Worm in the Apple

It was brought to my attention by a credit/debit card monitoring company this morning that some unusual activity had appeared on my bank debit card in the last couple days. Indeed, eight charges at three different companies: Yahoo, HostGator.com, and Apple's MobileMe -- somebody registering a bunch of domain names and setting up web sites, etc. Between my bank and the three companies, three of the four provided excellent responses to the situation. In the spirit of noting great customer service, my public thanks go to:

Citizens South Bank—my small, community based bank in Stallings, NC (cited on NBC Nightly News a few months ago as one of the most financially sound banks in the country). They immediately cancelled my card and requested a new one along with guidance on "what to do next."

Yahoo—in a matter of minutes by phone they found the bogus charges, cancelled them, and promised immediate reimbursement to my debit card.

HostGator.com—a web hosting company in Houston. Likewise, they found the bogus charge and promised an immediate refund.

But there was a worm in the Apple. Granted, this is a gazillion-dollar company, but still. There was no indication of who to call for such help on their Contact Us page. A call to Customer Service directed me to a web page where I entered into a live chat with a MobileMe agent who concluded they couldn't do anything to help. "You need to file a charge dispute form through your bank", etc etc.

Since the Apple charge was only $1.13 I'll probably not invest the time pursuing it. (The charges at the other companies amounted to hundreds of dollars.)

Kudos to my bank, Yahoo, and HostGator.com for excellent customer service. Apple—you should treat your lifelong customers more intelligently.

(Oh—and for the guy with the different accent who called early this morning to tell me about the activity on my card, sorry for not taking the call. I thought it was a telemarketer—"Hello . . . followed by 10 seconds of silence" until he mispronounced my name -- typical telemarketer signals. But I heard enough to call my bank to verify the activity. So—sorry, guy! And thanks for calling. I'll listen longer next time.)

"The Year in Meat: 2009"

I haven't been a regular reader of Erik Marcus' Vegan.com blog, but I plan to start. He not only writes this blog but is the author of The Ultimate Vegan Guide and Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money.

On his blog he has posted a 5,000 word piece titled "The Year in Meat: 2009" which is a summary of noteworthy events in publishing, industry, media, and other venues related to animal welfare, veganism, factory farming, etc. It's a quick and easy read and is filled with more than 175 links to relevant books, films, news items, web sites, and other resources that he mentions. A quick perusal revealed things I (not surprisingly) missed via the MSM—such as the attempt by some agribusiness leaders to prevent Washington State University from making Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma required reading for 4,000 entering freshmen. When word of the censorship attempt got around, a WSU alumnus paid for the books and ensured they were made available. Or the gifts of beef by Texas cattlemen to fire houses in Texas after Austin, TX, firefighter Rip Esselstyn's vegan diet book, The Engine 2 Diet, began making national headlines.

These and many other 2009 events are covered in Erik Marcus' year-end review.

New from Kathy Freston

Author, lecturer, vegan, and Huffington Post blogger Kathy Freston has two new blog posts, both worth reading.

1. "Top 10 (Recent) Developments on Factory Farming and Vegetarianism."

In this article she highlights 10 recent developments in the world of animal welfare, things like Al Gore finally acknowledging the role of meat consumption on climate change, Martha Stewart promoting a vegetarian Thanksgiving, and others. One she could have left off—or cited as a negative development—was Cargill's new offering of a non-dairy cheese. Just what we need in the grocery store aisles—another collection of processed chemicals and "stuff" resulting in a non-food food product. Cargill's own press release doesn't say what's in it, only that it was produced by their patented "Lygomme ACH Optimum functional system." Sounds delish! Sorry, Kathy -- can't agree with you on this one.

2. "Flue Season: Factory Farming Could Cause A Catastrophic Pandemic."

