Waypoints

Thursday, June 01, 2006

The year in review

I plan to wrap up this project today, just a year after launch but not too soon I think. My thanks to everyone who came to visit, read and contribute to this blog.

Waypoints opened at the end of June, 2005, the day I turned 35. I wanted to keep the process going that led to the birth of my last book and maybe to spark a new one. Something like that might have happened; one post or another could germinate and blossom into something good. But if I don't write another book, maybe you (or you or you or you) will. I hope so!

I've spent the past year mostly watching my kids grow and worrying about them, which is normal. Worry is the necessary partner of love. I've been flying my hawks and worrying about them, too, which is nothing new for me. But for the first time, I fret now about the near future of my hunting---everyone's hunting, everyone's access to animals and to places where animals are. There seems to be a culture-wide pulling away from these most important things. To my inner ear it sounds like cloth ripping.

We are paving and posting and fencing like mad in Baton Rouge and everywhere I know. The "Animal Rightists" are louder and more accomplished than ever, seeming to find their message better received today, so accustomed we are to sales talk. Too few of us think about animals anyway; what use are our own opinions?

How will our governments---local and national---conclude their apparent efforts to see that no one grows an egg to eat, or keeps a pigeon, kills a hog, or owns a dog. What's next: a vegetable registry? A canning ban? The Wild Berry Protection Act?

What will my kids do for a living when their schooling's done? What for fun? Is it too much to expect those could be the same?

To these worries my aging friend Ida says, "Oh, it'll all come out in the wash." But she's a fatalist and doesn't have much to lose at this point. She has no children. The world is already unrecognizable to her.

But I'm not here to bring you down! In fact I think we'd all do better to cheer up. Waypoints are just places in the road. The road continues.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Small brush, big mess?

Forward-thinking scientists have now invented brushes small enough to tidy up microscopic spills. Why would you need something like that?

"We need to look at the needs in the nano-world, where machines and materials can be the size of atoms and molecules," said UH doctoral student Vinod P. Veedu. "As in the 'bigger' world, there are messes to sweep, walls to paint, tubes to unclog and electronics to power. So our invention ... demonstrates a way to make the tiniest of brushes to do these jobs."

Messes to sweep!

Monday, May 15, 2006

Tomatoes a'la B

This has become a May tradition, a couple years running at least: broiled tomatoes with cheese as an after school snack.

Thanks to Tom Coulson for the tomato lore and continued horticultural mentoring.

Plants go in in early March; begin to fruit in mid-April.

A few days on the sill...

Pepper, mozzerella and feta cheese, olive oil; 10 minutes at 400...

Nuff said...

Sunday, May 14, 2006

While waiting...

...for my wife and kids to return from their weekly trip to Wal-Mart, a 132 year old general store in New York state went up for sale.

What's a general store? The author of this piece (rightly, I bet) guessed you'd need an explanation:

"[Owner Jim Marilley's] store once played the role of a rural Wal-Mart between cow farms and the Adirondacks' western edge: Long hours (even until midnight), convenient location, two creaking wooden floors of goods. 'If We don't Have it, You don't Need it!' the sign says."

Now, what's a cow farm?

Monday, May 08, 2006

Uh huh

That's what I'm talking about.

And for Mardi Gras 2007:

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Cross posting

A Berry-flavored piece I sent to Steve's blog: The Next Big Thing

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Banning "canned hunts?"

Associated Press writer Clare Nullis reported yesterday on South Africa's proposed ban of "canned hunts" and the captive breeding that supplies animals for them.

According to Nullis, "[S.A. Environmental Minister] M. van Schalkwyk said the new laws would stamp out practices that 'have cast a shadow on our phenomenal conservation successes, and left a stain on our reputation as world leaders in protecting and promoting biodiversity.'"

But this legislative effort goes a little farther, and in so doing, suggests more than conservation or biodiversity is at issue.

Breeding threatened or endangered large predators such as cheetahs, lions or leopards for any type of hunting would be forbidden. Also banned would be all hunting that causes unnecessary suffering, such as the use of bows and arrows on large animals that can take hours or days to die...
...The new laws would "close the loopholes that have allowed environmental thugs to get away with immoral activities like canned hunting," he said.

So, immorality and unnecessary suffering; these also are to be banned in South Africa. There's a familiar ring to this rhetoric, and in fact:

The International Fund for Animal Welfare, one of the organizations campaigning for tougher controls, welcomed the draft regulations.

"Let's hope they go far enough to address unethical hunting practices and, in the words of the minister, rid this cancer from society," said Jason Bell-Leask, the organization's southern Africa director.

I wonder how far would be "far enough" for the IFAW, whose work (according to their website,) "leaves hunting exposed for what it is -- a cruel and unnecessary activity that has no place in a modern compassionate society."

As a hunter, I recognize the likes of the IFAW and our own Humane Society of the United States as no friends of mine. Probably the situation is worse than that, though it does little good for civility to brand someone an enemy.

The irony is that I am no supporter of canned hunts; nor would any hunter I know recognize in them the virtues they see in actual (real, wild, free) hunting. In fact, what South Africa seeks to ban is not hunting at all.

Shooting an animal in a pen is simply shooting a penned animal. It matters little how big the pen or "wild" the animal: If someone raised and placed it in the pen for the purpose of being killed, it can only be, technically, a slaughtering. For the same reason are slaughtered animals in this case not game but livestock. The canned hunts (or "hunting preserves," if you prefer) may provide a glorified experience of harvesting produce (if you factor in the gin, the porters and the portable hot tubs), but it is an amputated, incomplete and artificial experience as a hunt.

Confusing the two activitiess is disingenuous and sloppy but good for the goals of anti-hunters. An example from Nullis' report: "In 2004, an estimated 6,700 tourists killed nearly 54,000 animal 'trophies,' according to a report last year that recommended a ban on canned hunting. The report did not say how many of those hunts were 'canned.'"

In this country the connotation of "canned hunting" is narrower and (if possible) even more negative: We think of retired zoo cats being shot beneath pick-up trucks ten feet from the cage they came in. It would be hard to defend that, and some states have banned it without special effort on the part of animal wellfarists. But in fact, the principle being questioned in South Africa is more broad and virtually identical (except in species of concern) to what is practiced on many genteel quail plantations in South Georgia, at partridge shoots in Vermont and on exotic game ranches in Texas and elsewhere. It also, by same principle, implicates legal ownership, breeding and slaughtering of all livestock as part of a cruel and unnecessary system of animal abuse.

The more often our large, well-funded animal rightists organizations achieve their goals, the sooner the scope of those goals will be clear. By then, I expect they believe, it may be too late to deny them.