New kitten Lucy, because kitten pictures make everything better.
I re-read my last blog post and realized I sounded pretty bitter. That's not like me. (Okay, it is, but I lie a lot—it's my blog; I'm allowed to fudge. Plus, fiction writer here. Lying is what we do.)
Of course I am still bitter, but I've learned to ignore that and get on with life. Which, as a privileged person, I'm able to do. Others aren't so lucky, so that's why, when I can, I volunteer with the Democrats, the only party that can save your ass from this grim quagmire we've found ourselves in due to too many people thinking they could sit out the last election.
Ah, bitterness, my old friend! Welcome back! Have a seat while I try to entertain my readers—okay, my one reader who hasn't abandoned my blog for Netflix.
I've done a lot more of that fiction writing since I was here last. In fact, I have just about finished made some progress on my next book, which was on hold while I moped and volunteered and debated slashing my wrists. I've also, um, watched a lot of Netflix—or rather, BritBox, since my new strategy is pretending that I still live in England. I also listen to Radio X UK exclusively, even when I drive, thanks to TuneIn radio app. I try to read books set in England, too, which is another fun way to live a life of illusion.
I suppose I could watch French tv, or listen to Spanish radio, but I don't speak the languages, so there's that. And Danish telly hasn't been the same since The Killing (Forbrydelson) ended.
Have you seen The Detectorists? Great show, all about likable British men (who probably didn't even vote for Brexit!) with a passionate hobby of metal detectoring and cultivating quirky friends. We also watched every single episode of ten seasons of MI5, (aka Spooks, in the UK, because "spooks" doesn't mean CIA there) since that was a great way to imagine the good guys saving us from the apocalypse. Now I'm looking for something else featuring Nicola Walker, Britain's Meryl Streep, although actually I think that's wrong: Meryl Streep is America's Nicola Walker.
You probably wonder how Sparky's doing. After making peace with Tony, my daughter's cat, Sparky was saddened by Tony's unexpected death. Or rather, we all were saddened by Tony's death, and Sparky became aware that sometimes cats are "gone" for mysterious reasons. Then, a new kitten arrived, and Sparky realized that some cats are a lot more bold than others, and will steal your food WHILE YOU'RE EATING IT! Seriously! Also, it takes more than one bark to scare her to the basement. But she's still learning to use her claws, so that's a good thing.
Also, kittens are great for curing bitterness.
At the same time Daughter Number Two announced the arrival of Kitten Number Two, I was in the hospital, trying to find the source of mysterious chest pains. It turned out to be a bad gallbladder, which then attacked my liver and put me in the hospital for two days while they tried to figure out what was wrong. All this was followed by surgery a month later, and thankfully, a full recovery. After having every test they could think of, I at least know what I DON'T have. So there's that.
And since the local military hospital was having a two-for-one special on surgeries this summer, I went ahead and had my other cataract taken out and replaced with a bionic eye. (Not really, but it was the new, super-duper Symfony IOL that left me with at least some near vision and pretty good distance vision, so my long fight with poor vision is almost a thing of the past!)
How's 2017 treating you? Still bitter? Or dancing through the dark with shades on?
Sad Lincoln. (Photo taken by me at the White House.)
I happened upon this blog the other day (searching for a recipe, which is the main reason I come here anymore) and saw Matt Lauer's face, leering from the most recent post. (That long ago? Wow. I think I set a record for not blogging.) I apologize for subjecting all of you to that. I shall try to blog more often, and never again will I post a frightening photo of a media personality. (Notice I don't use the term journalist. Real journalists are so rare these days and so occupied with fighting the good fight that I never want to waylay them with my bloggy complaints.)
I suspect some of you might want my opinion on the election, especially my friends abroad. Normally you'd seek me out on Facebook, but I deactivated my account around midnight on November 8. I miss my true friends there, but I find so much of what goes on at Facebook deeply offensive. I find anyone who in any way enabled an ignoramus to be elected president of the United States deeply offensive, and that includes everyone who voted for a third party, and everyone who posted lies and lying memes about the only candidate who could stop him. We truly had an "all hands on deck" situation, and the number of American citizens who just didn't care about that is shocking.
(And yes, I know many of you were fooled by fake news, biased websites, and gross manipulation by the media. You should have known better. I tried to tell you, many, many times, and yet you still clicked on nonsense sites—on both the left and right of the political spectrum, but as we now know, the right side has several orders of magnitude many more fake news sites. Wonder why.)
Our country is in for a rough four years, and very likely a horrible eight years. And more importantly—yes, more important than the 350 million or so residents of the US—our planet, our world, is very fragile now, both environmentally and geopolitically. This nonsense about globalization being pushed back—that's no more happening than your long dead granny coming back to life and foxtrotting on Dancing with the Stars.
Our world is interlinked for better or for worse, and those of you who enabled a vile, lecherous ignoramus to be the leader of that world have dealt a blow to the 7 billion other human inhabitants of Planet Earth. I frankly don't want anything to do with you.
For those of you who want to keep up with me, please follow me on Twitter--I have three accounts, so take your pick. If you insist on following me on Facebook, I do have another account there too, where I talk about things other than politics. Feel free to friend me there.
Matt Lauer hosted the new reality show Search for the Commander-in-Chief last night.
I didn't sleep well last night. I had the same problem the other night after watching Stranger Things, a terrifying new show on Netflix that features monsters from the Upside Down and a preternaturally emotive Winona Ryder.
This time, it was because I made the mistake of watching the NBC "Commander in Chief" forum, an hour long dumpster fire in which Hillary Clinton and a random monster Donald Trump were both questioned for 25 minutes or so about their ability to be commander-in-chief—or at least, that was the purpose. In reality, it was more like a strange episode of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.
At one point, I was literally curled up in my chair, trying to resist the urge to toss something sharp and hard at the TV screen, just to make it stop. Finally I checked Twitter to see if I was the only one witnessing this demented clown show hosted by the same guy who failed to extract the truth from inept liar Ryan Lochte, Today host Matt Lauer.
