Thoughts from a Distance

I like things viewed from a distance.

One of the portions of the Auchattie Quiz Night on Saturday evening -- (at which I was a millstone around my team's collective neck, being both an American and a full generation behind the rest of the participants -- can you name the UK Christmas no. 1's for the past 15 years?!?) -- was a series of 10 aerial photographs of famous landmarks. I was able to help with the Hoover Dam -- but mistook St. Paul's for the U.S. Capitol building. Stephan caught the mistake, noting that US coaches aren't red on top (think double decker bus in London).

Anyway -- no one recognized Edinburgh castle from the air, though it is unmistakable from the ground.

Two things I especially am enjoying from a distance -- well, three really, but two intertwined yesterday.

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The first is the views across from Scolty on an unseasonably warm winter evening, looking west to the sunset between Mt. Battock and Peter Hill. By all rights I should have been in bed yesterday afternoon recovering from this cold, but napping is out of the question when it is suddenly 50°F and clear skies in the middle of winter! Scolty was teeming with people. I was last on the hill enjoying the sunset when a fellow originally from London appeared. As often happens these days, my accent led to a discussion of the primaries at home -- as viewed from the distance of Scotland (my second thing best enjoyed from a distance...). Turns out he'd shaken hands with Bobby Kennedy in 1967 on a side street off of Buckingham Palace. Thought of him as I read (with great delight, I must admit) Carolyn Kennedy's op-ed piece in the NYTimes, endorsing Obama.

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The final view from a distance that is less enjoyable but maybe more revealing is our collective gluttony -- and I include myself in the "our", having just polished off 2 chocolate chip pancakes with peanut butter which for some reason I have been craving for 3 days now. And as I'm eating my pancakes I'm reading an article on the high residual costs of meat consumption in the west. I realize we Americans are the worst culprits -- but I can't let my British friends off the hook, either. Yesterday I watched one of them eating a traditional beef and yorkshire pudding lunch. Whatever indiginities had been thrust upon that cow before then were equalled by the careless treatment its meat received in the kitchen.

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And that, frankly, is what has struck me from a distance. Our careless approach. My forgetfulness that meat really is a sign of wealth and luxury -- and now, I would argue, an indication of our widespread and well accepted gluttony. It comes cheap at the counter and costly in production. I'm ashamed to admit how long it has taken me to recognize, or care, that we are feeding our cattle better than we are the world's poor.

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That is enough to induce me to encourage you to join me in eliminating one or two meat meals a week, and going vegetarian instead. Last year was the year of the soup -- this year, I'll start exploring more vegetarian options and post them for you. Here's the first one -- a Quinoa and Black Bean Salad that is delicious -- enjoy!