The true end of a nest is when it falls and withers away never to be seen again. The hummingbird nest that was home to our little neighbors fell a week or so ago, and I just managed to document it before it fell apart. It is amazing how well put together it is.
A masterpiece for sure.
From 4 years ago. How time flies, and mountains remain. Zen wisdom is difficult:
I’ve been in a philosophical mood lately; probably because of the approaching life events, and other big tides, but my trains of thought seem to be manifesting themselves in grand ways.
What I have been working on in those passing moments is the idea of water dripping on stone. It has come up often here, and its a pretty obvious statement that water is the single most powerful element on earth. It’s our life giver. It is the mountain killer. It is the bearer of news, and conveyor of knowledge. According to zen wisdom, if you want to move mountains, you give it some water, and a little time.
I have this metaphorical image stuck in my head of a drop of water hitting a stone, and over time the stone melts away. Its a strong image, one that can focus me in an unusual way. It is a direct symbol for changing ones existence. If I am to change anything, I cannot expect it to do so in my favor, all at once. It takes an action at a time to move my course in life. We try to go around, or turn the other way, but there are times when we must face the mountains before us, and work to diminish them a drop at a time.
I have been extending the metaphor to the state of affairs of humanity, in a way that can provide me, and maybe someone out there, some guidance. We face some big boulders in our path. We all face them together, and they are all linked, because we are all linked. The environment and its degradation is directly tied to our activities, and our invented economies. Our health is tied to the environment, and the products we consume. We live on our collective culture of extracting resources, so how do we become sustainable? How do we beat the beast of shortsightedness, and transient rationale? We see it on the roads when people dart in, and out, burning our spirits, and our fuels, for what? to gain a few seconds and a few extra yards? We see it in the huge footprints we cast, and the competitive and wasteful way in which we live. So how can we expect our whole society to change if our fellow humans can not go through a day without adding to the problems we face. We are all responsible all the way up and down the line. But where do we have he ability to change it?
The power of a drop.
There is no one thing we can do, or even a list of things. It takes drop after drop after drop, until there is a torrent of motion against our mountainous problems.
1. We need political drops: I vote in every election. Obvious. But I try to add some voter power in between too. I am on emailing lists of a few groups that do the political, and legal fighting we need. I belong to the Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, Environmental Defense, One, and MoveOn, and have participated in petitions by River Watch, the Nature Conservancy, The Earth Day Network and a whole host of others. I also get emails, and have responded to the major Democratic presidential candidates, and party. I add my drop to each on those campaigns that I think will do the most good. Does it do a lot of good? Not a lot, but when I read about a Bush appointee usurping the law or acting as if the country is a corporate playground every day, I know that one of these groups has probably hired a lawyer, and is suing to stop it. I lend them my support in small amounts, but often and for a long time. The point about politics, is that it changes, and its complicated. Looking through this list, you can say I am concerned with people and the planet, which is a good thing, but my political leanings aren’t set in stone. Stones are the obstacle. Remember that!
2. We need economic drops: I don’t have a lot of dollar votes to work with in this category, but I try to stay informed and do business locally or with companies that are doing things a little better than others. Its not democratic by a long shot to think that how you spend your dollars is enough to guide markets or corporate decisions. I hate the argument that “well if you don’t like the company or the way they act, don’t buy from them.” I posted about it before, but it has always irked me. So what does that mean, that the only people who count are the Gateses, Whinfries, Packards,… and Bushes, because they have more $ votes than most of the rest of us put together? It would be naive to think that even the collective purchases of a huge fraction of people would have much effect on the people who own everything (and I mean the government too.) Boycotting companies, and buying local does make me feel better, though, and more importantly, if I am thinking about every single purchase I am making in terms of health, community, and environment, I am being reminded of my responsibility to the earth, my children, and neighbors, and that goes a long way to getting me to add my drops to the bucket. Plus, 9 times out of 10 when I buy something from the people growing, or making the product I am getting a better product. You want to participate in tinkle down economics, fine, be a dope, but I prefer to be a part of the trickle of economics against the plutocratic mountain.
