29 March 1999: Update

Willa recently wrote about her journal and her standards for content and later modification. She doesn't edit her entries later for either content or mechanics. For the record, I'd like to clarify that I do.

I've been reading Willa's journal since I took my first baby steps into this strange realm (September 1996), when Carolyn (earliest known specimen, begun January 1995) still wrote, when Bryon and Willa were pioneers, when Open Pages had 11 members. Willa's the only one of the earliest journalers left that I knew about, and in the 30 months that I've read her, I cannot remember a typo or misspelling or homophone or omitted word or grievous garbling of syntax.

Whereas when I review my own entries, I almost always find something (and I have maybe a tenth of Willa's near-daily entries). So I edit my entries, for mechanics at least. Spelling "vertical" as "verticle" was probably the worst error I ever found. Which is another confession: Willa composed her journals in pure HTML for quite a while, in programs not featuring spellcheck. I usually write mine first elsewhere, neglect even to spellcheck them let alone proof them myself, and post them. So while my entries are a paltry fraction of hers, the proportion of my errors is much higher even with the WYSIWIG HTML editors I use.

I do try not to edit for content, but when I've erred or impugned someone or -thing, I correct myself--if I realize the mistake. I have probably erred many more times than I have corrected.

I wrote to NBM about closets. I'm fascinating, ain't I? She used to complain that the advertisements for closet organizers always featured a wardrobe with three sweaters, two shirts, and one pair of shoes, and so were pointless for someone with a lot of clothes, like her (whose clothes are organized by color and season and function, but crowded). In a House and Garden I flipped through, I saw an advertisement for a closet system that had maybe four garments in it, very artistic and well lit. So to accent your new closet, you have to minimize your wardrobe (which I think is a fine idea environmentally but not one to undertake for your decor's sake) and after you've got rid of almost everything and kept only those four linen tunics in tasteful earth tones that complement the color scheme, if a quintessential je ne sais quoi is still missing, this closet system also features a large sphere like a cue ball on steroids, three feet in diameter. So I sent her the advertisement, which I've annotated, and told her about moving and my bagging the best closet space for my own, and of course, Blake.

The bedroom closet has been the source of Blake's latest adventure. He has this thing about a pair of shorts that RDC wears to Nordic Track.

When I come in the door I like to be greeted by everyone who's home. If RDC is home and Blake is therefore out of his cage, the bird is maybe not as overjoyed to see me as he would be if he were imprisoned, but he still gives his greeting noise ("wheet wheet!") and calls me a good boy buddy. So when I came home on Friday and got a hello and a kiss from RDC but nothing from my little buddy, I called him. Nothing. RDC called him. Nothing. He doesn't come to you in response to his name as the merest dog can do, but he usually says something. So we began to hunt, first in each toilet (which we try to remember to keep closed) and then in his usual favorite hiding spots (under the desk or the futon, behind the couch). I checked the bedroom closet, because he likes to chew on shoelaces. The study closet was closed. Under the futon, in back of the desk, behind books in the bookcases. Nowhere. Now we worried.

RDC had told me he'd just put away these shorts because Blake had become enamored of the earlier pair (not as obnoxious as a dog mounting your leg, but unmistakable). He asked if I was sure I'd checked the closet. Yes, but let's check again. I opened the closet doors as wide as they would go, confirmed the lack of any cockatiel chewing on shoelaces, and peered into the shadows of the corner where the shorts would be.

Blake had watched RDC put away the shorts, or just knew wear they were kept (his sense of smell is not that good, and besides, the shorts were clean). He escaped RDC's notice in the living room, entered the bedroom, passed through the nearly-closed closet doors, braved the dark closet, climbed up my boots, and stood there gazing upon, bowing to, and revering these shorts.

He was territorial, too, and didn't want to be removed. But we're 4125 times heavier than he (in a fit of procrastinative boredom this weekend, I figured that out) and so we won. Might makes right.

No, I don't believe might makes right. It's a segue. In voluminous reaction to my slipshod piece about veganism, I was told that in addition to the theory's other faults, "might makes right" doesn't justify humans eating meat. So I have an update--well, for other reasons too, a main one being that the original entry was slapdash, poorly articulated, etc.

