Learn how these women are in the . Other stories include:

: A political science professor gets to the bottom of conspiracy theories and how to handle them.

: The Optimal Aging Clinic celebrates a year of rejuvenating the aging experience.

: An alumna fulfills a burning desire to build a community through writing.

Whether by planting seeds, sharing yield or trying to launch grocery stores where they are most needed, several local women are tackling lack of access to fresh, healthy foods in parts of the city.

With heightened concern born of the pandemic or accelerated by months of protests against racial injustice, the women are taking action in the community to allay hunger and increase the availability of choices as well as to empower others. They agree that people shouldn’t have to leave their own neighborhoods to find nourishing food or affordable groceries and that Black-owned businesses should have a chance to be suppliers as well.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic and its related shutdowns or slowdowns, food insecurity is on the rise, says Lisa Markowitz, a UofL associate professor of anthropology who has developed several food justice and farm movement courses. “It’s hitting low-income communities and people of color at a much higher rate. People are not able to get out and about, and people are losing income,” she said.

Harvesting help

Mariel Gardner ’03 got into raising plants as a side job growing cucumbers to launch a pickle business. But a week after the stay-at-home order related to COVID this spring, she and her gardening partner shifted direction.

“We can’t profit off this. We have to feed people,” Gardner said.

Gardner operates two greenhouses on formerly vacant lots where she grew more than 200 pounds of produce in a chemical-free manner and gave “the vast majority of the food away to people who live on the street.” This season included collard greens, carrots, zucchini, kale, corn and tomatoes; Gardner said she hoped they learned enough this year to double or triple next year’s yield.

She initially called the operation Apocalyptic Acres in a nod to the unusual time, but the title evolved into Fifth Element Farms. The choice comes from the fifth element of hip-hop culture: knowledge. Besides playing hip-hop music in the greenhouses, they chose the name to harken back to history.

“We are using the knowledge of our ancestors to grow this food for the good of our community,” Gardner said. “It all ties hand in hand with our ancestors, using our ancestral roots to feed the community. I love all these connections being made to the past and the present.”

Just as greenhouses make vacant lots more vibrant and productive, so does her spinoff project. Gardner and friends have been clearing blighted alleys of abandoned tires, which they are repurposing into planters and giving to people with seeds or plants to start their own small gardens.

“I don’t think we’re doing anything revolutionary here in trying to feed our people,” Gardner said. “It’s what we’re supposed to do.”

Sharing her attitude are other alums like Ebonee Sutton ’02, owner of Victory Gardens Urban Farm in the Victory/California Park area, and LeTicia Marshall ’08, ’11 who used her property in Shively to Bear Fruit and Grow, the name of her urban farming operation, and to teach young people and others to connect to their food.

“I wanted my daughter to learn because kids don’t understand where food comes from,” Marshall said.

Now her 4-year-old, dubbed Little Big Girl Farmer on Marshall’s YouTube gardening videos, “plants seeds and harvests, and she definitely knows how to eat,” her mother said.

“We typically think about farms in rural areas,” Marshall said. But her farm is in the middle of a residential neighborhood, where her garden surrounds her house, with produce planted in beds and containers and crawling up trellises. She has expanded yearly with plots, fruit trees and even a small greenhouse replacing traditional lawn space. “I can’t eat grass so I’m going to grow some food,” she said.

Neighborhoods that rely on grocery shopping at corner stores, gas stations and small mom-and-pop operations aren’t getting the full range of options, she said. “There’s very little access to fresh vegetables and berries.” So Marshall shares her bounty with the community.

A neighbor has agreed to lease a yard to her for $1, and “whatever I’m growing, they can go pick.” Her plans include purchasing items to extend her growing season and one day operating a nursery. “I do want to be the first Black-owned seed company in Louisville,”
she said.

Gardening this year has helped bring Marshall some peace and nudged her into more action. Marshall’s psychology and social work degrees help her coach others on gardening techniques and seed collection, emphasizing the cycles of harvesting and planting again for a new season. Like she experienced, people can find purpose in reclaiming their spaces and taking action, and they can take pride in growing their own food.

