Brian Ulrich - www.notifbutwhen.com - This is from a chapter, Dark Stores, that is part of a larger series entitled Copia. In this series, Ulrich is examining various aspects of American consumerism.
I’ve always known a little bit about what happens to animals before we turn them into the food on our table at dinner time. I read a book in high school called “Fast Food Nation”. I tried my hardest to block out some of the images that were described in the book about where our meat comes from, and what happeneds in restaurants. Since reading the book I have not gone back to eating fast food, and went almost a year being a vegetarian. As the year went by I forgot about a lot that was said that happened in slaughter houses. “Willed ignorance” as is used in “The Steer’s Life” by Michael Pollan is exactly what I think a lot of people do when there eating red meat at dinner time. I know that that’s how I get through a meal is by not thinking about what happened to the meat before it was placed in front of me. I thought that it was interesting when he spoke about the first six months of the Steers life, where he was fed grass and was still by his mother’s side. I was shocked when I found out that a steers life has been cut nearly in half with the new diet with out grass, only living to about three years old. The risk of killing them by changing there diet was also upsetting, they shouldn’t have to be weaned onto another diet that may hurt there insides. Not only does there diet affect them, it also affects the people eating it. Eating meat fed by corn, less healthy then a cow fed by grass. Why do we put up with changes that can affect our health? It was exciting when he mentioned Temple Grandin, after the art school got to listen to her last week. What she said happens to the cattle when they get into the slaughterhouse sounds very unpleasant. But the fact that she said they don’t know where they were going was a little pleasing, while at the same time upsetting because they are slaughtered in a single file line. The Meatrix was very interesting. It was a strange way to show what happened to animals/ pigs in factory farms. Putting antibiotics in there food to make them grow at a faster rate should not be allowed. We need to think more about where our food comes from so that we can stop animal cruelty as well as making food that could potentially harm us as well.
The United States is very fickle when it comes to our stance on the nature and they way we treat our environment. In the 70’s the United States was the first country to set aside land for a “national park”. And now after so many countries developed their own national parks following in the U.S.’s path our country’s efforts seem to be barely sufficient due to the fact that we have the smallest percentage of our land set aside to national parks. Less then 2 percent of the United State’s land is set aside to be preserved as a national park, in contrast to Argentina where 35 percent of the country’s land is set aside. In our less then 2 percent of land set aside, 65 percent of the parks are smaller then Disney World. This just shows how the United States values are set. We clearly have more of an interest in technology then the preservation of our land and the environment. Which, makes sense the who idea of increasing technology is a very exciting one the flow of the technological advancements in the united states is much more of a descending one compared to the condition of our environment which is accelerating downwards. Technology is both our enemy and ally. We need more technology to solve global issues but it is clearly apparent that the more we advance technologically the less environmentally aware we become. It is a tricky situation because as we do more research and make more advancements to come up with systems and ways to preserve the environment we are at the same time advancing in technology and being drawn in my that; it’s a huge distraction to the origin of the reason for the technological advancement in the first place. –Brynn Kurlan
It is quite sad to think about our nature and the environment we live in terms of what we do and our consummation of goods. It is sad, but true that most people know nothing of our nature and how precious it can be. For most of us it doesn’t even cross our minds when we use wood or paper, or even the fact that in order to build our houses and stores and roads, forests needed to be cut down. That means that all wildlife inside those forests either died or was left with no home. Also, America does have enough parks. Our country in filled with stores, houses, buildings, man made places. It was very interesting and surprising to me to hear that nearly 65% of parks in America are smaller than Disney World. Not to mention the massive amount of food we consume. In one of our lectures, I was absolutely in shock to hear that the average American family consumes about 275 pounds of meat in a week. I can’t even imagine how many animals they have to kill to feed us Americans. It was interesting to me to see the comparison of money spent on groceries weekly from Americans to other families in other countries. Other countries consume so much less food than we do; they also eat healthier and more organic foods then us Americans.
“This Steers Life” was absolutely disturbing to me. At first I thought the article was boring and just statistics. I was surprised by how much a cow eats, but also disgusted by the artificial growth process. When Temple Gradin came to Penny Stamps I thought she was the type of person who really cared about cattle. This article made her look not sympathetic at all. I am not so sure what the system of slaughtering cattle was before but I do not see how it is any better to shoot a cow in the head. Then how hanging them by a leg and slitting their throat is any better. To be honest this article has made me not want to eat red meat at all. I’m disgusted by the living conditions that they are in and how dirty of an animal they are in general. I thought it was interesting that the author actually “raised” a cattle; it gave me an inside view of the whole process that I didn’t know was taken. I also had no idea that it could take only up to 14 months to have a large, healthy cattle. Something that made no sense to me is how the cattle owner could nurture a calf just to raise it to be killed. How do they have no connection to these animals? If I went through this process of buying a cattle and I looked at it once I would NEVER be able to through with the process. I think I would see the cow in my dreams….ew makes me nauseous. I was happy to read this article and learn the truth about the dirty meat I eat. Or use to…..