3. We need doing drops: It is “we”; that means you do things, and I do things. Hang your close on a line instead of using a machine once in a while. Walk instead of drive. Compost, and reuse. Don’t buy new when you can use what you have, or buy used. All this hurts the economic status quo, but that’s what we want, right? A change. What it means is that you have to learn how to do more things for yourself instead of depending on the cheap shit you get from the marts. Learn how to fix that broken lamp instead of buying a new one. You just may feel a little more satisfied in life when you accomplish something real. It works; you would be surprised. The solutions to our problems won’t come packaged up, won’t be able to buy them somewhere.
Sorry to say it, but a Prius and CFL’s won’t help us all that much in long term. The government can’t fix things either, in so much as they don’t do the work they legislate. They can, and should stop the old ways, so we don’t die in our own tinkle, but they can’t produce what will replace it. Being interconnected doesn’t mean we have to be interdependent, and thus interned. Interconnection means we have to willingly share our lives on teh planet.
The last point is that our priorities should be set properly. We have leaned from the Baby Boomers, that “me first” gets us a bitchy, depressing, and boringly unoriginal culture, full of apes more interested in getting $$ and comfort than anything else. So what is important? I think I have written over and over again, that if we put our priorities in order, we won’t be so stressed about competing over everything. Environment, family, health, and education all add to life. However you want to quantify the idols you worship, the alternatives produce better societies, period.
Go out and imagine the drops of water slowing working away at our problems. The drops of water, that when combined, make a river, and then a sea. And imagine that sea rising, and falling as waves on the shore. They are part of the same. You are part of it all, and it is good, and you are strong, even against the stones that lie in your way.
For me, today was cloth instead of disposable. You?
I made some big claims in Part 1, and caught your attention I hope. In this second part, I am going to discuss some of the sticking points you may have had with my logic in part one. Then, I will address the anti-vegetarian arguments I’ve heard these last months, debunk them, and finally point to where all this is going.
There are a couple points that I am sure came to mind as you read part one. The first was probably along the lines of, “you sound like an arrogant purist and a little bit of a hypocrite.” How could I write something like that without realizing that people are just trying to do the best they can with what they have. Making ideological choices is a luxury for most people. Plus, if I start stripping things out of my life for idealistic reasons I won’t be left with anything, never mind anything fun or interesting.
To carry out my logic I have to admit that I am implicated by living and functioning in society in general. I can’t just pick and choose where to take the moral high ground. Its the same case where I work. I have to bring in a salary, so I have to separate my ethics from how I make a living.
In a way, that is the point of a moral case. If it were easy, there wouldn’t be a problem. Moral character is all about doing what’s right even when it’s tough. Furthermore, it is true that we are all implicated by our social lot, and since I don’t have the power to stop raising cows in CAFE’s, or end wars, or switch the world off oil, I have to use what I have to take my part of the responsibility. I can vote, preach, work, create, and consume. So that’s what I use. It is all a choice, and all has implications.
This moral case involving food is a difficult place to live, because I am responsible for a certain part of societies problems, even if I don’t have the power to affect them. My claim in part one is that I am better than most, because I struggle with the moral implications of eating, and doing right by them, not because I live a pure life.
The second point I am sure you considered while reading my first part was that not all food is created unethically or immorally. In fact there is a growing food movement that is overturning many of the ills I laid out. I concede this, gladdly. In fact if you are going to eat meat, and live in the SF Bay Area get it from Prather Ranch. It is the only producer in the Bay Area that I have found that does things right. (They sell at several local Farmer’s Markets besides the Ferry Building in SF.)
Before becoming a vegetarian for years, I actually ate very little meat; probably around 5-10% of my food intake. That translates to one or two meals a week on average. What I realized in that time was that I actually was using up a lot of energy deciding whether I should eat a given piece of meat, and then not enjoying it much when I did. I spent a lot of time explaining to family and friends over and over again how I did eat meat, but not necessarily the specific piece that was in front of me. I was a meat snob to the Nth degree.
