Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

Tonight was rather exciting for me. We had family movie night and the movie was...duh duh duh duuuuhhhh...Hamlet (Branagh's of course--there is no other in my book). It's L's first time seeing it, which is very exciting for me. It was especially well timed for me, as I've been really distressed over the Egypt situation and have had a rough weekend as a result. Only something I love as much as Hamlet could keep my mind off all unpleasantness for over two hours!

We will have to finish the movie tomorrow, as it's four hours, and we have about 1.5 left. I actually intended to be very productive and blog while I watched. I normally always do something else while I'm watching tv and most movies. My brain likes a lot of things to work on/focus on at one time--not just one. I found though that no matter how many times I've seen this movie, I still can't look away to do anything else--especially while Kenneth is on screen. I love him.

L's current memory work (for school--memorization is very important to her brain and will help it immensely throughout life) is the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy from Hamlet, so I thought she should see the movie so she could place it in context and understand the emotion in it. Much to her dismay, when she memorizes poetry (or something like this), she is required to recite it with the proper feeling and emotion. No sing-songy or monotone recitations will pass! This is a really long piece, but she can do it. She committed to learning it within four weeks.

L was supposed to be tidying up her room, and she came downstairs looking like this.

She enjoyed a little downtime this weekend after H left and snuggled up with her stuffed wolf and finished reading The Jungle Book which went along with last week's history lesson on 18th-19th century India. (She always has one or more books that complement her history lesson(s). I'm a lit lover who believes the best way to learn and really understand history is to read both fiction and non-fiction preferably written in or about that region in that time period.)

L's latest

Wacom art. A series of four:

Wolves Proposal

Love is Paying Off

Love's Little Angel

Love's Little Devil

Missing weekend

This weekend was essentially a lost weekend, as L had another Bharatanatyam performance. The dress rehearsal was Friday night, and the performance itself was Saturday. The rehearsal and show were both in Waunakee, which is a bit more than an hour drive one way. I also had to spend a good deal of time Thurs. and Fri. sewing and making alterations for her costume. That left us with today to get the whole weekend's chores done.

She did the same dance as in her last performance (Chilanga Katti) with some minor changes. We all thought she did a great job--a little better than the last one even. I was much less nervous this time, because I didn't have to worry about her cosutme and/or jewelry falling off during her dance.

We got everything done and had a little time left tonight to play a game. L got some new board games for her birthday, and we played one she got from her uncle Dan, called Labyrinth. It was a pretty fun game. We're looking forward to playing again soon.

She and M also spent some time today finishing the second Lord of the Rings movie. He is working through all of them with her. That now leaves me as the only (sane) family member who finds those movies repulsive in every way possible and not remotely entertaining. M & the girls love them though, so I'm definitely alone on that. I'm happy for him that the girls share one of his passions, but I can't remotely see what the appeal is.

I was downstairs working on a birdhouse project for a while when they were watching, and I'm glad I was. I wanted L to watch V for Vendetta, which is definitely in my top three movies--maybe top two, but M thought it was still too violent for her. After witnessing the disgusting carnage in the movie they were watching tonight and hearing L laugh at it, I think she can handle my movie. I think the next night or weekend that M has a presentation and we have a girls' night, we will be watching V for Vendetta. YAY!!

It's Always Sunny

Saturday afternoon brought L's third birthday celebration with M's side of the family. Grandma & Grandpa D came, and L chose to eat her birthday meal at Green Owl in Madison. We visited for a bit after they arrived, and L opened up her gifts, and then we piled into the car and went for an early dinner at Green Owl. The food was good, as always. We returned back home, had some birthday cake (M used her 8 candle from a few years ago, along with three standard candles, she giggled when she saw it) visited for a bit more and then they headed home.

We had to do a quick clothes change and get ready for the opera for which we had tickets later that night. It was then and only then that L thought to inform me that the black dress pants I had just gotten her fit nicely, but she had outgrown all of her dressy tops and they were all in the donate bag. That left me with ten minutes to come up with an appropriate top for her. I found a nice crocheted cardigan that Dej had outgrown and put in the donate bag. It was a little big but close enough, and it went over her nice sleeveless top and made for a passable outfit. I guess I have to take her shopping for a nice dressy top.

My parents picked us all up in the van (Dej and her...uh...friend came too, but I couldn't get Hunter to go for it), and Mark drove us all to the performance. We watched Madama Butterfly, which I love! It was very enjoyable, though the women seemed to enjoy it much more than the guys. As many times as I've seen it, it still made me cry, which is annoying and ridiculous.