“What I found out was I am doing social work, just in a different way,” Marshall said.

Growing groceries

Shauntrice Martin, an associate alumna, was spurred into food outreach when the pandemic intersected with protests over law enforcement and racial inequity. The Parkland resident began #FeedtheWest with the organization Change Today, Change Tomorrow. #FeedTheWest distributed 23,000 food care packages in four months with at least $85 worth of groceries per bag, she said.

The assembling of the weekly food bags will continue in a new spot – her Black Market KY grocery store set to open soon in a 1,588-squarefoot renovated pizza business on a Market Street corner in the Russell neighborhood. It will be the only grocery store in the immediate area.

Martin has designed a place where neighborhood people can walk to or take a bus to buy fresh produce as well as a few household items – where they can afford and access items she feels they have been denied since larger retail stores closed and have not been replaced.

With a goal of providing 60 percent fresh food, Martin said she wants her customers to be “getting high-quality food for a low price.” She plans to hire only people who live in West Louisville and to raise funds to cover workers’ child care and transportation costs.

Intending to also use her surrounding half-acre, Martin envisions a social place where local children and seniors attend gardening education on plots next to or behind her store. Already she has encouraged Black-owned businesses to operate pop-up shops in the parking lot while construction continues.

Community organizer Cassia Herron, chairperson of the justice organization Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, also is focused on starting a grocery. Her efforts are for Louisville Community Grocery, which is being developed under the nonprofit Louisville Association for Cooperative Economics (LACE). Markowitz serves with Herron on the LACE board; alumna Kelsey Voit ’17, organizing director of the Community Farm Alliance, is president of the Louisville Community Grocery board.

The co-op business would be run and owned jointly by voting members who share benefits, profits and decision-making. Members become owners by purchasing shares priced affordably or subsidized to encourage local involvement. There were more than 250 owners by early fall, and Herron wants 2,000 by the time the store can open. The group was working to select a site and should complete its business plan by the year’s end, she said.

Herron ’02 has been working on aspects of food availability since organizing farmer’s markets while earning her bachelor’s degree in liberal studies. Connecting with UofL faculty and student researchers from areas including law, sociology, anthropology and business helped develop various aspects of LACE’s growth and helped set the stage for the grocery effort. “The university has been great,” Herron said.

As a faculty member, Markowitz encourages her students to get involved in food activism, volunteerism and related research opportunities. “It’s exciting to see the way students engage in the material and learn so much, using their knowledge and skill set to make change,” she said.

One of Louisville Community Grocery’s lead volunteers, Avalon Gupta VerWiebe ’19, recently spread the word about food access through an on-campus talk at the Garden Commons sustainability site. Instead of using the term food desert to describe the access problem, Gupta VerWiebe prefers food apartheid as a more apt description.

“Food apartheid looks at the whole food system – agriculture workers, grocery workers, proliferation of grocery stores, farmers’ markets,” she said. “The inequities in the food system are intentional and informed through inequality.”

Gupta VerWiebe urged students to take action to bring about “food sovereignty” instead. “I think the sky’s the limit,” she said. “Now’s the time to contribute ideas.”

“Having access to food is pretty essential,” Herron said. “If we are a community that cannot feed our people, I don’t know what we can do. Our community needs a win. I hope it’s a spark that ignites other wins in the community.”

That spellbinding feeling is what Angela Burton ’89 set out to capture when she began Feet to the Fire Writers’ Workshops. Six years later, her creative endeavor has found an even more noble purpose: providing lifelong learning and health benefits to aging populations by fueling connections through writing.

Feet to the Fire has helped more than 850 writers share more than 5,000 stories since its inception, and Burton has turned her homegrown workshops into a thriving business. With roughly 10,000 people turning 65 daily, Feet to the Fire has room to grow and to continue preserving the legacies of elders.

“There’s this whole idea that older people become invisible,” Burton said. “All I could think of was I don’t want their voices to go away.”

