Singin' in the choir

I sing in a church choir that is truly one of the best church choirs in the Pacific Northwest. I don't often blog about this part of my life; my spiritual life is quite private and my singing life even moreso! I have an incredibly average (alto) voice, but I like to work hard and, thankfully, auditions are not required to be part of this ensemble.

This past weekend, the choir gave two performances of Handel's Messiah -- the WHOLE thing -- and the experience of that and the reaction to it is worthy of a blog.

For those of you who don't know the piece (or don't know anything beyond the Hallelujah Chorus), the entire Messiah is 53 pieces of music -- arias, recitatives, choruses. That's nearly three hours of music. We did it with a small (15-piece)orchestra (which is in keeping with the Messiah's baroque origins) and nine professionally-trained soloists. It was fun. It was hard work. It was well done. It was inspiring.

The church pays the musicians and the soloists a (very modest) fee for their work; because, collectively, paying that many people adds up fast, the choir members contribute to paying the musicians and soloists. We don't mind. It's one of the typical costs, I fear, to being in a group that lacks a budget but has high standards. I, of course, earn nothing for my work with the choir, but I contribute to the small paychecks received by the soloists and musicians. So, in a way, the cost of my doing this was roughly equivalent to what it would have cost me to attend a professional performance of the Messiah in NYC. The irony is not lost on me. But that's the part of this blog that's supposed to make you laugh -- I PAY to be able to sing in a really good choir. I'm happy to do it.

However, for audience members, the cost of attending this event was about as cheap as it gets for decent music: canned food or a check made out to a local food pantry. We asked people to be generous, though we didn't specify a minimum number of cans or a minimum donation, nor did we turn people away if they just came to listen (and many did, in fact, come without giving anything). Despite that, our auditorium was packed -- and I do mean packed -- for both performances. In the end, people gave a total of $4588 and 1,319 pounds of canned food. Those numbers alone made me exceedingly happy, as this concert was a benefit for the needy. What better way to start the holiday season???!!

What touched my heart even more than those donations, however, were two letters that the choir director received a few days later, and which he shared with the choir. The first letter came from the first violinist. She is an exceptional musician trained at the London School of Music, a member of our congregation and works both as a pediatrician and a professional musician with local orchestras and festivals. She has, not surprisingly, performed Messiah several times. She praised our choir and soloists as having given a truly outstanding performance, one that she would compare to performances done by professional choirs. The second violinist told me the same thing. Wow. Way to make a bunch of amateurs truly proud! Our heads are a little swelled, but at least we know our hard work paid off.

The second letter, however, is probably the more important one. A woman wrote to the director, telling him that as a child she sang in a church choir and had performed the Messiah. Lately, however, her life has been rough -- she's lost her job, her marriage is falling apart, her car has been repossessed, she's suffering (understandably!) from depression and anxiety and a sleep disorder. But she told our director that for over two and a half hours, she forgot all that and felt peace.

I can't imagine that there is any greater reward performers can receive than knowing that their performances can make people escape, momentarily, from their suffering.

That is really what singing in a church choir is all about. I'm just lucky that the one I sing in is also particularly good.

A Vegan(ish) Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was my first major holiday since I started eating a vegan diet.

Of course.

Thanksgiving is basically a holiday that revolves around a dead bird; dairy-laden mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, creamed onions, buttery stuffing, and creamy pies; and a fictitious tale of goodwill between colonists and natives. A great backdrop, to be sure, against which to highlight dietary changes.

I knew going into this that I was THE vegan. Nobody else. Not even a vegetarian in the crowd. Everybody else would eat whatever they normally ate -- which is to say, the stereotypical all-American thanksgiving feast, complete with debate over whether or not to cook a turducken next year.

The best I could do was bring a few dishes of my own (to share, of course) and pray that I didn't get a lot of flack from the relatives. I didn't want the holiday to turn into a "weird Elaine" conversation, nor did I want to turn it into a lesson for everybody else. I just wanted to eat and celebrate abundance. Lessons can happen at other times.

I was a little on edge, anticipating a whole lot of drama. After all, what's a holiday without a little family drama, I ask you?

Well...I actually have nothing -- NOTHING -- to complain about. I am floored to be writing this, as I could easily regale you with tales of holidays past when arguments about things far less important than diet or animal welfare or the environment went from lively to heated within minutes (topics like kids' bedtimes or ages at when kids SHOULD KNOW TO TIE SHOES, for instance).

Nobody gave me a bad time. Nobody tried to trick me into eating something that wasn't vegan. Several people tried my dishes and proclaimed them tasty (leek-mushroom pie, a tofurkey roast and a sweet potato dish). I happily ate my dishes, salad and a roll. Though I ate less than everybody else, I TOTALLY had enough, and was spared the 'oh-my-god-I-ate-too-much-and-I'm-going-to-die' feeling.