I didn't say it before, but so no one thinks we starved HAO, let me reassure the peanut gallery that we stopped at the store after I picked her up and I bought portabella mushroom caps (and dessert), which RDC grilled on the freshly scrubbed grill before the fish, using different utensils. We're not total barbarians.

Second, I'd like to repeat what I said about respecting a person's choice to eat vegetarian or live vegan:

I can understand and I do respect choosing not to eat meat (and poultry and fish and crustaceans and insects and eggs and diary and honey) and making that choice for valid reasons. Ethics, health, and environment seem to be the main reasons. I understand and respect opting away from wool and silk.

That explicit statement was mostly ignored; however, in addition to being verbally abused I also heard a different perspective on the higher plane thing that I valued: perhaps some vegans think their meatlessness raises them to a higher plane, but at least one vegan who wrote thinks that because humans, all humans, have reached a higher level of intelligence, and by their intelligence are capable of living without animal products, then they ought to live without animal products, since animal products are exploitative and cruel.

I understand that point of view--and don't resent it, as I do the former--but it's not a morality I subscribe to. I don't think eating eggs and wearing fur are absolute moral wrongs. I think humans who live closer to the planet than industrialized humans--I posit this but don't advance it as a certainty--probably don't have the luxury to philosophize about such the morality of meat.

I think for an Eskimo to wear sealskin or a !Kung to hunt a gazelle or a Pygmy to suck a bird's egg dry is just fine. Neither I nor anyone I know belongs to a hunter-gatherer culture (not that any such culture exists unadulterated anymore anyway, thanks to missionaries and anthropologists), though, so how does that rationale justify industrialized humans using animals?

It doesn't. Using animals, full stop, doesn't need to be defended. The negative impact on the environment through the industrialized production of animals, however, is indefensible--according to my morality, as is all else that follows. If I went no-turkey cold turkey, concern for the environment would be why.

One ought consider the industrialized uses of animals. One ought to make informed choices about the use and the means of use of animals--and abuse. No human needs as much meat as the beef industry would like us to think. No cow needs to be mechanized or dosed to the degree most are. Genetically manipulating chicken to grow leglike meat on their wings; keeping chicken in nets their whole lives; veal calves restrained the trapping of animals for a vain, inefficient, and impractical means to keep warm; fishing the oceans dry--these things are all wrong.

All of these wrongs reduce to the problem of the overpopulation of humans, but even before I wax Malthusian, they reduce to desire versus health. If we ate healthy diets in which meat played a minuscule but useful role and even fish not a large one, then the demand for the quantity of meat that has capitalistically led to the abuse of the environment (long-term) and the animals (short-term), would be less, and therefore these means of production would be less. The meat that we did eat would be healthier for us, because the animals would have been healthier. The lives of the animals wouldn't be so miserable. More important, the negative impact on the environment would be reduced.

If the industrialization of meat production (the demand for water in beef production and the poisoning of groundwater with hog lagoons), is wrong, then monoculture in agri-business is also wrong. Growing acres and acres of one thing increases the likelihood of disease and increases the "need" for pesticides. Wanting oranges in August and apples in May is an environmentally unsound demand. For that matter, the cheap bananas that the U.S. enjoys come at cost to someone whose ancestors used to grow their living, maybe only a subsistence living but their own, but who now grows a cash crop for a large corporation. All of these things are as wrong as industrialized meat.

How can I think meat is okay but fur is wrong? I think meat is okay in small amounts, ethically and health-wise, ethically because however desirable aethetically, little is necessary health-wise. Meat at every meal, every day or even every week is neither necessary nor healthy. I think fur is wrong because it's impractical--it shouldn't get wet, it's environmentally harmful to clean, it doesn't keep you as warm as polypropylene. Maybe fur looks better than polyprop, but then wearing clothes for form over function is wrong too.Furthermore, you can both eat and wear cattle, but fur-bearing animals aren't eaten, for other reasons.

On the other hand, I think wearing vinyl instead of leather is usually a bad choice. It's an artificial fiber and like polyprop is therefore environmentally draining, but unlike polyprop, vinyl isn't efficient as its meat substitute. A fur coat lasts a lifetime if only you don't use it actually to stay warm; a leather coat will last quite a while and a polyprop jacket almost as long; but vinyl or nylon shoes will not last as long as leather. Reduce both what and how much you demand.

