writing
I recently posted a family history compendium to this web site. When I started this part-time writing project more than fifteen years ago, artificial intelligence was dream-stuff for a handful of computer scientists. When I finished, there were three AI assistants—Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT—each at my actual fingertips, asking at every touch how they could … Continue reading Blacksmiths, Ice Men, and Copy Editors
I am one of ten kids of Bill and Lorraine Durbin. My dad’s father died before I was born, but my mom’s dad, the remarkable James Kalish, was a regular presence in my life as a kid. In the 1960s, he and his wife Bernice lived in East St. Louis, Illinois, and we lived in … Continue reading The Resilient Jimmy Kalish
For the past few months I’ve been looking into my family history, posting here as I went. Now it’s all in a new section of this website. I’ve been curious about this story for more than fifty years. In 1973, when I was ten, I asked my parents if we had a family tree. “No,” … Continue reading My Family History
Fully revised and updated through 2024, my book Finding America's Farmworkers: Reaching Out in North Carolina is now available in a web version. To begin reading visit findingamericasfarmworkers.com When I moved to North Carolina from Chicago in 2005, I had no idea that so much of our nation's food was still harvested by hand. Now, … Continue reading Finding America’s Farmworkers
It's a sad truth that tens of millions of people in the United States depend on free food to keep their families from going hungry. Many of these moms and dads plant and harvest fruits and vegetables or raise and package chicken and other meats, all for the lowest possible wage. As a result, the … Continue reading To Feed Those Who Feed Us
We know he was 30 years old, a citizen of Mexico, working at a North Carolina tobacco and sweet potato farm. It was just the second week of his first year working there, authorized by an H-2A temporary seasonal work visa. We know area temperatures neared 100 on the fifth day of September. It was … Continue reading The Death of a Farmworker
In 1981, the travel writer Tom Miller made a spot-on prediction. President Reagan was then planning an experimental program to allow US growers to hire 50 thousand Mexican farmworkers each season on temporary contracts, a program that would be enacted into law in 1986 as the H-2A visa program. Writing in The New York Times, … Continue reading The New Bracero
"Qué tipo de cultivo están cultivando aquí?" I asked the men. “What type of crop are you growing here?” We were huddled in the frigid and rundown trailer where these North Carolina farmworkers cooked and ate their meals. I was just starting some research for a book, visiting labor camps to introduce myself. It was … Continue reading You grow what?
We live in an era of deeply polarized politics. But anyone who gives it much thought is likely agree on this: Our nation’s agricultural economy would grind to a halt without farmworkers, nearly 400 thousand of whom leave their families in Mexico for the better part of each year to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops … Continue reading The crux of the farmworker debate
When Becky and I decided to build a house, it did seem a bit impulsive. We had just met. When Covid hit a few months later, the idea seemed suddenly improbable. Then impossible. Then, positively insane. Our original plan was to do what most people do and just buy a pre-existing place—a used house, as … Continue reading To build a house. Or not.
Michael Durbin 