Oh, that would be the Buckhorn Exchange. What did you have there? The BBQer's went there in 2007 before departing Denver for Estes Park. I didn't go because I was picking up Chrissi at the airport. However, I did go back there with Luigi a year or so later and we had a rattlesnake appetizer.
I think we had the rattlesnake, too. And somebody had ostrich, and somebody I'm sure had buffalo, and I can't remember what all else.
I can see how your vegetarian son would have been freaked out by the animal heads.
He's no longer a vegetarian. It only lasted a couple of years, but man while he did it he was intense. I had to make two batches of spaghetti sauce, and if the spoon from the meat one went into the non-meat one, the non-meat one was ruined. He wouldn't sit on a leather chair. He made himself throw up when he found he had eaten Ceasar salad dressing containing anchovy paste. Couldn't eat lots of pies and most Hotess items because they contain lard. No gelatin-containing candy. Had to have a non-leather baseball glove.
Then one day he started right back eating meat.
There are getting to be some nice vegetarian restaurants in Denver now. And many of the regular restaurants are adding vegetarian dishes. When I am out with my vegetarian friends I always follow their dietary preferences but, secretly, I miss fish and seafood when I can't order it...meat, not so much.
I have to eat a lot of animal products because I avoid carbs. But I'm always happy to eat a vegetarian meal here and there. I find these days that most nice restaurants have at least one vegetarian dish on the menu. During Jack's vegetarian days he at some really delicious meals in restaurants. Sometimes I would join him. My then-husband and son always had to have meat.
But I could never understand veganism until recently. Then I realized that we have an abundance of milk and other dairy products because the calf is taken away from its mother shortly after it is born. That seems cruel, maybe even more cruel than eating meat.
It gets a lot crueler than that in the world of factory farming. Take the chickens who spend their entire lives in wire cages the size of shoeboxes, stacked by the thousands in big dark warehouses, their entire existence devoted to being egg-laying machines. And a "cage free" label usually just means they're packed by the thousands into big dark warehouses but without the wire cages.
I'm less familiar with the lives of cows but I'm sure all factory farmed animals endure various forms of hell. If you want to understand more about the moral argument for veganism, I highly recommend Jonathan Safran Foer's
Eating Animals.
So here's a thought I had last night. I went with some friends to see
12 Years a Slave, and as always with a movie like that, you have to examine your conscience -- what would I have done if I'd lived in those times? And of course I always like to think I would have been a progressive abolistionist and not a slaveholder (and by the way, this exercise doesn't just apply to white Americans whose ancestors were here back then -- unless you want to argue that different ethnic groups have different moral capabilities, then it applies to everybody). But of course you can never know -- if I'd grown up as a white person in rural Louisiana in the 19th century, I'd be highly unusual if I even thought to object to slavery. Even if I weren't entirely comfortable with it (as clearly some of the white characters aren't in the movie), I wouldn't necessarily do anything about it.
Now I'm someone who thinks that factory farming is evil, but I continue to eat eggs, dairy and meat. I do always grab the "cage free" eggs (figuring that's better than the alternative) and buy eggs and meat from a small farm at the farmer's market whenever I go, and look for sausage in the grocery story from this one company that even JSF kind of approved of because they raise their pigs so humanely. But those are pretty lame actions compared to the larger principle.
To be very clear, I'm not equating the lives of humans and animals, or saying factory farming is just as bad as slavery or anything like that. I'm just wondering: how far are average people (myself, for example) willing to go on behalf of their moral beliefs? Not that far, usually.
Topic: In the New Yorker... (Read 2357915 times)