Nope, it was real, not a drunken dream I'd concocted after finishing the box wine.
First, the Clinton portion. Now, I'm one who thinks Hillary Clinton was exceedingly stupid to use her own email while she headed State. I mean, who does that? When you're offered a work email account, you use it, and instruct your family and friends to use your private email for private business, thus keeping the two separate. Right? But whatever. Apparently Colin Powell told her to do as he did and use a private email account to email world leaders and others because it's not anyone's business to know who you email. (Fortunately she didn't take all his advice to heart and she turned over all her government related private email, unlike Powell.)
So when Matt Lauer opened with a half dozen or twenty questions about email, I wasn't too surprised, but that was before I learned that each candidate only had 30 minutes. That's why Mean Matt kept shushing her whenever she tried to answer a question, calling her "Mrs. Clinton" instead of her title, "Secretary Clinton". He spent more than a third of the time allotted to question her about emails. But it did accomplish one thing: She finally gave the right answer, something she seemed incapable of before: "I communicated about classified information on a wholly separate system," she told an angry and ill-informed retired Naval officer, who thought she'd been sending all her classified email through her private email. Then she described how, in foreign countries, she often went inside a tent so that those classified communications couldn't be seen from above. This is what many in the press and most Americans don't understand: Classified email goes through an entirely different system, and she used this system—not the one that resided on her private server—to send and receive email marked "Classified". A few lower level emails were sent to her private email that were either improperly marked or were later classified. This should put to rest the email "scandal" that's always been overblown, frankly.
Then she answered one question about Iraq and a couple about ISIL before her time was up. This presumably was all we needed to make a decision about who should be our next CINC if we'd been, say, living under a rock the last two years, or maybe in the Upside Down.
Exit stage, Hillary Clinton.
Then Donald walks in, with a huge entourage (Hillary brought one person with her). After they were all seated, Matt Lauer started lobbing softballs at him. "You were for the Iraq War," he reminded Trump. "No I wasn't," Trump lied, and Nice Matt let that slide. He asked him about military action in Libya—Trump was for that, too, but you wouldn't know it from the answer he gave and the lack of follow up. Then Ryan Lochte's Best Friend Matt started quizzing Trump about his statements on "the generals". We find out that he thinks they've been "reduced to rubble" and that he's going to replace them all, anyway, so it doesn't matter what they think.
Yes, he seriously suggested he'd line all the current generals up and announce "You're Fired" just as if they were candidates on The Apprentice.
At this point I wanted Khizr Khan to rush into the room and start waving that Constitution around.
And while he's at it, he should bring a copy of the Geneva Convention, because it turns out that Trump thinks we should have stolen Iraq's oil while we were there. That's quite clearly a war crime.
But that's not all. Mr. Lauer, using techniques he must have learned from interviewing America's Biggest Loser, also asked Trump if he was "surprised" by anything her learned in his intelligence briefing. "Yes," Donald replied, and it was about now that I started looking around for something large enough to break the screen of my TV, anything to stop him from saying what he said next: Donald could tell from the briefers' "body language" that they disagreed with President Obama when it came to decisions made about this intelligence.
People, I can't even begin here...the average Demogorgon is better equipped to be president than Donald.
I guess the intelligence briefers were, what, winking at him? Nodding knowingly? Crossing their fingers behind their back? How does one use body language to convey the idea that President Obama routinely ignores intelligence briefings? I've actually read books on body language and I can't for the life of me figure this one out.
Maybe they were secretly letting Donald know that they agreed with him on Vladimir Putin, a man Trump admires and thinks is doing a better job than President Obama. (The Russian economy is in tatters, and if you believe Putin's approval ratings really are 82%, I've got a dacha in Siberia to sell you.) Oh, and another thing—when Putin called Trump "brilliant" what he really said was "colorful" or "flashy", not clever.
Here's what REALLY went down at that intel briefing. It turns out intel briefers don't like being accused of crass political maneuvering, and so they used something a little more obvious than body language to let reporters know the Donald is full of gas.
What else?
Since Donald the Demogorgon wasn't asked endless questions about a non-scandal, he had plenty of time to answer questions from the veterans. At one point he corrected a woman who asked him about the veteran suicide rate—20 veterans commit suicide a day. "Twenty two!" he corrected her gleefully, as if this terrible statistic, and what it might reflect about the current efforts of the VA to prevent suicides, was good news for Donald Trump and his aspirations to become Supreme Leader President of the United States. But it turns out he was wrong: The rate is not 22 a day, it's 20. She was right, he was wrong, and later, she said in an interview she was disappointed in his answer as it didn't offer any solutions to this very serious problem.
To his credit, Matt Lauer did ask a question about a 2013 tweet of Trump's, when he said the sexual assault problem in the military was to be expected, since that's what inevitably happens when men and women serve together. Trump said he still agreed with that, a statement that elicited loud gasps from the audience.
So, to recap, Mr. Hyde spent an hour grilling Hillary Clinton about her emails, shushing her whenever she tried to expand on her answers to the questions the vets asked, and then Dr. Jeckyll let Donald Trump utter lie after lie and make one outrageous statement after another and never interrupted him once.
That horrible hour made me really happy that I'll be 30,000 miles above the ground when the first presidential debate occurs on the 26th. That's better than being in the Upside Down here on Earth, where the media thinks that these two candidates are equal in their mendacity.
Stranger Things scared me, so much so that I checked the locks again and again and slept with my dog nearby. The NBC candidate forum was even scarier, because the Demogorgon named Donald might just pull off the upset of the century and become president one day, a truly terrifying prospect. But that can only happen if the media fail in their duty to properly vet the candidates.
I never want to see Matt Lauer on my TV again, but I might be okay with inviting the Demogorgon into my house for Season Two.
(If you want to read more about why Matt Lauer so badly botched this forum, and why it's so important that they get it right for the debates, read Ezra Klein's excellent wrap-up at Vox.)