Starting with a spark

Feet to the Fire began with a flicker of an idea. Burton, who earned a bachelor’s degree in English at UofL, had always been a writer, eventually earning a master of fine arts in creative writing. By 2014, she had gone through a series of jobs but was searching for something more fulfilling.

“I was at that point where I just wanted to do something that was selfishly in my own zone and I wanted my tribe around me,” she said. “And my tribe were people who really enjoyed writing.”

Burton began searching around Louisville for creative writing groups but all she could find were classroom experiences. She imagined something much cozier: a group of writers sitting in her living room, in her “cool, little cottage” of a house with a fire crackling behind them, letting their stories pour out onto their pages. She wanted a connected experience through which people could share and feel safe and be heard, and they could find a sense of accountability to hone their craft.

“And then with the notion of gathering around fire to read the stories, it became Feet to the Fire Writers’ Workshops right off the bat,” she said.

So on one October day in 2014, a small group of people of all ages showed up to Burton’s front door with notebooks in hand.

“The first meeting it was all strangers and it was like magic,” Burton said. “It felt like this was the absolute right thing to do.”

The only thing that didn’t fit with her initial vision? The weather. It was an unseasonably warm October day, so the crackling fire would have to wait.

“Instead we opened up all the windows,” she said. “Nobody ever noticed or said, ‘You didn’t light a fire,’ but in so many metaphoric ways, I did light the fire that night.”

Fanning the fire

Louisville resident Mindy Hedley was one of the early Feet to the Fire participants. Like Burton, Hedley felt something indescribable in her first sessions.

“Community forms so quickly in these groups. I’m telling you, the only way to describe it is it’s some kind of magic,” Hedley, 59, said. “I think it has something to do with the writing; we’re sharing these intimate stories.”

Hedley had always journaled, but her writing took on more meaning as she turned to the craft to help her cope after her father’s death.

“When he passed, I thought he has to live on in some way, and writing is the way I could preserve his story,” Hedley said. “Feet to the Fire was something to guide me past the journaling, and I liked the small-group aspect of it.”

Preserving family legacies is often an outcome of the Feet to the Fire workshops. Since there is no expectation to publish any of the writing done in the group, many participants turn to their personal history for inspiration, illuminating the stories of their kin for future generations.

At one of the early living room sessions, Burton’s mother participated. Until then, Burton and her father had been the writers in the family; her father wrote dozens of stories, essays and poems before he passed away, finding a saving grace in writing down his thoughts as he got older. At Feet to the Fire, Burton’s mother began writing tales about their family that Burton had never heard before. And it was her mother who gave Burton her next big idea.

“My mom said,‘You should do this with people like me. You know, people that are old,’ ” Burton said.

Like any good daughter, Burton listened to her mother. She took her workshops to a local retirement community where she held sessions each week and piloted the program that would eventually become her business. The oldest gentleman in that first group was 97.

As Feet to the Fire began getting more attention, she got requests to expand the program into other communities. She quickly realized she would need to figure out how to scale her product.

She got a little help from a startup competition. In 2018, Burton was one of 10 finalists to compete for investment capital from Wild Accelerator’s female founders competition. Once again, her family became her inspiration.

“I remember walking into the room and there were 20 to 30 people all under 35 and I thought ‘How am I going to get them to relate?’ ” Her planned pitch sailed out of her head but she instantly changed paths as she looked at the picture of her father, whose Ernest Hemingway-esque portrait looked down on her from the backdrop for her presentation.

“I asked them ‘How many of you have grandparents? How many of you want to know their stories?’ and hands shot up,” she said.

Burton won.

With the seed money, Feet to the Fire expanded its focus to its current incarnation – a licensed program designed for use in senior/assisted living communities and wellness organizations. The communities receive writing kits for participants and training for facilitators.

In November 2020, Burton was named one of 20 “Influencers in Aging” by “Next Avenue,” a digital magazine for the senior population.

Stoking an eternal flame

While Feet to the Fire is now a bona fide business with facilitators in seven states, at its core the program is still about creating bonds. That connection is especially vital among aging populations.