Every single time, I'm hoping for a different ending. The ending I want to see consists of Butterfly, instead of slitting her own throat, surprising Pinkerton by slitting his instead. Sharpless, being sympathetic to her plight would help get rid of the body and cover the very justified murder, and Butterfly, Suzuki, and Kate would all stay together and raise Sorrow to be a better man than his father.

The investigators

We took Jolsie to the vet today to get his penis problem taken care of. They soaked it in warm water and got all the sticky stuff cleaned off and then tucked it back in. We're hoping it stays there, but I've learned how to take careof it if it happens again.

We left Jolsie's empty carrier on the kitchen table and came back to find Basil and Charlie investigating. Basil is always the first to investigate, while Charlie stands back a bit and watches. This was no exception. Basil crawled as far into that tiny carrier as he could stuff his giant self and scarfed around, even munching down a little Jolsie turd. The twins will eat anything--they're like dogs. Charlie looked on curiously, almost putting his head in but couldn't quite go through with it in the end, but he enjoyed watching Basil do it.

11!

Luciana's 11th birthday was Monday, and unfortunately, this has been one of the more stressful weeks as far as work, so I couldn't take the day off to hang with her. This is one of those times where it's been really nice that I can work from home or the stree would be worse! I've been able to plug away and put lots of extra hours in getting some very time-critical work done without having to be away from my family.

Even after having a smaller xmas, L couldn't come up with anything to put on a birthday list. M & I ended up getting her an Amazon gift card which she has decided to use to replace her old computer monitor with a flat screen. My parents got her some gift cards and a pegasus she's wanted. Her gift from her sister was to spend the afternoon shopping together at the mall (which I hate!), and they are going this afternoon. L is so excited about that. Dej did the same thing last year, and L doesn't care much about the shopping part but loves having her sis's undivided attention.

She wanted to go out for a veg burger at Red Robin, so we had her birthday dinner there and then came back to our house for dessert. L requested my mom's mint fudge brownies for her birthday 'cake'.

(That's Mark smooshing Dej's head.)

As with every birthday, M did his decorating, so that when L came down on Monday morning, the house was very festive for her birthday.

Birthday Eve

Today is the beginning of the celebration of Luciana. Her birthday is tomorrow, but today I made her favorite meal--baked potatoes with chili. She loves potatoes, in any form, more than anyone I've ever seen! She wanted to have a fire tonight and is now trying to decide if we are going to watch a movie of her choice or play a game of her choice.

Tomorrow is my long day at work, so I don't get back in time to do much. She decided on the day of her birthday that she wants to go to Red Robin with her grandparents (my parents). Then she will be celebrating again next Saturday when M's family comes for a get together.

M & I went to see The King's Speech last night for date night. It was such a good movie! We both thought it was fantastic, and my undying love for Colin Firth has only grown stronger. He is so damn good in every role he plays!

We decided, yet again, that seeing movies in theaters is sucky and we would rather wait to see them at home. People are just so loud and rude! This showing was all mature adults, so we were extra annoyed by the rudeness--they are not teens and should definitely know better. So many people came in late and disrupted everyone in an effort to find and get to the seats (it was a full house). Then the two assholes next to me decided to loudly swirl and chew their ice cubes. It was driving us crazy! So...great movie, bad company. We are going to work on being patient and waiting for the movies to come out on video.

The high point of my weekend was perhaps the penis cleansing. It was truly a Sunday afternoon filled with more excitment than most people should be allowed to have. Jolsie, our little old man guinea pig, hasn't been able to retract his little penis. It's not terribly unusual. They get out there and it only takes a little dampness and debris to turn into a cement-like layer that fills in the cracks. It can't then retract. Gentle scrubbing with warm water and a little olive oil to get it all clean will generally fix it. The trick is trying to get the necessary cleansing done without making it raw or inflamed, which could then cause the same problem. L got the pleasure of holding him while I crouched underneath and did my magic. Fortunately, he did not enjoy it any more than I did--poor little guy. As unpleasant as the whole thing was, it would only have been worse if he had enjoyed himself.

L observed the whole thing with a sneer. She got a nice close up view of the penis, as I had to hold it extended with one hand and try to cleanse in between the creases with the other hand. She asked me why penises were so gross and ugly. I laughed. She then said, "It's amazing that anyone has kids when it involves something like that!" I laughed again. She then asked me point blank why anyone would ever want to touch one of those things. I'm great with the scientific explanations, but there really isn't a logical or medical way to make her understand the answer to this question at this point in time. So, I just laughed again and told her we would talk about that another time. I can only handle so much trauma in one day.

