ELO

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.

The Amazing VNO

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.
• The organ is well developed in strepsirrhine primates such as lemurs and lorises, developed to varying degrees in New World monkeys, and underdeveloped in Old World Monkeys and apes.
• 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!!

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.

"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'.

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.

Whirlpool

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.

One part London, Two parts Magic

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'.

"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."

-Call of the Wild, Jack London 1903

On Time

Oh not because happiness exists

that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.

But because truly being here is so much

because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world

which in some strange way

keeps calling to us.

Us, the most fleeting of all

-excerpt from The Ninth Duino Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke

The Country of Marriage

I.

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.