Death on a Factory Farm

A couple days ago I finally found the energy to sit down and watch the HBO Documentary, Death on a Factory Farm, which originally aired on March 16, 2009. The film follows an undercover investigator with the alias "Pete," as he seeks to procure video and audio evidence of animal cruelty at the Wiles Hog Farm in Creston, Ohio. Tipped off by an employee at the farm, the Humane Farming Association hired Pete to gather enough evidence to allow the organization to file a complaint with local law enforcement and a lawsuit. Pete gets hired on the farm as a farm-hand and begins his surveillance. 

Over the course of six weeks, he obtains horrifying video evidence of animal cruelty to the animals on the farm by several employees, including the owners son, who runs the daily operations of the farm. From slamming piglets against the wall and dumping them in buckets, bleeding and still alive, to hanging downer sows with a chain using a forklift to raise them up and hold the squirming animals until they die, the Wiles Hog Farm is chock-full of the type of 'evidence' HFA wants for its prosecution. The film does a great job of limiting the graphic video of cruelty so that even a viewer who is unable or unwilling to watch such acts are able to sit through the entire film. This is important, because turning the movie off halfway would be a grave mistake.

The majority of the film is not video of animal cruelty, it is the story of the investigation and subsequent trial against the Wiles Hog Farm, giving the viewer insight into the way the farmers, the animal rights group, the community, and the law view the issues. Scenes from the actual trial give a real-life feel to the film where many documentaries fall short. The film is eye-opening (or closing, if you dont want to watch a piglet swung like a baseball bat against the wall) and provocative, in the way only a documentary of this kind can be.

This is a film that needs to be widely screened. As the filmmakers point out, animal rights is like the present-day civil rights movement. Our collective ignorance about the way our meat is raised, treated, slaughtered, packaged, and sold is an unsustainable way of living. We get squeamish when we see animals mistreated, so we choose to ignore that it happens and continue to make choices that perpetuate the mistreatment. From hogs, chickens, and cows to salmon, tuna, and sharks, our unchecked appetite for meat and seafood, fueled by agricultural, oil and gas, and pharmaceutical industries, creates the perfect recipe for cruelty, the likes of which are described in Death on a Factory Farm.

Please let me know if you would like a copy of the film, I would be more than happy to give one to you.

keep it fresh...

- Neil

Refresh

Yesterday, I found myself re-reading some of the early posts on this blog and truly enjoying being reminded of the memories I blogged about. Today, I find myself re-energized about the idea of maintaining a place to store my thoughts and experiences so that I can one day re-read this post and remember the feelings and environment at this exact moment.

Ten weeks into the summer, I feel consistently overwhelmed with what lies ahead of me, to the point that I physically and mentally cannot relax, even on weekends. This is new. I have never had a problem dropping whatever was on my mind and taking half a day or a few hours to be mindless, and relaxed. In the past, television, music, video-games, sports, and sleep were some of the ways I was able to accomplish mindlessness. For whatever reason, video-games do not appeal to me anymore; I get bored. Television and music can distract me for a while, but I'm never fully disengaged from what is on my mind at the time and so I sit there staring at the tv, but thinking about work that I have to do. Sports and sleep, are still the best ways for me to escape, but I exercise much less than I did before (a result of more work/anxiety), and I resist sleeping because once I'm out, I'm out.

So, this feeling of dread that I just can't shake prevents me from feeling happy a lot of the time. I think it's important to distinguish contentment from happiness. To me, being content involves gratitude, perspective, and satisfaction (in that order). Happiness, on the other hand, can be temporary and involves one's state of being for a given time. Of course, it need not be temporary. For me, contentment is not something I struggle with so much, but happiness has been hard to find lately. I am going to try and list the issues that I find myself constantly wrestling with.

1. Confidence. I've been rattled over the past year or so. Silently and gradually, I've come to trust myself less and feel unsure in my decisions. It just crept up on me. What do I want to do now that I'm at this point in law school?
Sometimes I feel like I want to discontinue down this road and explore a lifestyle that would seemingly be completely different. I imagine moving to a farm, learning how to grow plants, food, raise animals, and becoming closer to the people that I live/work with, the land I live on, the Earth that sustains me. I know that a choice like that isn't one that would be popular with some of the people that I care about. I don't know that I want to give up the relationships I have and the lifestyle I have to do that (though I'm tired of living a city-life most of the time).
In the case I stay in law school, what kind of work do I want to do? I know the direct answer to that question, but putting that into practice is much more delicate and complex. How do I balance the advice I get from attorney's, counselors, and peers with my gut feeling? I tell myself that I want to go down a certain path, but I am afraid to take the first step. Firm v. Non-profit v. Government v. ????. Are there any other options? After working at a firm this summer, I know that I don't want that job. But do I participate in OCI anyway? How much time do I allocate to each of the commitments I've made to different organizations?