A department store synonymous with American excess and, coincidentally, its shooting culture. Fortunately, they sell wine.
Today, August 29, is the anniversary of our repatriation. It's been two years since we came to these shores, weary from our long journey (okay, it was seven and a half hours from Heathrow to Dulles, plus another hour to our new home near the Potomac. But we had two bottles of wine on the plane so it SEEMED like a long journey, in wine years). I thought I would check in, let you know how I'm finding it here in former British colony of Virginia.
August is not the best month here. It's hot, humid, and hellaciously buggy. I found a grasshopper clinging to my wall this morning, apparently a harbinger of the coming plague, or maybe it just was hungry and had heard there was a trail of sugar ants in my kitchen. It reminded me of that first night, when right after I arrived here, I went outside in the dark, eager to explore my new environs, and a cacophony of crickets and cicadas greeted me. It was a sound I remembered from my childhood, a sound unique to the American South. It's a hot, sticky, invasive sound, not at all pleasant. I got back inside right quick and wished I had another bottle of wine.
I missed England already. They don't allow plagues there; Defra has eliminated them as surely as they've outlawed rabies. Yes, I know I used to mock Health and Safety; that was before I came to these Former Colonies and discovered 12 year olds could buy guns. Traffic lights are more a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. Or maybe the cops are too busy shooting unarmed civilians to bother enforcing traffic laws. The second time someone sped through an intersection after the light turned red, nearly hitting me, I decided I'd just wait a few extra minutes each time the light turned green, the honking horns behind me a small price to pay for safety.
Moving to suburban America from England probably feels like what the settlers encountered when they departed their wagon trains in the Wild West. I saw a man with a pistol strapped to his waist entering a church the other day. Maybe he was worried about wild animals—a cougar or a bear or a distempered raccoon. Or maybe he just wanted to protect his family from the other armed settlers, who regularly shoot up houses of worship and cinemas and schools, but fortunately I don't have any reason to go to those types of dangerous places.
People in America like to proclaim which tribe they belong to by papering their cars with bumper stickers. It's as if they think we care who they voted for in 2004. Maybe these are just the people whose children didn't make the honor roll so they have extra room on their bumpers. I don't put any stickers on my car; it's dangerous enough changing lanes here without asking to have a cap popped up your ass. "You're voting for Hillary AND you cut me off? Bang! Bangbang!"
Daily living is scary here, but fortunately there's box wine. I read an article that said boxed wines were actually pretty good. With memories of wine runs to France fading, I embraced this new concept and now keep a box of Cabernet on my kitchen counter, which now that I think about it may explain the ants. No worries; after a couple glasses I can't even see them!
If you can't cross the Channel and hit the Auchan in Calais, it's fine. Really.
One thing that's really good here: surgery. I've had three, the last two on my eyes, because why not? Americans are champions when it comes to consuming health care. Our surgeons are busy and well fed, and they live in great big houses called McMansions. There's a few in my neighborhood, surrounded by invisible fences because what's the point of obstructing the view of your brick and mortar retirement fund? None of those stately English walls and yew hedges here, preventing others from peeking into your front lounge! In fact, they don't even call them "lounges" here; they're living rooms, family rooms, and great rooms. (They're not especially "great," that's just what they call them once they reach a certain size.) I imagine my surgeons there, sipping box wine and reading up on the latest plague.
Plagues here are generally spread by mosquitos, which deserve their own special plague designation. (God probably hadn't invented them yet when he sent those plagues to Egypt, or else he'd have finished off the pharaohs with a cloud of aedes aegypti.) Lots of companies here claim to get rid of mosquitoes, since underground fences apparently don't keep them out. You can buy candles that are supposed to be offensive to mosquitoes, but just like the traffic lights, they don't seem to be effective at cutting your risk of death. Luckily I've got my own grasshopper now. I hope he has a taste for ants and mosquitoes.
I've also got a black rat snake that lives in the backyard. When I saw it I was so upset I almost went straight to Dulles to board the next flight for England, where there are no snakes, but then I found out they only eat mice, not Golden Retrievers.
I'm trying to make friends now. I've been to a couple of gun control rallies, which is where my tribe gathers. I've also joined a book club, another tribal activity. I'm thinking about attending a wine tasting at Wegmans, which is where my tribe hunts and gathers. The food here is colossally large: apples the size of a Swede (the root vegetable, not Stellen Skarsgård); zucchini the size of watermelons; cantaloupes the size of Mexicans' appendages, according to at least one political candidate.
Xenophobia is one thing I don't miss about England; there's plenty of that here. One prominent presidential candidate wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. I have a hard time figuring out why any Mexican would want to come here. Maybe they haven't heard about the mosquitoes, the questionable traffic laws, and the armed citizenry. Or perhaps they don't have box wine in Mexico?
I know it sounds like I'm not adjusting well. I should be further along with my assimilation after two years. I guess 24 months isn't enough to forget what I loved about Britain—the walks, the castles, the weather. Oh wait, I hated the weather in England. The endless rain, the cold summers, the damp winters—I wrote a whole book about the weather in England (well, almost a whole book). And the plumbing—how could I forget the annus horribilis, the plumbing nightmare that involved five plumbers, gained me a stalker and got an estate agent made redundant (or fired, if you prefer blunt Americanisms)?
Absence, that's how. It makes the heart grow fonder. Two years on from a leaking shower, a cracked toilet, and a freezing summer and my memory's dimmed.
Michelle Obama's speech last night at the DNC in Philadelphia was centered on her children and on ours. It was one of the most effective and emotionally compelling speeches I've ever seen—and make no mistake, it was effective because it was emotionally compelling.
Before she spoke, a video showed her with children all across America, children who love her: "She's probably one of my favorite first ladies. Probably first or second out of three," says one young man who seems to have weighed the ranking with great thoughtfulness. So we were primed to think of her and her relationships with America's children, with her own children (who didn't appear in the video) and most importantly, with our children.
