a rare quiet mind.

i have the blissfully empty mind of someone who has spent the day doing quiet and meaningful things.
i woke, found a sunny spot in the house, and began reading a new book. (extremely loud & incredibly close, by jonathan safran foer if you are curious.)
after a time, the sun was too wonderful to not experience outside. i raked, dug up, split perennials and replanted them. there is now a new sunny area for beans or squash or whatever vegetable is lucky enough to earn its place there. the hosta have been repositioned in the sandy area around the garage. i hope they survive, not because i particularly like hosta but because it will deter the sneaky neighborhood cat from doing his business there.
the raking has my hands burning the way they always do after an extended season of soft labor.
it's a good feeling.

short attention span.

.waiting patiently for completion.

it's definitely late february. i have a pretty serious case of bored-apathy. that's what i call the feeling of needing to do something but being to lazy to do it, let alone figure out what it is.
i did successfully (re)launch my portfolio website: reneeleigh.com. the content isn't final, but i am just happy to have finally gotten it off the ground. slow progress is still progress!
i also received an advance copy of the moral lives of animals written by dale peterson via librarything's early reviewers program. it's a pretty thick text and with a quick skimming, reminds me of an environmental ethics course i took in college. i'll likely post the review here as well as on my librarything profile if you're curious how it turns out.

a quick book review.

being a vegetarian for 20 years, i was looking forward to Melanie Joy, PhD's book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows and her concept of carnism.

in the book she writes: "we don't see meat eating as we do vegetarianism-as a choice, based on a set of assumptions about animals, our world and ourselves. rather, we see it as a given, the "natural" thing to do. we eat animals without thinking about what we are doing and why because the belief system that underlies this behavior is invisible. this invisible belief system is what I call carnism."

unfortunately, i felt that the carnism concept wasn't examined in enough depth. granted, it is a short book, under 150 pages when you remove the resources and bibliography but much of the book is composed of descriptions of slaughterhouse practices and the suffering of animals. while I feel this is important to be aware of, it is not something that hasn't been covered by other books (Animal Liberation by Peter Singer) and movies (Food, Inc.).

i liked what she had to say about how society justifies the eating of meat through myths. she calls these myths the "3 N's of Justification"; that eating meat is Normal, Natural and Necessary. she discusses how "carnists" are able to continue eating meat through the objectification and abstraction of animals, hence blocking feelings of disgust triggered by empathizing with animal suffering.

overall, i think this is a valuable book, but not one that covers any new ground.

pile up.

i got a librarything early reviewers book in the mail today; Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows.  An Introduction to Carnism by Melanie Joy, Ph.D.
(click here for a video promo of the book)
i am excited to read this; especially since it's the first early reviewers book i've been awarded in over six months.  the topic is timely considering that we just watched food, inc.
the only trouble is i have two other books in progress; one from the library (waiter rant) and one given as a christmas gift (armageddon in retrospect by kurt vonnegut).  after quite a few months of no reading (tsk, tsk) i had better get to it!

south of the mason dixon line.

