there was a picture of a cow, its dirty head sticking out of some huge machine. the caption read “A cow is weighed and inspected using an ultrasound machine to assess fat content and marbling at a Maple Park, Ill, feedlot.”
the article was all about high cattle prices, and the cute little headline was “drought prods cattle prices to high.”
and that poor cow, with a tag on its ear, is looking at the camera, and i’m pretty sure it was thinking, “why me?”
do i have it in me to become a vegetarian? because right now that’s what i really want to do.
aren’t cows people, too? i mean, yeah, they’re not actually human beings, but aren’t they thinking beings who deserve better than being put in huge machines to be measured for fat content and marbling, not to mention the whole horror of the feedlots and the slaughtering of them?
weighty thoughts this sunday morning.
plus, if i stopped eating meat, that wouldn’t help all the animals who are killed. but at least i wouldn’t be part of it.
this morning kevin went off to a cowboy shoot and hadn’t fed the birds, so i filled the feeder and the bird feeder house and now there’s a feeding frenzy going on out there. right now i see at least one cardinal, a bluejay, a couple of wrents and a woodpecker.
so at least the birds are happy this morning.
part of this whole contemplating the vegetarianism thing started last sunday, when we went to a dinner for the 114th. every year they have a speaker, and last year it was an interesting woman who was the curator or something at lincoln’s home and she brought along his actual portable writing desk and it was a good talk, not too long, and full of good stuff.
this year, it was some historian guy who rambled. on and on, random things about lincoln, ending with saying that 1,000 books were published about lincoln last year in china, so that’s good news for the possibility of china becoming free and open. uh huh.
but during his spech, which did almost last all of eternity, he said something about one of lincoln’s early jobs, something that certainly isn’t mentioned anywhere that i know of.
he said that lincoln had a job loading hogs, “who are intelligent animals,” the man said, onto boats to down river to be slaughtered. and because the hogs are so bright and independent, they’d wander off if not contained…and they did that by SEWING THE HOGS’ EYELIDS SHUT.
i’m sorry i had to even write that, because it’s such an incredibly horrible thing to think about, and i can’t stop thinking about it.
i told this to a friend (a big ham lover), and he said, well, they don’t do that anymore…but then he said that they do all kinds of other horrible things to them.
on a happier note…lester has just come into the room, and whatever he does, it’ll be cute.
ok then,
mrs. somber sunday morning hughes.
vegetarian.