“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Orwell got it right? Yes? Meanwhile I can report that I am acquainted with Ishmael Khaldi, Israel's current ambassador to Eritrea. :)
I have a lot of things to do today and was not planning to comment on this column. But several comments spring to mind -- so while I am thinking of them, here goes.
The scriptures say that man is made in the image of God. So this story about putting parts of hogs in people brings up some interesting things to think about. This is not a new story. Valves from a pig heart was put in a human heart several years ago; but I believe that the transplant of the kidney is the first with an entire organ. If parts of hogs will work in people then there must not be a big difference biologically between an person and a hog. Then if a person is the image of God, what does that say about God? We better not go there, but it is something to think about.
That is a good idea to raise donor hogs. It is said that some people sell a kidney to raise needed cash; but if there are donor hogs around how does that affect them?
My closest companion is a dog who stays outside. He has his own little house to stay in and he can come and go as he sees fit. But he always acts like he is glad to see me when I return home from being away. Dogs are funny; when a strange person or animal comes around he runs out and barks at them like he wants to run them off. But if said person or animal is real aggressive, then said dog runs and gets behind me.
If you want a really good tomato, you just about have to raise it yourself. We bought some tomatoes this past Summer and a few were good but it is extremely hard to buy a good tomato. That is because people who raise tomatoes to ship have to use a variety that was developed to stand a lot of handling and shipping. If you raise them at home you can grow varieties with more taste but they could not stand a lot of handling. It is possible to grow them in containers on the patio.
About old people who are bright eyed and enthusiastic; I always wonder about their intelligence and their emotional stability. Anyone who has seen 80 or 90 years of life and still thinks the world is a wonderful place, well, we probably don't need to go there either. Anyone 80 or 90 years old should know that most of the world and its activities are terribly overrated and that a lot of busy and important people are just busy killing time until the grim reaper shows up. If I died today a handful of people would notice but most of the world would not know or care and my passing would make little difference to very many people. I know that and it is just reality and it is true for everyone.
In the mean time, the dog is anxious to go walking. It is a beautiful, cool, sunny day so lets enjoy it while we can.
the subject of tomatoes brings to mind the discussion of "mission statements." Is it your mission to have a tomato that tastes good, or is it your mission to have one that can be shipped and sold across the country?
Or, is it a tomato on a mission? Some time in the 1990s, when I was a judge for Orange County, CA student science fair projects, one of the entries was about "Tomatoes in Space!" No Kidding! Some government organization wanted to know if they could speed up the "making new varieties" of popular vegetables by sending the seeds into space! The concept was that perhaps exposure to cosmic rays could alter the DNA in novel ways. But, how can you test several hundred tomato seeds to see if there's any difference in taste? Set it up as a "Science Fair" project! So this student had joined the NASA (?) program. Seeds were provided. The tomatoes were grown, and the student set up taste panels to judge how "delicious" the fruit was perceived to be. Each and every one of us judges found one "flaw" in the project: We didn't get to sample any "Space Tomatoes" ourselves!
Some other project won that particular regional science fair. As a judge, I tended to favor projects that were "personal inquiries" that interested the exhibitors themselves. At that particular fair, for example, one student from a private school had been stimulated by a dinner table conversation with her obstetrician father. The father felt that in the face of a potentially difficult birth - if the mother's birth canal was narrow, for example, - that children born by Caesarean section might turn out to suffer less stress and have higher IQ as a result. This teenaged girl had gone to the school's guidance counselor and set up a questionnaire. Students supplied the relevant information about their birth status: "natural" or "assisted." The counselor then matched this information with scores for standardized IQ tests. The doctor's daughter used some standard probability techniques to analyze the data. It turned out that the kids who were spared the stress of passing out the birth canal actually scored about five IQ points higher on average, that the cohort that arrived in the world via a "natural" birth.