“At its heart, Feet to the Fire is fulfilling a very social need that we have as human beings,” Burton said. “People want to connect with each other and they want to do it through their stories.”

While the program provides valuable prompts to kickstart the narrative process, it doesn’t matter what the participants write — fiction, nonfiction, stories of loss and love, tales of triumph or tragedy — it only matters that they write it down by hand and that they do it themselves.

“I want them to get into the therapeutic nature of writing and journaling. It challenges people to have to figure out what to do with words or phrases and make a story out of it,” Burton said.

Feet to the Fire also provides physical health benefits to the aging population. The act of writing is cognitive exercise and it gives participants a drive, desire and a reason to get up in the morning, Burton said. Having a purpose has been proven to add longevity to life, according to a 2019 study by University of Michigan epidemiologist Celeste Leigh Pearce. Burton is working with Pearce on a research proposal to examine Feet to the Fire as a scientifically valid intervention to develop that sense of purpose. She is also in talks with Swansea University in Wales to do international research.

For Louisville resident Judith Conn, the workshops have helped her process her grief over the death of her husband, provided her a way to stay active and connect with peers in her retirement community and allowed her to leave a legacy for her three children.

“It has helped me remember,” said Conn, 80. “The writing has really been beneficial, and I reach way back into my childhood because these are the memories I need to pass on to my family.”

Conn has written about everything from the perils of sleeping on a feather bed at her aunt’s farm to the joys of driving across the country on a work trip. One of her stories, about giving up her beloved red Mazda Miata when she started having trouble using the stick shift as she aged, was published in “Next Avenue.”

“It was about my realization that I was losing my independence,” she said. “I knew I was going to make a lot of changes and that was one of the hardest to make.”

As the aging population expands, Burton added a consumer version of Feet to the Fire so people can participate from home. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a sense of urgency to that goal.

“The older population may be sequestered for a while, so my concern is reaching people because I know they’re going to get lonely,” she said.

Feet to the Fire changed drastically with COVID-19, switching to Zoom sessions instead of in-person visits. Conn, who attends Feet to the Fire workshops at the Episcopal Church Home, enjoys the Zoom sessions but greatly misses the camaraderie of being in the same room with her fellow writers.

“Sitting across the table from people, sharing the laughter and sadness with their stories, you just can’t get that on Zoom,” she said.

In addition to adapting the sessions, Burton also launched the latest effort in the . The podcast interviews Feet to the Fire participants and tells some of the stories they’ve written. It’s another effort to make sure their memories are saved.

For Burton and Feet to the Fire participants, getting those stories out is the whole point — people, especially seniors, need to be heard and writing is the way to do it.

“They never run out of stories. It’s like they write stories to the end of their days,” Burton said. “So if that tells you anything, it tells you about the power of writing.”

This was the experience of Glenn and Joy Walters as they were referred from one medical specialist to another to unravel Glenn’s complex medical concerns. That changed with Glenn’s first appointment with Christian Furman, a geriatrician and medical director at the Republic Bank Foundation Optimal Aging Clinic at the UofL Trager Institute.

“When she was with us, she was present with us,” Joy said of Furman. “She asked very pointed questions about his situation. She also listened to my concerns. We got more out of that one appointment than we have in probably six months with other doctors. She made suggestions right away.”

Within a few days, the clinic’s team approach for Glenn’s care was in motion. A social worker followed up to help them navigate Furman’s suggestions. Treating the whole patient – mind, body and soul – so that older adults can be at their best as they age is the overarching goal of the UofL Trager Institute. The Trager Institute is supported by a gift from Steve Trager ‘85 and the Trager Family Foundation.

The Optimal Aging Clinic, opened in September 2019, enables the UofL Trager Institute to put into practice a model of comprehensive, integrated care for patients as they age. In the customized center, located on Market Street in Louisville, clinicians provide whole health primary care and specialized geriatric care as part of UofL Health – UofL Physicians, as well as behavioral health, wellness lifestyle medicine, yoga, tai chi, fitness classes and acupuncture services.

