Prop 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, will provide more humane treatment of millions of farm animals by phasing out their confinement in small crates and cages where they can barely move for virtually their entire lives. The law would take effect in 2015 and would require that calves raised for veal, breeding pigs, and egg-laying hens are given enough space to turn around, lie down, and stretch their limbs.
In my humble opinion, if we really cared about animals’ rights, we shouldn’t be eating them.
This week we’re on California. I’ve been looking forward to this essay, by a writer I admire: William T. Vollmann, and I was expecting something crazy. But the first half of the article is rather tame, with a brief overview of California’s industrial transformation, and then a tour of many towns: Mi-Wuk Village, Chinese Camp, Sausalito, etc. And then, all of a sudden, we came to this passage:
I put on lipstick and earrings, while my sweetheart, who now stood nude in the lovely wig I had bought her, told me to close my eyes until she was ready to surprise me with her new outfit, a dominatrix costume. You see, we were off to spend more expense money at a certain S&M club and dungeon whose workshop that night addressed a question of considerable interests to any loving couple: What are the most effective ways to inflict fear and spicy physical stimulation upon a submissive, employing hot and sharp objects as needed?
The story got interesting, and we read our very first report on an S&M workshop, with breast-slapping, pistol-sucking, electric wand, and a lot of screaming. This is the Vollmann I expected - a Californian, “a believer in the right of any adult to act upon her preferences beyond the point of extremity as long as whatever she does remains consensual.”
Saw this book yesterday in the library. I was surprised. The book is interesting so far, 40 pages in. The book is a McSweeney’s Rectangulars and can be purcahsed here.
I just learned about this - so don’t take my word for it. But from what I’ve gathered, the French were one of the first Europeans to come out west and explored America around the early 16th century. And in our study of Arkansas’ history we came across this guy Henri de Tonti who, in the late 1600s established a trading post off of the Mississippi River and it later became known as the Arkansas Post.
So who is Tonti? He’s Italian, found the city Detroit with his younger brother, and was the friend and associate of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (see above, the one with a sad face, kneeling) - the famed French dude who explored and “claimed” the entire Mississippi area (as in, the state of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota) for France.
Tonti lost his hand during the Sicilian Wars and wore a prosthetic hook. His nickname was “Iron Hand”. I cannot find any connection between Tonti and Captain Hook.
“Archeology is not simply about finding old things that have been buried by time and dirt. As a subdiscipline of anthropology, archeology is inevitably about what those things can tell us about past people—their cultures, their lives and what their daily experiences might have been like. Van Winkle’s Mill offers researchers several important venues in which they can contribute to understanding the past of not only the Arkansas Ozarks, but of modern America in a broader sense.”
My name is Charlie Brennan, From Charleston I come. I’ve travel’d this wide world over, Some ups and downs I’ve had. I’ve travel’d this wide world over, Some ups and downs I’ve saw, But I never knew what mis’ry was Till I hit old Arkansas.
Forgot about this when we were discussing Alabama: Buy a Meter. One in four households in Hale County is not connected to a municipal water system and do not have access to clean water. The people behind Project M worked with Rural Studio and HERO Housing Resource Center and started this campaign to raise awareness and funds to help the residents in Hale County.
The project was started on July 2, 2007. I heard about it later that month and donated $50 to the project. Now, a little over a year later, they have reached about 30% of the goal ($127,500) - and unfortunately I cannot find any info or updates on the project (you can still contribute here).
Now looking back at the project, I’m baffled that this kind of problem was not addressed by the local government, and I wonder if it would’ve been more effective if the effort was spent on, say, getting signatures for a petition to the county governance, or making the campaign about how tax money is spent and budget distributed. Of course, this is easy for me, sitting in my living room, to say, but I also wish that some sort of newsletter or blog was set up, so that donors can keep up with the project and help spread the word.
We’re on our 4th state and so far, all the names of the states can be traced back to the Native Americans (you know the people who used to roam on this great land until the Europeans came and…). So what happened to the Native Americans? I know the history ain’t pretty but we weren’t sure exactly what happened. We consulted with the all-knowing Google and we found out about the Indian Removal Act (1830). Apparently around early 19th century, Americans were hungry for land, and the president at the time, Andrew Jackson, did what any good American President would do - he past a law and ethnically cleansed the Native American tribes by ordering them to move west. In total, the Jackson administration moved thousands of Native Americans and opening up 25 million acres of lands to white settlement and to slavery. And for that achievement, Andrew Jackson gets to have his pretty face on our twenty dollar bill.
We're Judy and Shawn. We're designers, we're parents, and we live in New York City.
