The Dish

by Jessie Roberts

James McWilliams expands on the ethical conundrum raised by Bob Comis, a pig farmer who believes that “[w]hat I do is wrong, in spite of its acceptance by nearly 95 percent of the American population”:

Comis’s call for a more philosophical approach to animal agriculture is neither an arbitrary nor an academic appeal to an abstract notion of animal rights. Instead, it’s grounded in the humble workings of daily life, especially the humble, if complex, workings that bring to our plate animal protein—which has been shown to be not only unnecessary but often harmful to human health. A secular and religious consensus exists that living an ethical life means accepting that my own interests are no more important than another’s simply because they are mine. Basic decency, not to mention social cohesion, requires us to concede that like interests deserve equal consideration. If we have an interest in anything, it is in avoiding unnecessary pain. Thus, even though a farm animal’s experience of suffering might be different from a human’s experience of suffering, that suffering requires that we consider the animal’s interest in not being raised and eaten much as we would consider our own interest in not being raised and eaten. Once we do that, we would have to demonstrate, in order to justifiably eat a farm animal, that some weighty competing moral consideration was at stake. The succulence of pancetta, unfortunately, won’t cut it.

Previous Dish on the processing of livestock here, here, and here.

by Alice Quinn

The poet and journalist Eliza Griswold is the editor and translator of the forthcoming volume I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, with photographs by Seamus Murphy, to be published in April by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

In her introduction to the collection, Griswold writes, “In Afghan culture, poetry is revered…. A folk couplet—a landay—[is] an oral and often anonymous scrap of song created by and for mostly illiterate people: the more than twenty million Pashtun women who span the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. . . . Sometimes landays rhyme, but more often not. In Pashto, they lilt internally from word to word in a kind of two-line lullaby that belies the sharpness of their content, which is distinctive not only for its beauty, bawdiness, and wit, but also for its piercing ability to articulate a common truth about love, grief, separation, homeland, and war.”

Today and over the weekend, we’ll post sets of these landays, which Edward Hirsch, award-winning poet and President of the Guggenheim Foundation, praises for the way in which they enlarge “our sense of the work that poetry does in the world.”

On Thursday, April 3rd at 7PM, Eliza will be appearing at McNally-Jackson Books at 52 Prince Street in New York in conversation with the New York Times’ writer Elizabeth Rubin and Sonia Nassery Cole, and I will be on hand to introduce the event. Here’s the first selection from the book:

When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.
When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.

*

My body belongs to me;
to others its mastery.

*

Don’t shout, my love, my father isn’t giving me to you.
Don’t shame me in the busy street by crying out, “I’ll die for you.”

(From I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, translated and presented by Eliza Griswold, photographs by Seamus Murphy, to be published in April 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. LLC. Text copyright © 2014 by Eliza Griswold. Photographs copyright © 2014 by Seamus Murphy. All rights reserved.)

by Katie Zavadski

Alina Dizik and her family fled the former Soviet Union as Jewish refugees, and she broke away from the language and culture. Yet she recently decided to raise her newborn daughter bilingual:

So, even though I find it simpler to speak English with my Soviet-born husband, I’ve been speaking only Russian to our child—and it’s surprisingly comforting. I find that I want her to know the language, after all. There’s an innate part of me that identifies with the language and feels like I can express my love for her better in Russian, the language my own family still uses to speak to me. Subconsciously, it’s the language I associate with love and family, regardless of politics. And I’d hate to watch her grandparents and great-grandparents struggle to find appropriate words during their own conversations with her if they had to be in English, a language that still feels foreign to them. Her being able to communicate with our family is important to me.

I’ve also realized that I have a personal connection with the language that I can’t just erase. The words mean something. The bluntness of some Russian phrases makes it easier to say what I really mean, even if those same words sound harsh in English. So what if it sounds (to those who don’t speak the language) like we’re constantly berating each other? Sometimes we are. Speaking Russian has given me thicker skin and a constant insight into a culture that I don’t always love. But even with my own atrocious American accent, speaking Russian still feels like home.

She worries that her “American daughter will start kindergarten with a Russian accent.” I’ll have her know that’s nothing to worry about—they tell me I didn’t speak a word of English before entering kindergarten, but I can’t recall ever thinking in another language. A child’s mind is an amazing thing.

But her first concern has a second element: grandparents adapt, and grandchildren pick up scattered phrases. The trouble comes with the extended family. Perhaps Dizik’s, like my own, is scattered across Israel, Europe, and parts of the former USSR. How can we maintain connections without this lingua franca of our ancestors?

Previous Dish on bilingualism here, here, and here.

by Chris Bodenner

Sue Thomas’ post is making me pine for the wilderness:

This year some people might consider the idea of a digital detox vacation. Perhaps a trip to the Scottish Highlands, where communities deprived of decent broadband are wondering whether to market themselves as digital-free destinations in an attempt to flip a lack of poor reception into “meaningful and emotional experiences”. A digital detox can be simply achieved by disconnecting yourself from the internet and turning off your phone for short bursts of time to flush out the anxiety infesting your poor wired mind. Digital detox coach Frances Booth lists the benefits of switching off including reduced stress, an increased sense of calm, better sleep and a sense of freedom.

But is it worth the bother and expense?

Some hardliners go offline for a whole year, but usually only to write a book about it. Or you might purchase a detox vacation in some area of wild natural beauty where others take control of your consumption by confiscating your kit and enticing you towards other kinds of social and unwired interactions. The Caribbean island of St Vincent and the Grenadines offers a digital detox holiday package where travellers exchange their smartphones for a guidebook explaining how to function without technology and a life coach to help them through it. And in northern California, Camp Grounded says it helps visitors to “disconnect from technology and reconnect with yourself”.

However, in line with her book on the benefits of technobiophilia, Thomas suggests that the ideal escape “offers not detox but intoxication – with both nature and with digital life.” Apparently even Dish features can provide a respite:

[I’ve come] across a number of influential and widely cited experiments which demonstrated the positive effects of nature on physiological and mental health. But a considerable amount of their data came from subjects looking at still or moving images, such as window views, … rather than going outdoors.

So in lieu of that detox:

San Juan, Puerto Rico, 9.48 am

(Top photo by Ruben Brulat. See many more stirring images from his series here. Read more Sue Thomas at the The Conversation.)