If I recall, neither the "Tomatoes in Space" nor the "means of entrance" project won that particular science fair. It seems to me, though, that just the act of becoming involved in a science fair may be more important to the contestants, than whether they "Win" or not! I feel, as someone who judged half a dozen or more of these contests, that the students who actually followed their own curiosity, whether it was to find a project like "Tomatoes in Space" or to dig into a subject that captures their attention, really gained a lot from participating in the program. The "build your own volcano" sort of entry that comes out of "Science Fair Projects You Can Do" type books, on the other hand, seemed to me to have much more limited effects on whether participation in the fair spurred their interest in science as a whole or not.
P.S.! Along the way, one project I saw was probably of more interest to us, the judges, than to the students themselves. One student heard someone say that "Red cars get more traffic tickets than other colors." This contestant went to a local traffic court and got the data for a hundred or more speeding ticket arrests. Yes! Especially if you're driving a "sports car" - something that gives the impression of speed, red paint can be ticket bait! A word to the wise, courtesy of science fairs!
Maybe someone will develop a tomato that can be grown commercially (that can stand a lot of handling) but that also will have the taste of a homegrown tomato. That would be a great accomplishment. We have several varieties now that one can grow at home and which taste good; my problem is having the energy to go out and plant them in the Spring and grow them. We have had a garden every year for the last 25 years; but the one this year was the poorest. Part of that was my fault but we also had a wetter and cooler Spring than normal. Many vegetables like tomatoes and okra need warm sun. They need water but not too much water and damp soil.
Okra! Wow! In the 1980s my husband and I moved to California. I had a garden in the side yard, with peas and artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes and lima beans,... Chinese pea pods and okra. I was picking the okra one day when the mail lady came by. "Okra!?! she said.
"My Dad's from Oklahoma. We ate okra when I was a kid." I replied.
"You're An OKIE!" she crowed, as if I was the first of the "Grapes of Wrath" Steinbeckian breed she'd ever laid eyes on. As an Upstate New Yorker, I was amazed at her conclusion! She wasn't alone, though. In the Central Valley of California, I ran across folks who still carried prejudices about the Dust Bowl migrants of the 1930s, as if their children and grandchildren carried some sort of an indelible stain. Isn't it strange how the shadows of depressions and migrations from decades ago can still cause reactions in the present!
Okra and grits are two things that many people like to make a "todo" over. Okra is slimy and they have never eaten grits -- you know what people say. But I like okra and grits. Tomatoes and okra are my favorite vegetables to grow. Some years ago we had gardens with peas, beans, corn, eggplant, squash, etc. But now we just grow tomatoes and okra. One reason is that I don't have the energy to grow all of that other; another reason is that you can buy frozen peas and beans that taste pretty good. It is hard to buy a really good tomato; you just about have to grow it yourself. Okra fresh from the garden is also better.
Okra is one of the easiest crops to grow. After you plant it and it starts growing all you need to do is pick it. Okra likes warm weather and does best if the temperature stays above about 70 at night. I water it if it gets real dry; otherwise just pick it. I try to plant enough so I pick it about every other day and get enough to fry for lunch. I don't like it boiled; so every other morning I go out and pick what is large enough and take it in and cook if for lunch. You can do that until frost comes.
Most people put too much breading on okra when they fry it. If you eat it in some restaurants, all you taste is breading.
"people who still carried prejudices" Yes some people love to hang on to their prejudices and biases. Many people have a yearning to feel that they are better than others and they grasp at all of these chances to be special. "My family came on the Mayflower," etc. you know.
That was certainly lovely wry humor at the end! Here I am, wondering what day it is? I went somewhere yesterday that I usually visit on Sunday. It wasn't until I saw the date line for Writer's Almanac that I was convinced that, indeed, it is just Friday! Oh! The confusions of our later years!