There’s an animated scene from, I think, Sesame Street that I distinctly remember watching as a kid. A little boy is shown brushing his teeth and, while he’s doing so he leaves the water running in the sink. All the while, a fish on the other end is running out of water until the point that his pond runs dry – clearly a lesson to kids to save water. There have always been those little hints throughout my life - as I’m sure everyone else’s - to conserve energy, save water, etc. My dad, especially, has always been very persistent in making sure my siblings and I are aware of how to save energy. Even now, if you leave a room with the light on just for one minute, he will have it off before you return. However, although all he, and the rest of my family, does to conserve is helpful, it is not nearly enough that could be done when compared to the rest of the world. There are so many things/processes/ways of life that are not working for the better of the environment. There are solutions to all of these problems; it just requires a few creative minds to discover them. For example, why do we even have plastic water bottles? Or even paper cups at fast food restaurants? Why can’t everyone that enjoys carrying around a water bottle just own one or two washable bottles, and do away with the plastic ones? And if there’s a concern for being able to purchase water at, say, a gas station, have fountain water available so the customers can refill their own bottle. Imagine all the trees that would be saved, as well as fewer toxins being released into the environment from making plastic water bottles. The lectures so far have shown me to really rethink the way we do things. I also see a connection between the Derrick Jensen “Beyond Hope” reading and the past lectures, that being that it’s going to take a lot more doing and thinking and less hoping. Every student here has the capacity to come up with some crazy design to help change something that is having a negative effect on our environment and/or its people.
PART 1: I am all for treating animals with dignity and respect, as they are doing us a great service, but I am not a vegetarian nor have I ever considered it. Killing animals for food just makes sense to me and call me insensitive for it, but I do and will always believe that animals’ lives are nowhere near as valuable as a humans. Now with that preface, I must say, even I was appalled by “This Steer’s Life,” by Michael Pollan. I never would have thought that I, who regularly grills chicken breasts, makes turkey sandwiches, and eats hamburgers at restaurants, would be so turned off to beef by simply reading an article. I suppose that I too subscribed to the “willed ignorance [that] is the preferred strategy of many beef eaters” as Pollan writes, but I was aware of that ignorance and still could not make myself care. I certainly do now. Tell me a grass-fed cow is happier and I would respond sarcastically “yeah, sure.” But tell me a corn and protein supplement-fed cow is sick and then has to be on regular antibiotics and medications (which most people, including myself, probably think is an added safety precaution and no cause for concern) and you have suddenly got my attention. Worrying about a cow’s well being comes second to worrying about my own, but after reading “This Steer’s Life,” I see that the two may not be so mutually exclusive. I am a very healthy eater and am genetically prone to extraordinarily high cholesterol, and for those reasons do not eat red meat all that often, but when I do I want to be consuming something that is not detrimental to my efforts at staying healthy. I was really bothered by the fact that “corn-fed” sounds so natural and in reality it is the farthest thing from it. I certainly do not want to be eating meat that is higher in saturated fat and omega-6 fatty acids, and definitely not under the pretense that it is healthy.
PART 2: Also, I may not understand much about what eating a sick cow can do to you, but it cannot be good. Pollan writes, “…the only reason contemporary animal cities aren’t as plague-ridden as their medieval counterparts is a single historical anomaly: the modern antibiotic” (Pollan, This Steer’s Life). Aside from the obvious issues one should take with this overuse of antibiotics, the fact that the beef industry process requires cattle to get sick so as to need the drugs is problematic. Eating beef from a cow with liver disease is hardly appealing. Also disconcerting is the sketchy system of the protein supplements and hormones that the cows are given and the disgusting truths about the manure cows live in that is simply disinfected before the butchering. Economically, the process does not make much sense either. Sure, organic and grass-fed beef may be more expensive, but it would eliminate the necessity for buying drugs, hormones, employing people whose sole purpose is to make sure that the cattle do not die because of our doing, and the environmental costs to boot. I used to be someone who saw the organic bandwagon as a fad and was a complete nonbeliever in the trend, but after reading this article my thoughts have changed. And I do not think I am the only previous cynic to feel this way and be more willing to pay more to get more back in return.
I am working my way through A Sand County Almanac and trying to keep my skepticism as to what I will reap from reading this book to a minimum. I am thus far having a hard time relating to Leopold, but I understand the concept behind reading is to broaden my horizons and way of thinking. Sure that’s the idea behind education but what am I really getting out of it? Mostly I’ve been getting frustrated. How am I, a twenty year old girl (young woman even) supposed to relate to this farmer from the 1950s? He gets up at 3:30am to survey the land he lives on and allow himself to be entertained by the animals on his farm. That’s well and dandy but I can’t exactly relate to the earth the way he can. I have a sleep schedule I try to keep, and if I’m up at 3:30am you can bet I’ll be surveying the topographical elements of the wood studio rather than the hills and pond next to the art school. This assignment where I have to go make friends with a plant for an hour is interesting in theory, but I feel there are so many more pressing matters at hand that it seems like an imposition rather than a friendly invitation to experience something “new.” Maybe then, I need to change the way I think about my situation in relation to Leopold’s. There are times where, even from a very remote distance (and mostly on accident) I experience the natural world in a way like he had. At 4:45am I was driving away from the Art and Architecture Building and as I was stopped at Bonisteel waiting to turn left in the foggy morning I saw a single deer standing by the side of the road eating. My radio was off, and my windows were open and for a moment I let myself gape at the creature like it was the first time I had seen one on north campus. I feared for a moment, that because it was so close to a main road, that it might be hit by a car. I felt there was nothing I could do to prevent this either way, and was comforted by the thought that the deer had already managed to reach the age it was at now so it had more experience than I was giving it credit. But this was really something special to me at the time. Before I made that right turn I was waiting for I pointed left so that the car approaching behind me could share the view as well. It was a very short moment, and I can hardly say I was connected with the earth considering I was at a stoplight waiting to turn right in my fossil fuel burning vehicle, but I would hate for those details to detract from my experience with the creature at such an absurd morning time.