But then Michelle Obama began speaking, to a crowd who obviously adored her as much as those children in the video did. This wasn't a typical political speech, with a grocery list of policies, or a typical endorsement speech, even, with a list of reasons why you should vote for a candidate. It was, however, one of my favorite speeches, probably first or second of two (to paraphrase that young boy in the video), both given by Obamas .
She began by speaking of her own daughters, "the heart of our hearts, the center of our world". She had worries, as any parent does about their own children, but when she described the particular worries of raising two children in the White House, she used a specific image:
"I will never forget that winter morning as I watched our girls, just seven and ten years old, pile into those black SUVs with all those big men with guns. And I saw their little faces pressed up against the window, and the only thing I could think was, “What have we done?”
In our mind's eye, we see little Sasha and Malia, imagine them in a huge SUV, the targets of someone who might want to harm them, and we share her fears for these children we have come to love, from afar, over the last eight years.
And then she reminds us of the special challenge of raising children in the middle of a white hot partisan political atmosphere: "We urge them to ignore those who question their father’s citizenship or faith. How we insist that the hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country. How we explain that when someone is cruel, or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level -– no, our motto is, when they go low, we go high."
Most of us don't have to worry about our children hearing ugly things said about their father, and we recoil from the idea of a child's innocence being so sullied with the images we've all seen of Barack Obama, rhymes with Osama, possible Manchurian Muslim infiltrator. But the Obamas took the high road, and Michelle here earns our respect, no matter which side of the political spectrum we inhabit. Children—anyone's children—deserve that high road.
She reminds us of another image, of the young black boy who asked to see President Obama's hair, a moment that was captured in an iconic photo that reminds us of the consequences of electing a black man as president. We are role models for our children, and by electing a president, we provide role models for them. It's a serious task, choosing a president, and we must always remember that choice affects our children, not just the children who live in the White House.
Then she tells us about the Hillary Clinton she knows:
See, I trust Hillary to lead this country because I’ve seen her lifelong devotion to our nation’s children –- not just her own daughter, who she has raised to perfection -- but every child who needs a champion: Kids who take the long way to school to avoid the gangs. Kids who wonder how they’ll ever afford college. Kids whose parents don’t speak a word of English but dream of a better life. Kids who look to us to determine who and what they can be.
You see, Hillary has spent decades doing the relentless, thankless work to actually make a difference in their lives -- advocating for kids with disabilities as a young lawyer. Fighting for children’s health care as First Lady and for quality child care in the Senate.
Then Michelle goes back to her own children, in the most powerful moment in the speech:
"I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves -- and I watch my daughters –- two beautiful, intelligent, black young women –- playing with their dogs on the White House lawn."
When she says this, we can see Sasha and Malia again, and Bo and Sunny, on that green lawn. The specificity of that image is perfect—the reminder of our country's awful past, the accomplishments of its present, and the amazing possibilities of its future:
"And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters –- and all our sons and daughters -– now take for granted that a woman can be President of the United States."
We want the best for Michelle's daughters, who we've watched grow up these last eight years, praying they are safe and sheltered, freezing with fear when a bullet is reported to have hit the White House residence.
And we want the best for our daughters, our sons, our grandchildren, and those children to come. We want them all to remain safe and to reach their highest potential. That emotion, the hormonally driven emotion we feel for our children, is what transforms this political speech, given at the most partisan of political events, into a speech that will be remembered and emulated and most importantly, be effective.
Michelle used one of my favorite phrases: "There but for the grace of God go I" and one of my least favorite themes—"Our children are our future"—in her arguments. So many politicians and other leaders mouth the words "Children are our future!" that it's become a meaningless, feel-good cliché, one that hides the empty agenda of whoever utters it. But Michelle really made us care about those children, all of them, who really will inherit this country, this world, for better or worse.
In whose care do we want their futures to lie...a man who communicates in 140 word tweets, or a woman who's worked tirelessly for children her whole adult life? Of course there was never any doubt who Michelle Obama thinks the next president should be, but her words painted a picture for us of exactly who we need to think about as we prepare to make this choice ourselves.
I don't think it's any coincidence that, as soon as she stopped speaking, there was a loud clap of thunder outside, a streak of lightning, and then a deluge of cooling, much-needed rain. Metaphors are timely like that.
Apparently I haven't done enough to educate my fellow Americans about the environmental benefits of eating less meat. A recent study examined beliefs about climate change and the efficacy of actions around diet and other strategies in the US and the Netherlands. One of the authors of that study, Annick de Witt, summed it up:
We presented representative groups of more than 500 people in both countries with three food-related options (eat less meat; eat local and seasonal produce; and eat organic produce) and three energy-related options (drive less; save energy at home; and install solar panels). We asked them whether they were willing to make these changes in their own lives, and whether they already did these things. While a majority of the surveyed people recognized meat reduction as an effective option for addressing climate change, the outstanding effectiveness of this option, in comparison to the other options, was only clear to 6% of the US population, and only 12% of the Dutch population.
Only 6% of Americans knew about the "outstanding effectiveness" of reducing meat to combat climate change. (Notice this is merely reducing meat, not eliminating it altogether.)
A global transition to a low meat-diet as recommended for health reasons would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO2-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050 compared to the reference case.
In other words, without reducing the meat in our diets, we’ll have to find those savings in greenhouse gas emissions somewhere else.
Emissions from livestock account for as much greenhouse gases as the entire fleet of cars, trains, ships and airplanes throughout the world. No one loves cows more than I do, but clearly the world would be better off if there were fewer of them. Lots fewer of them. (With 1.4 billion cows in the world, we could stand to lose quite a few before anyone would notice the lack of bovine beauty on our hillsides.)
And in fact, those hillsides and pastures currently occupied by cows could be filled with carbon-reducing trees. If we’re going to keep greenhouse gas levels low —so that temperatures rise below 2C degrees, or even 1.5C as scientists are currently advising—we need to plant trees to recapture that carbon we've already released. Lots of trees. Billions of trees. So freeing up the 80% of the world's land that is currently occupied by my friends the cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens (and the crops they consume) and replacing them with trees and other vegetation would go a long way toward fixing our little problem with climate change.