This article is the transcript of Freston's interview with Dr. Michael Greger about his book Bird Flu—A Virus of Our Own Hatching (available to be read in its entirety online here). I'm a big fan of Dr. Greger who is a committed vegan and Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States. He is a published author in many scientific journals and has lectured widely on health and animal agriculture. He was even called as an expert witness in Oprah Winfrey's defense when she was sued by the "meat industry" for remarks she made about eating meat on her show (a case she won). Every year Dr. Greger surveys thousands of journal articles looking for the best research related to diet and health and presents the results in an annual DVD (three so far). (He comes at the research from a scientists perspective, but the conclusions in the research literature are always the same: a balanced, whole food, plant-based diet is healthiest.) He has a terrific, dry sense of humor and makes these annual DVD's really fun to watch. (Dr. Greger's web site is here.) In this interview with Kathy Freston he talks about how factory farming is a pandemic waiting to happen because of the ideal virus incubation conditions provided by the close confinement of animals.

Small World

Received a nice note from a lady who found the post I wrote back in August about the sinking of the HMT Rohna, the British troopship sunk by the Germans in the Mediterranean Sea in World War II (Nov 26, 1943). My dad was on that ship and was one of the few Americans to survive. (Of the 1,138 men lost, 1,015 were Americans.) The sinking of the Rohna remains the single largest lost of American troops at sea in any war.

(I smile thinking that no hardheaded Dutchman like my dad was about to let a lousy Luftwaffe pilot consign him to the briny deep—and the fact that he was an excellent swimmer. Not to mention the fact that he still had conception work to do after the War—me!)

The lady who wrote me said that her father was a crew member on the USS Pioneer, an American minesweeper that was one of the first ships to come to the aid of the Rohna survivors and which rescued most of them. She wondered if our fathers might have met. However, Daddy was rescued by a British cargo ship, SS Clan Campbell, so it's not likely they met.

Thanks to the Internet for making these unlikely connections happen—another small stitch in the tapestry of life.

[When I get a minute I'll post the article daddy wrote and submitted to Reader's Digest magazine years ago (they declined to publish it) about the sinking of the Rohna and later working side-by-side at NASA with the German scientist who developed the airborne torpedo that sunk his ship.]

"Ten Technologies that Will Rock 2010"

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch.com discusses 10 technologies -- all web and mobile related -- that should make a splash this year.

Strangers in the Valley

Ellen Bromfield Geld, daughter of Malabar Farm founder Louis Bromfield, writes beautifully in Strangers in the Valley—The Story of Malabar in Brazil (1957, now out of print) about her and her husband's search for, and finding, an old farm on which to begin their farming life in Brazil:

In the midst of it all an old house stood, almost hidden by an ancient crumbling stone wall and a grove of orange and lemon trees, bittersweet and half wild with time. Sunlight sifted through the dark feathery leaves of the lemon grove and fell soft against the house's aged yellow walls. In some places the walls had been washed away by spring rains, in others eaten through by termites; but there remained sturdy beams and dark wooden floors, tremendous rooms with high ceilings and wide stone hearths. For many years it had sheltered nothing but herds of wandering cattle, who had bumped and scratched and covered with dung everything but the most distant and ghostly of memories. How beautiful it must have been when the first Brazilian family lived there, tending the garden and the orchards and the fertile land beyond! A beautiful garden could be fashioned again back along the flat stretch of land into the very mountains and forests themselves. And the house could be rebuilt with a wide veranda all the way around and perhaps a new wing with a kitchen and spring house. Someday, if we grow old in this valley, we shall do all this.

We went often to Barreiros [the farm]. We picnicked under an old, sinuous, jabuticaba tree, which sprinkled its sweet fruit all over the ground, and ate mangoes from a tree which bore them large, soft and true yellow.

Sometimes we climbed to the summits of those mountains and looked out over mile upon mile of forest and granite-covered hills. From there we could see the dark, tortuously curving line of the River Atibaia, the green groves of eucalyptus which marched up the rim of every mountain and spread themselves in waves over every summit. And in the far distance we could see the white church steeple of the town of Itatiba. The rest of the world was wide open, so that a man could look as far as he liked without having his vision hindered by highways and signboards and ugly towns and all the clutter of a fast-growing civilization. The nearest highway could not be seen from Barreiros, and in this we discovered a host of new reasons for our coming to Brazil. [pp. 61-62]

The Gelds' own reasons for moving to Brazil were put succinctly by another Brazilian they met who gave up a lucrative career to become a farmer: "We wanted to live and not just spend our lives." [p. 152]

Vegan Outreach

Vegan Outreach is a non-profit advocacy group that uses volunteers to pass out literature in a non-confrontational way on college campuses about the abuses to animals inherent in the factory farming of animals for consumption. Since the fall of 2003, just under four million college students have been handed a pamphlet, and millions more at other events (concerts, festivals, etc.)—11 million total since 2001.

