Just back from nearly two weeks excavating on the Isle of Harris and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides Island of Western Scotland. Lovely, breathtaking, amazement - how can one come up with the words to describe it? There is a sense of wildness and necessary self-sufficiency that is conjured up in the mind when seeing the vast salt-marsh, the sandy Scottish machair plains, the steep rise of the highland. The people primarily speak Scottish Gaelic. There are black-faced sheep everywhere, defiant to cars and people. And mostly importantly there are dogs. Lots of them. All seeming clones of each other: black and white piebald, long collie faces, bright eyes and desperate to corral sheep. Walking along the rocky hills with the cold ocean breeze coming at me I fancied myself a sort of Diana.
Monday, August 2, 2010
No recent posting because I have been out-of-my-mind busy. And it isnt looking to stop anytime soon.
Schedule:
Aug 6-Aug 21: excavating, Northton, Isle of Harris, Scotland
Aug 21-Aug 28: ICAZ conference, Paris, France
Sept 15-Dec 15: internship, Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL
Because, of course, I search YouTube for dog burial related items I give you the following:
"The Dog Burial" by Sopor Aeternus
"Be quick, be quick, you must climb down! I heard him breathing below the ground! Bring forth some light and break the lid! What is wrong with you, why do you hesitate?! Open the grave, oh please be quick, before his poor heart gives up its last beat!"
Last night saw the Swedish movie Girl with the Dragon Tattoo based off the book by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. I hadnt read the book and wasnt really sure what to expect with the movie. All I had heard was that it was 'good', 'controversial' and that they were planning to make a US version of the movie soon.
Leaving the theater after the movie I was in a bit of a daze. Im not sure what I was expecting, but that movie rocked my senses. I think I barely breathed for the whole 2 hours. Its like taking Saw, Underworld and some vintage murder mystery and putting it into one movie. The friend I was with said that the movie was much more tame than the book, and that was not a tame movie. The sex, violence, sexual violence and perversity are on a pretty high scale, but it all seemed critical to telling the story.
It will be very interesting to see how they make a US version of this movie. I can see this movie being much too graphic for a majority of US audiences. I cant imagine an American actress who could pull off the lead role of Lisbeth. Im not convinced some of the themes of the movie are something that a US audience would handle very well unless it is watered down significantly. Will be interesting to see how they pull it off.
I decided to take a little stroll through the Botanical Gardens here in Durham the other day on one of the few sunny days we might have this year. A little stroll turned into a long stroll when I realized that the gardens are 60 acres of winding paths through meadows, forests and swamps.
At the end of one quiet, empty path through a forest I came to a sort of clearing. Looking around and listening to the birds and the movement of the leaves I had the strange feeling that someone was watching me. I scanned the treeline. No one. I looked down the path, but no one else was headed my way. Then I saw him, with a look on his face that encouraged me to keep walking.
Recently been having a series of very - colorful - dreams which often include vivid impressions of past events in my life, particularly places I have visited. Here are some of the most memorable experiences.
Seeing a poisonous sea snake swim right under me while snorkeling in Jamaica when I was 12. I clearly remember thinking that the only reason I didnt get bitten was because it chose not to bite. Thats when I realized that being in the sea is really being out of the human element.
Waking up pre-dawn on a 19hr. train from Chennai to Delhi, India with four older men staring at me, waiting for me to get up so they could play cribbage.
My first time using Spanish while on vacation in Mexico during junior high. I was really proud of myself.
The looks you will get as a single woman standing alone in a movie line in Cairo.
Winning a booty-shaking contest in a Winnipeg, Canada bar (yes!)
The pure joy of everything about the town of Dalyan, Turkey. The Kaunos ruins, families that sell honey on the side of the road. Lemons the size of your head.
Realizing that street vendors in Bangkok are very serious when they say 'last price'. They hold grudges.
Watching my best friend Nichole chugging mass amounts of root beer in a contest (we were 14) in Laughlin, NV then watching it all come back up. Some through her nose. (Yes, Nichole!!)
The hurried Londoner that looked at me and shouted, "MOVE" on my first day figuring out the London subway system. Thank you random Londoner, you inspired me to figure it out very quickly.
Sitting for seven hours in a grungy beach bathroom in Haiti while a woman braided all my hair into tiny plaits.
