Back to school

It's well into September already and I only posted three measly times last month, my all time low. I intend, this month, to get back on track. It's so hard to do. Everything worth doing has be done all the time: eating healthy, exercise, loving your friends/partner/family, forgiving yourself, writing and even gardening. Without practice and dedicated attention, these things wither - body, relationships, mental health, passion and the plants. I'm settled now, for the time being, in the suburbs. I have a one bedroom apartment to myself and although it's quite nice, I'm still very aware of not wanting to get comfortable, or maybe to not get too used to not having to work. What if making a living is like those other things and without practice I will cease to do it?

The suburbs are dreadful and even my mother thinks so. She's here because of me. In 1980, my parents got jobs in this area and bought a house in the place they could afford that was also a good area to raise kids. Many of the parents of the kids I went to school with left when the kids graduated. The others, like my mom, still work for the Navy and have to stay until they retire. Many stay here after retirement but a lot of them are anxious to go somewhere else. The food is dreadfully average and if you ask a barista if they have organic milk, they look at you like you just vomited. It's always been Republican country but the demographic seems to have changed. People drive huge SUVs with license plates that say "LUVRKIDS," right next to a sticker of a little girl praying. Many of my friends don't believe the stories of people here chopping down mature trees and paving the front yard in order to park the boat, RV or 4-wheelers there. Every night someone buzzes by one of those "mini motorcycles" and we can hear it coming for ten minutes before it passes by. It's a concrete paradise! Some of the American flags in the yards are bigger than the one at the USA gas station.

I went to the Farmer's Market on Saturday and made a lot of new friends. It wasn't as fun as the one in San Francisco but that's to be expected. One of the vendors told me that more people are coming to these days, that it's in vogue. The checker at Trader Joe's told me more people bring their own bags these days too. So I'm encouraged by that. I brought home from the Farmer's Market, the sweetest tomatoes, the crispiest cucumbers and the tastiest chard I've ever had. I also found pastured eggs (for half as much as they are in San Fran), raw milk cheese and homemade avocado cilantro hummus (yum!). I'm going to try the yoga studio soon and check out the new pool at the community center and, yes, I'm going to blog about something interesting. I'm kind of floored over this Sarah Palin thing and still formulating what to say about her except the fact that she is Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter. Ironic, considering that she tried to ban the Harry Potter books from the library in the town she was mayor of.


Dolores Umbridge, if you don't recall, is the woman who showed up from the Ministry of Magic in the last film and dismantled everything that was good about Hogwarts. Under the guise of spreading the truth, her main objective was to put to bed the rumors that something bad was about to happen. She took over the Dark Arts class and banned the useful books that actually taught magic and insisted that they instead study from these 1950's style books with innocuous illustrations. She took over the school and fired teachers that she didn't like and established hundreds of rules limiting the freedom of the kids, including free speech and the right to assemble. It's precisely what Sarah Palin has already done in her "leadership" positions.

Umbridge, played with delightful malice by Imelda Staunton, was adorable. She smiled and wore pink and had an office decorated with kitties but behind closed doors was not above torturing students to get to the truth. Nor was she above pitting the students against each other, turning them all in to spies, or lying to get what she wanted, kind of like what Sarah Palin did at the Republican Convention. See, most people don't really want to know the truth, they WANT to believe what they're told. You can tell them out-and-out lies and they won't look it up online to see if it's true. Even if it's later revealed to be a lie in the media, they'll chalk it up to the fact that the press is liberal (another Republican "distortion") or liars themselves.

The good news is that Dolores Umbridge was eventually sacked, after people started to believe Harry that you-know-who was back, but things got really bad before that. The bad news is that the religious right doesn't watch Harry Potter movies (magic is evil) so they won't see for themselves how dangerous Ms. Palin aka Ms. Umbridge is. Nor will their children learn the valuable lesson of how important it is to think for (and stand up for) yourself. The one thing I know most people can understand, however, is the potential for malice in politics. Just because Palin is on McCain's team, recruited to help him win, doesn't mean she's on his side. Look what happened to Kennedy! All I'm saying is that McCain should watch his back, I wouldn't trust that woman. If I were McCain, I would be sure to resist seduction by Palin and I sure wouldn't go hunting with her.

A different kind of animal lover

This friend of mine wanted to set me up with a guy she thought I might like. A cute Midwesterner with a great sense of a humor and a sweet “aw shucks” demeanor but, she stalled; there’s something else. She laughed nervously and a slew of dreadful attributes ran through my brain: he used to date men, he’s terrible in the sack, or he has a psycho ex-wife and two kids. “He’s a hunter,” she said, waiting for the vegetarian’s horrified reaction. “Oh!” I said, “I have no problem with hunters.”

I actually, weirdly, have a lot of respect for them. The main reason that I’m vegetarian is as a protest against factory farming and the cruelty and disgusting toxicity associated with the commercial raising of animals, the over fishing of the oceans and reckless destruction of nature in pursuit of profits. The second reason is because I love animals and think that anyone who eats meat should be able to raise it, kill it and prepare it. I couldn’t. With our level of technological development, we have the ability to eat better than any generation prior. I am vegetarian because I have a choice.

I surprise even myself sometimes with my seemingly contradictory beliefs. I’m part of what's referred to in Applebee’s America as the Tipping Tribe because I hold mixed beliefs. Take the quiz for yourself! But I had this conversation years ago with a guy who bow-hunted elk. He described to me how difficult it is to do, and the passion for hunting required to do it successfully impressed me. While these hunters might mount the head of their kill on their wall, they also eat nearly the entire animal. They’re connected at the purest level to the value of the animal’s life, experiencing where food comes from more than other meat eaters. They are aware of the seasons and our affect on nature and the populations of the animals they hunt. Compare that to the person eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger for lunch everyday because it’s cheap and easy, with no awareness of the low quality of meat they’re eating and of the kind of life that animal had before becoming their meal.

Of course there are people who shoot animals for fun or kill animals in cruel ways for sport, but I think of a hunter as someone closer to nature than most of the population, someone with the discipline to track an animal for days at a time and with a love of animals that while different from mine, is no less strong. In this month’s National Geographic, an article describes how the conservation of public land is in jeopardy partly because of the lack of the new generation's interest in and appreciation for hunting. You see, hunters contribute billions of dollars, to ensure the preservation of natural lands and help maintain a balance in species when other human factors cause them to go out of whack.

I knew that Theodore Roosevelt dedicated millions of acres of land in his presidency as National Parks but didn't know he was inspired by a hunting trip to Yellowstone. He believed it was critical to ensure the future of the magnificent animals he liked to hunt. Today, Yellowstone is still home to bison, grizzlies, wolves, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, bobcats and moose and hunters have always played a role in maintaining the balance of these populations. Now how could I have a problem with that? It goes back to the fact that I tend to look at things as a whole and the world is messy, it isn't black and white. It's like my views on PETA. Someone needs to have the laser focus they have in protecting animals because that's how things get done, but it's the sum of the parts that makes the world go round.