One reason cows and other ruminants produce so much greenhouse gas is that the gas they produce is methane, not CO2 (carbon dioxide). And the impact of methane is over 25 times as great as CO2. But because methane has a shorter “lifespan” than CO2, the good news is that removing it will have a sooner impact. So all those meatless meals will make the atmosphere that much cleaner, in, oh, about 12 years!
Even worse than methane is nitrous oxide, which is produced by the manure of all those livestock. And nitrous oxide is a major player in greenhouse gas—it’s hundreds of times more potent than CO2. Manure from livestock accounts for a whopping 65% of human-related nitrous oxide. That gives new ewww to poo.
What about eating local? Eating a plant-based diet one day a week—the equivalent of taking 273 cars off the road—has more impact than eating local seven days a week. If you multiply by seven, you can get an idea of the benefits of a completely plant-based diet. But hey, you could do both! Try eating local, plant-based food from your farmer’s market whenever possible.
The study points to another factor that may influence people's knowledge of the destructiveness of eating meat:
People who already eat less meat may be more open to hear and retain information on the climate impacts of meat, while people who eat lots of meat may be more inclined to deny or downplay it.
Does this ring a bell? Push any buttons? Clichés aside, it struck a chord with me: I happen to like eating sugar very much, and there's an inconvenient amount of research saying sugar isn't very good for you. I ignore it. Why? Because I like sugar and don't want to feel guilty when I eat it. I don't want to change my ways. This, I suspect, is true of many meat eaters as well, including many people who consider themselves environmentalists.
The author of the piece goes on to suggest several ways to make this realization more, well, palatable. She suggests moving "beyond finger pointing tactics" and focusing on the empowering message of meat reduction.
And, "while environmental behaviors often involve sacrifices, the meat-reduction option offers a range of personal benefits." What are these personal benefits? For me, it's the huge savings in calories that would otherwise be delivered by the meat on my plate. (Did I mention I love sugar? I would much rather eat a few Oreos after dinner than eat a hunk of meat as part of my meal.) There's also the wide variety of plants at my disposal, a diversity I didn't know about before I started exploring vegan and vegetarian cooking. I ate quinoa and kale long before hipsters noticed it, I was making risotto before gastro pubs were even a thing, and I ate cactus long before Wegman's started selling it in their produce department.
I like my food cutting edge.
But the best benefit, and the real reason I switched to a vegan diet, was because I hated the guilt I felt every time I ate meat. Even before I lived next door to cows—indeed, from the time I first knew where the meat on my plate came from—I knew there was suffering involved in raising and killing animals for food. I avoided that information, too, during my meat-eating days, because I didn't need any more guilt. Now, I merely feel a huge sense of relief every time I come across one of those shock videos online.
These concrete cows release much less methane than the real thing.
So yeah, I get it—I know why my environmentalist friends don't want to know more about the huge environmental costs of their diets and the “outstanding effectiveness” of eliminating even some meat. But the fact that only 6% of Americans do know this, when around 40% consider themselves environmentalists, tells me I haven't done enough to educate my circle of friends. (Yes, I take these things very personally.)
Consumption and lifestyles therefore tend to be shaped more by people collectively than individually. The most effective strategies thus engage people in groups, and give them opportunities to develop their understanding and narratives about food in dialog together.
Well, I have a blog, a few hundred cookbooks, and several social media accounts. If anyone is prepared to help people develop a narrative about food, it's me—well, me and a few hundred food bloggers who focus on plant-based cooking. As a plant enthusiast, I want to share my love of beans and fennel and farro. (But not avocado. Never avocado.)
So join the avocado-free Zeitgeist! And save the planet one meal at a time!
Do you want to know more about the link between livestock and greenhouse gas emissions? Try Chatham House, a think tank in the UK that's been studying this for a while. Prefer your info from the American side of the pond, and in video form? Try Johns Hopkins. And if you like a little conspiracy flavor with your facts, try Cowspiracy.
We got some photos of the deer this week on the new trail cam—the old one, which we got for Christmas, broke right after the big snow. Fortunately, the manufacturer sent a replacement, an improved model at that.
I was happy to see what looks like a fawn in the pictures. She or he has baby fawn markings, spots to keep her camoflaged in the woods. She looks a little wobbly on her feet still, though it's hard to tell from the photos.
Isn't she sweet?
In this one, you can see her markings (I'm going with "she" here) and in the one below, you can see just how spindly her legs are. Any guesses on how old she is?
I think she might have heard the dog barking inside.
Hopefully we'll get more photos before she's all grown up. We need to name her. Ideas welcome!
A lot of my friends abroad have been asking me lately if there's a chance Donald Trump can ever become president. I understand their worry; the president of the United States holds a position that directly affects people all over the world. They've heard and seen how many votes he's getting. Is President Trump inevitable?
The short answer is: no. President Trump is not inevitable.
The long answer is more complicated, since American politics is very complicated.
I see three main choke points stopping the Rise of Trump.
1. The GOP itself. So far, the Republican party hasn't mounted much of an opposition to Trump, despite lots of handwringing among the party elites. Part of the problem is there have been too many candidates in the race for those elites and for voters to coalesce around a single alternative. But now that may be just the ticket.
Preventing Trump from getting over 50% of the delegates is key. Right now he's on a trajectory to win enough states' delegates that he will win on the first round of voting, thus assuring the nomination. But the rules of delegate allocation change in many of the remaining states: they award delegates in a winner-take-all manner. Whoever wins gets all the delegates, rather than the delegates being assigned according to the proportion of the vote each candidate wins.
Right now, Trump is leading in the polls in these states, too. But if the remaining candidates say this: "Don't vote for me in Ohio, vote for John Kasich (governor of Ohio); don't vote for me in Florida, vote for Rubio," and so on, with some large winner-take-all states going to Anyone But Trump, Trump will be prevented from getting 50% of the votes and there will be further rounds of voting at the convention in Cleveland. After that first round, delegates are not bound to vote for the candidate they're pledged to. Thus, 51% of the delegates may decide that Rubio should be the nominee, or John Kasich, or Mitt Romney (who may be seen as a "white knight" candidate who can rally the party).
