Divisive

I read a short story in the paper this morning. No big news, just a woman writing about a family outing to a vegan potluck and maypole dance. I have never been to either. A maypole dance sounds like it might be fun, to watch anyway, but a vegan potluck? I'm sorry, count me out. I understand that people have reasons for being vegans. They could be moral, health or religious, and that's fine, but by proclaiming this to be vegan potluck, they were effectively shutting me out. Of course, I did not know about it, and since I seldom go anywhere, it is almost certain that I would not have gone. Well, if one of my vegan friends had insisted then I could have gone, assuming I have any vegan friends. (Vegans are what you might call extreme vegetarians, no meat, milk, eggs, etc.)

I wonder, do vegans feel the same way about barbeques? I suppose they might. I don't know, but I suspect the rise of veganism locally is due to the number of Indians who have immigrated to this area, mostly because of Intel. They are the biggest employer of over educated nerds in the area. Of course, I could be completely wrong. It could be entirely a home grown thing, people rebelling against the way food is grown and prepared in this country. I have to agree with that, especially the way cattle are handled, but I'm not going to get into that argument. I expect that those involved will sort it out eventually.

Food is one of the things that binds us together. I remember reading a story about some aboriginal Indians living in the Amazon (probably in The New Yorker). There were deer living in the forest, and to the outsider who was visiting, they seemed like a good source of food. But the tribe he was staying with did not hunt deer. The next tribe over did, and that was one of the ways they distinguished themselves from that tribe. Those guys eat deer, us guys don't.

We have a bit of that going on here with omnivores, vegetarians and vegans. I don't think there are any human carnivores, though there was one guy in a film about Teddy Roosevelt, who said "Vegetables? I haven't eaten any vegetables since I was eight years old". Even including a little bread in your diet would exclude one from being classified as a carnivore.

Divisiveness is what causes much of the trouble in the world, and it doesn't look like it's going away.

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.