As for "cohabiting with animals", I got myself a needed berth out of town years ago by agreeing to "housesit" a cat while his human was in Jerusalem. I had no idea what that entailed! Nikki was like a mobile alarm clock! Whenever he decided it was time to go out in the morning, he would begin pacing back and forth across my face until I was thoroughly distraught. That was an inconvenience, but there was worse to come. There was a deck outside, with a birdfeeder that I had been instructed to keep filled. The birds were cautious, but Nikki decided he could sit on the windowsill, choose his time, and have some "cat and bird" fun, his style. Except - there had been some sort of metallic grill across the window in former times. A raw cut metallic bar protruded down into "cat seating area". Time after time, Nikki would gouge himself on the sharp end. Then I'd have to apply ointment to the raw cut, and worse, try and fit an open-ended sock over his head to cover the area so he wouldn't scratch it and get an infection.
I wondered about Nikki's intelligence, that he kept returning to that painful post. But I guess the pleasure of "birdwatching" - and the covert intent that he would capture one of those creatures some day, outweighed the stabs. Eventually, the owner's son-in-law came and did some repairs to the house. He removed the grill entirely, giving Nikki his preferred platform, without the pain.
Most of what I know about cats, I learned from Nikki. I wonder how typical he really is?
Pigs are also intelligent. I would imagine that human kidneys would make suitable transplant organs for pigs. That would be a total waste of resources. I would imagine it would also be sacrilegious and illegal.
We are God's creation. Life has only been found in one location, this lovely place we call Earth. I know the is high speculation of other possible locations in this universe where life might have developed but nothing positive yet. We are in such an intense endeavor to find extraterrestrial life and yet we don't respect or care for the abundant life that is all around us. It's quite odd.
Pigs are intelligent and much cleaner than most people think. Those pigs that roam in the wild or on free range are usually quite clean. They lie in mud to stay cool and to combat insects. When I was growing up we always had five or six pigs and usually each December we would butcher two of them. By that time I had made pets out of them and always hated to see them killed.
You are right, I don't know why so many people are interested in going to another planet. It is great to look at them with a telescope but I would not want to go there. Maybe they have thoughts of escaping the problems that we have created on earth. Actually, time and life goes by so fast and humans have such little knowledge and control over the universe and the earth that all of our plans are probably for naught. People are still building in places that are known to be flood prone.
Thank you and you too. My son is a graphic artist and he makes a living doing so. I pointed out to him that there aren't many people who do what he does successfully and at the beginning of my education I considered being an artist. After taking classes in art in college I learned that to be an artist is to have a special spirit and of course to be talented. I had neither. I realized my life would be more fulfilled and productive by going into healthcare and I never regretted that decision. I do admire my son and his ability but my son commented to me, I am now retired, he thought my life is "golden". Who would know? As Mr. Keillor might comment, "lucky". I know I am.
Mr. Keillor, I hope I’ll live long enough to see you turn old, reading your observations and laughing out loud. But if it makes you feel better in the meanwhile, arguably you could already be considered “cranky.” I selfishly hope we’ll all be blessed by your musings, cranky or not, for at least another decade.
I think this move to pig parts for people is brilliant and long overdue. With the average pork consumption among Americans so high, I really don't see the need any longer for drugs that prevent organ rejection. Those pig kidneys will feel right at home...
Maybe what will happen is that when a pig is slaughtered, the kidneys, heart valves, and other reusable parts will go to be put in humans; the rest of the pig will go to make bacon, sausage, etc. Talk about efficiency; nothing will be wasted. Best regards.
The pig royalty was a great vision! I wonder if we will still enjoy bacon if we know that the transplant we are waiting for was at one time keeping that meat alive?!?
Good to know of another Cappy (although my older sister gave me the nickname as she wasn't able to say Cathy...or maybe after no longer being the only child, she wished to call me Crappy...dunno). There used to be a comic in the newspaper called Cappy Dick about a seafaring Captain. What's the story with your Cappy?
You are so witty, but this particular column had me laughing so hard my neighbor came to see if I was alright!