“Our mission is to provide a one-stop primary care experience for older adults to achieve optimal aging as they progress through their lives,” Furman said. “Annual wellness visits are particularly important for older adults as it is a time to intervene early. The patient and provider have a chance to proactively develop a plan for optimal aging.”

In addition to medical care, clinic providers evaluate medication management, chronic disease management, pain management, palliative care, fall prevention, brain health and dementia care and mental health support.

“Our clinic provides full behavioral health services to help patients when they are experiencing depression, anxiety, trauma, relationship issues or dealing with the losses that occur as one ages,” said Joseph D’Ambrosio, director of wellness and behavioral health therapist for the clinic.

To address the many aspects of health, clinic providers follow FlourishCare, an evidence-based model of patient care developed at the Trager Institute that addresses functional and quality-of-life factors that affect patients’ ability to flourish in spite of disease.

“We believe that optimal aging is more than treating illness with medication,” said Anna Faul, executive director of the Trager Institute. “Complex cases are evaluated by a full team of providers and professionals from a wide array of disciplines: medicine, nursing, social work, counseling psychology, pharmacy and dentistry. These meetings are then used to develop care plan strategies that are developed into comprehensive whole-health care plans with the patients and their families.”

In addition to treating the patients, providers at the Optimal Aging Clinic offer support for their family members and caregivers.

“When a family member is ill, it affects the whole family,” Faul said. “We keep that in the forefront of our minds and provide resources, support groups and other services to the patient’s friends, families and caregivers.”

For Joy Walters, the support and comprehensive care are a welcome change.

“They don’t leave you out there by yourself. They developed a care plan for Glenn and they made suggestions not only for him but for me,” Joy said.

At a recent appointment, the couple were in the room with Furman and a fourth-year medical student and on videoconference with their counselor and social worker to ensure the whole team knew what was happening. The visit even involved Forest, Glenn’s service dog.

“It was a medical appointment, but it was almost like a family affair,” Joy said.

During the pandemic, the clinic has made adjustments to ensure vulnerable patients continue to have safe access to health care. Whenever possible, patient visits are delivered via telehealth, reducing contact and risk of COVID-19 exposure. Wellness activities and weekly presentations were moved to an online format. For patients in senior living facilities or nursing homes, clinic providers make use of SmartGlasses technology. The glasses, worn by on-site health care workers, include a camera and microphone which allow clinic physicians to see and hear the patient in real time, ask questions and interact with the patient without entering facilities.

The UofL Trager Institute also hosts virtual COVID-19 information sessions focused on needs and concerns of older adults, caregivers and those with chronic conditions during the pandemic.

Since its opening, the Optimal Aging Clinic has served more than 2,500 patients with more than 9,000 patient visits. Plans include an elder law clinic, physical therapy and rehabilitation services and a teaching kitchen for nutritional coaching. Also in development is a survivors’ clinic for those with residual health issues following recovery from COVID-19.

In addition to patient care, the Trager Institute focuses on research and training health care providers in better ways to treat adults as they age.

For Glenn Walters, the most important facets of care at the clinic are that the providers work together and follow up with the patient.

“It is a lot less stressful and not as complicated as a lot of the situations I have been through,” he said. “They are people that care and they are there for me – for us, and they go the extra mile. It is a wonderful organization for the simple fact they are honest and straightforward and they do follow up on things.”

For political science professor Adam Enders, uncovering the mystery surrounding conspiracy theories is a puzzle worth solving.

It’s an especially timely interest, as conspiracies have been “dialed up to 11” during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to tangible consequences such as people not wearing masks or social distancing.

Add COVID conspiracies to other outlandish ideas already prevalent in society, and it results in heightened difficulty for people to determine fact from fiction. It could also raise anxiety and make for awkward social interactions between those with opposing views.

Enter Enders.

“I hope I can help people better think about what to be worried about or to what extent to be worried, and how you can interact with other people who believe these things,” he said. “I think a lot of people at this point are having trouble with interpersonal interaction with others that don’t have their same beliefs.”

