Well, it’s pointless to write something about this amazing wedding when my new pal, Nancy Wadsworth, said it so much better than I could. Check out her blog for more photos and a great, personal essay about why gay marriage matters.
My good pal, Jules.
The adorable couple.
We were on the Cape this weekend for the wedding of my good pal, Jules. It was a heartwarming event. I’m extremely happy for Jules and Lee. With their permission, I’ll post a photo later, but for now a few shots of the scene at the Cape. Hurricane Bill was forecast for the wedding, but never really arrived.
Low surf, awaiting hurricane Bill.
Isaiah Hall Inn, circa. 1857
Paige and Evelyn cope with the humidity.
Plimouth Plantation, just outside Plymouth, Mass.
(and oddly, they do spell it with an “i.”)
Long time Jane’s World readers will laugh, or possibly fall out of their chairs in shock, based on what they are about to read in this post.
For years, Jane has promoted and even flaunted her junk food habit in this comic; meanwhile, in early 2007 the creator (me) gave up corn syrup. Since I basically had the same diet as Jane (Frosted Flakes and powdered donuts) this was no easy task. It would be an understatement to say this seemingly small alteration in diet changed my life. So, I now confess that I’ve been a bit of a closet health nut while continuing to live out my junk food fantasies vicariously through Jane.
Now, for phase two…
For many years I’ve struggled with the question of whether it is ethical to eat meat. I’ve even written some comics about it, suggesting that it is ridiculous to cuddle up to some animals and eat others. It goes without saying that changing a life-long habit is extremely hard. I grew up on Carolina Pulled Pork sandwiches… one of my favorite meals.
My meat-eating quandary started years ago with the Ten Commandments. “Thou shall not kill.” Some later translations change the wording to “thou shall not murder,” but I believe the Gnostics interpreted this to be “thou shall not kill,” as in, thou shall not kill anything. (This raises the obvious questions about all the “fish” stories in the New Testament. But the mainstream New Testament is not based on a Gnostic interpretation… so I think the Gnostics may have been on to something.)
I’ve put off reading books about factory farming because I know once I read them and have those images in my head, then there will likely be no going back. This past week I did purchase a few books and I will spare you some of the horrific stories I’ve already read, but will share some less “graphic” elements.
(Can I sidetrack this for a moment and say that, oddly enough, seeing District 9 this past weekend pushed me to seriously consider veganism. Why? Because, as the SFGate reviewer put it so well: “the film is a corrosive assault on the baroque inhumanity of common human beings.”)
Some of these excerpts are from The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble, by Ingrid Newkirk
“Today, the taste for meat represents the kiss of death to billions of animals every year in the United States alone.
These animals are suffering and being slaughtered not to feed the needy, who have no other options, but to have tons of their flesh discarded on hotel room service trays and into dumpsters by the most overfed (and often obese) members of a nation that can command endless varieties of foodstuffs by picking up a phone or driving to the supermarket.
It is truly bizarre that people who love animals grow up eating them.
There are lots of reasons to rethink what has become the standard American diet, among them the fact that producing meat uses up so much fossil fuel that it is actually more energy efficient to drive a Hummer than it is to walk – if the energy for walking comes from a meat-based diet. Also, more than half of all precious freshwater used in the United States – which will one day be as precious as gold dust in the West, just as it is now in parts of Asia and Africa, is used for the meat industry.
If only our restaurants and kitchens had glass walls that allowed diners to see meals being prepared form start to finish.”
Basically chickens, cows and pigs are all treated horribly on big, factory farms. Although, most state laws do not technically differentiate between cruelty to a dog and cruelty to any other animal, as Peter Singer wrote in Animal Liberation: “Anyone who kept a dog in the way in which pigs are usually kept would be liable for prosecution, but because our interest in exploiting pigs is greater than our interest in exploiting dogs, we object to the cruelty of dogs while consuming the product of cruelty to pigs.”
But what about fish I wondered?
According to behaviorists at the University of St. Andrews, fish value friendship, choose which fish to adopt as friends (they recognize their chums by both smell and appearance), and decide to swim with them instead of with other fish.
