Meatless Thanksgiving

Eyes open at 4:30 again. Oh, no, I am going to have to take a nap later. If I could get stuff done so early it wouldn't be so bad, but I hate to wake up the whole farm. Everyone, including the chickens, are still sleeping...except for the DOGS. When I get up, they get up. And when they get up - they have to go out. That means shoes and sweater for me, leashes for them. Open the door, we go out, cats run in. I love to put on NYC news and watch the parade preparation. I did go once as a kid, when my NYC cop father got tickets to sit in the grandstand. Everything on TV this morning is turkey, turkey, turkey. The commentators are anxious to get home and put the turkey in the oven, how to cook the turkey, how to carve, etc. etc. Turkeys loom large in my collective memory. My mother got many meals out of her free turkey from the grocery store. We had turkey sandwiches, turkey and gravy over rice, turkey soup for weeks. She would put the carcass in a paper sack and pound the bones to make the soup taste better. I've done the same, to the point where Matt refused to eat one more bowl of turkey soup. But not this year. I confess I was longing to grab one yesterday in the market, but I resisted. We are on day 3 with no meat and things are going well. I made mushrooms and onions sauteed in wine and olive oil over angel hair pasta last night and Matt didn't complain (a good sign). It feels good to go through a day where nothing had to die to feed me. I look at this way of life as a rejection of the overwhelming violence in the world we live in. Meat is violent, I don't care how kindly it was raised. To eat it you have to kill it and I am sick of killing. I've had too much of it around me growing up and still have a hard time with it. War, car accidents, motorcycle accidents, gun accidents, the usual carnage. I don't know how any Christian can eat meat. Jesus probably ate bread dipped in olive oil most of his life, maybe some fish once in a while. Yet Christians point out the verse in the Bible that says something like I give all the fruits of the earth to you to enjoy. And that includes killing animals for food. Once when flying to Louisville I looked out the window of the plane to see giant football fields full of waste from factory farms. It's so easy not to look behind what's on our plates. And all that gas rising into the atmosphere! Once a student asked me, "Mrs. Alexander, how is eating meat like the Holocaust?" I was blown away. Here I had a unique opportunity to comment on an amazing association I had never even thought of, made by a young person. Living beings, loaded on trucks against their will, to be destroyed by more powerful beings in hideous ways. I know, I know, it's much more complicated than that and genocide is not being waged against animals...still, it's a level of consciousness that can be explored. Yesterday the hunter behind me was blasting away on the ridge. I was walking the sheep out to pasture when a blast made me jump. He must have been standing on my property line in the trees. I screamed in the direction of the shot, "That was too close you a--h---!" I regret the a--h--- part now. If only I had come up here 8 years ago when I had the chance. I could have bought hundreds of acres and made a whole world unto myself. But I foolishly stayed in NJ, trying to stay afloat, and not even treading water, wasting time and money. I had always stayed pretty close to home and never knew Central New York existed. I had dogs who I couldn't leave at home for long periods of time while I explored different areas. I was going to school, etc. Then I got the job at Voorhees HS. So many excuses. I try not to wallow in regret and focus on the future. AJ is coming on Saturday and I will make a Thanksgiving feast which includes his favorite yam/marshmallow casserole, stuffing, cranberry salad, cauliflower with cheese sauce, corn, etc. I will miss the smell of the roast turkey and pulling the skin off. Oh, the grease I would consume when I cooked my own turkey! Here's to the start of a healthier, more humane, more globally aware lifestyle.