I am eternally, terribly, horribly lactose intolerant. Cow, goat, sheep - if it makes milk, I cant process it. I am not alone in this, but there are many of you out there who still dont realize how intolerant of dairy products you may be.
I have now gone about six months without dairy products of any kind and it has made a world of difference. A WORLD. Anyone very close to me knows about my long battles with stomach problems (sorry to share) and I have finally realized the culprit (after years of trying to eliminate everything else). Dairy is like poison to my body. This is a lesson I have recently had to learn again when I got weak last week and had some goat bleu cheese. Not pretty.
If you are interested in seeing if you have a dairy intolerance (anything from very mild to strong) there is a ton of information out there. I suggest everyone try at least a month without dairy to see what sort of differences it can make for you. I will warn you that the first week isnt the greatest as your body is busy purging itself of milky toxins, but after that it is smooth sailing. There are lots of great blogs about dairy-free cooking and living, but this is one of my favorites.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Somehow this song, and Sigur Ros music in general, always recharges me. Time to plan a trip to Iceland.
Friday, May 7, 2010
(ive always loved this picture of a Hadza man keeping a lookout on a tree, from National Geographic)
Our culture, well my culture at least, is obsessed with ways to remove fat from the diet. The grocery store shelves are filled with products stating that they are 'lite', 'fat-free', 'skinny', 'skim'. These qualities are promoted as a means to encourage buyers and we fall for it willingly and without fail.
If you were a prehistoric hunter-gatherer you would feel very differently about fat. In contrast to modern diets, you would spend your life searching for fat resources in your diet. More and more it looks like hunter-gatherers based their entire subsistence practice around the acquisition of fat. Hunting intensely in the late autumn when deer, boar and other prey species were at their fattest (after they had gorged in order to survive through the winter), moving to follow herds of caribou or reindeer which provided a main fat source during the Paleolithic period in the North, splitting the bones of hunted animals in times of desperation in order to retrieve the fatty bone marrow.
As we try to avoid fat like the plague, hunter-gatherers would have searched after it relentlessly.
In other news, our weather here has been quite inconsistent, which isnt inconsistent for the UK. We had a long streak of warm, sunny days and then suddenly cloudy, windy, cold rain. Yesterday was particularly interesting as most of the day Durham was filled with just the finest mist of moisture in the air. Things noticed:
a baby pink tulip covered with the slightest hint of misty dewdrops
lots of birds loving the escapee earthworms the rain produces
a layer of Icelandic volcano ash covering my black rain boots
and increased level of green to the trees and plants that makes it look like someone adjusted the color and brightness modes on a TV
that smell of fresh rain air
people on the street in a hurry to get out of the rain have no problem knocking you off the sidewalk
coffee tastes better when its cold outside
paying attention in German class is hard when you are concentrating on the rhythm of raindrops on the window
things always look better the next day after the rain
The year I was born Lewis Binford, the so-called 'father' of New or Processual archaeology, wrote a seminal piece of archaeological literature outlining the differences between 'forager' and 'collector' hunter-gatherer groups. It talked about 'affluent societies', logistical strategies and settlement systems.
If you arent an archaeologist you are dying of boredom about now.
Anyway, in his 'Willow Smoke and Dogs' Tails: Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological Site Formation' (1980) he included the following excerpt which always stayed with me:
"An old Eskimo man was asked how he would summarize his life; he thought for a moment and said, "Willow smoke and dogs' tails; when we camp it's all willow smoke, and when we move all you see is dogs' tails wagging in front of you. Eskimo life is half of each."
On a related, but unrelated note: I came across these pictures on the web today as I was looking for pictures of white-tail deer to include in a Powerpoint (power point! power point!) presentation. I nearly died of cuteness overload. Albino deer (and a baby!). Makes me wonder if this is what people saw that made them think unicorns existed. An antler could easily be mistaken for a horn.
Electronic Light Orchestra (ELO) is such an underrated band. If you can find someone who produces more joy than Jeff Lynne and his afro, Ill give you a dollar. Heavenly.
So, I am still in the process of reading The Vegetarian Myth though, admittedly, it is taking me quite the effort to push through it. After reading Foer's Eating Animals, which I found to be engaging and a page-turner, The Vegetarian Myth is proving a slow read. I think I just dont like the voice of the author. She went from loud, aggressive, radical vegan to loud, aggressive, radical meat-eater. Something about her tone irks me (which makes it difficult to buy her story).