Leopold’s consideration for the way human’s had impacted the land he lived on was something I at first did not consider to be something I would be able to relate to either. I live where I’ve always lived, in the suburbs, I’m surrounded by cement and apartment buildings and this doesn’t seem strange to me. There was a moment though, at about page forty where I was able to relate on a more personal level. Two, maybe three years ago now, during the summer time I had a boy that was very important to me teach me how to fly fish. Standing in the blistering heat at Newburgh Lake the two of us would fish together on the lake but far enough away that our casts would not interrupt the other. One particularly hot afternoon I released a Bluegill from my fly and tossed him back into the water and for a second envied his cool bath water. I wondered why were weren’t allowed to swim in the lake water and my eyes moved up and down the coast next to me. Bits of trash on the shoreline, stench from the water, and suddenly the urge to enjoy the water was lost. I was aggravated that the lake hadn’t been cared for more carefully before I had been around to enjoy it. Maybe if other people had paid more attention the lake would be clean and I could wade in it like I had really wanted to. And I remember that being the first time I ever considered myself to have been robbed from an experience from an earlier generation of polluters. I imagine that that is something like what Leopold must have been feeling when he mentions his barren sands that can’t support plants or the highways nearby other farms in the region and for a second I am left feeling hopeful that I will be able to connect with him further, but at the same time I worry that I will and that it will result in me realizing more of what I have not paid attention to out in the world, and what it might be too late to appreciate because it’s already been ruined.
After reading the first section of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, I was most drawn to the section dedicated to the life of the oak that had to be cut down after a storm damaged it. My first thought when the author addressed the tree’s death and the need to cut it down was that all life comes to an end and that cutting down the tree meant nothing but retiring a tree whose life was over. It was not until they began sawing down the oak and cutting into its many layers that I realized that its form told a story. With each layer that the saw reached, the blade found a different time in history. As they described the various times that the oak had lived through and how each year can be represented through the rings in the trunk, I realized that this tree, if not all trees and plants, tells a story. The oak told stories of its years and inhabitants, droughts and rain, and many other experiences but I realized was that most people would consider it a bystander if they take notice to it at all.
Nature is around us everywhere but the questions is do we really consider it a part of our lives or is it just a bystander. I’m hoping that this class will help me evaluate my relationship with the environment and how it can affect my life. Some people recognize the nature around them more that others and after reading the passage I can see that if you fail to notice your surroundings, you fail to see its true beauty and its story. If one dying oak can tell us that much about its history and experience, I’m sure that I can get so much more out of spending some time out in nature. It is just a matter of taking the time to slow down and appreciate your surroundings.
“City Lie” and “City Life” are two totally different statements. One implies a fake identity and one implies a long journey. This smart twist by taking just the letter ‘f’ out of the word ‘life’ peaks my interest. As I look through the photographs provided in the series ‘Copia’ by Brian Ulrich I found only picture after picture of products. These product ranges from, flowers, to stuffed toys to carpeting. When I look at these pictures, I question the artist why would you take pictures of these everyday products with some random people? I discover what I think was a possible answer as I look at the expressions of the people’s faces in these pictures. For instance the first picture is of a woman holding what seems to be a bouquet of some sort. I was not able to see the beautiful flowers but only the green stems. The facial expression of the woman looks rather lost. It reminds me of how a woman looks when she is trying to find cute outfits in the never-ending sales rack: determined and focused. Another picture that intrigued me was of a little girl in a red dress and her doll that is also dressed in a red dress. She seems lost and bored, which is rather ironic because every little girl loves her doll. The expression on these people’s faces seems so blank or focused that it made me think of the objects surrounding these people. They were objects that we consume from a day to day basis: dolls, drinks, couches, sweaters on sales racks, etc. After looking at these pictures I started remembering the lecture Professor Trumpey taught about overconsumption. America, being one of the largest consumers on earth, is perhaps getting bored of objects we take for granted like video games, elevators, etc. Maybe the artist even thinks that our image of a glamorous city life, is a dull one after all.