You can watch a brief slide show of this year's leafleting activity on college campuses here. You can view a .pdf of the booklet ("Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating") or order a paper copy, here.

The Source of Soy

The Cornucopia Institute is a watchdog group "promoting economic justice for family scale farming." They do in-depth research on the status of issues effecting small farmers and consumers with special attention given to the "organic industry" (which, by the way, is gradually losing more and more of its luster and integrity since being "bureaucratized" by the Federal government).

One of Cornucopia's most recent in-depth projects was to determine the quality of the soy going into the hundreds of organic soy-based products now on the market. That is, are soy products that claim to be organic verifiably organic? Are the companies producing or selling them transparent about their processes? Is the soy GMO? Has it been produced with hexane, an EPA-listed contaminant used in much commercial soil processing? Etc?

Cornucopia developed a thorough screening process for ranking companies producing organic-labeled soy products and assigned a rating based on the company's practices and their transparency in providing information.

Here is the page that details the study, provides an executive summary, and provides a very detailed scorecard for the scores of companies rated. It's easy to see how your favorite organic soy companies or product lines fared using the scorecard (by ranking or alphabetically by company/product name).

The rankings go from zero to five "soy beans," five being the best. Here are how a few well-known brands ranked:

Eden Foods (5 out of 5)

Tofurky (4 out of 5)

Nasoya (4 out of 5)

Vitasoy (3 out of 5)

Harris Teeter Private Label (3 out of 5)

Trader Joe's Private Label (2 out of 5)

Boca Burgers (0 out of 5)

Pacific Foods (0 out of 5)

Silk (0 out of 5)

365 by Whole Foods Market (0 out of 5)

Kirkland by Costco (0 out of 5)

Wegmans (0 out of 5)

The above represents a small sampling of the scores of companies profiled. Two things to bear in mind:

1. A company might have scored poorly for their unwillingness to divulge information about the sourcing of their soy as well as for the actual sourcing itself.

2. Almost all private-label brands (TJ's, 365 by Whole Foods, Kirkland by Costco, et al) scored poorly because they have no idea where their "organic" soy comes from because the production is handled by multiple layers of "middle men" who prepare soy products for private label brands.

This research is another example of just how complicated "food" has become in our modern system—even "organic" food. I'm especially bummed about the amount of hexane my liver has probably struggled to process after polishing off several quarts of Silk Nog over the holidays. :-)

There remains no substitute for growing one's own food and eating it in as pure (unprocessed) form as possible with one's personal "beyond organic" standards of integrity.

[Two other helpful resources for understanding the "organic" food industry on the Cornucopia web site are these: a graphic showing who really owns the organic food sector (increasingly, the large agribusinesses) and an animated graphic showing the consolidations that took place in the organic food industry between 1995 and 2007. Both graphics were prepared by Dr. Phil Howard at Michigan State University.]

(Thanks to the Cornucopia Institute for the unauthorized use of the image above from their web site.)

Catching Up

Some recent pictures from here and there:

Avocado trees moved inside for the winter . . .

along with pineapple plants:

I run humidifiers in the house during the winter to keep the humidity levels up. This one has a thermostat so it cycles on and off creating a great environment for the plants. This mist is so fine that it doesn't get things damp unless it runs for a couple hours or more:

The largest aloe vera has sent up a single tall bloom stalk, something I've never seen before:

The winter broccoli is producing beautifully—the leaves take a hit when it gets down in the 20's at night, but the heads remain firm:

Tools of the earth: garden tools hanging on the outside of Daniel and Jennifer's garden shed.

Everybody got cashmere scarves for Christmas. (Daniel was especially excited.)