Which brings me to another point. I have been reading many of these nutrition, animal-rights, factory farming/agriculture, etc books lately and have noticed a certain overlying thread - and not a good one. The incidence of taking scientific one-liners and basing huge chunks of an argument on them is enormous. This is the downfall of a non-scientist writing about scientific things. They have no way to accurately interpret what they are putting down, they are just putting it out there in its raw form (and thus a crowd of readers learn to believe it as well). In the last few months of reading these books I have seen SO many biased uses of scientific figures to prove an author's personal viewpoint, it is truly unbelievable (or not). I wonder if the author, or the reader, or the public in general realizes that we as scientists arent even sure about a lot of these things and are still debating them within the scientific community. I read an 'archaeological fact', presented as such, about the earliest agriculturalists in The Vegetarian Myth last night (something that has been in contentious debate in archaeological circles for many decades) and thought, "Oh great, well, Im glad she settled that. Ill just quit my PhD now and let Peter Rowley-Conwy and Doug Price know she solved the mystery."
One thing that did come up in the book last night, which I hadnt heard much about was the VNO or vomeronasal organ. What an amazing thing with such possibilities. It is basically our 'sixth sense' organ. A list of its uses in animals, from Wikipedia:
Salamanders perform a nose tapping behavior to supposedly activate their VNO.
Snakes use this organ to sense prey, sticking their tongue out to gather scents and touching it to the opening of the organ when the tongue is retracted.
Elephants transfer chemosensory stimuli to the vomeronasal opening in the roof of their mouths using the prehensile structure, sometimes called a "finger", at the tips of their trunks.
Painted Turtles use this organ to use their sense of smell underwater.
Also suggested that this is the organ that makes human females living together sync on the same menstruation cycle. Brilliant!!
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Last night as I stood up for bed after many, many, MANY hours hunched over books and my laptop I was reminded of something: muscle atrophy. The simple act of standing and stretching made my muscles sing for joy and reminded me that although I may live primarily in my head at the moment, I am in fact made of muscles, ligaments and blood.
I lie on my bed, flat on my back and made a conscious effort to reconnect with the individual pieces of my body. I started at my toes. I curled them and flexed my feet, attempting to feel each muscle as it pulled and released. Then my legs, raising them, lowering them. Knees. Thighs. Arching my back, stretching the muscles that have only recently attempted to keep me from falling over in my desk chair. For the first time in a quite a while I allowed myself to be aware of the small miracle of the body, something we take for granted every day.
I stretched and rolled and folded and squeezed and breathed deeply and it was wonderful.
Friday, April 23, 2010
"I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I cannot transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls." -Anais Nin
Anais Nin's books saved me during my isolated and awkward time at OSU.
roma flag
Also, while it is on my mind (because I saw the menu of a new Portland restaurant with a dish called 'Gypsy toast'), please stop using the word 'gypsy'. It is not politically correct in any sense and is truly a demeaning word for the Roma people. It is true they often use it themselves as a means of identification because most people havent a clue who 'Roma' are, but it is certainly not an acceptable term for outsiders to be using. Ever wonder where the term, 'I got gyped' comes from? Yeah. You wouldnt call an African-American that, or a Hispanic person that, so start a revolution and stop with the word 'gypsy'.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
This morning I have been thinking about how lucky I am to have been able to travel to all the places I have been. I really believe seeing the world the way it truly is, not just through pictures or movies, is a goal everyone should have. I have been fortunate enough to visit every continent outside of Antarctica and Australia (on the list!) and have seen a host of amazing things.
Some of those amazing things have been the simplest: sunrises and sunsets. The thing about sunsets and sunrises is that they happen everywhere, every day, but somehow they manage to be different in every place you go. Thinking about the greatest sunsets I have seen around the world, I knew immediately which location I was most in awe of.
2006. Palolem Beach, Goa, West India. The sunsets here were unreal and this vibrant every evening. At sunset the beach would fill with people just sitting around quietly, staring at the horizon. Just minutes before there were old men hustling fruit, groups playing cribbage (hugely popular in India), people laughing loudly at the Nepalese momo cafe. Just minutes after people were bargaining for cheap wine #7 at the liquor shop, conversing about beach parties, and passing around joints. But for a few minutes in between it seemed like everyone was silent, focused on the small miracle happening in front of us, every night.