In addition, nowhere outside my house could I be confident that I was getting a “good” piece of meat, so there was an endless search for information. Every waiter or waitress was asked a litany of questions, and friends and family got annoyed with my pickiness. It got old.
My ultimate stand on ethical meat is nuanced. I concede that animals can be raised well in every sense of the world, but it is rare. As a result, it is expense and time consuming to find and acquire that meat, so it is a luxury. If then I am eating meat as a luxury I must then question why I am eating it. Do I need it? Is it for pleasure? Is out of a sense of social tradition or obligation?
The answer to “need” is clearly no. Eating meat solely for pleasure doesn’t sit well with me, nor do I think it is ethical to take life for pleasure. (If you know me, you know I am a fly fisher, so there is a bit of conflict here. That defense is for another post, but let’s say I know what it is to take life, and I know where I draw the line in doing it.) So, that leaves social tradition.
I will get into this in a few paragraphs, but generally speaking, humans do have a lot of blood traditions. Most culture in fact have many feasts and ceremonies that revolve around animal slaughter and communal meat eating. The problem is that those acts are so diluted and overwhelmed by daily food habits, that in contemporary society they are virtually meaningless. Again, that could be a whole other set of writings, but put simply, since contemporary humans aren’t dependent on growing or raising food for survival anymore, nor is food expensive in a any way, food has lost its sacredness. Being a vegetarian, it has become so for me again.
Most of the arguments so far are fairly theoretical, so let me get into my experience with people challenging me. Here are some generalized statements I have heard. They aren’t exact quotes, but represent a class of peanut-gallery comments that came up repeatedly:
I will be hungry all day long.
If I ate just vegetables, I probably would be hungry all the time. Since being a vegetarian doesn’t literally mean eating just vegetables, I have some options. Really, all my stomach is looking for to feel full is fat and protein. All the other stuff like carbohydrates and fiber pretty much get digested in a blink. There is balance to look for here, because what I need is different than what my stomach wants.
Hunger goes back to those pesky instinct thingies we have. For most people, there is a proto-homo sapien urge left over that drives us to overeat and pack on body weight. It comes from the fact that our caveman ancestors didn’t have grocery stores and could never count on having a decent meal, so when they had food they ate it until there was literally no food left. And that is how humans respond to a plate of food (There is a study out there to this point, but I don’t think I’ll be able to come up with a link.).
I need “hard” or “complete” protein.
Everything has protein in it. Again the key is finding foods with the right balance. For example, I could technically live off of broccoli. It has all the protein and other things I need, but the problem is those nutrients are not in the right balance. I would have to be like a cow, growing a few more stomachs and eating all day long to get enough calories out of broccoli. The same sort of thing holds for the other end of the spectrum. If I ate meat alone, I would have to be like a wolf, developing an ultra-efficient stomach, and sleeping 16 hours a day.
The other thing to note here is that I am not a vegan. I do eat eggs and dairy. My choice has to do with not eating flesh. Once I add yogurt, cheese, eggs and bread to my mix, there is little doubt I will get enough protein in the day. Plus I like nuts, beans and tutu, too, so I probably get a surplus on most days to keep me healthy in an active lifestyle.
This “protein” claim is an old world argument that doesn’t line up with today’s vegetarian pro football players, and vegan fighting champions.
I will suffer from malnutrition.
There is a chance, I suppose, I might go low on iron, but I eat right so it isn’t a problem. I also eat a fortified breakfast cereal a couple times a week, too, (the cereal is actually organic and natural. Cascadian Farms seems to be the only brand that does this,) so if I’m missing anything my body will squeeze it out of the cereal.
