Alice Waters: I’ve always thought about what was going to happen for the end of my life, and I guess it’s because I had a great aunt whose husband died early on — 50 — and she asked people to come and stay at her house. She called it “a room with a broom.” And my family went to stay there in the summers. And she had friends all year-round that… she lived to be 101. And she has always been that mentor to me, and she believed that you have to have friends and meaningful work through your whole life.
And I have this idea that it should be a working commune. Set up like the missions in California with the big inner courtyard and rooms around the perimeter that go into the courtyard or out into the world. And that the front part could be actually a business.
My latest is fantasy is to have it be a tortilleria. And I want a printing press where we print the news of the movement and wrap the hot tortillas in the papers of the press so that you would really take that home and learn about all the varietals of corn. Maybe it’s a work of art that’s on the papers that we’d print. Or maybe it’s some photograph of somebody — a farmer someplace. And we could curate that as part of the project. We, as the elders, could help to curate that newspaper if you will. And maybe the tortillas themselves would go directly to the schools.