Now you can ask whether I walk the talk. I live in a city apartment, I don't have a garden, I own more clothes than I need, I use toxic cleansers, I would use medical products tested on animals, I drive a car. On the other hand I don't ski in October on snow stolen from downstream ecosystems (but I do ski during the winter, upon petroleum-based skis and using more petroleum to get to the mountain). I eat fish that aren't at dangerously low population levels (mostly). I don't use cosmetics. Now that we can afford to--which is another whole issue, the righteousness of those with the disposable money to eat as they preach--we eat more organic produce. I have reduced my consumption of consumer goods. I recycle. Back to the first hand, I could recycle more; I could reduce more; I could eat no animal products--an environmental, not an ethical, issue; I could do many many more things for the environment. I don't. So I'm an evil bad nasty person. Which is another good reason for me not to have a child, no? Especially since reproduction is about the worst thing a U.S. resident can do to the environment.

Someone told me about giving up all meat after having to cook the Thanksgiving turkey in a hungover state which she, as a teenager, had to conceal from her ill mother. She still doesn't eat four-footed meat, a decision she ascribes to having gristle issues, but she began to eat food with a face again after years of constant fatigue and listlessness. I believe meat provides other nutrients besides protein that build connective tissue and so on, nutrients that non-meat sources don't and can't provide simply because they aren't meat. I understand beef to be such an efficient source of protein and other nutrients that humans simply don't need as much as the average Usan eats. By that argument, long pig would be a most efficient food. Hmm.

Another peanut gallery factoid, similarly unsupported by my own research, is that soy is such a healthy food because it drains all those nutrients straight from the soil. Organically grown soy (and other foods) are fertilized with manure. I would like to know if anyone considers using manure to be exploitation of the animal. Probably not: bees use honey and sheep wool but the only animal use of manure is by predators to mask their own scent with that of their prey.

Natural Health this month advocated selecting smaller fish from the fishmonger. Smaller means younger means less toxicity accumulated in the flesh. Health versus morality: smaller fish have been taken from the sea before they have had much chance to reproduce. You make your choices, you have your morals and you decide how much you stick to them.

Speaking of reducing consumption, I stopped at Bloodbath and Beyond after work for a new fitted sheet. A few months ago the flat sheet tore across, just below the hem. We blamed that on RDC's stubble. I stitched it up and it rent again, at which point we bought a new sheet. A couple of days ago I realized I had kicked through the bottom sheet. We have solid color sheets and I make no effort to make the bed with the sheets right side up or anything, so while I would rather blame the new hole on RDC's scaly knees, I have stubble too. So I bought a new sheet. This last set lasted not quite three years, and though it was our only set, that doesn't strike me as very long. Should we find linen sheets? Did my mother's sheets last because they had polyester? Should we shave more?

I strolled through the mall waiting for my bus, entering through Lord & Taylor. In Old Lyme last summer, at the A&P, RDC was flabbergasted to see grocery-shopping people still in Izod shirts with the collars up and pressed chino shorts. I recognized it as odd when he remarked on it, and maybe would have noticed if I didn't live so far away, but coming home after so long away it just seemed like quintessential Old Lyme to me; it could have been 20 years ago and it would have looked the same. Well, no. That whole end of the shopping center is new. Anyway, in Lord & Taylor I got a rush of homsickness, seeing the sailor motifs and the cardigans over the mannequins' shoulders.

The parrots ouside the Rainforest Café I can never pass without greeting. The store has a few parrots with an allegedly nice mews behind, and four birds come out for two-hour spells. I have seen two handlers in the several months the place has been open, sometimes one and sometimes the other, so it does seem that the birds have long-term relationships with humans. The Café says that when the birds are four or five they go to their breeding facility, whence all their birds come, and live less publicly from then on, among more birds and possibly a mate, and parrots are the vainest critters ever (including peacocks) and maybe enjoy the attention, but I wonder. If they are bred, that's something; the South American parrots are endangered in the wild (Australians cockatiels are not).

I emerged in perfect time for my bus, came home, emptied the dishwasher and readied the kitchen, then started the laundry and vacuumed before RDC got home. I left a pair of tongs I also bought on his bathroom sink in case he wanted to try them out as tweezers. So the house is clean, the bureau is full of clean underwear, dinner's eaten (salmon, basmati rice, and steamed broccoli with lemon) and Blake is chewing his beak.