They've done it again.

The Democrats have done it again. Amazing how they managed to choose a candidate for Teddy’s seat who was so “Kerry for President”-esque. Martha Coakley had all of the advantages going into this thing, but, as it turned out, she was tone-deaf, seemed remarkably cold-hearted, and is a terrible campaigner.

Jon Stewart made the point the other night that George W. Bush was able to do pretty much whatever he pleased, even though he did not have a filibuster-proof majority supporting him in the Senate—far from it, in fact. The Democrats just can’t get out of their own way. Remember Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug message in the 80s -- “Just Say No”? The Republicans have extended that, very successfully, into anti-everything.

I find those shiny, well-groomed, hard-edged Republican pols and their toadies at Fox News to be so entirely and universally repellent. They’re like mass-produced gingerbread men (and a few women), nearly identical and in lockstep. They seem nearly Swiss in affect – but without the good chocolate. They make their politics look so tidy because there’s only one note: No.

The Dems, on the other hand, are an unkempt bunch, hard to define and even harder to organize. They can’t figure out how to pull together as a party, because they are so busy being, well, sort of French. Dramatic, emotional, each going their own way, wanting to be seen for who they are as individuals, a cacaphony of passions, intentions, and purposes. That’s no way to run a party, and, unfortunately, no way to win elections – or people’s hearts.

At the end of the day, it just slays me that the people who are most passionately for the Republicans are the ones who get screwed by them the most. And it seems so easy to get that constituency to believe whatever they are told, from death panels to the evils of socialism to the old “Democrats are soft on terrorism” crap. I’ve said it before: people are addicted to fear, and the Republicans serve it up again and again.

….

So, pretty boy Scott Brown wins and takes health care reform down with him. Sigh. Well, maybe the Dems will sort a few things out. As for me, I see a future in which Scott Brown and Sarah Palin get married (after they both first get divorced, of course) and create beautiful babies and bad policy together. God help us all.

'Nuff Said

Taking Care of the Livestock First

There's an old rule of thumb in farming: take care of the livestock first. Whether it's feeding, tending to, or providing shelter in a storm, seeing to the animals' needs before one's own is no doubt good farming practice, protecting one's investment and livelihood. It's also our responsibility as their caretakers, something we chose when we adopted or acquired them, a decision they had no part of. That responsibility doesn't stop when the animals get old or infirm. Much as we'd like to hold onto them forever--to make time stop--there's a point at which keeping an animal alive becomes more about us and our needs than about them and theirs.

Verlyn Klinkenborg has a piece in the Times today about making the hard decision to put a beloved dog down. It's an eloquent articulation of all that I believe to be the right course in such things, as heart-wrenching as it may be.

• • •

It reminded me of a wonderful story by David Updike, written in 1978 when he was still in college, "Out on the Marsh." It's a reflection by a young man at 21 about the passing of time, illuminated by his sudden awareness that his dog, Mtoti, has gotten on in years. Here's the last paragraph:

I had been out on the marsh for several hours that day, and Mtoti was tired and followed a few feet behind me. I turned to him and ran backwards, clapping my hands, calling his name, and he worked himself into a run. On the lawn we stopped, and I bent down to hug him. In the afternoon light, I could see that the gray flecks on his muzzle had gone to white, and I realized that he had drifted into old age without my having noticed. I have thought of him all these years as my peer, but it is only now, in the blue light of spring, that I realize he has grown old without me.

Getting on the Other Side

Some years ago, a friend of mine was struggling to manage her new horse, a somewhat feisty Argentinian polo pony. It was a challenge for her to overcome her fears and ride the horse with the confidence it required. She rode for a while with a local trainer, a born-and-bred horseman, nearly Midwestern in his approach to horses. He took everything in stride and remained both calm and patient when working with difficult horses.

At one point, when she was frustrated and expressing her doubts, he looked at her and said, “You’ve just got to get on the other side of that horse.”

In addition to being good advice, it’s a great concept. There is, I have found, a tipping point at which nearly every formerly insurmountable problem becomes manageable. Reaching that point requires patience, determination, and a commitment to hang in there until the thing sorts itself out, one way or another.

. . .

I started last summer wondering if Wolfie and I would ever form a workable partnership. He was spooky, I was nervous; not a good recipe for success. But I stayed with it, and rode nearly every day, alone and in company. I rode through spooks and shies, calmed my butterflies, and just kept at it, even on days when I just didn't feel up to it.

By the end of the summer, we had made great strides together: he doesn’t spook at everything now, his spooks are smaller, and I just ride them out and keep on going. No more butterflies. We’re both calmer and our rides are a lot more fun.

I figure I got on the other side of that horse. And I think he probably got on the other side of me.

What to Eat

Have been thinking a lot about eating meat, for a few reasons:

• Saw “Food, Inc.” – movie about where our food comes from. Haven’t had a hamburger since, don’t plan to have another anytime soon.
• Heard a caller yesterday on NPR’s show about Thanksgiving recipes talk about how she was getting a fresh turkey this year. She said it would be slaughtered today and wondered if there was enough time to brine it before roasting it.
• An article in the NYTimes by a vegan, talking about not using animals for food or anything else—and then mentioning his cat. Found myself wondering what he feeds his cat.

I am very conflicted about eating animals, and, to a lesser extent, fish. Lots of issues:

1. Animals do eat each other. And a bear or an alligator or a tiger (if there are any left) might be quite happy to eat me, under the right circumstances. Why not eat them?
   
2. We are the only species that raises animals specifically to kill and eat them. There are far too many of us to survive by killing and eating wild animals (especially since we’re obliterating their natural habitats, bit by bit).
   