Ellen decided hers would make a good head-wrap for Granddaddy. (Shades of the 'Sixties.)

Ellen and Arianna did a couple duets on their recorders:

Caught the low winter light streaming through the living room windows. The secretary in the corner was the "control center" in my parents' home—where Daddy sat to pay bills; where Mama filed away her annual calendars filled in with scribbled notes of daily happenings; where I found my English maternal grandfather's leather-bound diary he kept as he walked and sang his way from Kentucky to New Orleans to win a bet that he could start with nothing in his pocket and arrive in New Orleans fed and clothed—which he apparently did. (The diary stopped somewhere near Marion, Alabama where he was distracted by a young school teacher named Fleming Cocke—whom he married in New Orleans. So I presume he made it, fed as well as wed.) The secretary shelves are filled with books not deserving of dust, the desk holds a growing collection of family pictures. The old family pictures at the lower right fill the wooden trunk that my paternal great-grandfather brought with him when he made the voyage from Holland to America to begin a new life in the land of opportunity, settling in Pella, Iowa. The picture on the wall above them—an aerial shot of the Old City of Jerusalem which I visited in 1982; found the photo rolled up in a dusty shop in the Old City; brought it home in-hand and it survived the next 20+ years until I could get it framed. Not all the corners in my world are worth contemplating, but this one is (for me).

Guess What's Missing From Your Food (and Thus from You)?

Ocean Grown is a Florida company that harvests ocean water far off the eastern coast of Florida and concentrates it for dilution (1:100) as a soil amendment and plant/grass/tree fertilizer. I visited their offices in Naples several years ago when they first began work and almost joined up I was so excited about what they were doing. I've been using Ocean Grown Solution to water my wheatgrass and garden ever since.

Why ocean water? Because it contains the perfect balance of the 90+ chemical elements found in nature, all of which should (in a perfect world) appear in the earth's crust (soil) and in the foods grown in that soil. (Different plants need and select different minerals from the soil.) Dr. Maynard Murray, the "father" of the ocean-water-as-nutrient idea, in his book Sea Energy Agriculture, described plants and their fruit as nothing more than conduits for getting minerals out of the soil into the human body (which gives new insight to Genesis 1:19: "for dust you are and to dust you will return").

The demineralization of the earth's soil, through wind and water erosion, poor agriculture practices, and failure to replenish, has led to nutrient-poor foods which has contributed to the lack of vitality and health in those who feed upon them. This is one of the main reasons to eat organically-grown foods as opposed to conventionally-grown—organic farmers (generally) make an effort to add back to the soil more than they take from it through composting, deep-root cover cropping (some grasses and legumes can send roots as deep as 20 feet below the surface, bringing fresh supplies of minerals to a plant's foliage which is then plowed back into the top few inches of the soil ready to be taken up new crops), remineralization, and proper tillage.

In one of their recent magazine ads, Ocean Grown produced the following color-coded periodic table of the elements, the headline stating that earth's soil used to contain every chemical element in this chart (except the two yellow ones). They then ask, "See the BLACK ones? Those are the ones listed on your fertilizer bag."

Everyone who has fertilized their yard or garden is familiar with the three numbers on the bag of fertilizer, e.g., 10-10-10. Those are the three chemicals represent by the black boxes on the chart: nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K). A nineteenth-century German scientist, Justus von Liebig, the "father of modern fertilizer," set in motion the discoveries that led to the realization that plants could grow with adequate N, P, and K alone—especially N. But what about the other 87 elements? Plants will grow without all the elements they ideally need, but not robustly. And neither will humans and other animals who feed on mineral-deficient plants. (Obviously, all soil contains some minerals. The point is that most/all soils today are unbalanced and deficient in mineral content.)

This post isn't an advertisement for Ocean Grown. But the three black boxes in the periodic table from their ad point out the deficiency of most modern fertilizers that are lacking the majority of chemical elements that are needed for healthy soil, healthy plants, and health beings. Fortunately, companies like Ocean Grown (and now others) are providing remineralizing products via ocean water, and other companies have been providing remineralizing amendments (trace minerals harvested from dried sea beds) for gardeners and farmers to add back to their soil (products like Azomite, Planters II trace minerals, and others). The more complete the mineral balance in our soil the more resources our bodies have to work with in maintaining health via the foods grown in those soils.

