true til death.

sorry for the graphic nature of the picture above, but walking in astoria to my friends' apartment yesterday afternoon i saw a bunch of skinned whole goats in a butcher shop window. it always serves as a great reminder to me of why i don't eat meat.

i could never hunt, skin, de-bone and cook an animal. people have this disconnect between the food on their plate and the animal that it once was. as long as the processing of the meat goes on behind closed doors, where they don't have to think about what goes on, they are fine with being a carnivore. 

this is the first time in a long, long time i've written about anything of this nature. i am far from the preachy vegetarian. years ago i was vegan for a couple years, but ended up going back to eating dairy. i am not on some crusade to "recruit" people to my way of life. 

there is one "vegan", er freegan?, in my office who constantly annoys people with her tirades. this is not the way to win friends and influence people. i never even touch upon the subject with her since our views are pretty opposing. my boss of three years didn't even know i was veggie until she was racking her brains for a lunch spot that could accommodate someone from another company who was. 

because i don't eat meat i am constantly subjected to little comments, jokes, jibes from family and friends alike. my irish grandpa used to go to market and buy a live goose for holiday dinners. one favorite story was when my uncle sean was a toddler, grandpa thought it would be funny to put the live goose in his playpen and watch him be chased around by the bird. the same animal would then be taken out back, put on a stump and beheaded, then plucked and sectioned into the meat that would be christmas dinner.

my mom's dad was a hunter. he grew up on a farm in rural upstate ny, one of ten kids. his dad owned a farm but was a high school principal as well. gramp just didn't understand when his 15 year old granddaughter decided to only eat vegetables. this was a man who grew up in the depression, so all the food options given to him later in life were luxuries. he had no problem tracking and killing an animal, but he also loved the cats and dogs they had at home.

the reasons i stopped eating meat are very different from the reasons i continue to not eat meat. but every time i go out to eat with a large group of people to a fancy ny restaurant i feel like i shouldn't have to justify the fact that i'm ordering pasta instead of whatever exotic meat offering there is. just like i would never ask anyone the reason they ate meat, or attack them for doing so.

"if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."-paul mccartney

"one farmer says to me, "you cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle."-thoreau