Author Information
Food Odyssey Of A Slow Learner
A home ec teacher in high school
showed us the graph on the wall
of a cow marked with dotted lines
to signify cuts of meat. And I
did not connect the dots to
my plate.
Next came a waitress job and
a daily customer who was
an Indian vegetarian. He had no
impact on my unripe soul.
Kief Newman took me to see the
film Mondo Kane which includes several
horrid animal cruelty scenes. I thought
them terrible and did not connect.
Marvin Katz at a peace vigil said
those who oppose violence in war
should begin with their dinner forks.
The message was understood but
followed by 6 months of resistance.
Next came a trip to Rehoboth Beach.
I asked my stepson David not to fish.
He replied that I ate meat.
That was it. I gave up meat and fish.
5 natal aspects of sun, mercury, neptune,
mars and the north node met that day
in the starry sky the planets of pluto uranus
venus and the moon. I had to be pulled
by the light of stars to make the change.
This was followed by a trip to my inlaws for
Thanksgiving which I dreaded, for my mother in law
was a biology teacher who thought the lab specimens
were too expensive and so purchased several chickens
and wrung their necks on her lunch hour. She loved her
son and grandchildren and had taken care of them after
her daughter in law's death. She was always kind to me.
Thursday she told me she was a scientist, that vegetarian diet
led to malnutrition. She had misgivings about her family
being subjected to my diet change.
She was also understandably upset that i would not eat
the turkey she had spent so much time
preparing. And so came the surrender and the eating of 1 bite.
That was it. November 23rd is my annivesary
as a vegetarian.
3 years later cracking eggs into a skillet for the family, I saw
feathers beak and claws sizzling as a fetal chicken from a fertilized
egg was being fried alive. The last egg ever cracked by me.
6 years after going meatless and fishless I was still hanging
on to the last animal product.. milk chocolate... until
Bob Pinkus gently pummeled me
into tossing it.
Sometimes unconscious, sometimes
actively resisting, i've been pulled into
a more nonviolent diet. I was very afraid
I could not act out my resolution, but it
was amazingly easy. I was never tempted.
*
Footnote to Allets:
You might say I was guilttripped into changing.