Also, here is Pom-Pom, the angora rabbit. He was the pet of a Swiss hostel owner I stayed with in Udaipur. Pom-Pom had more attitude than any dog or cat you have met and was fickle about who he liked and didnt like. Mostly he just couldnt be bothered.
So many things in my head right now. I am at the height of my research creativity currently and things are whirling around in my mind all together like a blender. I am finding that I need to discipline myself to not just go all-out on every idea I have as it comes to me. Recently this kind of research tactic has been wearing me out and pulling me in a billion directions at once when I should really be focusing on one or two things at a time for the best results.
My research encompasses so many interesting things. Obviously I get into ancient cultures, specifically during the Mesolithic/Archaic time period (between 10000-3000 years ago), but I also do a lot of work on past environments, climate change, animal ecology (roe deer are solitary animals, red deer arent), hunting techniques, subsistence practices, sedentary vs. nomadic lifestyles. Each of these topics have thousands of offshoots of their own and if I get stuck wandering down one of these paths I could be gone for hours.
During my research this week, Ive come across many interesting things. While looking for possible images of deer hunting in ancient Scandinavian art I came across this haunting etching. I just couldnt get it out of my mind after I had first seen it. It depicts seidmen, practitioners of the traditional Norse pagan religion, being tied down in a bay during low tide to face their impending death by drowning when the tide came in. This was a practice ordered by King Olaf of Norway in his process of the Christianizing of Scandinavia.
Continuing to look for artistic evidence of dog hunting, I came across this great find. This will undoubtedly become a key piece in my theory of dog-assisted boar hunting in Japan. It is taken from a ceremonial brass bell from the Yayoi culture (staring about 3ooo years ago) in Japan. Though they were rice agriculturalists, they were known to depict traditional practices (in this case, Jomon ancestors hunting boar) on their ceremonial brass pieces. Dogs holding down a boar while the hunter shoots it. Brilliant! This fits with my research perfectly.
Finally, another Japanese piece from the site of Fujioka, a clay dog figurine. The only piece of its kind ever found.
Currently Japan holds one of the most prolific records of intentional dog burials during the Mesolithic period. There are said to be over 200 burial sites in central-eastern Japan. The problem is that there is little to no archaeological literature about these burials in English. The spread of this knowledge has been lost to western scholars because they simply arent aware of it. I am working to rectify this situation. I am currently in the process of getting a mass of Japanese archaeological literature (which has been generously shared with me by numerous Japanese scholars) translated and published so western archaeologists can join the discussion about what is happening at Jomon (Japanese culture group from about 14000-3000 years ago) sites per the zooarchaeological record. It is a lot of work, but I think it can make a real contribution. I am also working to prepare an application for a large grant to support my visiting both Japan and Taiwan to do ethnographic work with native boar hunting groups there as well as examine the Japanese dog collections.
Still reeling from my recent trip to London. That is a difficult city to take in, I imagine, in any amount of time, much less a few days. I was simultaneously overwhelmed by both the 'newness' and 'oldness' of the place.
It got me thinking about the mythology we create, especially as Americans I believe, about foreign places we see on TV and film. Certain locations conjure specific images and experiences in our minds and when we finally get the opportunity to visit those places we can either be deflated by failed expectations or enjoy the true nature of the place. I have had the great privilege now to visit some of the most iconic places in the world: India, Egypt, London (soon, Paris!). I had a set expectation for each of these places in my mind. India would be magically, spices in the air and people doing yoga and living in temples. The vision of the Pyramids at Giza, people in London all being well-dressed and well-spoken. In reality India can be quite dirty, difficult to navigate, people are rightly more concerned about selling goods to tourists to support their families than Ayurvedic medicine. The Great Pyramids are actually located in the center of a very busy Giza City. The view from the pyramid plateau is one of freeways and high-rise buildings, not endless deserts and palm-lined oases. And London...
Im not sure what I expected to find in London. As I said before, a mix of new and old. The well-dressed ancestors of Sherlock Holmes. Thin women drinking tea in Prada. Girls navigating cobblestones streets in mile-high Louboutin heels. And museums. And culture. And history. Add red buses and red phone booth. Sprinkle in some costumed guards, some palaces, a few bridges. Mix. London. In reality, a good deal of this you do actually find in there, but not quite the way you expect.