What Makes a Good Song?

Old Crow Medicine Show's signature song, Wagon Wheel, is a GREAT song. Okay, give 'em a pass on a few of the lyrics and then watch the audience tell you whether they think this is a great song or not—singable, memorable, unique, with a high harmony line to die for, and just plain FUN. This is from their live concert DVD filmed in Asheville and Knoxville where they are revered by a loyal fan base. Not hard to see why:

Parenting Today for Tomorrow

I'd like to commend two blog posts written by a friend of my daughter-in-law on the topic of parenting young children -- developing biblical convictions and practices today that will guide and protect children in the future.

Kelly and her husband, Jason, are the parents of twin girls and a boy, all very young. Kelly is a gifted writer (as is Jason on his blog), but these two posts of hers deserve a wide reading. If you go to Kelly's blog today you'll find they are the two most recent posts at the top of the blog. If you come across this reference in the future (when the two posts have been shuffled into the archives), here are the individual links to the two posts: Part One ("My Two-Year-Olds Are Dating") and Part Two ("Part 2: Our Two-Year-Olds Are Dating").

There are many young parents investing significantly in their children's future who may not have time or inclination to write about their priorities and practices. But when good parenting and good writing surface in the same place, it's worth taking note.

Kennedy Center Honors

The current class of five Kennedy Center honorees were celebrated earlier this fall and the ceremony will be broadcast tonight on CBS at 9:00 p.m. If you are not familiar with the Kennedy Center awards, they are a genuine education in the history of the arts in America. Every class of five represents a cross-section as exemplified by the current honorees: Bruce Springsteen, Mel Brooks, Robert de Niro, Dave Brubeck, and Grace Bumbry.

There is a wonderful retrospective with clips from previous awards ceremonies here -- it is terrific (it's a bit slow to load, but worth the wait). I got tears in my eyes just watching some of these clips. I especially loved seeing again the clip from the night Brian Wilson, leader of the Beach Boys, was honored -- seeing Washington's, Broadway's, and Hollywood's elite in their tuxes and gowns on their feet dancing to "California Girls," honoring this musical genius who fought his way back from the darkness of depression and breakdowns to write music once again. Unfortunately, they didn't show the finale when scores of beach balls were dropped into the audience from the ceiling. It was amazing. The older one is, the more cherished these memories become.

If you've never seen the Kennedy Center Awards shows, tonight's promises to be a good one.

Dave Barry's 2009 "Year in Review"

Read Dave Barry's summary of 2009, in typically hilarious fashion, here.

Gloucester Cathedral Choir

Time

I read two things about time this morning:

Scott and Helen Nearing needed a 420-foot wall built around the garden at their Maine homestead. So they built it themselves—one stone at a time—over a period of 14 years. It cost $450 in materials and 14 years in time to build what they needed. When they finished, Helen was 67 and Scott was 87, meaning they began their task at ages 53 and 73 respectively. Scott died at age 100 and Helen at age 91, so they enjoyed the fruit of their labor for many years. (Helen and Scott Nearing, Continuing the Good Life, p. 116).

Award-winning historical novelist Jack Cavanaugh (see "The Life of a Novelist: A True Story") wrote and queried for 13 years before a publisher gave him his first contract. Hundreds of thousands of words and 13 years of time to achieve his goal.

Why Americans Are Exhausted

Peggy Noonan, in her current WSJ column, explains why Americans are exhausted and think the country is on the wrong track—and it's not just about war and healthcare debates. It's about who we're becoming as a nation as exemplified by Adam Lambert's perverted performance recently on the ABC broadcast of the American Music Awards.

Mr. Lambert is free to do as he pleases in his personal life, of course. But I wonder why he didn't display who he truly is when he competed on American Idol. I'm sure it's because he knows that most Americans don't favor his lifestyle and would have voted him off the show. So his deceit gained him a victory and a free pass into America's living rooms during prime time. No wonder Americans are tired of what they like and believe in being taken from them by some who claim to be shocked when we protest.