Really, the issue on this one is that everyone thinks they are a nutritionist in America. There are “experts” coming out the wahzoo, so people learn a little here and there, and then believe they have a grasp on what human bodies need. The truth is the science behind all the nutritionism is very, very thin. Most of what we hear is just conjecture and marketing based on a few studies that work on less than complete statistical models.
Boiling down our food health to a few groups of nutrients is flawed at its core, so making any sort of claim about one nutrient or another without the bigger picture is nonsense.
Compounds in food behave differently in combinations than when alone, and function differently in different parts of the body. Most of what Americans used to hold true about fat, cholesterol and sugar from the 50’s, for example, turned out to either be wrong, or just a partial truth. And yet, people today still make choices to avoid these nutrients. What about the other ten thousand compounds I eat on a daily basis?
The real numbers here show that there have been, and are BILLIONS of vegetarians who live strong active lives, and conversely BILLIONS of omnivores who have been and are malnourished, so nourishment has little to do with meat consumption, or individual nutrients.
I am biologically designed to eat meat.
I also have nipples! And I had wisdom teeth, a tail bone, and I have an appendix. So if my canines mean I need to eat meat, I must have done something wrong by not breast feeding my son, not hanging upside down in trees when I was a boy, or, well, I don’t know what my appendix was supposed to be for.
I concede, though, that our bodies do heal faster when we eat meat after an injury, plus give us some nutritional benefits not found in other foods. Meat does seem to pack a powerful dietary punch our bodies are tuned in to, but I am also going to add, that this should not to confused with food density. Meat is a highly concentrated source of energy and bodily building blocks, so it is bound to provide boost from that alone. What I am conceding is that there are some extra whole-is-greater-than-the-parts effects going on, too. Just as I can’t boil down arguments about nutrients, I also can’t boil down meat to its constituent parts without acknowledging that they exist together, and whose value isn’t totally understood.
This one is a minor argument for me, though. As I posted in part one, ethics and morals make me more than an animal. In that realization, I sacrifice some forms of pleasure and well being. The benefits of meat are tiny in comparison to the decisions I make about my animal nature and living a civilized life.
It’s not part of my food traditions.
Neither is anything else that Americans eat. In fact, my vegetarian organic habits are MUCH closer to what my ancestors would have eaten than the typical American diet. Americans are delusional about what they eat (There, I said it!) First, the typical diet is not made up of actual food. Secondly, American diets are not based on any sort of cultural tradition. Americans don’t cook, and when they do its not what their grandmother’s would have cooked. No traditions here.
Even if we say that hamburgers, hotdogs, and ice cream are traditional American foods, what Americans think those are now, isn’t even close to what they were fifty years ago.
Ice Cream is an easy one. Just look at the ingredients on any of the leading brands and you won’t see cream and flavors alone. You will see all sorts of chemical modifiers, emulsifiers and preservatives. And this doesn’t even get to the ingredients themselves, which are factory produced chemicals. Because it has the label “Ice Cream,” doesn’t mean it is actually iced cream.
Hamburgers and hotdogs are the same, but on an even bigger scale. With those you have to think about all the fillers, colorants, and “flavor enhancers,” plus all the stuff the animals are fed, too. A hamburger or hotdog fifty years ago would have been meat from animals that ate plants on buns made of wheat flour and yeast, with condiments made of vegetables. Today, who knows what they are made of.
My favorite comments under this type of argument went something like this,”Which peoples in the world are vegetarian? Indians? You’re not Indian. None of the people you come from were vegetarian, so why are you trying to be like someone you are not?” This was proclaimed over a dinner of lasagne, green salad, Reese’s Pieces, chocolate ice cream, and vanilla cake for dessert; all of which came from a whole range of cultures, with ingredients originating form all over the planet.
For that same dinner, my ancestors may have eaten potatoes (both the original South American type and the European,) whole wheat bread, gravy, winter squash and maybe hog meat in some sort of stew. Except for the hog, that sounds like a good vegetarian meal to me.