3. We pay other people to kill the animals we eat. And we don't want to know how the sausage is made.
   
4. I live with and take care of animals that I couldn’t begin to consider eating, even if I was starving to death. Why are they different than any other animals? Because I know them?
5. Some people believe that animals are lesser beings, as they lack the ability to reason. Seems to me that they reason just fine: my cats know that if they bug me long enough, I’ll feed them or come up to bed when it’s late. I didn’t train them to do that—they trained me. My horse knows that if he comes when I call him, he’ll get a carrot. I’m not saying that they’re going to understand or develop the theory of relativity, but they understand cause and effect, and certainly know how to cause to get effect.
6. Animals have very distinct personalities, likes and dislikes, fears and favorites.
7. Animals can suffer and feel pain, including the pain of separation. They will fight for their lives.
8. The way we treat the animals we raise for food is horrific and inexcusable. Beyond inhumane.
9. The way we process meat and poultry products is just plain scary from a health perspective. Ecoli, anyone? Rat droppings? How about the fact that a single hamburger may be made of ground meat from a hundred different cows from different places?
10. I grew up in Ohio, next door to a farm that raised black angus cattle. And we ate meat or poultry pretty much every night. It's always been a major part of my diet, and I like meat. Or at least I used to. Am not so sure these days.
    

So, what else would I eat, if I didn’t eat meat? I have a bit of a lactose intolerance, which makes cheese a bit problematic, and it’s not like we treat our dairy cows all that much better than the cows we eat. And soy products aren’t a great solution, either. Soybean agriculture is a main contributor to deforestation in the Amazon, which is bad for man and beast alike. And I read somewhere that people are more likely to get sick from eating imported vegetables than meat, because of the way veggies are grown and processed.

I have thought about raising chickens, just for the eggs. Unlike Tyson, I'd give the chickens a safe place to roost, good food, with plenty of room to roam around. Of course, it would mean eating a lot of eggs, if that was my main source of protein. Not so keen on that.

I have also considered eating only local produce, buying at farmers’ markets from farms I know, canning my own food for the winter, even grinding my own flour. A lot of work and, who knows, I could easily give myself botulism (or worse, if there is anything worse).

I don’t have an answer. All I know is that it's just about Thanksgiving and I don’t feel good about eating meat. Or poultry. Or soybeans.

In Search of the Quick Fix

I’m continually surprised by how short people’s memories are. Watching the "commentators" on Fox as they opine about (and misrepresent) the economic mess, the health care debate, and the president’s deliberations on sending more troops to Afghanistan, I wonder how it is that a lot of my fellow citizens have come to believe that all of our problems should be resolved—or nearly so—by now, one year into Mr. Obama’s term.

Americans believe in the quick fix. From reality TV shows about transformations seemingly wrought overnight with plastic surgery to commercials from pharmaceutical companies that promise relief from intractable conditions to beauty creams that tout instant results, we’ve become a culture of impatience and false expectations.

If you’ve ever had major surgery—of any kind—you know it’s not a cakewalk. The healing process can be long and quite painful. A friend of mine had shoulder surgery this summer; his doctor told him that it could be up to a year before he’ll be completely pain-free. That's reality.

On a long plane flight this summer, I watched an episode of “Make Me a Supermodel” (yes, I know), in which a beautiful young woman with very bad teeth spent 24 hours getting her teeth fixed—drilling, grinding, implants, the whole thing—and was expected to (and did) walk the runway a few hours later, without complaint or apparent discomfort. That’s just not how it generally goes, as anyone who’s had dental surgery can attest.

It took decades to bring the country to its knees economically and culturally. The girlfriends’ rule of thumb for getting over a bad relationship is that it should take up to as much as half as long as the relationship lasted. With that math, we should not expect to be back on our feet for at least 4 years, if we just count the W/Cheney years. And some of our problems go back a lot farther than that.

The people on all sides who are saying that Mr. Obama “hasn’t done anything” don’t seem to understand that fixing problems of this magnitude—and so many of them at once—is an excruciatingly slow and complex process. And it’s not like he’s the only guy in the room. There are a lot of other people involved: one political party that is mostly engaged in making sure that things stay as they are until the midterm elections, one party that squabbles within itself endlessly about everything, and a whole lot of people in the middle who are looking for a quick and painless fix.

It's going to take time. Some things are still going to get worse before they get better. So, fasten your seat belts. And adjust your expectations accordingly.

Garbage Day

Whenever I take my trash and recycling out to the end of the driveway for the town to pick up, I feel lighter somehow when I get back to the house. That stuff is gone! The kitchen garbage, the stuff that can't be recycled, various things that I am getting rid of that can't go to Goodwill and no one else wants. All sorts of bits and pieces that came into my house one way or another are gone from my house for good. It always feels like progress.

But more and more, I am aware that that is an illusion. The stuff is just gone from here. It's not gone gone. It is somewhere. Maybe it gets incinerated, maybe they just dump it in a landfill somewhere. I've never bothered to find out. I should.

* * * * *

When I am walking or riding along a road or on a beach and see litter that people have discarded along the way, first I wonder who and why, and whether they considered, even for a second, what they were doing when they dumped the stuff there.

Then I wonder if the packaging designer gave any thought to how the package would look, lying on a beach or in the grass by the side of the road.

And then I think about this: imagine that when you die, you are suddenly confronted with all of the trash you generated in your entire lifetime. Not the trash that was generated on your behalf, just the trash that you discarded yourself. Aside from a few collectors' items (your old Barbie Dream House, for example), the stuff is garbage. And it's all yours.

Whether you dumped that six-pack of empties along the road in high school or just tossed the cans in a dumpster somewhere, it all comes back to you in the end. And so there you are, looking at a mountain of everything you ever discarded. (FWIW, recyclers might well have smaller mountains, since the stuff they recycle is reused and won't count against them in the end.)

I haven't figured out what happens next.