Waste Not...Part II

Again, some of what follows may not be for everyone as it discusses slaughterhouses, hunting in excess and language which may prove disturbing...please consider this before proceeding.

    Author Harold McGee's recent book, Nose Dive, described waste as this: ...from a root meaning "empty" or "desolate."   In giving that explanation, he was talking about excrement; but lest you walk away with the impression that our colon is little more than an end point, note this observation that our colon is: ...also the primary residence of our gut microbiome, which can include thousands of different species and contributes several million different genes to our superorganism, compared to our own body's measly twenty thousand.  20 million (colon) vs. 20 thousand (rest of our body).  He goes on to talk about an "aggregation of countless small building blocks" that early on formed into a "network that can be enlarged indefinitely" -- lignin.  It's the rigidity of plant cells that allowed them to tower beyond their original mosses and shoot skyward as trees and dissolve rock into soil.  Adds McGee: Lignin has been such a successful invention that it now accounts for a third of the biomass on the planet -- and much of the industrialized world is powered by energy extracted from the fossilized remains of the first ligninfied forests, the carbon deposits we call coal.  

    So what on Earth does this have to do with hunting, and throwing out our trash, and wasting our lives and talents?  Perhaps it is simply to show that we are far from alone, perhaps far from dominant, and perhaps far from being able to take credit for having gotten where we are in the big scheme of things.  It took work, and working together; and yet as far as we have come evolution-wise, it would seem that we still have a long ways to go.  During  an early morning visit to the grocery store or market one will often find the shelves of produce and meats and breads being cleared away for the new; items that are misshapen or bruised or "not perfect" will fill large trash bins, the "inferior" and damaged or spoiled goods destined for a food bank or more likely, the dump.  Fish and apples and bakery rolls have to be "just right" for our eyes.  Said an article in Eating Well about a research report from Santa Clara University about farming in California: Across 34 farms in the central and northern part of the state, more than a third of perfectly good crops were left to rot, often due to cosmetic imperfections,  In romaine-heart fields, where workers discard the outer leaves to get to the plants' more attractive centers, more lettuce was left than taken...the amount of water used to grow food that's never eaten each year in the U.S. is equal to the total used in California, Texas and Ohio combined, according to estimates from the food-waste prevention group ReFED.*  Another piece in the same magazine noted that for the lower-income families, this quest for perfect food often means higher prices and puts it out of reach for them.  Said one mother in the piece: It angers me that not only my family is going through this, but others.  So much waste is out there and we can't have a simple meal.

    The New York Review noted in a recent review that author Catherine Coleman Flowers: ...began urging officials to treat sewage as a public health problem, not a moral failing. She found sewage pooling in Appalachian towns and behind trailers in California's Central and San Joaquin Valleys...she has pressed government to recognize their responsibility to maintain infrastructure and provide essential services to rural poor and city dwellers alike.  Urban areas are not immune: in 2002 Hurricane Sandy damaged more than two hundred waste treatment plants and dumped more than 10 billion gallons of raw sewage into the local waterways, shores, and streets of New York and New Jersey.  The review also pointed out that death and decay at one time enriched the land, the massive early oceans retreating and leaving Louisiana "black soil enriched by mineralized fossil sediments.  It was perfect for growing cotton."  The same review noted that Booker T. Washington wrote: The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers.  Later, and especially since the war, the term ["Black Belt"] seems to be used wholly in a political sense -- that is, to designate the counties where the black people outnumber the white.

     Author Seth Steven's Davidowitz wondered about all the data today's world collects, not only from social media but also from your grocery stores and Amazon accounts and on and on; he went on to write a book titled Everybody Lies, and let loose on what he discovered (such as what men and women most often type into search engines when in the privacy of their own home).  But one of his findings about America shocked him, this after Obama first won the Presidency...Google searches presented a picture of America that was strikingly different from that post-racial utopia sketched out by the surveys...On Obama's first election night, when most of the commentary focused on praise of Obama and acknowledgment of the historic nature of his election, roughly one in every hundred Google searches that included the word "Obama" also included "kkk" or "nigger(s)."  Maybe that doesn't sound so high but think of the thousands of nonracist reasons to Google this young outsider with a charming family about to take over the world's most powerful job.  On election night, searches and sign-ups for Stormfront, a white nationalist site with surprisingly high popularity in the United States, were more than ten times higher than normal.  In some states, there were more searches for "nigger president: than "first black president."  There was a darkness and hatred that was hidden from the traditional sources but was quite apparent in the searches that people made.  Things haven't gotten much better.  Said a short piece in The Week: The Southern Poverty Law Center identified 576 "extreme anti-government groups" in 2019, 181 of them militias.  The group counted 155 "white nationalist hate groups" the same year, a 55 percent increase over 2017.

Taxidermied elk used in off-season to catch illegal hunting.  Photo: Lucas Foglia for National Geographic

     Former President Obama recognized much of this, writing in his own book: It was one thing to have integrated my own life -- to learn over time how to move seamlessly between Black and white circles, to serve as translator and bridge among family, friends, acquaintances and colleagues, making connections across an ever-expanding orbit, until I felt I could finally know the world of my grandparents and the world of a Reverend Wright as a single, unified whole.  But to explain  those connections to millions of strangers?  To imagine that a presidential campaign, with all its noise and distortions and simplifications, could somehow cut through the hurt and fear and suspicion that had been four hundred years in the making?...Hell, I myself was too complicated, the contours of my life too messy and unfamiliar to the average American, for me to honestly expect I could pull this thing off...In [an interconnected world] --of global supply chains, instantaneous capital transfers, social media, transnational terrorists networks, climate change, mass migration, and ever-increasing complexity-- we will learn to live together, co-operate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish.