Meet Lt. Col. Allen West

I was not familiar with retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West until today -- he is running for a Republican congressional seat in Florida in the upcoming 2010 election. He is a fiery and articulate speaker and a staunch conservative opposed to the current administration's policies and the direction of the country. I'm posting the following two videos simply as information since we'll likely hear his name in the coming months.

You can read the Wikipedia article about him which provides some detail about alleged aggressive interrogation tactics in Iraq which resulted in charges and his ultimate retirement from the military. Ninety-five members of Congress signed a letter to the Secretary of the Army in support of Col. West after his "forced" retirement. But he nonetheless has this affair on his record. My fear is that he might ultimately go the way of Allen Keyes -- a fiery African-American whose message was too strong for the public to swallow. He seems genuine, but unfortunately too naive and unsophisticated in the ways of Washington-world. He makes some good points but his hard-core military style won't resonate with a lot of folks -- just a first impression. But we'll see what happens.

Here is the six-minute video of a speech he gave recently that went viral on the Internet and raised his public profile: (In case you're not sure what his reference to "the President at Home Depot" refers to -- a few days ago President Obama's entourage went to a Home Depot to talk about people insulating their homes better; how "insulation is sexy." I was embarrassed for Obama when I read about the trip and his remarks.)

(Addendum: For those who don't know me well, I need to clarify that my hopes for the future are built on "nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness." I put no trust at all in human governors to do either the right or righteous thing, try as they might. Indeed, I fear all political efforts are akin to straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic. That said, I am more than willing to thank them for their efforts when their acts and intents overlap those of God (as Samuel Rutherford outlined in Lex Rex in 1644). Also, I feel the responsibility to participate in the political process as intelligently as I can and so like to be aware of those on the playing field. I post videos like these purely for informational purposes -- not as an endorsement. If you know anything more about this particular candidate I'd be happy to hear from you.)

Here is a video of an interview with Col. West by Sean Hannity (of whom I am not a big fan for various reasons) after West's speech went viral:

Looking Better All the Time

This is a Flash-based interactive summary of a number of different polls (red dots = the "Oppose" numbers from a particular poll, the blue dots the "Favor" numbers). Hold your cursor over any dot to see which poll it represents. The solid lines represent a summary of all the polls. Roll your cursor over the opposite extremes of the x-axis (the dates line) to adjust the dates. Because this is Flash-based, the numbers will change as new poll results are added to the graph at pollster.com.

12-15-09 addendum: With only 38.5% of the nation currently favoring the Obama healthcare proposals, why are 60+% of senators apparently prepared to vote for the Senate version of the bill (with Joe Lieberman's capitulation this morning)? I realize the purpose of a republic is to put elected representatives in place as a buffer between true democracy (mob rule) and ultimate legislation. But shouldn't the percentage of the public's opinion and the percentage of senators voting a certain way be closer than 38.5% vs. 60+%? It would appear that not many senators are listening to their constituents.

Why You Will Lose Your Private Health Insurance

This is a great piece on the disaster that is looming in the halls of Congress if any version of the health bill now under consideration is passed. Written by Robert Tracinsnki of The Intellectual Activist. You can read the piece here at RealClearPolitics.com.

The Funeral of One's Independence

From the pen of the never-easy Oswald Chambers:

The cost to your natural life is not just one or two things, but everything. Jesus said, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself . . . " (Matthew 16:24). That is, he must deny his right to himself, and he must realize who Jesus Christ is before he will bring himself to do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.

My Granddaughters Could Have Been in This Commercial!

The best part is at the very end when they do a "rowing" motion—hilarious!

Jeffrey Masson

Jeffrey Masson was a Sanskrit scholar who became a Freudian analyst and now devotes his time to vegan and animal welfare issues. He is a prolific author (see his titles that deal with animals and veganism in my list of "Books Read" in the left margin), his latest book (2009) being The Face on Your Plate. On March 30 of this year he did a book signing and hour-long discussion of the book and related issues at a bookstore. The hour-long presentation and discussion was recorded and made available to the public. You can watch it online here or below. (Happily, the embedded video below plays perfectly. Why can't all online videos be as large-formatted and stream as well as this one?)