Well it looks like there are many people here that will just hate my thoughts on this matter. After reading This Steers Life by Michael Pollan. Well… I kind of just shrugged. I don’t know which part did it. Was it the idea presented that all beef is bad because of what happens in the feed lots? (like we could meet the demand of America if we went free range.) Is it the feeling that the author of this article might secretly want all large operations put out to pasture so to speak so that smaller farms may continue to exist? I don’t know. Perhaps my view is distorted by the fact that I will likely be inheriting two farms from my family. In fact my family has been tied to farming for a long time on both sides. I have been out on the fields on harvest days and I have seen the sweat and ware on the faces of my grandfather and my uncle. Let me say this now. Farming is not romantic. There is no tie to a glorious nature to be found in farming. Farming is work. Farming might be some of the hardest work known to man. You will fight nature at every step of the way. You will curse nature when it fails to rain. Curse the sun for not enough light. Curse the fact that you need to harvest your fields now before they are flooded and lost. It is a job that goes from sun up to sun down. And it never pays enough to make a profit, and even if it did you would be unable to spend it. One of the families next to our farm had never taken a vacation in their lives because there was no one who could milk the cows in their absence. If they did decide to leave then they would be unable to balance budgets. That’s the other thing about farming. It is expensive to run. A Combine will run you an easy 100,000 dollars new. Same goes for tractors. My Uncle suffers too much for the amount of work he puts in. In order for him to keep afloat he has to drive buses at night for the University of Illinois. During harvest times he goes with only 2 hours of sleep. The point is that farming sucks.
In the book A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold takes the reader on a journey through understanding landscapes and the beauty of nature. Leopold uses poetic and descriptive language to engage the reader in his descriptions of the seasonal, ecological changes. Throughout the book, Leopold derives and justifies meaning behind even the most seemingly mundane environmental changes. He talks about cutting down and oak tree to be used for firewood and related that process to lessons in history, both social and natural. For example, the tree’s age, as seen by the rings in its trunk, dates back to the end of the Civil War. Also, Leopold finds relationships between the oak tree and the life that surrounds it, whether it is humans, animals or other trees. So far, I have really enjoyed reading A Sand County Almanac. Leopold does a really successful job of engaging me and leading me through nature’s life cycle. This book has really given me insight and pushed me to think more deeply about everyday occurrences. Since I have started reading A Sand County Almanac, I have become more aware of the effect humans have on our environment and wonder how I can live my life in a more environmentally friendly, less destructive way.
Although we’ve only been in class for a few weeks now, I can easily see the vast difference between ADP this semester and those of last year. In ADP last year I would find myself nodding off or not paying attention... mostly because when I did so, I wasn’t missing anything. Just learning about the general idea of “stuff” never seemed like enough to get me through an entire class actually feeling like I had learned something, and it wasn’t. After the last two semesters of ADP I came out feeling not only like I had learned nothing, but also like I had wasted a great deal of my own time on a class that I got absolutely nothing out of; Nothing that I could add to my portfolio for my sophomore review, no higher knowledge of the world of art or of art history. The only things that I left ADPs one and two with were two essays about “things”, one being a cell phone, and one being my childhood stuffed animal. Of course, after going through an entire year of a hated class and learning nothing in it, I dreaded the first day of ADP3. However, after walking in and receiving the first survey I knew that this class was going to be quite different from my ADPs past. Filling out that first survey made me start to feel bad about myself. As I went through the survey and was able to answer every question about material goods in entirety, versus only parts (or even none) of the questions about the environment, I began to worry that this entire class was just going to be one big guilt trip about how I need to be better to my environment and less materialistic. However, I am coming to see quickly that that is not what this class is about at all. The reason for that questionare was not to make me feel bad about myself, but to make me more conscious of the world around me and what I am missing in it. Rather than spending all day in the mall (I was able to quickly list off ten stores in my mall without even thinking about it), I should try spending some time outside and in my backyard (I’m pretty sure that the only indigenous plants from my home that I listed were poison ivy and poison oak – aren’t those the same things anyway?). Rather than buying a new disposable water bottle at lunch every day, I should go buy a reusable one that I can bring around with me to my classes and meals so that I don’t throw another piece of trash into the landfills every time that I’m thirsty. Even though a great deal of what is talked about in this class could be viewed as a “guilt trip”, I think that the way it is being approached seems to be the exact opposite of that, which I find to be a really refreshing approach to talking about the environment.
So far in the lecture, I am glad to see Joe’s enthusiasm, he clearly believes in the content that he is teaching. This is rather refreshing, since the past lecturers have been less than valuable, in my opinion. I do share Joe’s interest in finding creative solutions to the existing problems of the world, and I find it equally interesting to think about ways that artists can contribute to these solutions as well. So far my only questions would regard the validity of sitting next to a flower for two hours, and why we would physically collect trash and then proceed to bring that trash in to school. I do understand that we should be more aware of the items that we throw out, in an effort to reduce the amount of waste that we produce as a country, but bringing trash in to school is not going to further this learning experience, in my opinion. One other topic of the lecture that I saw as slightly troubling was the fact that Joe informed us to be careful when selecting our position on the issue of global warming, and to be aware of the sources that we use when writing papers. I completely agree that one must be aware of the source of their information, in order to avoid using biased information, however, Joe’s example that he used was the part of the lecture that was troubling to me. He ended up discussing a student that did not believe in global warming, and even though he had a non biased source, Joe said that the individuals that reported the findings disproving global warming must have been on the pay roll of the oil companies, even though there was no evidence to suggest that being true.