    The recent shootings in both Boulder and Atlanta mark a long history of the belief among some in the U.S. that "might makes right," "my way or the highway," or that "I'm better than you."  Having spent many of my years in the San Francisco area, I was still surprised to recently read that Alcatraz, known for holding such prisoners as Al Capone and the Birdman of Alcatraz, also once held the crew of the Civil War schooner, the JM Chapman.  Said Archeology:  In 1863, the Knights of the Golden Circle, a shadowy secret society with the stated goal of annexing all of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean to form a proslavery “Golden Circle” in conjunction with the Confederacy, formed a plot to arm the schooner and raid vessels along the Pacific Coast.  On the night before it was due to set sail, J. M. Chapman was seized by the U.S. Navy after its captain bragged about the scheme in a local tavern.  Before that happened, National Geographic noted this about the state just above that area: Before Oregon became a state, it fashioned itself as a whites-only utopia.  When it joined the union in 1859, it was then the only state with laws specifically prohibiting certain races from legally living, working, or owning property within its borders...By the 1920s, one in 20 Oregonians was a card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan, the highest percentage of any state west of the Mississippi. 

    Bloomberg noted this about the recent stimulus package: A study from the Tax Policy Center found incomes of the lowest fifth of earners will jump 20%, the highest among income groups...Not one Republican in Congress voted in favor of the Covid rescue bill, having attacked it as too expensive.  Democrats were happy to point out the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul Republicans passed in 2017 that largely benefitted corporations and the rich.  Add to all of that, continued efforts to restrict voting, primarily for the poor and those of color, as noted by the Washington Spectator: Researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice have established that lawmakers in 43 states have endorsed more than 250 bills that would make it harder for citizens to vote—over seven times the number of voter suppression bills introduced around this time last year...In Arizona, which Trump lost, there is a proposed bill to give legislators the power to overrule state election officials and the popular vote.  In Pennsylvania, another state Trump lost, Republican lawmakers have introduced 14 voter suppression measures.  The Georgia legislature is set to pass its own restrictive voting measures today...

    Dive into the world of religion and you may find an equally long record of such changes.  Over 3300 years ago, the Pharoah Akhenaten ordered all statues of any other "gods" be taken down and destroyed; only the single sun God of Aten was to be worshipped.  The people complied but upon Akhenaten's death, took down all of Aten's statues and returned to their ways of having many gods.  Another attempt to have "no other gods before me" came centuries later (remnants of it remain as Zoroastrianism) but again failed.  Only when other beliefs were placated (in Christianity came the Trinity) did belief in a single God become widely accepted.  Said DailyHistory: What is also telling is that monotheism only appears to emerge during a period when larger states and empires were present.  In fact, all religions that we can call monotheistic, or more accurately universal religions (i.e., a religion relevant to all people and not just a population group; e.g., Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Manichaeism) develop at a time of large scale empires where kings were now being called “king of kings” and seen as unifiers of many people...Therefore, it may not be a surprise that universal empires helped to create philosophies of universal religions and ideas, as the ideas of greater unity between populations had already become well established.

Coastal artist Sudarsan Pattnaik. Photo: Hakai Magazine

     National Geographic called 2020 "the year that tested us...we won't miss 2020," it said.  "We won't forget it.  And together, we greet 2021."  Dams began to fall, coal plants began to close (in 10 years, dependence on coal in America has dropped from 50% to 20%), Coca-Cola pledged to make half of its cans and bottles out of recycled material by 2030 (that's nearly a billion containers daily),  and the world seems to be ready for a change.  Personally, I miss the days of harmony which was so often reflected in music...today's world seems so full of solo acts, or solo performers, solo politicians and solo world "powers."  Yet I can't help but focus on that description above -- "the ideas of greater unity between populations." 

     We have a long history of waste, of perhaps feeling entitled or judge & jury; but who would have thought that something as small as a virus could change all of us, or that something as large as climate could change us (the oceans are warming enough that South Africa is witnessing great white sharks that normally patrol their waters being killed and eaten by an even larger predator, killer whales).  Author Harold McGee added this in his book on the smells of old forests and resins and their prehistoric histories: Curious and informed smelling can lift the dull shroud of familiarity so that we perceive plants and their creations afresh.  It can also remind us of their significance in human culture: the scents of tree resin that inspire thoughts of deep time and immortality; ceremonial flowers that represent life's intensity, fragility, and brevity; fruits that, as carefully prepared and flavorful nourishment for creatures of a different kingdom, provide a model for cooperation.  Stop, and smell the roses...

    Change is in the air, and perhaps overdue; and while it may be a bit of a struggle we appear ready for it.  As The Hollies, one of the old "harmony" groups sang: The road is long, with a many a winding turn that leads us to who knows where. It's a long, long road from which there is no return.  While we're on the way to there why not share?

*The waste of food has led to a digital marketplace for "imperfect and surplus produce"...Full Harvest.  Said the article: Since it launched in 2016, the company has helped farms sell 28 million pounds of produce that likely would have been left to languish in fields.  While in California, my mother used to participate in helping "gleaners," ordinary folk allowed to gather the fruits and vegetables that harvesting machines missed and box them up for shelters and food banks.