SEEKING REALITY

Enders first began studying conspiratorial thinking while in graduate school about six years ago, at a time when radio host Alex Jones was making it onto the mainstream news more and more frequently with his far-fetched conspiracy theories.

Enders had a hunch conspiratorial thinking would increasingly impact our society. Despite a word of caution from his mentor, who warned the topic seemed trivial, Enders moved forward with his research.

“Maybe in 2014 it was kind of weird to study conspiracy theories, but now everybody has a sense that it actually matters,” Enders said. “When people show up at rallies with QAnon signs and they don’t have masks on or they go driving through downtown Portland with paintball guns and flags, it’s clear that the rubber has hit the road.”

Enders’ research has been featured in national media such as The Guardian, Politico, The Washington Post and even John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” proving his hunch that conspiracy theories are undeniably prevalent.

“Understanding why people believe these things is the key to correcting them and mitigating the pernicious effects of beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation,” he said.

As for why people believe, Enders said there are individual-level factors and environmental factors. Individual-level factors can include political, social and psychological reasons, while environmental factors include what Enders calls “information environments,” which is what people are exposed to through social and mass media.

“There are a million things that happen in the world every day, but we only talk about like five things,” Enders said. “If elites talk about conspiracies, and especially if they encourage them or at least fail to discourage them, then that’s going to promote belief. Because then you have this trusted authority figure that’s basically sanctioning particular behavior or thoughts.”

People also tend to see patterns in their everyday lives and that plays into conspiratorial thinking.

“We naturally see patterns in the world where there aren’t really patterns. It’s just coincidence,” he said. “But we like to see patterns because it simplifies the world and makes it easier to navigate. Conspiracy theories impose structure on a very messy world.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect storm to watch this play out. Take, for example, people who downplay the coronavirus or place blame on other countries for its spread.

“The pandemic is this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence that has uprooted our lives and is beyond our control. People to varying degrees just can’t handle that,” Enders said. “So they need to say, ‘China did it,’ or ‘the death toll isn’t even that high,’ or anything to make them feel better. This helps them regain control and feel a little less powerless, and those things subsequently reduce anxiety.”

THE TRUTH CONTINUUM

It can be difficult to not fall down a rabbit hole while constantly being surrounded by out-there theories, but Enders said the key to staying grounded is not to think of conspiracies as black and white.

“The way I see it is truth is sort of a continuum,” he said. “On one end of the spectrum we have scientific thinking and the other end is conspiracy thinking. What sets conspiracy theories apart from other theories is that there is almost never enough evidence to support them.”

That “almost never” is what further muddies his research. Watergate, for example, was a conspiracy theory until people had evidence it was true. That’s why it is critical for researchers like Enders to get to the reasons behind why people think the things they do, which could lead to helping people respectfully interact with those with different beliefs.

“It’s naturally difficult to study something that isn’t well-defined and is always inherently shifting. For example, there isn’t one QAnon conspiracy theory, there’s 100. There are different versions of conspiracy theories and the more outlandish the theory gets, the more people drop off in their belief,” Enders said. “So if I ask people ‘Do you believe in QAnon?,’ I have to figure out what version of QAnon they hear in their mind when I ask the question. Getting everyone on the same playing field as far as what we’re even talking about is a very difficult first step.”

Enders understands the social struggle that often occurs when conspiracy theorists come up against those inclined to fall on the side of science or fact. He, like many people these days, has family members, friends and co-workers who sometimes lean into conspiracies.

His advice for those entering into conversations with conspiracy believers? Approach them from a place of understanding.

When asked how he handles such situations, he thoughtfully considered before answering with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh … carefully. I never start it,” he quipped. “Maybe it’s easier for me because I know why they’re like that. I know it’s a confluence of other things, a cocktail of individual level stuff in their life and what’s going on in the news that leads them down a particular path.”

Enders knows he won’t solve the conspiracy problem completely, but the goal of his research is to help people navigate an increasingly tumultuous world.

“Conspiracies have been around forever and they’re going to continue to be,” he said. “But I hope to help people understand and deal with them.”

And that’s certainly something to believe in.