...Not all of these question's have discrete answers, but I know that at the root of this struggle is a lack of confidence in myself and my world view. I'm not sure that I'm right.

2. Discipline. 24 hours sure hasn't seemed like enough time lately. There are always a million things to do, right? I want to get to that day where there I have accomplished all my work and have tomorrow to look forward to because there is nothing that I have left over from today. Before I get there though, I've got to put up the art that has been sitting in my apartment for months, organize my desk in a way that I want to have it permanently, use the storage drawers that I recently bought for some of my files, update my filing system with paperwork, move my music from one computer to the other, fix some of the things that need fixing at the apartment, clean my car, fit the cleaning of the apartment into a schedule of some sort...the list only grows.

I guess most of my struggle is the general struggle of a particular human in a particular culture in a particular city at a particular stage with a particular world view.

Its ironic that sitting here for 30 minutes writing about my struggles has been very relaxing. I guess, that maybe shouldn't be so much of a surprise to me. Thank you. Im not sure who, but thank you. Now I'm off to cross off a few of those things on the list.

keep it fresh...

- Neil

The tipping point

It seems like every year for the past 3-4 years (that i can recall), I feel like the stakes just keep getting higher. From the War, to climate change, to the breakdown of our financial markets, to my own life there is less and less room for error and folly. This recent article by Thomas Friedman does a great job of explaining the very serious consequences of allowing ourselves to forget how important this time is.

It is a common feature of history that every generation believed itself to be the turning point of civilization or the "one." For example, talk to enough religious folks and you will find that we are in the End Times and all the global issues we face today are just signs of the beginning of the end. But, humor me for just a minute. What if all those generations were right? What if they all really were in the End Times, just not at the very, very end of it? What if the "end" is a two thousand year-long ending? What if we are getting closer to the actual end? December 21, 2012 ring a bell???

I know, you're probably thinking that I am just perpetuating the cycle, and maybe I am, but it's hard not to think of this time "a" tipping point at the very least, and "the" tipping point at the most. I don't think that the end of the world, in the physical sense, is ten of fifteen years away, but I do think that a foundational shift is occurring in human history that will determine how successive generations will live and view the world. 

Like the fashion world where trends reemerge every 20-30 years, so will humankind's worldview reemerge from some period in the past where we had not yet reached the End, hopefully.

A new chapter, again

I just moved to SF this week for law school! Its been a crazy mental transition, and Im finally feeling well settled and genuinely excited for whats coming up next in my life, namely law school. First and foremost though, I took some pictures of my new crib and I wanted to post em up here.

This is the entrance to the apartment. We are the bottom of a three unit building in the sunny Mission neighborhood of SF.

The entrance is a narrow hallway, which is a good representation of what the entire layout is like. Narrow and long with the rooms on either side of the hallway.

The living room.

My room from the doorway.

The other side of my room.

Among other things, I went to a little mixer last night put on by one of my fellow 1Ls. It was a chance for us to meet up informally before orientation. It was at Mr. Smiths, a club close to school and in the SoMa neighborhood. I'm not one to step out and meet people like that normally, but it was nice to see my fellow classmates and get to know about the people who will most likely go on to be colleagues and friends in the future. The club is a pretty nice spot with cheap and good drinks. I had, for the first time, a Basil Gimlet which is a variation of my favorite cocktail and it was delicious. The music was questionable; had me loving to hate it and hating to love it at times. Overall, a good night. It felt great to just walk out of the club, hop on BART, and be home in 15 minutes without having to even think about driving, parking, traffic, one time, or anything! Going out in SF is gonna be a lot of fun!

...keep it fresh

- Neil

It's not something I believe I can plan. I suppose that's because it cannot be tamed, cannot be controlled. As much as I may want it to happen to me, I don't know if it ever will. I live my life resisting the temptation to assume its occurrence at the same time trying not to be so arrogant as to question its existence. There have been a few times in my life when I thought I found it in another. Maybe I did. Life always seemed so much better in those days. But I always believed that once I found it, it would be permanent. That it would perpetuate infinitely. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps it comes and goes as the seasons, though not with the same certainty. I wish it were certain. Life seems so lifeless without it.