I titled this post "vegan(ish)" because I did succumb to a teeny slice of pumpkin pie, which I'm pretty darn sure had some dairy in it somewhere.

Next year, I'll bring a vegan pie, too. :)

Mortality and Health, Plastic Surgery and Rationing

Health news characterized my week. First, from some recent government study, *maybe* women 40-49 don't need mammograms AND maybe those self-exams that we fret about don't do much good anyway. Second, a family friend is dying of cancer. Third, an uncle of a friend of mine is a plastic surgeon in Carlsbad, CA and reports that a surprising number of wealthy people in Southern California give boob jobs to their girls upon high school graduation. In the weirdest of ways, these three "health" items go together.

Regarding the first bit of news: I'm going to say I already knew this. Previous studies (I wanna say from Sweden?) found out YEARS ago that mammograms yield, in a cost-benefit analysis, too few benefits for women in this age range and do yield a whole lot of extra testing (for "questionable" findings) that result in worry but thankfully, usually not disease.

Of course, for the women who HAVE had breast cancer detected through a mammogram and who were 40-49 when this occurred, there is no arguing that it wasn't beneficial for them. But for the vast majority of women my age, it's probably a test we don't need, at least not every year. And, sadly, it's still true that with the worst breast cancers (like inflammatory breast disease, which killed my aunt) neither mammograms nor ultrasounds generally detect the disease (because it doesn't present as lumps).

So...on that depressing note, I'm gonna say we women should keep checking our breasts and head to the doctor and demand tests IF we find something suspicious. Our health is ultimately our responsibility and we have to be our own best advocates regardless of the statistical findings and insurance-related test rationing going on. You think you need a mammogram? Don't hesitate to ask for one.

Health-related news bulletin #2 this week was very personal: a family friend, in his early 70s, has just been told he has cancer and has 6-12 months to live. Wow. Nothing like that kind of news to make you think of your own mortality. How much time do we all have? Is today our last day? Are we going to defy odds and live to 100? Or will it be 90? Or 80 or 70? Or 60 or 50? Have I done with my life what I wanted? Am I consistently appreciative of all that I have? What could I do better RIGHT NOW? If I only had 6-12 months to live, what would I do with that time?

I've spent quite a bit of time this past week thinking about those questions. We should live each day like it's our last, but plan our lives as if we have lots of time left. We need to hold those two opposing possibilities in our heads at all times; no reason to act old when we don't feel it; no reason not to plan even if those plans might not materialize.

Health item #3: Those boob jobs for girls graduating high school. SICK. "Honey, we're so proud of you! And to show our pride, we're gonna get you some REALLY NICE boobs! We're not going to encourage you to go work with the less fortunate -- or spend time with women undergoing treatment for breast cancer -- we're going to focus on YOU and on YOUR body and make it BETTER! We're going to spend our considerable income on something that shouldn't matter, but somehow does: you "need" to have "perfect" boobs (and perfect teeth, skin, hair, eyes, nose, tummy, etc.) in order to be part of OUR world." Talk about self-centered shallow bullshit. (I am not against boob jobs for reconstruction following mastectomy, or for reduction, nor I am against them if, congenitally, there really is a need to "fix" one or both; I am pretty much against them for the shallow purpose of looking "right".)

My friend told me that her uncle says that nearly everyone in Hollywood has something done; that it really isn't possible to be successful and not tweak the tits, or the butt, or the face or the underarm flab or the tummy. What galls me is that while celebs and other rich folk do these things to "look good," the message that reaches the rest of us is that it's all lifestyle (diet and exercise, lots of green tea, yoga, etc.). Yeah, right.

So, while people die from diseases that can't be cured or mull over whether they can afford to have a mammogram that will likely be rationed further by insurance companies, you can contemplate rich girls who, at the tender age of 18, are urged by their parents to have major surgery to get great boobs before they go to college. Or, you could contemplate which celebs have had the most work done.

Wish we could ration that.

The Goat Pimp, Part Two

I did not tell you everything about the conversation I had with my goat pimp friend.

She does, by the way, have a very nice name and a wonderful personality and really deserves a better virtual identity. However, since I assured her that I never reveal my friends' names in blogs, she will simply be referred to with the memorable moniker, "goat pimp friend".

The second half of this story is, at least for me and I suspect for most of my vegan (internet) friends, less tolerable than just the facts that she raises some goats, milks them, makes goat cheese and eats some meat.

She breeds them. Obviously, this was clear in the last blog. Farmers breed their animals; so do horse and dog and cat breeders. For many people, this is just a "duh" issue -- something not to think too hard about, something that just "is".