Could this happen? It's very unusual for a candidate to deliberately direct their voters to vote for someone else, but the fear that a Trump nomination holds for the GOP is growing every day. I'd give it a less than even chance, but there's still a chance--and a chance that if they did, it would work as expected. Otherwise, Trump gets 50% of the delegates and is crowned the nominee in Cleveland.
And if they do stop him at the convention, after he's won state after state and delegate after delegate? He'll be one angry bear, riled up and ready to destroy those who poked him. He'll either run as a third party candidate (it will be difficult, and impossible in several states, to get on the ballot by that point) or will throw his support to a third party. I wouldn't even be surprised if, enraged, he told his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton over the dirty, rotten Republican who stole the nomination from him.
2. Hillary Clinton. Clinton is almost sure to win the Democratic nomination, and for many reasons, she's favored to defeat Donald Trump in November. How could she defeat him when Republicans have failed? Because she faces none of the constraints that Republican candidates have grappled with. None of them challenged Trump's tax plan, because all of their plans are just as outrageous, based on lowering taxes for the rich, raising them for the middle class, and increasing spending on the military. They all make voodoo economics look like trick-or-treat.
Hillary's tax plan is based on sound economics, does not favor the rich, and most importantly, adds up, no matter what your level of math or belief in unicorns bearing magic tax cuts.
She also isn't aiming for the votes of the racist underbelly of the Republican party, voters who look askance at candidates who denounce racism and defend immigration reform. She can attack Trump full force on the despicable tactics he's used to get votes, without fearing she'll alienate voters who'd never vote for her anyway. His unfavorable ratings are huuuuggge! It's key to remember that he is only popular with a (too large) segment of the Republican party, a segment that has turned out to vote for him because they hear his dog whistles (like when he refused to denounce David Duke and the KKK on CNN Sunday).
Here's the thing about US primary elections: Primary voters are a subset of general election voters, and an extreme subset at that—in both parties. Moderate voters are outnumbered in primaries, but in a general election, they prevail. And moderate voters will not vote for Trump.
Where will moderate GOP voters go? Some will stay home (or leave the tick box for president blank), some will vote for a third party, and some will vote for Hillary, as the lesser of two evils, in their view. I could see a Republicans for Hillary Facebook group getting lots of new members.
3. Barack Obama. The only politician who's bested Donald Trump in a war of words is Barack Obama (see the White House Correspondence Dinner clip from 2011). He's a gifted orator, and possesses the sharpest wit of any politician I've ever known. He's been silent so far, remaining "presidential" and above the muddy fray, but with his legacy at stake, he'll be a powerful and energetic voice of opposition to Donald Trump. He'll humiliate him. It will be ugly, and hilarious at the same time. Make popcorn.
So if Hillary Clinton somehow can't annihilate Donald Trump on the campaign trail and in the debates, look for the sitting president to devastate the Trump with surgical precision.
Here's how you defeat Donald Trump
Is there anything that could lead to Trump winning in November? I see a couple of possible scenarios: One, the American economy could go into recession. Right now, economists give this a worrying 20-30 percent chance of happening, due to Brexit, China, the still wobbly Euro-zone, student loan debt, etc. And if this happened, the Republicans in Congress would do nothing to prevent it, and there's little a president could do, either. Notice that several of these possibilities are completely outside the control of the US—just to be safe, you probably shouldn't vote for Brexit if you live in the UK. (Already the possibility of Brexit is driving down the pound, making it harder for American goods to compete in Britain.)
A second possibility is a major terrorist attack on the United States, just before the election. I see this as more likely than a recession. Remember, Congress has done nothing to keep guns from the hands of suspected terrorists on the no-fly list. It wouldn't surprise me if a handful of home-grown terrorists shot up a concert venue, a cafe, a school—this happens all the time, anyway, except those murderers aren't labeled as terrorists unless they're connected with jihadists. Scare Americans would flock to the candidate who promises to save them, although some may come to their senses and vote for the candidate who promises to forbid would-be terrorists from buying weapons.
Other scenarios:
Ted Cruz could be the nominee. He's won more states than anyone other than Trump. By rights, the nomination should go to him if Trump is defeated at the convention. But everyone hates him. His colleagues in the Senate detest him. American general election voters would hate him too. Hillary would beat him handily.
Marco Rubio: He's better liked than Ted Cruz, but not by a lot. We haven't see a lot of the Republican establishment come out for him, because they think he doesn't deserve to be president. He's a first term senator, and he's seen as grabbing for too much, too soon. But he'd win their support in a heartbeat if the only alternative were Trump. Hillary would have a 50-50 chance of beating him.
John Kasich: He's a popular governor of Ohio. He's seen as the moderate in the race, simply because he doesn't brag about torture and kicking 11 million immigrants out of the country. But he's a fairly old school conservative. Hillary might not beat him, especially if a recession looms.
Mitt Romney: He would be seen as a savior, and grateful establishment Republicans would eagerly vote for him, and moderates in the party would follow suit. Trump's voters would hate him as a usurper, and either vote for someone else or stay home. He might win, though, especially if the economy falters.
A third party Trump candidacy: If this happens, he might be able to spoil things for the Republicans, which will only make it more likely for Hillary to win.
A third party Bloomberg candidacy: If Michael Bloomberg decides Trump is too odious to be tolerated, he might get into the race as a third party candidate. He'll act as a spoiler, and would almost certainly throw the election to the House of Representatives if no candidate gets over 50% of the electoral college votes.