More Wisdom from Walter

Please read Walter's latest essay. He is an amazing writer and motivator and really uses his words in a powerful way. I don't repost all of his writings, though they are all excellent and worth reading. I select those that are most moving and educational to share with my friends and readers. Take this opportunity to read the words of a truly great man who I have no doubt will go down in American history as one of the great animal abolitionists of our time.

Originally posted at: http://www.supportwalter.org/Articles/11-1-6_WhyImVegan-II.htm


Slaughterhouse Blues (Why I am Vegan Part II)

Hogs have been genetically tampered with for so long that we no longer know many of their natural attributes. We do know that in nature no hog is pink. That is a genetic modification because people like "light colored pork". We also know that no hog in the wild gets up to 800 pounds which is a ridiculously obese size. Many times when I worked at IBP (Iowa Beef Producers, which is the largest producer of "pork" in the midwest and I am fairly certain in the nation) I would see hogs that were so unnaturally overweight that one or all of their limbs were crushed under the weight. In this essay I am going to go back to that chamber of horrors to better detail the suffering that thinking, feeling and sentient beings we know as pigs endure at the hands of speciesist human oppressors.

Early in the morning it starts, semi-loads of doomed pigs arrive at the slaughterhouse. They are packed in "assholes to elbows" as the drivers so succinctly put it. At least three hogs per truck will be deemed "unfit for human consumption" usually due to huge abscesses on their hind legs. This happens because a few hogs per trailer always get their rears stuck against the air hole grating. When this happens their hindquarters become horrifically blistered from a 30 hour ride in this condition. Imagine sitting on a school bus with no pants and a cheese grater for a seat. Upon arrival an IBP supervisor inspects the hogs. Any hogs that absolutely cannot be "used" get thrown out behind the facility to either die of exposure or to starve to death. Its not uncommon to see drivers or IBP supervisors stabbing hogs in the hind legs with pocket knives to pop abscesses and continue with business as usual. The hogs then get filtered from the back of the trailers to the pen runs. This is a very temporary holding area where they wait to be killed. On the opposite side from the trailer docking is the "shoot". All the hogs get forced into this single file death run made of tubular steel. Once inside the shoot they are on a death march, they cannot turn around and because of the steady flow of their doomed brethren being forced in behind them, they cannot stop. Hogs have the cognitive ability of a 5 year old child. They are very smart and very aware what's happening. They tremor from fear, some are so frightened they lose control of their bodily functions. Others faint and get pushed along their bellies to death. In any event, there is no stopping.

The impending horror is immanent. Once at the top of the shoot there is an abrupt 45 degree ramp. At the top of which an electrified bolt thrusts out and jolts the hog in the head to knock them out. They then land unconscious, or awake and paralyzed on the conveyor belt. Here they meet the "sticker". The sticker has the job of stabbing the hogs in the throat and shackling their hind leg so that they bleed to death while hanging upside down. At the IBP plant in Perry, Iowa the stickers wear hockey masks so that if a hog regains consciousness prematurely and kicks them in the face, they will be protected. Can you imagine being hung upside down by a lunatic in a hockey mask and having your throat cut! So much for your welfarist "humane slaughter" ! Very quickly they awaken gushing blood from the throat, traveling upside down in a corridor of congealing blood. The floor beneath is pitched at a 45 degree angle so that much of the blood drains into the blood tanks one level beneath the kill floor in a department called rendering. As they awaken they begin kicking and panicking. This is good according to industry standards because it quickens the bleed out. At the pinnacle of this A-frame shackle drive, the slow ride is over. They slide along the shackle channel very fast, approximately 35 ft descent and 40 ft in length. Because of this acute slide angle approximately one in every one hundred hogs fall from the shackle and end up on the floor beneath. There they stay drenched in the blood that rains down from the "sliders" above. Every shift change the line stops just long enough to power-spray the "jelly" off of the "fallers" and shackle them back up for "production", on the kill floor.

