No More Baked Alaska

... that was an Irish Rovers reference. 
♪ "There was green alligators and long-necked geese,
some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees.
Some cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you're born,
The loveliest of all was the unicorn."  ♬
I jammed to this so hard when I was a child, back in the days of CD's.

I love my sustainability class because this is what I am assigned to read:

This is an excerpt from an New York Times article written by Michael Pollan titled, "Farmer in Chief".

"It will be argued that moving animals off feedlots and back onto farms will raise the price of meat. It probably will — as it should. You will need to make the case that paying the real cost of meat, and therefore eating less of it, is a good thing for our health, for the environment, for our dwindling reserves of fresh water and for the welfare of the animals. Meat and milk production represent the food industry’s greatest burden on the environment; a recent U.N. study estimated that the world’s livestock alone account for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases, more than all forms of transportation combined. (According to one study, a pound of feedlot beef also takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce.) And while animals living on farms will still emit their share of greenhouse gases, grazing them on grass and returning their waste to the soil will substantially offset their carbon hoof prints, as will getting ruminant animals off grain. A bushel of grain takes approximately a half gallon of oil to produce; grass can be grown with little more than sunshine."

It was as I was reading through this, and as I think about this awesome girl, Zoë, who I met here, that I decided I am going to try to further reduce my food-generated carbon footprint. Mondays and Wednesdays will, from now on, be Lisa's vegan days. No milk, no cheese, no yogurt, no eggs, no dairy what-so-ever. It's probably easier said than done, but it is going to be done. It's easy while I'm here at school because they have a readily-available vegan option at any time throughout the day; venturing away from campus may prove to be a little more difficult. I am up for the challenge. 

Now I've got myself really thinking... tomorrow, my breakfast will probably consist of cereal with soy milk, a bagel with peanut butter, and a banana or an orange. And of course a glass of orange juice.

Back to my sustainability class... another reason I love the course is because one lecture we discussed this photo [The Arcadian or Pastoral State (1834) by Thomas Cole] and the concept of "a life of contemplation". 

Another lecture, we had "The Spirit of John Muir" come in, and for an hour and a half we simply listened to the tales of John's adventures in the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We heard things like, "I decided then, that as long as I lived, I'd hear the birds sing", "I never saw a discontented tree, did you?" and "hiking is a vile word; one should saunter though the wilderness".

The last lecture I sat through for this class was all about civic engagement, tearing down fences, and the antidote to apathy.  Dave Meslin had lots to say about Canadian "democracy", in quotation marks. Anyone who has spoken at a TEDx event gets my attention; take a look...

And that is why I love this class... not because of the upcoming test.