I like these off-the-cuff presentations as much as authors' books. The live discussions reveal "who" the author is (personality, mannerisms, tone, etc.) which is often not revealed (as clearly) via the printed page. "Meeting" the author adds an extra dimension to reading his or her books. Plus, wittingly or unwittingly, these interviews always reveal insights about other "major players" with whom the author has interacted, conversations that rarely make it into a book. For example, I was intrigued by his remembrance of an interview with Alice Waters, the iconic doyen of whole/slow/organic food—the owner of the famous Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California. It revealed (at least from his perspective) that even the most esteemed leaders in a given field have not always thought about everything. His comments about, and stories of his conversation with, Michael Pollan, an even larger icon than Alice Waters, and Wendell Berry, were also illuminating. Masson, as an author and researcher, does prodigious research, interacting with the leading lights in the field.

I keep coming back and adding tidbits from this talk. He talks about how trends are changing in our culture by noting that when he was an undergrad at Harvard there were only two vegetarians (he and another), whereas the student body of Stanford University today is 25% vegetarian.

Palin, Pleasure, and Principle

(AP picture borrowed from the Los Angeles Times blog.)

I don't plan to read Sarah Palin's new book (Going Rogue), but am intrigued by what she has to say about vegetarians and her own meat-eating habits as reported in an article by Johanna Neuman on the LATimes blog (Nov 17, 2009). "Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has never made any bones, if you will, about her culinary preferences. She's a carnivore, a hunter and proud of both," Neuman wrote. Technically, Palin isn't a carnivore—she's an omnivore. Lions and tigers are carnivores—beings that eat meat exclusively. Omnivores eat a broad spectrum of foods including meat—possibly even mostly meat—but not exclusively meat.

That said, it's Palin's comments in her book that beg analysis. The former governor writes,

If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: "If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?"

I love meat. I eat pork chops, thick bacon burgers, and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done-steak. But I especially love moose and caribou. I always remind people from outside our state that there's plenty of room for all Alaska's animals—right next to the mashed potatoes.

The Washington Post also notes the book contains photos of her history as a hunter dating back to her childhood under her father's tutelage, one showing her father demonstrating to Sarah and her friends how to skin a harbor seal (before the practice was banned) resulting in new seal-skin coats and mittens from the hides, made by her grandmother. On another occasion her father taught her (still as a child) how to field-dress a moose. He asked her to hold the moose's still-warm eyeballs which he planned to show his science-class students later that day.

We can forgive Palin's mis-use of the carnivore term—lots of people get that wrong. What is more worthy of attention are the two foundations for her attitudes and practices about animals: her environment and her assumed right to personal pleasure.

Environmentally, she is her father's daughter and a true daughter of the "Alaska" frontier mentality where foraging off the land was first a survival skill and then a badge of machismo, one Palin appears to wear proudly. She is not singularly guilty of wearing the mantle of her upbringing—who doesn't? Southerners who still salivate at the strains of "Dixie" are guilty of the same unwillingness to break out of the molds in which they were cast. Not all molds deserve breaking, of course. But if they do—and Palin's do—they need to be broken. Palin is openly verbal about her Christian commitments, but appears never to have allowed Scripture to challenge the assumptions about animals with which she was raised. In that regard, she is like most Christians who unwittingly do the same—they've never stopped to think that life in the kingdom of God might be different from life in "Alaska;" that the Bible speaks to more than issues of personal morality (don't lie, don't chew, don't hang with people who do, etc.). I would encourage the former governor to ask God (as every Christian should), "What is there in my personal kingdom that is inconsistent with Your kingdom—including my perspectives and practices regarding animals?"