we just got back from our annual trip to Virginia Beach. oddly enough, i am not a really beach-y person. i burn pretty easily and prefer temperatures around 72 degrees. i did get a bit of sunburn even with SPF 45, but i fared a bit better than adam. he managed to sunburn his inner thighs (honestly there isn't a lurid explanation) which is understandably uncomfortable. it could have been worse considering he almost used Icy Hot instead of a similarly blue colored sunburn lotion as a pain reliever.
we drove down in the CR-V because it's still cheaper than flying. plus, you can't really get a feeling for distance and place if you don't drive. Stephen King's, Cell was our driving entertainment (what is up with that ending?!?!). we stopped at Shucker's Pier 13 in Dover, DE on the way down. i don't eat seafood, but they had grilled vegetable and cheese sandwiches and the food was cheap. the atmosphere was odd to say the least, topped off by what could only be explained as significant blood splatter on the inside of the women's bathroom stall door. on the way back home we stopped at the Dog House in New Castle, DE per the recommendation of Roadfood.com. again, i dined like a true vegetarian on the cheese fries (which were stellar), but adam got two of their famous foot long chili dogs. you can't get that on a plane!
we also ate well while in vb; mary's, captain george's, croc's, not to mention karen's home cooking, but i could go on forever about food...
i got to spend some good QT with my father; riding bicycles, chilling on the beach and staying up until all hours drinking and talking. adam partook a bit too heavily of the drinking part, but recovered enough to go to First Landing State Park the next day to check out the cypress swamps and ospreys.
to break up the trip back we got a hotel room in Paramus, NJ. at the hotel we watched 30 Days of Night, an incredibly creepy and disturbing flick which seemed pretty appropriate for our overall NJ experience. there is little to say about Paramus, except that there is a lot of shopping. and there's the atrocious Route 17. what is the urban planning logic behind this road? what is up with the u-turns?? why does this road inspire such hate???
anyway, before departing for home we stopped at IKEA and bought what seemed like enough to furnish a small apartment. we then went to CAMPMOR, where we got a new Ruffwear backpack and boots for crosbi (the dog).
an all around good time...thanks to dad and karen for their hospitality and to russell for watching the "kids"!

wandering home.

i just finished Bill McKibben's, Wandering Home. granted, i didn't "read" it, instead i listened to it on audiobook. i figure it still counts...

anyway, the book is a travelogue of the author's backpack from his home in the green mountains of vermont to his home in the adirondack mountains of new york. he walks with different folks along the way and tells stories of the places he passes through.

he touches on the similarity and differences between each side of lake champlain, the struggle of land use issues and the meaning of wilderness. all of this with a hiking theme!!!

i've read Bill McKibben's books before, but i have to say that this is by far my favorite one.

766 pages of good reading.

this is a great mid-winter book. at first, i was daunted by the amount of pages and a little bit put off by the historic and nautical context.  once i got started, i was drawn right in.

"the terror" is based on the actual disappearance of two naval ships departing england in 1845, out to find the northwest passage. 129 men were never heard from again and simmons takes a stab at filling in what may have happened to them. 

 

i can't imagine i would have had the same empathetic reaction to the suffering of the characters in this book if i was sitting on a warm beach in aruba.

i certainly can't imagine myself lasting more than a month trapped on a ship locked in the ice at 60 below zero.  i get upset if the heat blanket isn't turned on early enough before bed.

bad food?  a monster?  no thanks.

(thanks to sam, who's on an expedition of his own right now, for the recommendation)

nerd alert.

this is my new favorite thing.  

it's like having lots of friends that read and give super awesome recommendations.  

plus it's got organization, lists and books.  

those are three things i like.

what i'm reading right now...

this book sort of reminds me of my job.

trying to be there at the right moment.

(if there is a right moment)

sustaining hope for renewal.

keeping your distance and cultivating trust at the same time.

understanding that our reflexive judgements based on what we see betray the complex circumstances that bring events to actualization.

is it a science text or a cookbook?

i don't know...but it is currently my favorite book. am i a dork? yeah, probably. this book is crammed full of things you didn't know someone thought about.

for instance:

"black truffles are relatively subtle and earthy, with a mix of a dozen or so alcohols and aldehydes, and some dimethyl sulfide. (they also contain small amounts of androstenone, a steroid compound also found in men's underarm sweat and secreted in the saliva of the male pig, where it prompts mating behavior in the sow. some people are unable to smell androstenone, while others can and may find it unappetizing.)"

amy

good ole' peter singer...

yay! for this book. coming from a 16 year vegetarian who had until this reading lost an intimate connection to the original reasons for not eating meat-not that i was thinking of "going back"-but this book refreshed my vigilance.

having gone vegetarian at the age of 15 made much of my reasoning very reactionary (think PeTA). this book brings the adult logic to the party.

before this book i was unfamiliar with jim mason. i will have to give him another look.