I saw what you did there.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Orwell got it right? Yes? Meanwhile I can report that I am acquainted with Ishmael Khaldi, Israel's current ambassador to Eritrea. :)
I have a lot of things to do today and was not planning to comment on this column. But several comments spring to mind -- so while I am thinking of them, here goes.
The scriptures say that man is made in the image of God. So this story about putting parts of hogs in people brings up some interesting things to think about. This is not a new story. Valves from a pig heart was put in a human heart several years ago; but I believe that the transplant of the kidney is the first with an entire organ. If parts of hogs will work in people then there must not be a big difference biologically between an person and a hog. Then if a person is the image of God, what does that say about God? We better not go there, but it is something to think about.
That is a good idea to raise donor hogs. It is said that some people sell a kidney to raise needed cash; but if there are donor hogs around how does that affect them?
My closest companion is a dog who stays outside. He has his own little house to stay in and he can come and go as he sees fit. But he always acts like he is glad to see me when I return home from being away. Dogs are funny; when a strange person or animal comes around he runs out and barks at them like he wants to run them off. But if said person or animal is real aggressive, then said dog runs and gets behind me.
If you want a really good tomato, you just about have to raise it yourself. We bought some tomatoes this past Summer and a few were good but it is extremely hard to buy a good tomato. That is because people who raise tomatoes to ship have to use a variety that was developed to stand a lot of handling and shipping. If you raise them at home you can grow varieties with more taste but they could not stand a lot of handling. It is possible to grow them in containers on the patio.
About old people who are bright eyed and enthusiastic; I always wonder about their intelligence and their emotional stability. Anyone who has seen 80 or 90 years of life and still thinks the world is a wonderful place, well, we probably don't need to go there either. Anyone 80 or 90 years old should know that most of the world and its activities are terribly overrated and that a lot of busy and important people are just busy killing time until the grim reaper shows up. If I died today a handful of people would notice but most of the world would not know or care and my passing would make little difference to very many people. I know that and it is just reality and it is true for everyone.
In the mean time, the dog is anxious to go walking. It is a beautiful, cool, sunny day so lets enjoy it while we can.
"overrated and busy killing time" that applies doubly to the "self-important" people in our midst.
the subject of tomatoes brings to mind the discussion of "mission statements." Is it your mission to have a tomato that tastes good, or is it your mission to have one that can be shipped and sold across the country?
Or, is it a tomato on a mission? Some time in the 1990s, when I was a judge for Orange County, CA student science fair projects, one of the entries was about "Tomatoes in Space!" No Kidding! Some government organization wanted to know if they could speed up the "making new varieties" of popular vegetables by sending the seeds into space! The concept was that perhaps exposure to cosmic rays could alter the DNA in novel ways. But, how can you test several hundred tomato seeds to see if there's any difference in taste? Set it up as a "Science Fair" project! So this student had joined the NASA (?) program. Seeds were provided. The tomatoes were grown, and the student set up taste panels to judge how "delicious" the fruit was perceived to be. Each and every one of us judges found one "flaw" in the project: We didn't get to sample any "Space Tomatoes" ourselves!
Some other project won that particular regional science fair. As a judge, I tended to favor projects that were "personal inquiries" that interested the exhibitors themselves. At that particular fair, for example, one student from a private school had been stimulated by a dinner table conversation with her obstetrician father. The father felt that in the face of a potentially difficult birth - if the mother's birth canal was narrow, for example, - that children born by Caesarean section might turn out to suffer less stress and have higher IQ as a result. This teenaged girl had gone to the school's guidance counselor and set up a questionnaire. Students supplied the relevant information about their birth status: "natural" or "assisted." The counselor then matched this information with scores for standardized IQ tests. The doctor's daughter used some standard probability techniques to analyze the data. It turned out that the kids who were spared the stress of passing out the birth canal actually scored about five IQ points higher on average, that the cohort that arrived in the world via a "natural" birth.