Second—her priority on pleasure when it comes to eating meat. Anyone who uses this kind of detail in describing the meat they eat—"I love meat . . . and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak"—is a person who has a serious stake in steak-eating. And who can blame her? It is the fatty portions of meat that give it the flavor humans crave (along with the cholesterol that eventually clogs their arteries and causes them to assume room temperature). Think of the envy that rises in most people when, on a balmy summer afternoon, they catch a whiff of the savory aroma of seared fat and flesh emanating from a neighbor's grill—and how they wished it was their meat on their grill that was making their mouth water. We are like Pavlov's dogs when it comes to the aroma of burning fat. Our salivary glands start pumping overtime when we detect the near-presence of "the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak." Nobody could fault Palin for her honest expression of what promotes her personal culinary pleasures. But being honest about the wrong thing doesn't make it right.

In the prescriptions for sacrificial offerings in the Old Testament, the fatty portions of animals were reserved for God:

The priest must present part of this offering as a special gift to the Lord. This includes all the fat around the internal organs, the two kidneys and the fat around them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver. These must be removed with the kidneys, and the priest will burn them on the altar. It is a special gift of food, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. All the fat belongs to the Lord. You must never eat any fat or blood. This is a permanent law for you, and it must be observed from generation to generation, wherever you live." (Leviticus 3:14-16, NLT, bold added)

Don't misunderstand my use of this scripture—I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't eat fat because it violates Old Testament dietary or sacrificial precepts. (Why God instructed animals to be killed as sacrifices is a whole different discussion.) I'm not using it to say what the pleasure of fatty meats was not (not for man), but what it was—it was for God. Why? Because the burning of fat on a fiery altar produced the same pleasure in the nostrils of God (figuratively speaking) as it produces in you when you smell it in your neighborhood or on your own patio:

You shall sprinkle their blood on the altar, and burn their fat as an offering made by fire for a sweet aroma to the Lord. (Numbers 18:17b, NLT, bold added)

The Israelites reserved the most savory portions of animal sacrifices to burn so that the powerful flavor would ascend to heaven and bring pleasure to God as a "sweet aroma." If you think an 18"-wide Weber grill gives off a sweet aroma, think how the wilderness smelled when the Israelites fired up the 56-square-foot altar (five meters square; Exodus 27:1) within the Tabernacle (later in Jerusalem) and started lobbing baskets of fat-meat into its roaring, perpetually-burning flames. Sarah Palin would have gone nuts from the smell alone.

There is fat in all meat, of course, so burning the non-fat portions sets off the conditioned pleasure response as well. But the most pleasurable, the most savory, was reserved for God. We err when we think that "if it feels (or tastes) good, do it!" Pleasure is not permission. Liberty is not license.

The point is this: Just because something produces pleasure in this life doesn't make it right. Sex always brings pleasure, but that doesn't make non-proscribed sex right. Eating sugary foods is a conditioned pleasure, but that doesn't make their unlimited consumption right. Indulging oneself at the expense of others may result in pleasures of various sorts, but that doesn't make narcissism or hedonism right.

No amount of frat-boy humor ("if God didn't want us to eat animals, why'd He make them out of meat") can cover Palin's (or anyone's) willingness to extinguish the life of a sentient being (beings that were created for Jesus Christ, Colossians 1:16. I wonder if Palin asked Christ if it was okay to kill the reindeer—Christ's reindeer—shown in the picture above?) for her own personal pleasure. Does the seared, fatty portion of a steak taste good? Absolutely. I remember my own trips, along with fraternity brothers, to a local discount grocery store in college to purchase huge slabs of some kind of beef which we would throw on the fraternity house grill, and then consume with Palin-like gusto along with copious quantities of beer and frat-boor humor, followed by a couple of days trying to expel the remains. If I hadn't engaged in so much colon-cleansing in recent years I would assume there would yet be remnants of those pleasures remaining in me to this day.

Having been as uninformed and pleasure-based then as Sarah Palin is now, I can't be holier-than-her with these comments. But I can remind her, myself, and all that pleasure in life—especially unnecessary pleasures that come at the expense of other beings—is not life's highest goal. Our highest goal is to have our thinking transformed (Romans 12:2) so we continually submit our environmental conditioning and our at-any-cost pleasure-seeking to the principles and values of the kingdom of God.

You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever. (Psalm 16:11, NLT)