The last few days have been horrible for walks. On the days that it is not raining it is incredibly cold and/or windy. I don’t think I will ever get used to Maine weather. I walked down Perham street because the ground was far too soggy to walk in the woods this week. I hate walking in mud and I really hate getting my shoes covered with it.
As I was walking, I noticed how dead the world looks right now and sadly realized that winter is coming. The time right before the first real snow fall always depresses me. Everything looks so grey, cold, and sad. I constantly feel like I’m in a Stephen King novel at this time of year. The only good thing about snow is that it covers up all of the death.
Unfortunately, I see a lot of road kill when I walk down Perham street. It’s a little gross, but if you walk by the same road kill every day you get to see it slowly disappear. Animals slowly pick away at it, a car might run over it again, and it also decomposes on its own. I know it’s gross, but I can’t help but think it’s a little interesting to see. Without death there cannot be life, so in a way I guess destruction is necessary to live.
While I looked at and thought about the road kill, I remember a passage from Ceremony that seemed relevant. The section in which Tayo smashes a melon ends with bugs infesting the “remains.”
“Tiny black ants were scurrying over the shattered melons; the flies were rubbing their feet on the fragments of pulp and rind. He trampled the ants with his boots, and he kicked over the seeds and pulp. He watched the flies buzz in circle above the burial places” (61-62).
I wondered at first, why did he not want the bugs to be in the guts of the melon? Perhaps the melon is not just food to him, but rather a living thing that is closer to human. Maybe the guts and the destruction reminded him of the war and the corpses that resulted from it. I wonder how Tayo would have reacted to the dead, insect covered bunny on Perham street.
I do need to write/think about the Food Inc. movie that we had watched in class last week. I do understand that some animals live in horrible conditions and this ends up being negative for the consumers (us). However, how many people inhabit the earth now? How many people live in the U.S. alone? Would it be possible in any way to feed all of those people with organic farming? I do not think that it is possible. What requirements must a food meet in order to be considered "organic" anyway? I'm currently doing a little research on organic food because I am now interested. Here are some links I have found so far:
http://www.green-blog.org/2009/08/05/penn-teller-claims-organic-food-is-bullshit-fails-to-mention-that-their-expert-is-paid-by-monsanto/
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/organic.html
Once I find some information I will write another blog on it.
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