If I recall, neither the "Tomatoes in Space" nor the "means of entrance" project won that particular science fair. It seems to me, though, that just the act of becoming involved in a science fair may be more important to the contestants, than whether they "Win" or not! I feel, as someone who judged half a dozen or more of these contests, that the students who actually followed their own curiosity, whether it was to find a project like "Tomatoes in Space" or to dig into a subject that captures their attention, really gained a lot from participating in the program. The "build your own volcano" sort of entry that comes out of "Science Fair Projects You Can Do" type books, on the other hand, seemed to me to have much more limited effects on whether participation in the fair spurred their interest in science as a whole or not.
P.S.! Along the way, one project I saw was probably of more interest to us, the judges, than to the students themselves. One student heard someone say that "Red cars get more traffic tickets than other colors." This contestant went to a local traffic court and got the data for a hundred or more speeding ticket arrests. Yes! Especially if you're driving a "sports car" - something that gives the impression of speed, red paint can be ticket bait! A word to the wise, courtesy of science fairs!
Maybe someone will develop a tomato that can be grown commercially (that can stand a lot of handling) but that also will have the taste of a homegrown tomato. That would be a great accomplishment. We have several varieties now that one can grow at home and which taste good; my problem is having the energy to go out and plant them in the Spring and grow them. We have had a garden every year for the last 25 years; but the one this year was the poorest. Part of that was my fault but we also had a wetter and cooler Spring than normal. Many vegetables like tomatoes and okra need warm sun. They need water but not too much water and damp soil.
Best wishes and good luck.
Okra! Wow! In the 1980s my husband and I moved to California. I had a garden in the side yard, with peas and artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes and lima beans,... Chinese pea pods and okra. I was picking the okra one day when the mail lady came by. "Okra!?! she said.
"My Dad's from Oklahoma. We ate okra when I was a kid." I replied.
"You're An OKIE!" she crowed, as if I was the first of the "Grapes of Wrath" Steinbeckian breed she'd ever laid eyes on. As an Upstate New Yorker, I was amazed at her conclusion! She wasn't alone, though. In the Central Valley of California, I ran across folks who still carried prejudices about the Dust Bowl migrants of the 1930s, as if their children and grandchildren carried some sort of an indelible stain. Isn't it strange how the shadows of depressions and migrations from decades ago can still cause reactions in the present!
Okra and grits are two things that many people like to make a "todo" over. Okra is slimy and they have never eaten grits -- you know what people say. But I like okra and grits. Tomatoes and okra are my favorite vegetables to grow. Some years ago we had gardens with peas, beans, corn, eggplant, squash, etc. But now we just grow tomatoes and okra. One reason is that I don't have the energy to grow all of that other; another reason is that you can buy frozen peas and beans that taste pretty good. It is hard to buy a really good tomato; you just about have to grow it yourself. Okra fresh from the garden is also better.
Okra is one of the easiest crops to grow. After you plant it and it starts growing all you need to do is pick it. Okra likes warm weather and does best if the temperature stays above about 70 at night. I water it if it gets real dry; otherwise just pick it. I try to plant enough so I pick it about every other day and get enough to fry for lunch. I don't like it boiled; so every other morning I go out and pick what is large enough and take it in and cook if for lunch. You can do that until frost comes.
Most people put too much breading on okra when they fry it. If you eat it in some restaurants, all you taste is breading.
"people who still carried prejudices" Yes some people love to hang on to their prejudices and biases. Many people have a yearning to feel that they are better than others and they grasp at all of these chances to be special. "My family came on the Mayflower," etc. you know.
Have a nice life.
That was certainly lovely wry humor at the end! Here I am, wondering what day it is? I went somewhere yesterday that I usually visit on Sunday. It wasn't until I saw the date line for Writer's Almanac that I was convinced that, indeed, it is just Friday! Oh! The confusions of our later years!