I’ve always known a little bit about what happens to animals before we turn them into the food on our table at dinner time. I read a book in high school called “Fast Food Nation”. I tried my hardest to block out some of the images that were described in the book about where our meat comes from, and what happeneds in restaurants. Since reading the book I have not gone back to eating fast food, and went almost a year being a vegetarian. As the year went by I forgot about a lot that was said that happened in slaughter houses. “Willed ignorance” as is used in “The Steer’s Life” by Michael Pollan is exactly what I think a lot of people do when there eating red meat at dinner time. I know that that’s how I get through a meal is by not thinking about what happened to the meat before it was placed in front of me.
ReplyDeleteI thought that it was interesting when he spoke about the first six months of the Steers life, where he was fed grass and was still by his mother’s side. I was shocked when I found out that a steers life has been cut nearly in half with the new diet with out grass, only living to about three years old. The risk of killing them by changing there diet was also upsetting, they shouldn’t have to be weaned onto another diet that may hurt there insides. Not only does there diet affect them, it also affects the people eating it. Eating meat fed by corn, less healthy then a cow fed by grass. Why do we put up with changes that can affect our health?
It was exciting when he mentioned Temple Grandin, after the art school got to listen to her last week. What she said happens to the cattle when they get into the slaughterhouse sounds very unpleasant. But the fact that she said they don’t know where they were going was a little pleasing, while at the same time upsetting because they are slaughtered in a single file line.
The Meatrix was very interesting. It was a strange way to show what happened to animals/ pigs in factory farms. Putting antibiotics in there food to make them grow at a faster rate should not be allowed. We need to think more about where our food comes from so that we can stop animal cruelty as well as making food that could potentially harm us as well.
The United States is very fickle when it comes to our stance on the nature and they way we treat our environment. In the 70’s the United States was the first country to set aside land for a “national park”. And now after so many countries developed their own national parks following in the U.S.’s path our country’s efforts seem to be barely sufficient due to the fact that we have the smallest percentage of our land set aside to national parks. Less then 2 percent of the United State’s land is set aside to be preserved as a national park, in contrast to Argentina where 35 percent of the country’s land is set aside. In our less then 2 percent of land set aside, 65 percent of the parks are smaller then Disney World. This just shows how the United States values are set. We clearly have more of an interest in technology then the preservation of our land and the environment. Which, makes sense the who idea of increasing technology is a very exciting one the flow of the technological advancements in the united states is much more of a descending one compared to the condition of our environment which is accelerating downwards. Technology is both our enemy and ally. We need more technology to solve global issues but it is clearly apparent that the more we advance technologically the less environmentally aware we become. It is a tricky situation because as we do more research and make more advancements to come up with systems and ways to preserve the environment we are at the same time advancing in technology and being drawn in my that; it’s a huge distraction to the origin of the reason for the technological advancement in the first place. –Brynn Kurlan
ReplyDeleteIt is quite sad to think about our nature and the environment we live in terms of what we do and our consummation of goods. It is sad, but true that most people know nothing of our nature and how precious it can be. For most of us it doesn’t even cross our minds when we use wood or paper, or even the fact that in order to build our houses and stores and roads, forests needed to be cut down. That means that all wildlife inside those forests either died or was left with no home. Also, America does have enough parks. Our country in filled with stores, houses, buildings, man made places. It was very interesting and surprising to me to hear that nearly 65% of parks in America are smaller than Disney World.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the massive amount of food we consume. In one of our lectures, I was absolutely in shock to hear that the average American family consumes about 275 pounds of meat in a week. I can’t even imagine how many animals they have to kill to feed us Americans. It was interesting to me to see the comparison of money spent on groceries weekly from Americans to other families in other countries. Other countries consume so much less food than we do; they also eat healthier and more organic foods then us Americans.
“This Steers Life” was absolutely disturbing to me. At first I thought the article was boring and just statistics. I was surprised by how much a cow eats, but also disgusted by the artificial growth process. When Temple Gradin came to Penny Stamps I thought she was the type of person who really cared about cattle. This article made her look not sympathetic at all. I am not so sure what the system of slaughtering cattle was before but I do not see how it is any better to shoot a cow in the head. Then how hanging them by a leg and slitting their throat is any better. To be honest this article has made me not want to eat red meat at all. I’m disgusted by the living conditions that they are in and how dirty of an animal they are in general.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting that the author actually “raised” a cattle; it gave me an inside view of the whole process that I didn’t know was taken. I also had no idea that it could take only up to 14 months to have a large, healthy cattle. Something that made no sense to me is how the cattle owner could nurture a calf just to raise it to be killed. How do they have no connection to these animals? If I went through this process of buying a cattle and I looked at it once I would NEVER be able to through with the process. I think I would see the cow in my dreams….ew makes me nauseous. I was happy to read this article and learn the truth about the dirty meat I eat. Or use to…..