For me London seems a bit like on of these large cnidarian communities. It appears to be one organism, but in reality it is made up of millions of small ones which have formed this amazing personality. I stayed in an area of South London called Camberwell, known for its thriving African immigrant population. Not considered a great neighborhood by typical standards, but I found the Sierra Leonian immigrants I stayed with to be some of the most welcoming, endearing people I have ever met. A half an hour bus ride from Camberwell put me at Buckingham Palace, surrounded by the Queen's Gardens and guards in fancy dress. 15 minutes away I was at the Portabello Market in Notting Hill, pushing through crowds of tourists and hip Londoners digging through piles of vintage books and clothing. So, this is London. All of it real. All of it 'magical'.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
"The call still sounding in the depth of the forest filled Buck with a great unrest and strange desires... wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what. Sometimes he pursued the call in the forest, looking for it as thought it were a tangible thing. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyes and wide-eared to all that moved and sounded about him.
One night he sprang from sleep with a start. From the forest came the call, distinct and definite as never before - a long-drawn howl, like, yet unlike, and noise made by a husky dog. He sprang through the sleeping camp and in swift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cry he went more slowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to an open place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on haunches, with nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber wolf."
I dream of you walking at night along the streams of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs of birds opening around you as you walk. You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said that bound me to you, some mere promise or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death? A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood still and said nothing. And then there rose in me, like the earth's empowering brew rising in root and branch, the words of a dream of you I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer who feels the solace of his native land under his feet again and moving in his blood. I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss that lay before me, but only the level ground.
III.
Sometimes our life reminds me of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing and in that opening a house, an orchard and garden, comfortable shades, and flowers red and yellow in the sun, a pattern made in the light for the light to return to. The forest is mostly dark, its ways to be made anew day after day, the dark richer than the light and more blessed, provided we stay brave enough to keep on going in.
IV.
How many times have I come to you out of my head with joy, if ever a man was, for to approach you I have given up the light and all directions. I come to you lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace in you, when I arrive at last.
V.
Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange of my love and work for yours, so much for so much of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are-- that puts us in the dark. We are more together than we know, how else could we keep on discovering we are more together than we thought? You are the known way leading always to the unknown, and you are the known place to which the unknown is always leading me back. More blessed in you than I know, I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing not belittled by my saying that I possess it. Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light enough to live, and then accepts the dark, passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I have fallen tine and again from the great strength of my desire, helpless, into your arms.
VI.
What I am learning to give you is my death to set you free of me, and me from myself into the dark and the new light. Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions of the dark. It does not hold us, except we keep returning to its rich waters thirsty. We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.
VII.
I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark, containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning. I give you the life I have let live for the love of you: a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road, the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life that we have planted in the ground, as I have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself again and again, and satisfy--and this poem, no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.
-Wendell Berry
Still reading Eating Animals , still consumed by the facts, figures and disturbing images it is creating in my mind.
My decision to not eat meat/poultry/seafood until I find a humane, ethical alternative source (if that exists) has been going well save for the Easter dinner I had with my international roommates last night where there was a plethora of chicken, beef, pork, seafood and venison. Speaking of venison, Im looking into the possibility of substituting the normal meat and poultry choices with those that have yet to be turned into factory farm models. Venison, buffalo, wild boar, perhaps some wild game birds? Its something I plan on looking into soon, but perhaps those have gone the way of the industry as well. Maybe I need to find a local game huntsman and purchase meat from him - or just stop with the meat all together.
You dont realize how dependent on meat your eating lifestyle has become until you cut it out of your menu. When thinking about what to make for lunch or dinner I have been going down a mental checklist thinking, "no, no, no" as nearly everything has meat in it. It is challenging yet sort of freeing in a creative way. Of our dependence on factory farms to provide us with the bulk of our food, the amazing farmer/writer/poet Wendell Berry says in his The Art of The Commonplace:
"Our methodologies... have come more and more to resemble the methodology of mining... This is sufficiently clear to many of us. What is not sufficiently clear, perhaps to any of us, is the extent of our complicity, as individuals and especially as individual consumers, in the behavior of the corporations... Most people... have given proxies to the corporations to produce and provide all of their food."