Of course, if you are paying attention to how I'm setting up this blog (or, if you just know me even a *little* bit), you know I'm about to say that it IS an issue.

At the crux of the matter is this: do we humans have the right to force animals to breed? (In the last blog, you learned that my friend assisted her goat by lifting up the goat's tail -- I didn't mention that she also had to hold the goat against her body -- because the female goat wasn't terribly interested in doing the nasty with the horny billy goat, whose owners were paying my friend for the service of breeding their goat with hers.)

When I heard this story, I said, "Hmmm...not sure I'm on board with that." My friend nodded; she expected me to say as much. The person standing next to us (a friend of hers) said, "Oh, God! They're animals, not people!" She was, of course, expressing an opinion held by many -- that we somehow CAN do to animals what we would not fathom doing to people. In this case, that we can force sex on a female goat even though if that goat were a female human, we'd call that rape.

I hope it's clear that I'm not against consensual breeding. I might also add: another story my friend told me was about having to spend half a day driving one of her female goats to a friend's house who has male goats, because her girl was in desperate need for a "conjugal visit". As far as I know, the male goat did not mind in the least servicing the female one. In this instance, I think my friend was facilitating something that her goat needed, as opposed to what she or some other farmer needed.

What I'm questioning here is whether it's ethical for people who raise animals to force their animals to breed. Vegans, not surprisingly, pretty unanimously answer "NO!". If you haven't read up on this, there are many in-depth reports out there, most of them so detailed that you'll want to stop reading and go back to your naive and ignorant ways. If you're interested, check out blogs at girliegirlarmy.come on this issue, or blogs at the Huffington Post by Ari Solomon. I'm not going to reiterate here what you can read there.

So, I'm ending this blog with a simple question: what do you think about forced breeding and why do you think it?

The Goat Pimp

My friend is a goat pimp.

Well, not exactly, but I wanted your attention.

My friend raises goats. I think she has six. She likes goat milk and makes goat cheese. She is kind of a modern-day farmer on a small (VERY SMALL) farm. She's not doing this to support her family, but it's a pretty important hobby to her. She loves her goats. Fortunately, her small goat-related income (more on that in a minute) is supplemented by her husband's "real" job (something technical that I haven't bothered to learn about...one of my many faults is my general inability to pay attention when the topic of conversation turns to electronics or wiring or computers).

She knows I've been pretty committed of late to veganism, and even though she is a (selective) meat eater and (obviously) a consumer of dairy, she is very sympathetic to vegans and others who criticize factory farming as well as the consumption of meat and dairy. As she succinctly put it, "The current system of factory farming isn't sustainable. We HAVE to change it. Maybe we're not all going to become vegetarians, but even if you do eat meat, that shouldn't mean that you think a farmer can just treat a cow however the hell he wants!"

She has been providing me (rather than me providing her) with various articles on veganism, factory farming and the environment. Most of them I'd already read, but she's one of my few non-internet friends who has actually even CARED that I'm into this. It's been a great comfort.

Perhaps more importantly, her interest in my current obsession has given me new insight into the often overdrawn dichotomy between meat-eaters and non-meat eaters. Here she is, somebody who DOES eat meat and dairy and is, at the same time, very, very in tune with animals. I never did think that it was impossible to be both, but a trend I've noticed among many vegans is their insistence that somehow meat-eaters are by definition heartless, selfish and uncaring.

She is absolutely none of those things.

A more honest description of the difference between meat-eaters and vegetarians is that the former group rarely sees animals as having the same rights as people. (I'm not even sure I can go that far, though I'm quite sure I go farther that most of my meat-eating friends in thinking of animals as having rights similar, though not identical to, people.)

In fact, I think this is THE difference between meat-eaters and people who have chosen a vegetarian or vegan diet due to concerns about animal welfare. (Those who choose either diet primarily for health benefits may not, for instance, be particularly concerned with animal welfare, or at least that may not be the driving force behind their choice.)

My friend told me tonight of a funny story about getting goat semen (yes, goat semen) in her eye when a male goat was brought to mate with one of her female goats. See, she had to "encourage" the female to be "interested" and this involved her holding the female goat's tail up, but somehow while she did this the male goat, while trying to mount the female, uh, sprayed too early and it flew into my friend's eye.

Yeah, that's gross. It's also funny. Premature ejaculation exists among goats (at least in certain artificial circumstances) -- who knew?! And, as my friend said, she was then in the uncomfortable situation of asking the couple who brought the male goat to pay for the service of having (almost) mated with her female goat.

So, she is kind of a goat pimp. But she takes really good care of her goats. And she helps other goat farmers in the area with their goats. And she reads widely on issues related to diet, food, the environment and farming. And she listens to other points of view.