There’s an animated scene from, I think, Sesame Street that I distinctly remember watching as a kid. A little boy is shown brushing his teeth and, while he’s doing so he leaves the water running in the sink. All the while, a fish on the other end is running out of water until the point that his pond runs dry – clearly a lesson to kids to save water. There have always been those little hints throughout my life - as I’m sure everyone else’s - to conserve energy, save water, etc. My dad, especially, has always been very persistent in making sure my siblings and I are aware of how to save energy. Even now, if you leave a room with the light on just for one minute, he will have it off before you return. However, although all he, and the rest of my family, does to conserve is helpful, it is not nearly enough that could be done when compared to the rest of the world.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many things/processes/ways of life that are not working for the better of the environment. There are solutions to all of these problems; it just requires a few creative minds to discover them. For example, why do we even have plastic water bottles? Or even paper cups at fast food restaurants? Why can’t everyone that enjoys carrying around a water bottle just own one or two washable bottles, and do away with the plastic ones? And if there’s a concern for being able to purchase water at, say, a gas station, have fountain water available so the customers can refill their own bottle. Imagine all the trees that would be saved, as well as fewer toxins being released into the environment from making plastic water bottles.
The lectures so far have shown me to really rethink the way we do things. I also see a connection between the Derrick Jensen “Beyond Hope” reading and the past lectures, that being that it’s going to take a lot more doing and thinking and less hoping. Every student here has the capacity to come up with some crazy design to help change something that is having a negative effect on our environment and/or its people.
PART 1:
ReplyDeleteI am all for treating animals with dignity and respect, as they are doing us a great service, but I am not a vegetarian nor have I ever considered it. Killing animals for food just makes sense to me and call me insensitive for it, but I do and will always believe that animals’ lives are nowhere near as valuable as a humans. Now with that preface, I must say, even I was appalled by “This Steer’s Life,” by Michael Pollan.
I never would have thought that I, who regularly grills chicken breasts, makes turkey sandwiches, and eats hamburgers at restaurants, would be so turned off to beef by simply reading an article. I suppose that I too subscribed to the “willed ignorance [that] is the preferred strategy of many beef eaters” as Pollan writes, but I was aware of that ignorance and still could not make myself care. I certainly do now. Tell me a grass-fed cow is happier and I would respond sarcastically “yeah, sure.” But tell me a corn and protein supplement-fed cow is sick and then has to be on regular antibiotics and medications (which most people, including myself, probably think is an added safety precaution and no cause for concern) and you have suddenly got my attention.
Worrying about a cow’s well being comes second to worrying about my own, but after reading “This Steer’s Life,” I see that the two may not be so mutually exclusive. I am a very healthy eater and am genetically prone to extraordinarily high cholesterol, and for those reasons do not eat red meat all that often, but when I do I want to be consuming something that is not detrimental to my efforts at staying healthy. I was really bothered by the fact that “corn-fed” sounds so natural and in reality it is the farthest thing from it. I certainly do not want to be eating meat that is higher in saturated fat and omega-6 fatty acids, and definitely not under the pretense that it is healthy.
PART 2:
ReplyDeleteAlso, I may not understand much about what eating a sick cow can do to you, but it cannot be good. Pollan writes, “…the only reason contemporary animal cities aren’t as plague-ridden as their medieval counterparts is a single historical anomaly: the modern antibiotic” (Pollan, This Steer’s Life). Aside from the obvious issues one should take with this overuse of antibiotics, the fact that the beef industry process requires cattle to get sick so as to need the drugs is problematic. Eating beef from a cow with liver disease is hardly appealing. Also disconcerting is the sketchy system of the protein supplements and hormones that the cows are given and the disgusting truths about the manure cows live in that is simply disinfected before the butchering.
Economically, the process does not make much sense either. Sure, organic and grass-fed beef may be more expensive, but it would eliminate the necessity for buying drugs, hormones, employing people whose sole purpose is to make sure that the cattle do not die because of our doing, and the environmental costs to boot. I used to be someone who saw the organic bandwagon as a fad and was a complete nonbeliever in the trend, but after reading this article my thoughts have changed. And I do not think I am the only previous cynic to feel this way and be more willing to pay more to get more back in return.
I am working my way through A Sand County Almanac and trying to keep my skepticism as to what I will reap from reading this book to a minimum. I am thus far having a hard time relating to Leopold, but I understand the concept behind reading is to broaden my horizons and way of thinking. Sure that’s the idea behind education but what am I really getting out of it? Mostly I’ve been getting frustrated. How am I, a twenty year old girl (young woman even) supposed to relate to this farmer from the 1950s? He gets up at 3:30am to survey the land he lives on and allow himself to be entertained by the animals on his farm. That’s well and dandy but I can’t exactly relate to the earth the way he can. I have a sleep schedule I try to keep, and if I’m up at 3:30am you can bet I’ll be surveying the topographical elements of the wood studio rather than the hills and pond next to the art school. This assignment where I have to go make friends with a plant for an hour is interesting in theory, but I feel there are so many more pressing matters at hand that it seems like an imposition rather than a friendly invitation to experience something “new.”
