So, a numerologist on TV said that 11.11.11 (yesterday) was an auspicious day to begin a new chapter in one’s life. It turned out to be the day that Nate & Shea finished packing up their belongings, loaded up a U-Haul truck, and took off to make a new home for themselves in Georgia. I tried so hard not to cry, but it proved to be impossible.
Making the trip with them is Mr. Puffer (above), Nate’s petpuffer-fish. We got attached to him when we fed him while Nate & Shea were away on vacation last summer. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that he will make the thousand mile journey safely in his special traveling cooler/tank under Nate’s watchful eyes.
I’ve made some good progress this week at chopping vegetables, and then the knife slipped and I cut the index finger on my left hand, but that should heal up more quickly as it was a clean little slice. One morning I got up and rearranged the shelves in the refrigerator to accommodate storing our new food choices and am so delighted with the new sense of organization and purpose.
But I’ve promised a few more fairy tale birdhouses at the Florence Griswold Museum from October…
#3. “The Beat of a Different Drummer” by Judy Preston, based on How Drummer the Woodpecker Came by His Red Cap.
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
#5. “Spinning a Yarn” by Bill Vollers, based on Rumpelstiltskin.
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
#50. “Pea Snoop” by Jennifer L. Johnson, based on The Princess & The Pea.
lower branches of Dad’s chestnut tree in his garden ~ 6.21.09 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
“We lost the chestnut tree.”
My sister delivered the most important news first. On Sunday we had last talked on our cell phones, and she let me know then that they had lost power at our father’s house, courtesy of the freak Halloween Nor’easter that caught Connecticut by surprise this past weekend, dumping over a foot of heavy wet snow on most of the state. Dad had a cold, and they had the wood stove going trying to keep him warm. Then her cell phone went dead and I heard nothing further.
This afternoon, two days later, she finally was able to make it down to her office and call me from work. They have their power back now, but still no land line or cell phone service. Beverly says I won’t believe the damage up there, although I am seeing many news reports on TV. Apparently the state lost more trees in this storm than we did during Hurricane Irene. With the wood stove they were able to keep Dad’s room at 70°F (21°C), although like many elderly ones, he doesn’t feel comfortable until the temperature is about 80°F (27°C).
When my father was a young man – he is now 89 years old – he found the chestnut sapling in Pennsylvania and brought it home with him, transplanted it in Connecticut soil, and nurtured it to a full-grown, gorgeous tree. When his short-term memory started disappearing several years ago, he would tell me the story over and over, every time I went up for a visit, which used to be several times a week. He looked forward to seeing it outside his window every morning, and was very attached to it, his special tree.
In June of 2010 it bloomed! A lovely scent filled the air. I’ll never forget it.
We used to decorate it with flower garlands for Midsummer.
And now the Halloween Nor’easter of 2011 has uprooted it. Beverly reports that when Dad discovered what had happened he simply said, “This is demoralizing.” I cried when she told me. The storm also took the tops off several oak trees and the yard and the roads are a mess. Poor trees. They’ve taken such a beating this year…
Earth is generous with her provisions, and her sustenance is very kind; she offers, for your table, food that requires no bloodshed and no slaughter. ~ Ovid
Honestly, I could live indefinitely on soy milk and cereal, and beans and rice. But husband Tim is a lover of great variety and hearty meals. I’m starting to realize that if I am going to have a vegetarian kitchen I am going to have to add a lot more to my repertoire to keep this guy reasonably satisfied.
Borders is or was going out of business and we found ourselves there browsing around for good deals on books. Looking over the cookbook selections I thought 1,000 Vegetarian Recipes by Carol Gelles sounded promising and started thumbing through it. It has won two awards, the Julia Child Cookbook Award and the James Beard Foundation Award for Excellence. Following my intuition about this one – sorry Dr. Ornish, but Tim was not at all thrilled with the recipes in your cookbook – I bought it and am so happy I did. So far, Tim has liked every recipe I’ve made from it! 🙂 Who knew there were so many ways to prepare eggplant? Or that eggplants and plums went well together in the same concoction?
A few days ago my friend Robin, over at Life in the Bogs, mentioned that she was becoming more of a vegetarian. I told her I was heading in the same direction and she recommended a book to me, The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted & The Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss & Long-term Health by T. Colin Campbell & Thomas M. Campbell. Well, thanks again to Kindle it didn’t take me long to finish this amazing book, which delves quite deeply into why animal protein is so unhealthy for us, even if it is humanely and organically raised. Our Western diets are primarily animal protein and this is probably the cause of many of what the authors call diseases of affluence – cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, cancer, dementia, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis – the list goes on and on as he cites the China Study and many other scientific studies.
As it turns out, the diet that is good for us is also good for our little blue planet.