A Sanders nomination: Sanders would not likely win against any Republican other than Trump and maybe Cruz, and Trump would take the gloves off his "pretty" hands and go after him hard, as a kooky, Socialist Northeastern liberal with a huuuuuggge tax plan! And with economists hardly defending Sanders' tax plan as it is, I don't see how Sanders could win a war of unicorns with Donald Trump. I'd give him a 50-50 chance of beating Trump, but it's a moot point: Not only is Sanders unlikely to win the nomination at this point, but if he did, Michael Bloomberg would almost certainly enter the race. Mitt Romney would also consider a run, if Bloomberg declined. And if no one won 50% of the vote, off to the House we go! And the House wins: they're certain to retain a Republican majority, and they would vote for Trump or Romney.
Bottom line: Hillary Clinton can beat Trump, if the GOP fails to do so at the convention. And if she doesn't, I'll be heading across the pond, in a life raft if I have to, along with a lot of other Americans.
My question for my friends in the UK is, will Britain take back her recalcitrant colonists when we fall upon her shores, our tails firmly between our legs?
Cats and dogs weren't meant to live together, my dog tells me, and if the cat could talk, he would say the same.
Regardless of this truthism, I have managed to keep peace, or near to it, for the last nine months while my daughter's cat has lived with us. It was supposed to be a temporary situation, but due to a housing situation no one could have foreseen, a fortnight has become nine months. And the cat who was once known as Basement Cat is now, well, Run of the House Cat.
Not only does Tony the Cat have the run of the house now, he also roams atop countertops and tables, inside closets, and if he can pry open the garage door with his tiny (but strong!) feet, he goes in there too.
Tony eyes Sparky, who is completely unaware that the cat is planning to stab him in the back.
And my reactive dog, who wouldn't tolerate a dog of the same size anywhere near, is fine with it. Sometimes.
They grudgingly accept each other's company, but neither one is happy with the situation. Sparky is probably more willing to share space with the cat, since we properly conditioned him by giving him treats when the cat was near—thus he associates the cat with bits of Pupperoni. The cat, though, hasn't had as much conditioning, since cats don't have a reward center as highly developed as Sparky's.
Sparky's reward center is huge. YUUUGGGE! His whole body, all 59 pounds, is basically one big reward center. He will do anything for a reward, including tolerate the presence of a rather spiteful cat.
I've even taught him to embrace the human quality of Taking Turns. We play a game: I toss a treat for Tony down the hallway, he chases it, captures it with a paw, and eats it. Then I tell Sparky it's his turn, I toss a treat, and he gobbles it. Then I tell them it's Tony's turn, and so on, while each waits patiently, even Sparky, who'd normally be all over any food that gets tossed to the floor.
Yes, the dog who'll literally lift textbooks out of a box to retrieve a lost treat waits for the cat to have a go at a treat tossed to the floor.
I never imagined this would happen when we first brought the two of them into close proximity, a basement door safely separating them. Sparky is highly reactive to squirrels, dogs, cats, anything that moves. But here we are, sort of co-existing peacefully.
Of the two of them, it's the cat who's still got issues. He'll wait around the corner, and when the dog passes, his head carefully turned to avoid causing affront, the cat bats a paw at him, hissing when he misses. He'll sit in silence, glaring at Sparky, daring him to react—and until a couple of months ago, Sparky would occasionally take him up on that challenge, erupting in barking and giving chase—but only to the top of the basement stairs. He knows the basement is Cat Territory. He only goes down there when there's a tornado warning, and frankly, the tornado is less scary than the cat.
The only complaint Sparky has is when the cat claws at the furniture. He's like that kid in second grade who told her mom every time you called her a name. He whines, looking at the cat, then at me, as if to say, "Do you SEE what he's doing?! He's destroying our furniture! Make him STOP! Also I get a treat for telling, right?"
Who knew Sparky was such a snot-nosed little tattletale? I didn't even know dogs cared about furniture.
Despite the occasional whine, the awkward hissing, the standoffs at the entrance to the Land of Plenty (ie, the kitchen), I'm quite proud of what we've accomplished with these two. In the beginning, when the dog wanted to chase and bark at the cat, and the cat wanted to shred the dog's face, I never thought we'd be at this point. I rank this as one of my top five accomplishments in life, maybe even the top three.
Yeah, turns out there are animals to blog about here in the New World after all.
Of course I'm partial to farm animals—cows, chickens, sheep, and pigs especially, with the occasional amorous goat thrown in.
But needs must. (I have no idea what that phrase means but it seems to fit so many situations.) Anyway, we've had a proper blizzard here, which you may have heard about on the news. I say "proper" because back in Britain they think any old snowstorm is a blizzard, when of course that's not the case. We ended up on the light side of this one, with only 22 inches or so. It turns out that after the first twelve it's all the same, something I did not know, never having seen more than twelve inches despite living in Wisconsin for six years.
Anyway, the white blanket of snow makes it easier to spot the wild visitors, and no doubt they are bolder when their food sources are covered with 22 inches of snow. I managed to get quite a few shots of them (and I hate using the word "shot" in relation to an animal that too often meets that fate). In addition, we have a trail cam that picked up quite a few deer-in-the-headlights shots overnight. We also have fox-in-the-headlights shots, and a few dog-in-the-headlights.
But this is Friday Deer Blogging, not Friday Fox Blogging—maybe next week.
An early photo of me, in the actual act of blogging.
Eleven years ago today I had this idea to start a blog. It was a whim, really, born of the fact I'd just landed in a new country where I didn't know a soul, and wasn't quite sure what to do with myself.
Before that whim went and died, I posted this, which said, among other things:
Meanwhile, my creativity demands a rest. Running amuck is hard work, and I have, remember, just given birth, to what promises to be a very exciting toddler.
Stick around, help me raise this kid, and maybe we'll both learn a thing or two.
I was pretty enthusiastic at first, spilling my guts in purple ink on my shiny blog on a regular basis, sometimes even two or three times a day.
Then I joined an ad network, and the thought of revenue seemed to sap my creative urges like that giant sucking sound I hear politicians go on about (but that I've never actually heard, unless they're talking about that slurp you hear when you empty the dishwater).
