A devil's choice

This morning we had to choose between walking on the sidewalk, which in most places had a half inch coating of in most places, and walking in the street, which was also kinda slippery not to mention full of cars. The sensible choice would have been to stay in bed until the ice melted, but people with dogs (and no yard) don't get that choice. I stayed home sick from work today, but still walked on the ice first thing.

It might have been fun, if it weren't mandatory. We could pretend to be explorers on a strange landscape, avoiding the patches of salt that burn our dogs' feet and not knowing if the surface would crumble or support our weight. I like to deliberately slide on long smooth patches. Not much of that out there today--it was slushy when it froze up. I'm going to try to take it easy, and hopefully when the dogs need to out again it will be melted. I'm crossing my fingers for Alexis, who still has to join the rush hour commute, comprised of people whose collective intelligence seems to decline with the road conditions.

Documentary review

Our Daily Bread (Unser täglich Brot, 2005)

When I worked at Drumlin Farm one of the things I never got to do was accompany the livestock to the slaughterhouse.  I wanted to understand every kind of animal facility, every relationship between humans and animals.  This crucially important part of it, the process by which animals become food, when "livestock" becomes "meat" is hidden from us.  Some believe that the disconnect between modern people and their food supply is a serious problem. 

Our Daily Bread is an attempt to reconnect  modern people with the very odd ways that the food supply comes to be.  This odd documentary, with no dialogue or narration, comes from Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter, and includes scenes shot in plant-processing facilities as well as those for meat.   Some of the more fascinating sequences in fact are the harvesting of olives (an amusing combination of low and high tech methods are used) and the cropdusting of a sunflower field (a beautiful scene, though it evokes Silent Spring).



( Read more; one not-too-gory dead cow picture back here. )