Hopefully by the time they reach this point they are dead, but that is not always the case. The first machine is the "beater". This machine is much like the rollers of a car wash except they rollers have thick nylon ropes with knots on the ends. This machine beats the hair off the hogs. Next is 'the washer'. This is a long scalding hot water bath/basin. This gets the residual hair that the "beater" missed and softens the skin for "disassembly". From this point everything works at a "break neck pace" (a term coined by the slaughterhouse industry in reference to the speed with which the kill floor operates). The head and hoofs are chopped off. The flesh peeled, salted, and stacked on pallets to be shipped to a leather tanning facility. The ribs sawed and broken and the innards dumped into stainless steel trays traveling along a conveyor belt to rendering with the blood tanks, bone cages and other waste bins. Every slaughterhouse has a section or sometimes separate facility on the same property called "rendering". A more accurate description would be "junkyard of death". Blood tanks, bone bins, 40 gallon drums of eyeballs, etc. The slaughterhouse industry is in cahoots with many, many food producers to hide their death junk in various foods. Many mass produced breads have powdered bones in the mix. Gelatins and lards get shoved into everything from cupcakes and Twinkies to car and truck tires. Blood gets used for rennet, an adhesive and oddly enough an ingredient in cheese (Sorry vegetarians but your cheese is not vegetarian. Its a combination of lactation and blood). And on and on.

It must be said that rendering is such a disgusting and wretched mess that few can stand it. I once had to work welding a blood tank and the smells were so intense I spent the four hours it took to complete the task, vomiting in a bucket, much to the amusement of the workers. I wish I could more accurately portray the evil and insanity of an IBP plant. But I can't. Words and videos only tell a small truth of the filth and misery. I can't describe the smells, the screams , or the terror that these animals experience. So often Animal Rights Activists will get hung up on one detail or part of the kill process but I will tell you its sick and wrong from start to finish! I will say this as well, its not intentionally cruel. This is the way it must be done to feed several million people several billion animals. Its unreasonable to ask that people that kill animals all day long as fast as technologically possible to also care about the animals at the same time. No! The answer is to GO VEGAN and destroy the death camps, raze them to the ground just as if they were Aushwitz or Dachau! Because that is what they are, concentration camps to the hundredth power!

But before my anger carries me away let's return to the slaughterhouse so I can explain the human oppression as well. The grunt workers, the ones that deal with all the gore, filth and danger are known as the "white hats" (In IBP, your place in the hierarchy is worn on your head with the color of your hard hat, denoting your rank). The white hats were all African immigrants except for the clean-up crews which were all Latino immigrants. The white hats run the kill floor, rendering and stacking and salting skins. They are paid the bare minimum and allowed no leeway whatsoever. They work 12 hour shifts with a 20 minute lunch and two 10 minute breaks. They are constantly threatened with write-ups for the slightest deviation from the rules or slow down in production. Three write-ups within six months and they're fired, turned into immigration and deported. Approximately 1 out of 5 white hats is missing a finger or part of their finger from working at ridiculously frantic pace with pneumatic scissors and saws.

The white hats' direct supervisors are the "yellow hats". There are three yellow hats in every area of the facility with the exception of the kill floor which has five. Every yellow hat I ever saw was an extremely angry 30-40ish white male, whose main job seemed to be to ridicule and frighten the white hats. I was a "blue hat" which meant I was a construction worker for an independent contractor, not to be confused with IBP maintenance men which wore "red hats". I had full run on the facility and was allowed to be anywhere at any time. That kind of freedom angered the yellow hats. More than once I had to explain to a yellow hat that my work was none of his business and to stay out of my way. The yellow hats bosses are the "green hats". The green hats are rarely seen on the floor unless the USDA are present or production has stopped for any reason. The USDA were known as the "white coats" due to their white smocks. Now, the USDA has real power. They can shut down a facility without notice at any time and for any length of time. For this reason everyone is nervous when the white coats are around. But as I said the demand for meat is huge. Quotas to suppliers cannot be met if a facility were to close for even 24 hours. Anybody that works in a slaughterhouse sees so many health violations occur in a day that you couldn't keep count of them all if you tried. The white coats know this, so the way it goes is no surprise. Literally, no surprise visits. Three days before a USDA inspector visits, the slaughterhouse is alerted. A massive clean up is initiated on the day of inspection. The white coats walk from one end of the plant to the other with their face buried in a clipboard and flanked on either side by green hats. The kill line is temporarily slowed down while they're in the building. The whole inspection takes about a half hour. Before the USDA can even leave the parking lot, its back to the break-neck pace and filthy gore.