We plow under the habitats of other animals to grow hybrid corn that fattens our genetically engineered animals for slaughter. We make free species extinct and domestic species into bio-machines. We build cruelty into our diet. ~ Peter Singer & Jim Mason (The Way We Eat)
It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat. ~ Jeremy Rifkin (Beyond Beef: The Rise & Fall of the Cattle Culture)
It’s going to take a lot of effort to become a vegan household, but I feel like I’ve got enough information now to help me keep this new commitment.
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. ~ Albert Einstein (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
In my last post I described the part of my journey from eating animals to only eating animals that were humanely raised and slaughtered. Still, even after seeing EARTHLINGS, and thinking I was doing enough, my intuition was telling me that this was not the end of the story. So I starting searching at Amazon.com and settled on a book called Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian by Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers. It is available on Kindle so I got it within moments and read the book in record time, neglecting my blog-mates and many of my chores in the process.
Hundreds upon hundreds of scientific articles from around the world demonstrate that a healthy vegetarian diet is the single most powerful thing individuals can do to promote, protect, or improve their health. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
There it was, right in the first chapter. As many of my readers know, my husband survived a heart attack and had triple-by-pass surgery four years ago, and we are both taking a host of drugs to deal with hypertension and high cholesterol. Also I’m being treated for osteomalacia and migraine. Trying to keep on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet isn’t helping those stubbornly high numbers to come down. But not one doctor has ever suggested a plant-based diet to either of us, in spite of countless scientific studies indicating that this would be the best route to a healthy lifestyle.
I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives. ~ Dr. Dean Ornish (Reversing Heart Disease)
I am so excited about possibly getting off all of these expensive drugs! Apparently eating even humanely raised animals is not good for us! I used to believe that since the animals ate each other nature was teaching us that it was perfectly natural to eat them. The circle of life. But while some animals are predators, there are many others who are not. The following information came as an enlightening surprise to me:
While humans can digest flesh, and it is likely that our ancestors did consume small amounts of meat infrequently, our anatomy much more strongly resembles that of plant-eating creatures. Like all plant eaters the human colon is long and complex, and our intestines are ten to eleven times longer than our bodies. Meat eaters have a short and simple colon, and in order that putrid meats pass quickly through their bodies, their intestines are only three to six times longer than their bodies. Human saliva contains digestive enzymes; meat eaters’ saliva does not. Our teeth resemble those of other plant eaters, with short and blunt canines, as opposed to long, sharp, and curved canines of the big meat eaters. Additionally, the meat our evolutionary ancestors consumed was wild game, which has less fat content than our modern domesticated meats. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
Once again science and spirit come together in my life. As I shared the results of the scientific studies mentioned in the book with Tim, he seemed to be open to the idea of trying a vegan diet. And then came the next question, “What’s for dinner?”
This book, to the left, has nothing to do with having pigs for dinner, but is a heartwarming true story about a very special pig. It is called The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood by Sy Montgomery. Christopher Hogwood was a wise old soul, a teacher to everyone in the community who melted under his spell. He was a good good pig! I hope you will read it if you haven’t already!
“Shepherd with Cows on the Lakeshore” by Christian Friedrich Mali
The process of becoming a vegetarian acts like a spark to consciousness, and as you journey down this path, you become mindful of the connection between the living, breathing creature and the package of meat or fish neatly wrapped in the supermarket. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to be a Vegetarian)
In the past, the idea of being a vegetarian has always appealed to me, but marriage is about compromises and I married a devout meat-and-potatoes guy. Our children had to put up with a few episodes of me trying to convert everyone to my way of thinking, but my lack of cooking talent and the lack of helpful information made for many unappealing meals. They all remember, without fondness, the TVP debacle – the cookbook didn’t mention that the textured vegetable protein needed to be soaked until soft before adding it to spaghetti sauce! No one appreciated the crunchy spaghetti and TVP sauce…
A little background of my journey from omnivore to herbivore…
My mom loved all things Native American. I remember her telling me that Indians worshiped nature and believed they should only take from her, with gratitude, what they needed to survive. With her words, she painted a picture for me that I still see to this day, of a hunter respectfully kneeling over the animal he had killed with his arrow, thanking its spirit for the sacrifice of its life for the benefit of his family or tribe.
One day I asked my father about hunting. He told me his story about a gun his father gave him as a gift so he could go hunting in the woods. Not wanting to disappoint his father, he set off to find some game. He found a squirrel and shot it on his first try. When he went over to retrieve it he found himself devastated and sick to his stomach that he had taken its life. He never hunted again.