This morning I woke up longing for it, like I have many times before, feeling such an excruciating yet pleasurable pain in some invisible space in the center of my body. Nothing I did could take away that feeling, and in a strange way I did not want the feeling to go away. I imagine it is this very pain that hurts so much when I am without it that feels so good when I am with it. For even pain turns to pleasure in its presence. In its absence though, there is much that can go wrong. Envy fills the void, the antithesis to it. Fleeting and unstable yet so comforting in the exact moment, it eats away at my sanity interrupting the positive flow of my energy. Doubt makes an appearance with all its conceit, its self-righteousness slowly evaporating any sense of certainty and hope. One must have it before it can be shared with others, or with another.

I have so much to give, and no one to give it to.
I have so much to give, and am looking for the one to give it to.
I have so much to give, and want so much for someone to give it to.

How to cheer up a sad iPod

A few months ago when I returned from my travels in Central America, the first time I tried to turn my iPod on it wouldn't work. It gave me the sad face! I had heard stories about the sad face and it being the final blow to ones iPod ensuring certain death. I tried rebooting my iPod, restoring it, I even tried giving it CPR but nothing seemed to work. After a month or two of being disappointed from such a terrible loss, my spirits were uplifted with the purchase of an iPhone! I thought, "Well, my iPod mini has a total capacity of 4GB and my iPhone itself has a total capacity of 8GB so addition by addition I dont need my stupid broken iPod anymore!" And with that, I chucked my iPod and all the accessories I had accumulated over time into a drawer which I never expected to check until the next spring cleaning date.

What a blow to little iPod mini's self esteem that must have been. No less than 3 months of solitary confinement would break the very soul of almost every other mp3 player there is. Yet the iPod mini is not just ANY mp3 player. Unbeknownst to little "miniPod for monsterPod", there was yet a sliver of life left in its resilient heart that would show its colors soon enough...

...For the past couple of weeks I have been getting things together to either take with me to my apartment in SF or pack away in storage for a while. I made my way to the drawer in which little iPod has been sleeping for so long and suddenly, I felt my heart drop. For all the miles I could not have run if not for my iPod, for all the canvassers I could not have ignored while walking up Bruinwalk, for all the songs I would have never listened to if not for the shuffling of its tiny-but-mighty 4GB library...

I couldn't just let it go from dark drawer to dark box, or worse. So I took it out one last time to see if I couldn't get it to work. Once again, I went to Apple to troubleshoot there for a while to no avail. Once again, it didn't work. It was then time to digg a little deeper. I searched the blogosphere for revival techniques and what I uncovered is nothing short of a conspiracy! Nearly all the websites suggested the same solution: BANG YOU iPOD ON THE GROUND. And then Lil' Jon appeared in my room and said, "WHAAAAT!?" to which I responded, "OOKAY!". And in an instant I took my iPod and tossed it across the room. It landed some 10 feet away from me on the carpet with a thud and rolled a couple feet further. Then it just lay there, on its stomach, motionless. As I walked over to pick it up the thought that I might have really killed it was front and center.

I picked it up, and turned it over. No sad face, no apple icon, nothing. I turned it on and to my amazement the little guy woke up!! Pretty much the happiest moment this month!







keep it fresh...like miniPod for monsterPod

- Neil

Who owns you?

I have heard, "It is very difficult for the poor to practice charity." Because one must have him/herself for one to share. You cannot share that which you do not have. Really, material things are not important in this post. It is things like respect, kindness, love that I am interested in. Why is it that we feel we must be given these very things before we can ourselves give back? You do not need someone else to give you respect before you are able to give respect yourself. Sit in a room, be loving. In our world, to practice love you need another being to share it with. No, share love with yourself. Fill an empty room with love, joy, thoughtfulness and see how the atmosphere in the room changes.

There are many things, material and immaterial, that we feel we own. We pay a price for a pair of jeans, or pay our time for a check at the end of the week, or pay with our experience for respect. We simply assume that we own, and thereby control, anything that we pay for or are given. Many of these things we have trouble sharing. Why is it that we do not share our money? The money, yes, is physically in your possession but if in your heart you want to give it to someone else but do not do so then who is in control and who is being controlled? Many times it is us who are possessed by the very things we "own." Free yourself from that which you think you own. Do not be held back by that which you have to give.