Long after I left that hideous facility in Perry, Iowa and went vegan, I found myself wondering why do we as a "civilized" society allow this to happen? Why did I not personally intervene when I had the chance? Why did it take me several years after bearing witness to this atrocity to seriously begin speaking out and fighting against it? The answer to all these questions is one word: speciesism. We, humanity, feel that we are inherently better and more important than all other forms of life put together. So completely do we believe this that even many of those that are vegan and animal rights activists have yet to contend fully with their own speciesism. For if we had a real sense of the evil wrought against animals that people call "food", the movement for their liberation would be far more voracious and militant than it is now. Instead of consoling each other with how much we "feel their pain" (which we don't) or simply falling apart at the seams whenever viewing or even thinking about their plight (which helps a doomed animal about as much as total apathy), we should ante up and do something about it.

The proper response to evil is not fear. The proper response to wickedness is not helplessness. The proper response to callousness is not to weep uncontrollably. The proper response to evil, wickedness and callousness is outrage, confrontation, and action! We need to look deep within ourselves and be honest about how much stronger we would feel about acting against these horrors and insanities if they were happening to people and then bridge that gap in our own speciesism. For on the day that we do we will quit crying all the time for the Animals! And start fighting all the time for the Animals! Our Mother Earth and her Animal Nations need us to be effective not affected. The truth is that we self-professed animal defenders have a greater knowledge of these atrocities. We also presumably have a higher sensitivity to them. And I assert that we therefore have a greater responsibility to do something about it. To have a greater knowledge about a crime and do nothing about it is in itself, a crime. It is called complicity.

And here's some knowledge. All the Animals that die annually for fur, entertainment, and vivisection globally, those numbers of dead are equaled by the American meat packing industry in one day! Over half of our fresh water, drinking water goes to "livestock"! The number one polluter of our water is the run-off aka shit from farmed animals. The number one culprit of deforestation and displacement of indigenous people is the meat industry! But simply knowing these things doesn't change them. Any more than knowing a recipe is going to feed you.

Its time to liberate, educate and agitate.

Animal Liberation, whatever it may take!
------------------------
Please write to and support Walter at:
Walter Bond # P01051760
PO Box 16700
Golden, CO 80402-6700

Craft details

The first photo is of our tiny Tica napping in L's bed with L's new giant stuffed tiger (the one she got with our car purchase). The remainder are the close up shots of each of our pages from craft night. Over the break, L and I watched The Blair Witch Project one of the nights M worked the light show. She's long wanted to see that movie and heard all about how it terrified her sister when she saw it in the theater. I thought winter would be the best time for her to see it. That way, if she ended up terrified by it and afraid to camp, she would have months to forget about it before our next camping trip.

Throughout the movie, she kept asking me when it was going to get scary. When it ended, she said, "That was IT?!" She was underwhelmed by it's scariness. I'm trying to think of the best one to try next. She wants to be scared but we'd like her to continue to sleep in her room at night, so it's a fine line we're working with. I think The Ring may be too frightening and Paranormal Activity has about a 50% chance of creeping her out. The problem with P.A. is that the creepy stuff all takes place within their bedroom at home. She loves her room and is very comfortable in there, and M and I agree that we would like to keep it that way, so I'm going to hold off for a bit on that one. Maybe The Fourth Kind would be a good one for her.

Hunter's:
Luciana's:
Dejanique's (I love the title of the sheet music she used; she searched through the whole book to find a song with a title she liked.):
Mark's:
Mine:

My Mom's: My Dad's:

You are ob-solete

We've kept very busy the last few days again. M has been working like a drone at getting all of the carpet, rugs, and furniture steam cleaned. We rented a machine for a few days, despite my dad's offering to come over and do it for us. I'd rather watch my husband clean our house than my father!

We brought the new year in last night at my parents (my aunt Bobbie & Todd were also there), playing games, as we always do. L chose the first game, so we played Moods. Lately she always chooses Moods when given a choice of games. We then switched to Sequence, played in teams, until we toasted the new year in with our sparkling juice.

We came home shortly after midnight. The kids were up quite late, M went right to sleep, and I settled in for hours and hours of the Twilight Zone marathon. Too much caffeine and Imitrex (I was fighting a migraine all day) kept me up until nearly four. My favorite TZ episode came on at two, so I was really happy I was still wide awake then to enjoy it!

Today we had (my dad's) pizza at the parents and then came back here afterwards for our annual family craft night. We each chose a photo from the season for the front and journaling about the picture on the back side of a chipboard page. All pages are bound together with an o-ring. I need to add the front and back cover tomorrow--haven't gotten that far yet. I took individual close-ups of each page tonight, but some of them were out of focus. I'll post the close up photos tomorrow, when I have clear shots of all of them.