With every dollar we spend on factory farmed meat we are telling the corporations that run these places to keep doing it - faster, cheaper, easier. We might mentally remove ourselves from the steps that happen before we buy it, neatly packaged, at Safeway or Tesco, but we are the ones encouraging the entire process with our spending and demand for the product. It will be difficult and uncomfortable and a pain, but we need to stop the dependence and send a different message.
Did you know that Smithfield, the largest pork producer in the US, produces at least as much fecal waste annually as the entire human population of the states of California and Texas combined? There are no rules or regulations in place that determine how these companies must dispose of the waste. You can imagine where its going.
The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
After finishing a truly bad novel by Kathy Reichs from which one of my favorite shows, Bones, is based I picked up something completely different. Having previously been a vegetarian for nearly 12 years and having lately been keenly aware of environmental, animal and sustainability issues, I decided to pick up the highly-controversial Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Long story short, he decided to become a vegetarian after having a child and worrying about what to feed him. What he found in his research turned him off meat.
I cant lie, this book has been bringing tears to my eyes for the last few nights I have been reading it. Sure, some of it is the typical shock and awe, but I think the public in general may be used to the PETA-style shock and awe campaign, which in fact, REALLY should shock and awe us – and not in a good way. Ive realized that all the reasons I became a vegetarian when I was younger still hold true. I still love animals. I still feel badly when Im eating a factory-farmed burger. I still think about what all the methane and raw sewage we are dumping from these factories into the environment is doing for our future.
One thing that I really hadn’t considered before, which now weighs on me heavily is the issue of seafood. When I was younger I didn’t eat seafood, so it wasn’t an issue I confronted. Now, I crave sushi daily. Until recently I had been one of those people who believed that being a vegetarian, but still eating fish may be the best choice. I figured the true evil was red meat and cattle slaughter houses. Chicken plants weren’t at the top of my list either. It wasn’t until very recently that I have realized that mass production fishing is probably the worst of the food evils. The author puts it best when referring to “bycatch”, the unintentional animals caught when fishing for one particular species:
“The average shrimp-trawling operation throws 80 to 90 percent of the sea animals it captures overboard, dead or dying, as bycatch… What if there were labeling on our food letting us know how many animals were killed to bring our desired animal to our plate? So, with trawled shrimp from Indonesia, for example, the label might read: 26 POUNDS OF OTHER SEA ANIMALS WERE KILLED AND TOSSED BACK INTO THE OCEAN FOR EVERY 1 POUND OF THIS SHRIMP.”
So, the question is: can I justify killing 145 other species as bycatch so that I can have tuna in my sushi hand roll? For me, the answer is simply, no. My claims to be a lover of the sea, the waves, its creatures, diving, and the underwater world cant really hold true if I am simultaneously encouraging companies to dredge the sea floor, killing everything in their path, so I can have a nice shrimp cocktail. Its just not acceptable and I am opening my eyes and become aware of my own contradictions. I might miss my salmon sashimi, but Ill miss the animals when Im diving in an empty ocean even more.
I am reading this book with a renewed passion for changing myself and the things around me in which I have influence. When I was younger I took a hard stance. I refused any meat or meat product at friends’ house, was ridiculed by my cattle-raising, meat-loving family, and stood outside KFC in a chicken suit. I really had beliefs, but those went by the wayside as I grew older, busier, let the reality fade away of what my craving for a cheeseburger means for the suffering, terrible life of that factory-farm cow. So, I think. Im looking into the possibilities of small local, truly farm-raised and humanely-treated animals for my meat source. Those are getting harder and harder to find, though. If so I will return to the creative life of a vegetarian.
Today I sat silently reading articles in the laundry room as my clothes went on whirring in the dryer. It was nice. Peaceful. Spring break in a small, college town. All the students have gone, it is early Saturday morning, nothing to distract me, nothing to interfere with my enjoyment of the rare British sun coming in through the windows. Or so I thought.