Over the last few months, I have felt like I have had to defend myself and my choices in a way I don’t think I every have. Becoming a vegetarian is a good choice for a lot of people, and for a lot of different reasons. That is challenging to many people. What I have seen is often a person being threatened by alternatives to the food mythology they accept. It is a case where those most invested in an American food delusion fight the hardest to protect it. They do so, even as the delusion itself crumbles around them. (Think of the Roman’s whose blood sports and wild extravagance rose at the times when the empire struggled the most.)
The American healthcare system is on the brink of collapse in part because of the junk that gets eaten year after year. Our “farmlands” become more depressed, polluted, and depleted year after year, because of the junk that is manufactured on them. And people are less and less satisfied with the junk that gets put on the pates. Yet, Americans still cling to the hamburgers, hotdogs, and ice cream, because it is all that they know.
I think my vegetarianism challenges people by proclaiming that I don’t struggle to eat my vegetables, and in fact I enjoy them. Americans have vegetable guilt, and when I throw my vegetarianism in front of them (not that I do that, but it usually gets noticed,) they just feel the guilt that much more. Guilt and delusions are very powerful things in this country. It doesn’t always pay to challenge them.
In the next part I will write about how and why I do it, things I’ve learned about myself, sources for info, and some final thoughts. You’ve made it this far, so stick around for the conclusion of my vegetarian saga.
I didn’t think I would have to explain my choice to be a vegetarian living in California, but over the last several months, I have actually been confronted several times about it. And oddly, I had little defense in those moments. I didn’t responded well, partly, because I hadn’t sorted out all my own reasons yet, (which is actually fairly odd for me,) and the questions blindsided me each time they came up.
In those moments of confrontation, I responded by being polite, and giving easy answers, “I’ve never really liked meat anyway,” and “It’s cheaper not buying meet,” and the good ‘ole, “I just want to see if I can do it.” It all felt pretty lame. Not only was I being questioned and judged by people who should know better, and really shouldn’t be judging me, but I didn’t even put up a fight.
What I wanted to say when some people asked, “So why are you a vegetarian? Human’s have always eaten meat!” was “BECAUSE IT MAKES ME BETTER THAN YOU!” And they wouldn’t have just been fightin’ words either. Sure, there are people who, for various considerations need to eat meat, and plenty of people who just don’t have the educational or informational resources to make any decisions about it, but for the most part, being a vegetarian makes me better than meat-eaters.
Let me explain! The reasoning is actually a fairly simple ethical principal. If a person knows what they are doing is wrong, and they continue to do it, they are complicit in the wrong doing. Doing right is better than doing wrong. Furthermore, the judgment of right and wrong needn’t be determined by anyone other than the one doing “it” in the first place. The rights and wrongs don’t need to line up. The argument is about whether a person is trying to do right instead of wrong.
Setting one’s own boundary and then passing it results from weakness, or some sort of compulsive disorder. I am not passing judgement, these are just the logical consequences. Furthermore, if a disorder is recognized in the self, and nothing is done about it, again, what can I conclude? Anyway, that’s not the point, since all of that lies outside the general argument I am making.
Going back to food, I claim that it is almost impossible to be a food consumer in this country and not know about the health, social, and environmental problems associated with the contemporary packaged nutrition we call “food.” Let me list some in case you haven’t caught on yet. These products: have too many chemical additives, too much unnatural sugar, modified fats, modified charbs, too many calories, are made with GMO’s, are produced using horrible toxins, take too much energy and water to produce, produced with ultra low wages and unsafe working conditions, are inhumane, are backed by corrupted officials, use ingredients that are unstudied, rely on monopolies and other unethical business practices, decrease biodiversity, are draining the natural fertility of the land, are generating super pests, lead to unhealthy populations, cause cancer in field and packaging workers, are shipped too many miles, spread plant, animal and human diseases, squeeze farmers out of reliable incomes and livelihoods, and are generally just bad for our health, communities, nation, and planet. Those are just a few, but again it doesn’t matter for the argument to work. For my claim to be valid only a small set of problems needs to be accepted.