She's not vegan. I doubt she ever will be. But if every meat-eater was as selective about where their meat comes from, the system of factory farming would pretty much fall apart because there would not be a demand for it. She only buys local, grass-fed meat and does not eat meat every day. While these choices are arguably not as ethical as a vegetarian diet, they sure are better than the typical meat-eater's choices.

If only all meat-eaters were like her!

We learn most from people who are NOT like us. I'm not a farmer. I'm no longer a meat-eater and I eat very, very, very little dairy. But I sure am glad I have a friend who is a goat pimp. She knows stuff I don't know. And I might know some stuff she doesn't know.

And sharing it with each other is good for both of us.

Whatcha sayin'?

My life has been oddly calm lately, except for the usual kid-related stuff ("NO! I am NOT sitting next to her!" "NO! I am NOT ready for school yet!" "I JUST got on the computer! You can't make me get off yet!"). About the only notable thing right now is our decision to have our youngest evaluated for possible speech therapy.

His speech is a little odd. His sentence construction is unusual, almost as if English were his second language (currently, it's his ONLY language). For instance, he leaves out certain words, as if they are superfluous ("I not want to do that" instead of "I DO not want to do that"). He sometimes puts adjectives after nouns, the way you do in Spanish ("Remember our house white?"). I'd love to think that he does this because I read to him every night in Spanish, but I REALLY doubt it, since he doesn't actually TALK in Spanish. Hmmm...

When he's excited and trying to talk fast, he is especially prone to these kinds of mistakes and his teacher claims that it's affecting his social life (are little kids really that picky? I guess so.). He consistently misuses pronouns (she for he, his for her, etc.). That, I suspect, isn't that unusual. Some of his pronunciation is difficult to understand as well. He often uses "f" for the "th" sound, which I also think is pretty darn normal for his age. He will tell you he's "hayving," when he means to say he's "behaving." He apparently hears the word as two words -- be hayv -- which, if you think of it, makes some sense, since we often use the word "be" before other words, such as "be good". He insists that we live in "gene," because he hears "Eugene" as "YOU Gene," and I think he (logically) figures that the "you" part is somehow part of the sentence "You live in You Gene". Still, these kinds of mistakes, collectively, mean that his speech is odd and he sounds like a younger-than-he-is child (almost five).

He also uses the word "'cause" instead of "because" ("I want you to play with me 'cause I not have a friend to play with!"). In addition, he has some charming ways of saying things that we've never bothered to correct because they ARE so cute: "Icky Donald's" for instance is "McDonald's". Who would want to correct that?! Perhaps we should, however, if such mistakes are affecting him socially.

I say all this because I just finished completing the at-home assessment, where he performed almost perfectly (although abysmally on the fine motor portion and letter and number recognition -- gotta work on that!). I can pretty much guarantee that if he does this well when being assessed, the evaluator will think, 'Why the hell do these parents and teachers think he has a speech problem?' Apparently, he is CAPABLE of near-perfect speech, but chooses not to use it consistently. The little bugger.

The boy, the doll and the Sunday School Teacher

Question: What do you get when you cross a four-year-old boy, an anatomically correct (boy) doll, and an (older, female) Sunday School teacher?

Answer: a future comic, a dedicated following, and a hassled old lady.

My husband went to pick up our youngest at Sunday School today. When he walked in, our son was surrounded by the other children, who were laughing uproariously at something our son was saying. The teacher, however, was saying, "I don't think that's a good idea."

My husband: "Hi! What's going on?"

Teacher, whispering, but upset: "Your son is pretending that the doll has a poopy diaper!"

Husband: "Oh."

Teacher: "I mean...the doll is ...anatomically correct."

Husband: "Isn't that great?!"

(Meanwhile, husband overhears son say: "And then he had a BIG poop!" Kids laugh hysterically.)

Teacher: "I mean, he needs to cover the doll up...the doll shouldn't be left like that, without clothes on."

(Husband overhears son say, "See! That's his penis!" Kids roll on the floor with laughter.)

Husband: "Don't worry. I'll take care of it. I'll make sure we leave the doll with its clothes on."

(Husband overhears son making sounds of farting and peeing, much to the consternation of the teacher and the delight of the students. Son then runs up to teacher, doll in hand and basically shoves doll toward teacher, making a peeing sound.)

Teacher: "I mean, he really shouldn't be doing this."

Husband: "Well....if the doll is in the classroom and available for play, at this age, this is kinda par for the course."

Teacher: "Oh."

I never heard the rest of the story except that my husband and son put the doll's diaper back on before they went home.

Our reaction? An anatomically correct doll is the PERFECT prop for a future comic. And if you can't handle little kids talking about penises, farts, poop and pee, you need to teach older kids -- MUCH older kids.

Poor lady, however -- she appeared so shocked that we think she needed a drink RIGHT after church. Hope the brandy was handy.