ReplyDeleteMaybe then, I need to change the way I think about my situation in relation to Leopold’s. There are times where, even from a very remote distance (and mostly on accident) I experience the natural world in a way like he had. At 4:45am I was driving away from the Art and Architecture Building and as I was stopped at Bonisteel waiting to turn left in the foggy morning I saw a single deer standing by the side of the road eating. My radio was off, and my windows were open and for a moment I let myself gape at the creature like it was the first time I had seen one on north campus. I feared for a moment, that because it was so close to a main road, that it might be hit by a car. I felt there was nothing I could do to prevent this either way, and was comforted by the thought that the deer had already managed to reach the age it was at now so it had more experience than I was giving it credit. But this was really something special to me at the time. Before I made that right turn I was waiting for I pointed left so that the car approaching behind me could share the view as well.
It was a very short moment, and I can hardly say I was connected with the earth considering I was at a stoplight waiting to turn right in my fossil fuel burning vehicle, but I would hate for those details to detract from my experience with the creature at such an absurd morning time.
Continued a bit:
ReplyDeleteLeopold’s consideration for the way human’s had impacted the land he lived on was something I at first did not consider to be something I would be able to relate to either. I live where I’ve always lived, in the suburbs, I’m surrounded by cement and apartment buildings and this doesn’t seem strange to me. There was a moment though, at about page forty where I was able to relate on a more personal level. Two, maybe three years ago now, during the summer time I had a boy that was very important to me teach me how to fly fish. Standing in the blistering heat at Newburgh Lake the two of us would fish together on the lake but far enough away that our casts would not interrupt the other. One particularly hot afternoon I released a Bluegill from my fly and tossed him back into the water and for a second envied his cool bath water. I wondered why were weren’t allowed to swim in the lake water and my eyes moved up and down the coast next to me. Bits of trash on the shoreline, stench from the water, and suddenly the urge to enjoy the water was lost. I was aggravated that the lake hadn’t been cared for more carefully before I had been around to enjoy it. Maybe if other people had paid more attention the lake would be clean and I could wade in it like I had really wanted to. And I remember that being the first time I ever considered myself to have been robbed from an experience from an earlier generation of polluters.
I imagine that that is something like what Leopold must have been feeling when he mentions his barren sands that can’t support plants or the highways nearby other farms in the region and for a second I am left feeling hopeful that I will be able to connect with him further, but at the same time I worry that I will and that it will result in me realizing more of what I have not paid attention to out in the world, and what it might be too late to appreciate because it’s already been ruined.
After reading the first section of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, I was most drawn to the section dedicated to the life of the oak that had to be cut down after a storm damaged it. My first thought when the author addressed the tree’s death and the need to cut it down was that all life comes to an end and that cutting down the tree meant nothing but retiring a tree whose life was over. It was not until they began sawing down the oak and cutting into its many layers that I realized that its form told a story. With each layer that the saw reached, the blade found a different time in history. As they described the various times that the oak had lived through and how each year can be represented through the rings in the trunk, I realized that this tree, if not all trees and plants, tells a story. The oak told stories of its years and inhabitants, droughts and rain, and many other experiences but I realized was that most people would consider it a bystander if they take notice to it at all.
ReplyDeleteNature is around us everywhere but the questions is do we really consider it a part of our lives or is it just a bystander. I’m hoping that this class will help me evaluate my relationship with the environment and how it can affect my life. Some people recognize the nature around them more that others and after reading the passage I can see that if you fail to notice your surroundings, you fail to see its true beauty and its story. If one dying oak can tell us that much about its history and experience, I’m sure that I can get so much more out of spending some time out in nature. It is just a matter of taking the time to slow down and appreciate your surroundings.
“City Lie” and “City Life” are two totally different statements. One implies a fake identity and one implies a long journey. This smart twist by taking just the letter ‘f’ out of the word ‘life’ peaks my interest. As I look through the photographs provided in the series ‘Copia’ by Brian Ulrich I found only picture after picture of products. These product ranges from, flowers, to stuffed toys to carpeting. When I look at these pictures, I question the artist why would you take pictures of these everyday products with some random people? I discover what I think was a possible answer as I look at the expressions of the people’s faces in these pictures. For instance the first picture is of a woman holding what seems to be a bouquet of some sort. I was not able to see the beautiful flowers but only the green stems. The facial expression of the woman looks rather lost. It reminds me of how a woman looks when she is trying to find cute outfits in the never-ending sales rack: determined and focused. Another picture that intrigued me was of a little girl in a red dress and her doll that is also dressed in a red dress. She seems lost and bored, which is rather ironic because every little girl loves her doll. The expression on these people’s faces seems so blank or focused that it made me think of the objects surrounding these people. They were objects that we consume from a day to day basis: dolls, drinks, couches, sweaters on sales racks, etc. After looking at these pictures I started remembering the lecture Professor Trumpey taught about overconsumption. America, being one of the largest consumers on earth, is perhaps getting bored of objects we take for granted like video games, elevators, etc. Maybe the artist even thinks that our image of a glamorous city life, is a dull one after all.