Fortunately, it wasn't long before I'd made friends in my new home and discovered how to drive and most importantly, got a National Trust membership. As I blogged less and less, I lived more and more. I quit thinking of my life's events as just another blog post. I quit waking up with my mind tumbling over with clever chatter, none of which sounded quite as clever when I actually committed it to keyboard several hours later.
And somewhere along the way I found my way back to fiction, where I'd started (back in second grade--but that's another story. Ha.). I published a couple books, under a different name, and blogged even less.
And a couple of years ago, I published my best blog pieces, right here, if you like Amazon, and here and here if not.
I don't want to stop blogging--I really like having a platform, even if it isn't the platform it once was, and I like having a place to talk about my dog, my politics, and my passions, whatever they happen to be. So I'll continue to post sporadically.
And if I ever wake up with clever chatter, I'll try to post it before I am convinced it's not quite so clever.
I live in a country where anyone can go to a gun show and buy a weapon without a background check. As you can expect, pretty regularly someone takes a gun to a school, a theater, a church--anywhere people gather--and shoots a lot of people. In fact, according to many reports a mass shooting happens every day; we just don't hear about it unless more than six or seven actually die.
I also live in a country where presidential candidates are suggesting that we intern Muslims because a few Europeans have shot and killed 130 people with illegal weapons they managed to smuggle in from, most likely, Libya.
Ironically, those same Europeans could have, provided they weren't on a watchlist, flown to the United States and bought their guns legally. And even if they were on a watchlist, they could still buy guns here from a private seller or from a gun show without so much as a background check.
Now, there is some evidence that at least some of these particular terrorists were on the no-fly watchlist (officials don't say exactly who's on it, for security reasons). Others may have been on a larger watchlist which has some 1.1 million names, including alternate spellings, and still others may not have been on any restrictive list whatsoever, in which case flying to the United States would have been easy: citizens of European countries don't need a visa to enter the US, and Americans don't need a visa to enter European countries.
So yes, those Europeans could theoretically have flown to the United States and purchased weapons at a weekend gun show. I'm not going to pretend to know my AK-47s from my Bushmaster rifles but I do know that Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster to kill a classroom full of first graders and some teachers. I suspect some committed terrorists would find it perfectly adequate for their purpose.
Meanwhile, the politicians who've sworn an oath to the constitution continue to talk about unconstitutional religious tests as a requirement for refugees coming to the US, while many of them want to ban Syrian refugees altogether.
But not a one has proposed tightening gun laws that have loopholes so huge that the term "law" hardly applies.
It's very hard for me to take any of their talk of "fear" seriously when they aren't willing to take the basic steps to keep me and my family safe. Right now, there's a college in Maryland that's closed until the end of the month because one of their students is missing and he has a gun.
This is the definition of terror--students unable to go to school because a bad guy, who was formerly a good guy, has a gun and is upset.
Our American terror has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with a faulty interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. We can intern all the Muslims we want and build a wall high enough to keep out migrants and prevent every single asylum seeker from reaching our shores, but we'll still be forced to live in terror.
But it's the kind of terror that Americans are remarkably willing to put up with.
Welcome to America. Here's your gun, and a copy of our constitution. Ignore everything in it except a few words in the Second Amendment.
I saw these lovely cows at my friend's house, where we stayed for a couple days during my visit to England. They all came to the fence when I walked over, even though I had nothing more than a camera in my hand.
I took a few dozen photos, then walked away, unbearably sad for some reason.
It's back! For a limited time only, Friday Cow Blogging will be making an appearance on these web pages.
Maybe I should call this "English Friday Cow Blogging" or at the very least, "EU Friday Cow Blogging" since it is much easier to find cows in the bovine-friendly countries of northern Europe. Here in the US, I'm pretty sure I would be shot if I walked up to a pasture and started taking photos of cows, and as much as I love bringing you these smiling faces every week, I'm not about to risk coming face to face with a farmer loaded for bear.
We arrived in the UK on Saturday, and by that afternoon I was out on the Thames, walking with my favorite dog, Stella, in my favorite spot, along the Thames in Bourne End.
One of the loveliest stretches of the Thames as it winds through the Chilterns.
We always see cows when we walk there--they hang out in the delightfully named Cockmarsh, where they graze on grass all day and drink water right from the mighty River Thames.
This far from the estuary, the Thames is still a mighty river, but it's not as wide and imposing as the London portion. There are always sailboats, yachts, canal boats, and other river craft sailing down the river or tied up at the moorings along each side of the Thames.
A sailboat lesson seemed to be going on
It's dog friendly, of course, and Stella is pretty used to cows, living near them as she does. So when we came across the cows on our way back to the carpark, I didn't worry about her "worrying" the cows.
The cows were all wading in the shallow water near the riverbank, as they do. These are all beef cows, young ones being fattened up before their eventual slaughter and trip to your supermarket. (Recipes here.)
I liked this black one, who really wanted to get near to see what was in my hand, in case it was an apple. It wasn't, of course, only an Apple iPhone, but I don't think he minded. He just wanted to reach out to the strange human lady who likes to take photos of cows.
"Any apples?"
And then the cow and Stella fell in love through the kissing gate:
We left the next day for Cambridge, where I saw cows along the Backs, and lots and lots of flowers. More later!
I leave tomorrow for a visit to London. I have mixed feelings about that. While I want to be able to walk the hills of the Chilterns, ride the Underground to museums and galleries, and poke around castles and other ancient places, I don't look forward to that feeling that it's only temporary, that I'll have to leave in a week.
Know what I mean?
Can you ever really go home again, knowing it's no longer your home?
I suspect not. I'm going to try to see things I haven't seen before—the Foundling Museum, the Geffrye Museum, Sutton Hoo. The museums in London will have exhibits I haven't seen, too, and the Queen's Gallery always changes up what's on its walls.
But knowing I can't go back home—to my red brick house on the edge of the Chilterns, next to a cow pasture—well, that's going to bring a pang or two.
Someone remind me of my plumbing nightmares, okay?