As for "cohabiting with animals", I got myself a needed berth out of town years ago by agreeing to "housesit" a cat while his human was in Jerusalem. I had no idea what that entailed! Nikki was like a mobile alarm clock! Whenever he decided it was time to go out in the morning, he would begin pacing back and forth across my face until I was thoroughly distraught. That was an inconvenience, but there was worse to come. There was a deck outside, with a birdfeeder that I had been instructed to keep filled. The birds were cautious, but Nikki decided he could sit on the windowsill, choose his time, and have some "cat and bird" fun, his style. Except - there had been some sort of metallic grill across the window in former times. A raw cut metallic bar protruded down into "cat seating area". Time after time, Nikki would gouge himself on the sharp end. Then I'd have to apply ointment to the raw cut, and worse, try and fit an open-ended sock over his head to cover the area so he wouldn't scratch it and get an infection.
I wondered about Nikki's intelligence, that he kept returning to that painful post. But I guess the pleasure of "birdwatching" - and the covert intent that he would capture one of those creatures some day, outweighed the stabs. Eventually, the owner's son-in-law came and did some repairs to the house. He removed the grill entirely, giving Nikki his preferred platform, without the pain.
Most of what I know about cats, I learned from Nikki. I wonder how typical he really is?
Pigs are also intelligent. I would imagine that human kidneys would make suitable transplant organs for pigs. That would be a total waste of resources. I would imagine it would also be sacrilegious and illegal.
We are God's creation. Life has only been found in one location, this lovely place we call Earth. I know the is high speculation of other possible locations in this universe where life might have developed but nothing positive yet. We are in such an intense endeavor to find extraterrestrial life and yet we don't respect or care for the abundant life that is all around us. It's quite odd.
Pigs are intelligent and much cleaner than most people think. Those pigs that roam in the wild or on free range are usually quite clean. They lie in mud to stay cool and to combat insects. When I was growing up we always had five or six pigs and usually each December we would butcher two of them. By that time I had made pets out of them and always hated to see them killed.
You are right, I don't know why so many people are interested in going to another planet. It is great to look at them with a telescope but I would not want to go there. Maybe they have thoughts of escaping the problems that we have created on earth. Actually, time and life goes by so fast and humans have such little knowledge and control over the universe and the earth that all of our plans are probably for naught. People are still building in places that are known to be flood prone.
At any rate have a nice and happy life.
Thank you and you too. My son is a graphic artist and he makes a living doing so. I pointed out to him that there aren't many people who do what he does successfully and at the beginning of my education I considered being an artist. After taking classes in art in college I learned that to be an artist is to have a special spirit and of course to be talented. I had neither. I realized my life would be more fulfilled and productive by going into healthcare and I never regretted that decision. I do admire my son and his ability but my son commented to me, I am now retired, he thought my life is "golden". Who would know? As Mr. Keillor might comment, "lucky". I know I am.
Mr. Keillor, I hope I’ll live long enough to see you turn old, reading your observations and laughing out loud. But if it makes you feel better in the meanwhile, arguably you could already be considered “cranky.” I selfishly hope we’ll all be blessed by your musings, cranky or not, for at least another decade.
Ken Horton
Houston, Texas
I think this move to pig parts for people is brilliant and long overdue. With the average pork consumption among Americans so high, I really don't see the need any longer for drugs that prevent organ rejection. Those pig kidneys will feel right at home...
Maybe what will happen is that when a pig is slaughtered, the kidneys, heart valves, and other reusable parts will go to be put in humans; the rest of the pig will go to make bacon, sausage, etc. Talk about efficiency; nothing will be wasted. Best regards.
Gives new meaning to the old saying: "You are what you eat!"
You shoulda channeled George Orwell
The pig royalty was a great vision! I wonder if we will still enjoy bacon if we know that the transplant we are waiting for was at one time keeping that meat alive?!?
Good to know of another Cappy (although my older sister gave me the nickname as she wasn't able to say Cathy...or maybe after no longer being the only child, she wished to call me Crappy...dunno). There used to be a comic in the newspaper called Cappy Dick about a seafaring Captain. What's the story with your Cappy?