ReplyDeleteWell it looks like there are many people here that will just hate my thoughts on this matter. After reading This Steers Life by Michael Pollan. Well… I kind of just shrugged. I don’t know which part did it. Was it the idea presented that all beef is bad because of what happens in the feed lots? (like we could meet the demand of America if we went free range.) Is it the feeling that the author of this article might secretly want all large operations put out to pasture so to speak so that smaller farms may continue to exist? I don’t know. Perhaps my view is distorted by the fact that I will likely be inheriting two farms from my family. In fact my family has been tied to farming for a long time on both sides. I have been out on the fields on harvest days and I have seen the sweat and ware on the faces of my grandfather and my uncle. Let me say this now. Farming is not romantic. There is no tie to a glorious nature to be found in farming. Farming is work. Farming might be some of the hardest work known to man. You will fight nature at every step of the way. You will curse nature when it fails to rain. Curse the sun for not enough light. Curse the fact that you need to harvest your fields now before they are flooded and lost. It is a job that goes from sun up to sun down. And it never pays enough to make a profit, and even if it did you would be unable to spend it. One of the families next to our farm had never taken a vacation in their lives because there was no one who could milk the cows in their absence. If they did decide to leave then they would be unable to balance budgets. That’s the other thing about farming. It is expensive to run. A Combine will run you an easy 100,000 dollars new. Same goes for tractors. My Uncle suffers too much for the amount of work he puts in. In order for him to keep afloat he has to drive buses at night for the University of Illinois. During harvest times he goes with only 2 hours of sleep. The point is that farming sucks.
ReplyDeleteIn the book A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold takes the reader on a journey through understanding landscapes and the beauty of nature. Leopold uses poetic and descriptive language to engage the reader in his descriptions of the seasonal, ecological changes.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the book, Leopold derives and justifies meaning behind even the most seemingly mundane environmental changes. He talks about cutting down and oak tree to be used for firewood and related that process to lessons in history, both social and natural. For example, the tree’s age, as seen by the rings in its trunk, dates back to the end of the Civil War. Also, Leopold finds relationships between the oak tree and the life that surrounds it, whether it is humans, animals or other trees.
So far, I have really enjoyed reading A Sand County Almanac. Leopold does a really successful job of engaging me and leading me through nature’s life cycle. This book has really given me insight and pushed me to think more deeply about everyday occurrences. Since I have started reading A Sand County Almanac, I have become more aware of the effect humans have on our environment and wonder how I can live my life in a more environmentally friendly, less destructive way.
Although we’ve only been in class for a few weeks now, I can easily see the vast difference between ADP this semester and those of last year. In ADP last year I would find myself nodding off or not paying attention... mostly because when I did so, I wasn’t missing anything. Just learning about the general idea of “stuff” never seemed like enough to get me through an entire class actually feeling like I had learned something, and it wasn’t. After the last two semesters of ADP I came out feeling not only like I had learned nothing, but also like I had wasted a great deal of my own time on a class that I got absolutely nothing out of; Nothing that I could add to my portfolio for my sophomore review, no higher knowledge of the world of art or of art history. The only things that I left ADPs one and two with were two essays about “things”, one being a cell phone, and one being my childhood stuffed animal.
ReplyDeleteOf course, after going through an entire year of a hated class and learning nothing in it, I dreaded the first day of ADP3. However, after walking in and receiving the first survey I knew that this class was going to be quite different from my ADPs past. Filling out that first survey made me start to feel bad about myself. As I went through the survey and was able to answer every question about material goods in entirety, versus only parts (or even none) of the questions about the environment, I began to worry that this entire class was just going to be one big guilt trip about how I need to be better to my environment and less materialistic. However, I am coming to see quickly that that is not what this class is about at all. The reason for that questionare was not to make me feel bad about myself, but to make me more conscious of the world around me and what I am missing in it. Rather than spending all day in the mall (I was able to quickly list off ten stores in my mall without even thinking about it), I should try spending some time outside and in my backyard (I’m pretty sure that the only indigenous plants from my home that I listed were poison ivy and poison oak – aren’t those the same things anyway?). Rather than buying a new disposable water bottle at lunch every day, I should go buy a reusable one that I can bring around with me to my classes and meals so that I don’t throw another piece of trash into the landfills every time that I’m thirsty.
Even though a great deal of what is talked about in this class could be viewed as a “guilt trip”, I think that the way it is being approached seems to be the exact opposite of that, which I find to be a really refreshing approach to talking about the environment.
So far in the lecture, I am glad to see Joe’s enthusiasm, he clearly believes in the content that he is teaching. This is rather refreshing, since the past lecturers have been less than valuable, in my opinion. I do share Joe’s interest in finding creative solutions to the existing problems of the world, and I find it equally interesting to think about ways that artists can contribute to these solutions as well. So far my only questions would regard the validity of sitting next to a flower for two hours, and why we would physically collect trash and then proceed to bring that trash in to school. I do understand that we should be more aware of the items that we throw out, in an effort to reduce the amount of waste that we produce as a country, but bringing trash in to school is not going to further this learning experience, in my opinion. One other topic of the lecture that I saw as slightly troubling was the fact that Joe informed us to be careful when selecting our position on the issue of global warming, and to be aware of the sources that we use when writing papers. I completely agree that one must be aware of the source of their information, in order to avoid using biased information, however, Joe’s example that he used was the part of the lecture that was troubling to me. He ended up discussing a student that did not believe in global warming, and even though he had a non biased source, Joe said that the individuals that reported the findings disproving global warming must have been on the pay roll of the oil companies, even though there was no evidence to suggest that being true.
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