One person who stopped eating fish for ethical reasons is Sylvia Earle, a leading marine biologist and ocean explorer. She knows a thing or two about the denizens of the deep. “I never eat anyone I know personally,” says Earle. “I wouldn’t deliberately eat a grouper any more than I’d eat a cocker spaniel. They’re so good-natured, so curious. You know, fish really are sensitive, they have personalities, they hurt when they are wounded.”
The National Wildlife Federation report on risks of cancer from eating freshwater fish concluded that one weekly meal of a trout from Lake Michigan poses a cancer risk of one in ten. Mercury turned up in 92 percent of all fish tested. According to a report by the General Accounting Office, the seafood industry is dangerously under-regulated. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t even bother to test most fish flesh for many well-known chemical and bacterial health hazards. Only 1 to 3 percent of fish imported from other countries is inspected at the border.
Don’t be surprised if Jane ends up dealing with this ethical dilemma in the coming weeks. After reading this post, you’ll know there is much truth in that jest.
I was in China for a two-week trip a few years ago and the food situation there was very challenging. When you are served a meat dish, you have no doubt about whom it used to be. I remember one lunch vividly, in which a small piglet was brought to the table and placed in front of my friend Kim and I. The pig was pretty much intact except it had been obviously cooked and then chopped from head to toe, in vertical slices, but still in its original form… if that makes sense… I couldn’t help but assume that if I were daily confronted with the true source of my pulled pork BBQ in the USA that I would without hesitation become vegan. We make it easy to eat meat in this country because we are so removed from the killing process. I found the Chinese approach much more honest.
This is a photo of one of our pork-free lunches. At every meal you could tell where Kim and I were sitting because we basically lived on Pepsi the entire trip.
Obviously these two things have nothing to do with each other, but I always like to post a little art with text, even if the two are unrelated.
A version of this Spinner poster will be part of the story for Mars 2… The font isn’t quite right yet, but I thought I’d share this early version of Spinner doing Che.
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Now, for health care.
The FCC got rid of the fairness doctrine back in 1987, which surely contributed to the rise of programming like Fox News. (The doctrine required broadcasters to seek out opposing viewpoints on issues of public importance.) If this fairness doctrine were still in place, would it protect the general public from having to hear misleading statements about, for example, “death panels?” I mean, come on… I’ll admit I’m not a huge Sarah Palin fan, but even I was surprised that she would be so irresponsible as to perpetuate such an obvious falsehood. Who is she helping with this sort of talk?
Jon Meacham had a great editorial in Newsweek this week about invoking Nazi references in political discourse:
“Given the enormity of the evil perpetrated by Nazi Germany, it seems reasonable to suggest a moratorium on the deployment of Third Reich imagery and language in domestic political conflicts that, while important, fall immeasurably short of Hitler’s territorial ambitions and his Final Solution.
I am not suggesting that we forget the past and consign Hitler to history. Quite the opposite: we must always, always remember. That a seemingly civilized nation in the center of Europe committed such crimes is a perennial reminder that the human capacity for evil is bottomless. The further we move in time from the events of the Second World War, the more remote it all seems, as though the rise of National Socialism, the persistence of American isolationism, the cynicism of the Soviet Union, and the appeasement chic of the British upper classes are relics of an ancient era. But these forces are not antique. They are permanent. It could all happen again tomorrow — all of it.
That is why the example of Hitler should not be invoked lightly or often. In this case, less is more; to deploy Nazi imagery as a matter of course diminishes one of humankind’s most potent lessons of its meaning and its power.”
I’ve recently gotten back to my original first car crush, which was a 1965 Mustang that I drove for 20 years. A few months ago I bought an 06 Mustang GT and just this week got a Hurst Short Throw Shifter installed. Holy crap is it fun to drive! When I called my dad to tell him about phase 1: The Shifter… and phase 2: The Wheels Upgrade… he got all nastalgic about the Ford from his younger days (my youth) and sent me this great Polaroid.
This is a 1970 Ford XL, 429 Cubic Inch, ET Mag Wheels
(The same wheels I’m about to aquire 
Parked outside our double wide trailer in Flatwoods, VA. Shortly before the family moved to Alabama. (And you wondered where all the crazy JW stories come from.)
I know people probably come to this blog for comic talk, but a little car talk never hurt.
Have a great weekend!
