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This blog is officially on break until Saturday, February 3rd.  And by then, I will have something of substance to say…

Sadness in the horse world, real sadness: Barbaro has been euthanized.  This horse, of all horses, had a will to make it.  The odds, apparently, were against him.  He will be missed.

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“Hell is other people.”

John Paul Sartre

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This morning, as I pour a second cup of coffee, I complain, aloud, to anyone who will listen: “The entire country got some real winter weather, except for Indiana.”

My spouse regards me, patiently, over his breakfast.  “Oh?”

“Yeah,” I say.  And explain that a front came across the U.S., swooped south of Indiana (while part went north), and dumped ice and slush in states west and south and a few north of us.  Mush in Missouri! Ice storm in Austin, Texas!  Snow in Illinois! Then this storm headed east, and north again.  More ice in New York!  Snow in Maine!  I shake my head. And we didn’t get any!  It’s like we’re this black hole of no weather except persistent cloud cover. 

Ever the rational half of this unit, my spouse says, reasonably, “We were lucky then.”

“But we’re missing winter,” I say.  You know: snow, ice, slush, the various cold wet miseries one expects this time of year.  I think I said something like “it’s not fair,” but I wouldn’t quote myself, not before seven in the morning.

Patient spouse shakes his head.  He’s married to a … you can see him ticking through adjectives.  Well, I’ll supply it: he’s married to a New Englander.  Weather is part of our birthright.  Winter means snow, privation, cold.  It means you get to actually use the candles and flashlights you’ve stocked up on.  The canned goods in the back of the pantry.  It means memorable moments of you and the elements.  In 1978, I don’t know about you, but I was diving into snow banks higher than my head.  Winter in New England also, happily enough, means blue skies and sunshine and new powder on the trails, perfect under your cross country skis.  It’s a great season. 

But here? Indiana winters? This dull greyness of 30’s and low 40’s week after week? Good lord, no wonder people go to Wal-Mart in droves.  It feels like a sunny day, under all those lights.

So, yes: Give me an ice storm any day.  Power outtages.  Two feet of snow.  More on the way.  And then sunshine tomorrow and outdoors we go.  Now that’s winter.

*****

Postscript: And then, as if it were listening, the weather changed.  By 9 a.m., snow!  Yes! (Okay, it’s only flurries, but still: it’s snow. Finally.)

I have a new theory about the relative economic, social, and educational wellbeing of any given community.  This wellbeing can be calculated in direct inverse proportion to the number of CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) in or proposed to be in any given community. That is: the worse off you are, the more CAFOs you will find.  The CAFOs are not the cause — necessarily — of decline; they are, moreso, the symptom. 

Wayne County now has a second hog farm approved.  This one, with 8,000 hogs, will go in the southern part of the county.  The first farm was approved for northern Wayne County over a year ago.  Here is what I wrote about that approval process, a short essay which appeared in the show Dick and I put up a year ago, County Lines:

At the Wayne County Administration building, the Board of Zoning Appeals is hearing a list of petitions: to split parcels of land, to build, to rezone. Sara Davis, of Fountain City, has an idle hog farm that she has sold to Natural Pork Production II of Harlan, Iowa. “N-P-P-2,” as its employees like to call it, is a confined animal feeding operation.

Today, N-P-P-2 explains what that means. Their presentation is polished and practiced. They have done this before. The representative from NPP2 wears khakis and a plaid short sleeve shirt. He is low key, non-threatening, self-deprecating. He repeats phrases like “good neighbors” and “environmentally sound” and “environmentally safe” and “we’re here to stay.” He brandishes principles. “We’ve got a personal commitment to sustainability.” He deflects criticism. “Why didn’t I talk to all of Williamsburg? Because I felt it was important to talk to the neighbors first.” He defends progress. “Consolidation is nothing new.” He evokes rural solidarity. “We like the fact that we are creating jobs in agriculture.”

A PowerPoint presentation glows on the screen. Facts pile up. 11,000 sows under one roof. 4,800 “isoleans” produced a week. Six-mile-long hoses to spread the manure. 60,000 gallons a day of water use. A compost heap where dead sows are taken. It is so hot from the decomposing bodies that a dead sow will be reduced to bones in a week. There is a horror to this that I cannot shake.

Yet, NPP-2 touts the benefits to the community: 35 jobs. 10 dollar an hour jobs. The need to purchase corn and soy from local farmers. Money back into the community.

A woman mutters, “It’s a factory. If factories could have saved small towns in the Midwest, they would have by now. It doesn’t work.”

When the presentation is over, and there is time for rebuttal, two people in the audience, and only two, get up. Neither is articulate enough to stem the tide. This day, the board votes to delay a decision. They will take their time, get more facts. Still. Despite the board’s admonition that this confined animal feeding operation is not a foregone conclusion, we all realize it most probably is.

And we will be right.

And we were right.  That was the first confined animal feeding operation.  11,000 hogs. But only the first.  Now there will be 8,000 more.  As we track the decline of our community in other numbers — abysmal graduation rates, high teen pregnancy rates, the number of children receiving free and reduced lunch, the published and actual unemployment rates, drug busts, meth labs, etc. – it will be interesting to track the steady growth in number of the animal factories.  Very interesting indeed.