But, Mom’s knowledge and Dad’s experience did not stop them from eating the all-American died of meat and dairy products! And while my paternal grandfather lived us, until he died when I was 8 years old, he regularly used his ax on a stump in the back yard to chop the heads off of chickens for dinner. It was very disturbing to me to see the decapitated chickens running around for what seemed like an eternity.
You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (A Political Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Over the years I got an inkling that animals were suffering terribly on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, so Tim & I agreed that we would only eat meat that was naturally raised, cage-free, and slaughtered humanely. A friend, knowing my sensitivity to violence, warned me not to watch the documentary, EARTHLINGS, but I did watch it, in August, while Tropical Storm Irene was raging outside. It did deeply disturb me, and removed all doubt from my mind about how bad things were in these torture chambers.
In one scene there was a pig who had spent its whole life squished in a cramped pen and had never seen a ray of sunshine or a blade of grass. Now it was time for it to be slaughtered. The worker opened the gate and started poking the terrified pig with a sharp prong. It fell down repeatedly and was pierced over and over to make it get up and move on. All the while the merciless worker kept shouting at it, over and over, “Come on, mother-f—-r, move.”
And a sharp contrast appeared in my mind between these two images: one, the cruel words coming out of the mouth of that heartless factory farm worker; and the other, much different picture: the sincere words of thanks coming out of the mouth of the respectful Native American hunter.
If you left a comment for me that I didn’t respond to between September 16 and now, I want to let you know that I have now gone back through my posts and have left responses.
The “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” box is working now!
My index fingers are in working order after my fall, and since I can’t do much else with these torn-up hands, I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone else’s blogs now, as I got terribly behind while moving By the Sea over here…
Also, I’ve been busy reading books about food choices and writing the next three posts, for the next three days. They are a bit of a departure from my usual offerings, and may seem depressing or fanatical, but growth, change and discovery are often painful. I want you to know that I’m not trying to be critical of how others choose to eat, or pushing my agenda, just working things out for myself and my husband’s well-being, and sharing a little of that journey.
The greatest delight the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)
Each that we lose takes a part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides. ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1634)
King Richard’s Faire ~ 9.16.06 ~ Carver, Massachusetts
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Eliot (The Writings of George Eliot)
A mood of melancholy has followed me around like a dark cloud the past couple of weeks. It probably has a lot to do with the anticipated move out-of-state for our son and daughter-in-law drawing ever closer.
Tuesday Laurie of Speaking from the Heart, posed the question, “What’s been your most recent surprise?” Well, the night before Tim gave me the dragonfly pendant pictured at the right. Laurie hinted that she wanted to see it, so….
Other recent gifts have been a long phone call from my daughter and of course, this new web domain from my son. I feel blessed and full of gratitude, and yet, still blue. I’m also taking more steps on a path to vegetarianism and am engaged in a pensive, inner spiritual struggle. Planning to write a post about that soon…
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: So this winged hour is dropped to us from above. ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Silent Noon)
I went up to visit my father Tuesday, and stayed overnight, returning yesterday morning. Visiting him always leaves me sad as there is so little I can do to make his life easier. My only hope is that my presence somehow makes him feel as comforted as the presence of my own children makes me feel…
Bernie, my sister Beverly, and I took a walk in the woods Wednesday morning. Bernie is showing his age and was in a little funk himself. If you haven’t been introduced to Bernie yet, you can find his story here.
Bernie ~ 9.21.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
Lately I’ve thought a lot about “my” hemlock tree, which I climbed all the time when I was a child. I loved to sit high up in it and absorb its energy and have now been wondering what its energy would feel like these days. Part of me wants to climb it again, for old times’ sake, but I’d have to bother someone for a ladder to get to the lowest branch and I question my agility and this stage of my life. The tree has been under attack and weakened from an infestation of the hemlock woolly adelgid, which my brother-in-law, who is a botanist, is trying to control. So I took a picture to show where Hurricane Gloria snapped its crown off in 1985. You can see where new growth has filled in above the break, in about the middle of the photo.
hemlock and orbs ~ 9.21.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
When I got home and uploaded the picture I was delighted to find it full of orbs! Orbs have been on my mind recently, too, since seeing Kathy’s picture of a golden brown orb on her post at Lake Superior Spirit. I think the orbs are a good sign that my tree still has some healing energy. Maybe I will bother someone about a ladder… Later on, walking along the path to the mailbox, I thought this little clearing looked pretty so I snapped another picture, and didn’t realize until I got home that it was full of orbs, too.
9.21.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
But that was it for surprise orb photos. The hemlock below has not fared so well, and has become an ideal place for woodpeckers to drill for insects…
9.21.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
I liked the texture I found in a pile of scrap lumber by the shed…
9.21.11 ~ Storrs, Connecticut
And to end on a more cheerful note, a pretty flowering sedum in Beverly’s rock garden…