What I am getting at is that the modern nutrient system which alludes itself to be food production fails on ethical and moral grounds. It treats people poorly, animals even worse, and the earth like an open pit mine to be exploited for all its worth and then left dead. All the world’s human moral compasses consider those things wrong. It is not loving, accepting, steward-like, or abiding to God’s/god’s/gods’/Gaia’s laws. If you eat food or any food-like product that has been produced immorally, YOU are complicit in that immorality, right?
At least that is the challenge of human morality. If it is not that clear cut, at least it SHOULD be a struggle. Being “good,” whatever that means, is a struggle, because human nature compels us against our will into what we exactly consider inhuman behavior. Ethics and morality are our inherent traits that allow us to determine who we are. We are not a sum of instincts alone, but choosing beings who can determine which instincts to fulfill. Accepting behaviors because they are in “our nature” isn’t valid, because ethics and morality are also in our nature.
Our instincts drive us for blood, but when it is wrong, we are obliged to deny those instincts.
Okay, did you follow any of that? If not, don’t worry, in the next part I’ll take a different tack. I will discuss the meat of the issue, meat in human culture, and our biology. The ethics plays itself out pretty easily when we start to consider actual food.
Flea Market finds. Two sorta interesting negatives in a box of old family photos. Neat little view of an other time, even if it’s not the most breathtaking treasure.
In case there was any doubt about my domestic hippitude, today’s dinner started with these 100% organic, whole wheat, vegetarian pot-stickers, then culminated in all organic wild and brown rice with mung beans and veggie stir fry. A few of the ingredients were from the garden, many form the farmers market, and it was all made from scratch.
And just as importantly, they were friggin awesome! There was a little too much fresh ginger in the pot-stickers for the family, but I enjoyed it very much.
Here’s the project I’ve been working on with film maker and educator Carolyn E. Brown of American University in Washington DC. It’s been a monumental task for her flying out here uncovering the story for us to shoot, and its far from done, but I wanted to show a little glimpse of what’s in the works.
Update (June 2012): American University has a description of the project on their website.
Here is a description of the project from Carolyn:
About one hour South of the wealthy Silicon Valley, and twenty minutes east of the affluent Monterey/Carmel area, home of the famous Pebble Beach Golf Course, sits the agricultural, immigrant town of Salinas. On the east side of Salinas, in a neighborhood known as Alisal, deplorable housing conditions and gang violence are part of daily life. But there are big changes happening in the community and a sense of renewal.
The city of Salinas, California, sits at the head of a fertile valley. Every day Americans eat produce that is hand picked by migrant farm workers here. Along with an abundance of other crops, 80 percent of the nation’s lettuce and artichokes are grown here, but few understand the challenges the farm workers and their children face. These farm workers are the backbone of agriculture in the United States and contribute to our food supply, yet they live in the shadows in inadequate housing, in dangerous neighborhoods, where gangs prey on vulnerable young people, left home alone, while their parents work long hours in the fields.
This documentary will profile several children of migrant farm workers living in the Salinas Valley, specifically in Alisal. Without resources, and sometimes undocumented, their future is often uncertain, but their hope and resilience are abundant. This film will help viewers understand this immigrant community that is often misrepresented in the media. News stories have often focused on gang violence, often marginalizing the lives of those who work in the fields, and their children. Furthermore the film will bring to light the systemic causes of the problems in East Salinas and will highlight the successes and hopes of this community, despite adversity.
It will probably be a year before anything is put together, but it’s been a huge eye opener shooting the video for this. The resulting film from Carolyn is going to be a powerhouse.
I mentioned that I found a jade doughnut in the garden in a previous post. I finally found it and snapped off a picture. What do you think? Ancient, rare artifact? Or kids pendent lost to play and adventure in the yard? It could even be a relic of the generations of pack rats that lived back there. Who knows, but it is fun finding little things like this. They make my mind wander about the past, and history of a place.