Owen and I took a walk this morning, a bit later than we usually do.  We made the mistake of timing our walk precisely when parents in our neighborhood were dropping their children off at school.  I realize this is the first day back to school after winter break, and thus there was the attendant fluster of resuming a schedule, and getting everyone where they needed to go on time, but: good lord, it was a bad moment to be out walking.  Owen and I nearly got sideswiped by a yummy mummy in a shiny beamer zooming off the street into the elementary school driveway to drop off her darling child.  No signal, no slowing down, not even a tap of the brakes (as far as I could tell) — just a swerving right turn into the lane in front of Charles Elementary school.  Owen and I hit our own brakes, sat and waited before we crossed the lane while three more cars did exactly the same thing, swerving off of Reeveston, speeding into the Charles lot.  It’s really a good thing that a sleepy kid wasn’t trying to cross the lane while these cars were zooming in; the sleepy kid would have been in serious danger of being hit, or killed.

So, parents, drivers, droppers-off of children in the morning: please slow down.  You never know who is in the road.  It could be me, it could be Owen, it could be your neighbor, or someone else’s child crossing the street to get to school.  Start a little earlier, drive a little slower, we’ll all get there on time.  And alive.

Today, January 3, 2007, the high is forecast to be somewhere around 50 degrees.  The average mean temperature in December last year was 55 (the usual average is 33); the high was posted at 62, and the low at 48.  The usual average high for December in this area is 52, low 37.  The forecast for the next week or so keeps us, here in east central Indiana, still in the 50s and 40s, a little precipitation (rain) at the end of the week.  Unseasonably warm for January.

I don’t know about you, but I find these temperatures troubling.  Yes, I’m enjoying the balmy weather, and yes it’s nice to be outdoors without bundling up like a North Dakota cowboy, and yes I too hate dealing with snow and slush and ice.  But we need winter weather.  We need it to freeze the ground and kill off insect larvae so we are not inundated with bumper crops of flies and mosquitoes come summertime, and all the attendant diseases those little critters carry; we need winter weather to keep plants dormant that need to be dormant to conserve energy and rebound in spring at full flower; we need winter weather even on a spiritual/pyschological level: after a long cold winter, the advent of spring weather seems like a gift, enably us to appreciate, not simply take for granted the world around us. 

Long ago when I was in graduate school I worked as an assistant to an internationally renowned Harvard scientist.  His specialty was, yes, global warming (or, technically: climate change).  Dr. M.’s particular focus was on the Antarctic, the coldest place on earth.  He regularly led trips there, sometimes for research, sometimes escorting wealthy alums on excursions.  Each trip, Dr. M. would send me back faxes (yes, faxes, not email — this was B.E., before email) describing the vast and glorious desolation of the place, the astonishingly cold weather, the brilliant blue sky, the way the penguins would leap into an oncoming wind, flap their wings to fly into it, and just hover in space.  At first, those faxes felt like missives from another planet, divorced from the bustle and commerce and relative warmth of Cambridge, Massachusetts. But the more I read, the more I fell in love with this otherworldly place, its extreme cold, the isolation, the charm of the penguins. 

The Antarctic, even then, was already a source of concern for scientists paying attention to it.  Dr. M.’s mission, even then, was to spread the word that global warming/climate change was a source of deep and immediate concern.  Global warming/climate change, scientists said then and now, is caused by an increase in “greenhouse gases” which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.  Coal, fuel oil, natural gas.  The stuff which makes our economy go.  And even then, nearly 20 years ago, this concept of global warming/climate change was politically polarizing, a fact which irritated Dr. M. as much, if not sometimes more, than the incremental upward creep of the thermometer in the Antarctic and elsewhere. I distinctly remember Dr. M. muttering, as scientists are wont sometimes to do, “This has nothing to do with politics.” 

But of course, it does.  One of our political parties believes that the earth is here for our use, and our use now.  Oil, natural gas, coal, the land itself: these are materials we can use for the greater good of humanity (and profit too, which is nice and makes the world go round).  The other political party believes that the earth is here at least in part for our use, but we should be a little nicer to it.  Conserve oil, go easy on the natural gas, eschew coal; rely more on alternative energy sources, tread less harshly on the land leaving a smaller “footprint.”  Neither party, on balance, is aggressively advocating systemic change.  Some small splinter groups on the left are, indeed.  But there is not a global movement toward conservation, alternative energy sources, living a greener life.  (And yes, I know some will argue with me that there is a global movement…perhaps can we agree on this: it has not reached critical mass yet.)

Why? Because conservation and alternative sources are uncomfortable.  Taking them up, and I will speak for middle of the road North Americans, requires change.  I could start with my own less than eco-friendly habits: Replace your big truck with a fuel efficient hybrid, Jean?   Substitute shade grown coffee for the big corporate Starbucks?  Buy free range organic eggs?  (Hey, I do that.  Back off.) I know there are hundreds of small changes to make in my own lifestyle to leave a smaller environmental footprint.  The past few weeks as I have felt the warm sun on my face, and known the reasons for that warmth, I keep thinking about two things.

The first is: while I know it is time to make significant changes, I will admit to the frustration of living in a community where it is damn difficult to find organic food, locally grown pesticide free produce, free-range anything.  How ironic.  Here we are in the so-called “heartland” and what we have is a preponderance of pre-packaged goods from California, Mexico, Florida.  If I want to live a so-called “green” lifestyle, it might require, in part, driving to a big city to get the green stuff.  Right.  A two hour trip to Whole Foods in Columbus, Ohio.  Does that make sense?  However, all that said, there are sources in the region for the “good” stuff, and ways to make those changes to live a greener life.  (Stay tuned and see replies below….)

The second thought is this, something which may have nothing to do with me or my life in Indiana, but perhaps everything: over the past 25 years, the population of Antarctic penguins has decreased by 33% in response to their shrinking habitat. That is: the Antarctic ice is melting.  And the penguins, simply put, are losing their home. That image of the penguins leaping into the Antarctic wind, hovering above the ice — perhaps for the sheer joy of it — is fading.  And we should, I think, take this as a cautionary tale.

Happy New Year!