Enter single remaining undergraduate student in all of Durham. She trudges into the room in her mud-stained Uggs, dragging her feet intentionally, "shhhhf, shhhhf". Her hair looks as if she got into a fight with her cat, but I suspect she spent quite a bit of time creating this style. Her bloated face reveals a long Friday night of drinking and the unfortunate use of non-waterproof mascara. Her low-rise jeans are three sizes too small, revealing the final resting place of all those beer calories. She doesnt seem to be in the best of moods. She is slamming washer doors, dropping laundry powder all over the floor and cursing at the machine change slots. I am staring at her. She looks at me with annoyance. I move out to the lobby in an attempt to continue enjoying my morning. She follows (I hear the "shhhf, shhhf" of her sad Uggs behind me) and sits on the bench next to me. Im a bit irked. Really? Of all the places, she has to sit here? Then it happens.
We are in a college town which is now void of most undergraduate students being Spring Break, yet this one straggler has decided to get up early on a Saturday morning, come into the laundry room (which has been void of anyone but myself all morning), sit right next to me, break out her cell phone and relate the story of last nights drinking to every friend she has. Its truly unimaginable. Im not sure how many buildings we have on campus, but its a lot. She could have picked any of them. Or her dorm room. Or the cafe. Or any other spot, but right next to me. Its like being on an empty airplane with one other person and choosing to sit in the center seat right next to them.
So, what is my point? As this situation was unfolding, I happened to be reading an article that got me thinking about things like, "Are we really better off?" Technological innovations (cell phone girl), food innovations (the joy of corn syrup) - they all seem to have their pluses and minuses. This got me to thinking about my previous post on hunter-gatherer sleeping patterns... which related back to the article I was reading.
Cordain, et al. write in 'Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets' (Am. Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2000), when discussing hunter-gatherer diet vs. the modern diet:
"Total fat intakes would have been similar or higher; however, under all circumstances, protein intakes would have been higher and carbohydrate intakes would have been lower. These differences are due, in part, to the high reliance of Western societies on cereal grains, dairy products, beverages, oils and dressings, and sugar and candy in lieu of meat and fruit and vegetables.
Anthropologic and medical studies of hunter-gatherer societies indicate that these people were relatively free of many of the chronic degenerative diseases and disease symptoms that plague modern societies and that this freedom from disease was attributable in part to their diet. Therefore, macronutrient characteristics of hunter-gatherer diets may provide insight into potentially therapeutic dietary recommendations for contemporary populations."
"Whats wrong with us?" "I dont know, ask the hunter-gatherers."
Ha. I just love the we think of ourselves as so advanced in comparison to archaic hunter-gatherers. So advanced we are killing ourselves. Michael would say KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
OK, admittedly sometimes I let this get me down. Politics, Ugg girls, text messaging, terrible eating habits, the state of the world in general. Thats when Wendell Berry becomes helpful.
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
There is something to be said for checklists. I am a big fan. I am an even bigger fan of checking things OFF checklists and today was a whopper.
Something I saw or heard yesterday must have set off a chain reaction in my mind, because my dreams were something else last night. It was as if someone was playing a filmstrip of every childhood memory I have between 4-14 on an endless loop. The last thing I remember when waking up is something that has often been a point of contention for me. The image was that of a red-haired, monocle-sporting ventriloquists dummy with a maniacal grin. I go through phases of insisting that I remember some movie or show with this scenario, especially this dummy. I have searched the internet, asked so-called ‘horror movie fans’, scoured old video store collections. Nothing. Im pretty sure people think I am making it up or imagining it.
And this morning, again, the dummy. That fuzzy red hair, that monocle. So, I decided it was finally time to put an end to this haunting memory. I did some real investigative work on the internet today (always a productive way to spend time when working on a PhD). And… SUCCESS! I am happy to report that I have not lost my mind. In fact, there are apparently legions of people my age who have faint memories similar to my own and have sought out this movie as well. I give you… Joey (1985), also known as Making Contact. Its German (I should have known!) and apparently it is a movie intended for kids, which is truly shocking as it was clearly scarring for myself and others who saw it as children. I mean, this is a movie whose plot involves an evil, possessed dummy who tries to control a young boy by faking phone calls from his dead father. Not the plot of your typical Disney movie.
If you feel the need to put yourself through the psychological trauma, have at it. As for me, I am checking this off my list and attempting to heal my childhood scars.
Diana and her hunting dogs by Jan Fyt
I heard him breathing below the ground!
Bring forth some light and break the lid!
What is wrong with you, why do you hesitate?!
Open the grave, oh please be quick, before his poor heart gives up its last beat!"