Wild Read by a Wild Woman

The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

Ex-vegan radical feminist anti-pornographer born-again farmer from the city etc. My boyfriend is getting sick of me referring to him as "the patriach" but that's just my geeky sense of humor. Lierre Keith has done a lot of very interesting research, which she turns to very provocative use. She calls veganism "part cult, part eating disorder." You go, girl!

Hard but Good

One of the books that I have been dipping into is James Herriot's "All Things Wise and Wonderful." It's another 25 cent book. Definitely not the latest thing. Herriot relates his experiences as veterinarian - pre-penicillin! - in the English countryside in the 1930s. What is striking is the richness of the lives of the people and animals he writes about. There is bitter cold, rain, and war, dirty barns and deep snow, but there is also the deeply satisfying beauty of open countryside, and the unpredictable revelations that come from living with and among other species. There is also the unrelenting labor that comes with making a living in agriculture. "Them were hard days," says a retired farmer wistfully, "hard but good." Herriot also describes unflinchingly the characters who have been ground down to dour rancor by too many hard and hopeless days. That is one of the reasons that so few people today are in agriculture. You don't have weekends, holidays, or guaranteed sick days. You don't have much time or energy for philosophizing or art. And yet your life is art, but it's not the kind of art that is clean and shiny and for sale. It's unpredictable, often quite grubby, and just as often blazingly glorious. It is not something that you can buy at Neiman-Marcus, ever. You find your art in your hard but good days, in the poetry of making.

Ua on Big Pharma

My daughter, Ua, who is 8, said something hilarious, and sad, last night as we were driving home. She said thoughtfully: "I don't know about these "doctors", they are making up all these drugs and nobody wants to buy them." I laughed. Undeterred, she continued with her business analysis: "Grandma and Grandpa use Tylenol and Advil, so I guess they are doing OK, but Symbacort and all these other ones that have ads on TV, nobody wants them. But they just keep making more and more ads."

The Power of Limits

"To hard-core nationalists and neoconservatives, the acceptance of limits suggests retrenchment or irreversible decline. In fact, the reverse is true. Acknowledging the limits of American power is a precondition for stanching the losses of recent decades and for preserving the hard-won gains of earlier generations going back to the founding of the Republic. To persist in pretending that the United States is omnipotent is to exacerbate the problems that we face. The longer Americans ignore the implications of dependency and the longer policy makers nurture the pretense that this country can organize the world to its liking, the more precipitous will be its slide when the bills finally come due.
A realistic appreciation of limits, on the other hand, creates opportunities to adjust policies and replenish resources - perhaps even to renew institutions. Constraints subject old verities to reconsideration, promote fresh thinking, and unleash creativity.

Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, 174.