After the volcanic ash settled a package my mom had sent me weeks earlier finally made arrived. The journey looks to have been a rough one as it was broken and stained and open... Nevertheless almost everything made it in fine shape, most importantly my Sun magazine. I had a day off yesterday from nannying so I ran some errands and grabbed the magazine to read on the metro. I started with the Sunbeams in the back (I always read magazine back to front) but after changing metro lines I opened up to the front and began reading the letters to the editor. They were all discussing an interview of David Peterson "The Good Hunter". I had read this article when I got home from Chile and found it waiting for me at my apt in NYC. My dad is a hunter/fisherman and I am uncomfortable with this lifestyle. I remember growing up when we'd be at the cottage when my grandpa, dad and uncle would get up early to go out hunting in the cold Wisconsin morning, the same place where on summer nights we'd spend on the lake fishing till it got dark. All of the men and some of the women in my dad's family were outdoorsmen; hunting and fishing was a family tradition. I grew up with deer hanging in our garage and my dad plucking birds and duck; fall wind scattering down feathers all around the driveway. I was embarrassed by our basement which my girlfriends called the man room, because it was more or less a taxidermy haven with dead animals stuffed and hung on display. My dad would occasionally take me duck hunting with him after work and when I turned 13 he signed me up for hunter's safety. I scored very well on the test (after all this may have been the only test my father took interest in my passing), but afterwards I shot a target once, and shot at a deer once.
At 13 it was pretty clear that I didn't have my dad's athletic ability nor did I share his interests or his temperament, and it made me feel guilty, I felt certain that he would rather have a kid who wanted to hunt, fish, golf, toss the ball and do yard work with him. But I was an only child book worm who liked big cities, didn't mind a messy room and Vogue magazine.
A couple years ago my father and I went on a photo safari in South Africa, he had the option to hunt and he took it. Clearly, this was a big deal for him, he is a good hunter, always gets his deer (even though it's well known that the these African companies make sure you get a deer when you pay hundreds of dollars to spend a day hunting) and he spent mealtimes posturing with a guy from Ohio who clearly was more casual about his hunting (the both got Impala's in the end). While I had Obama buttons on my bag I spent my meals with a special needs teacher who complained about gay couples who had the gall to adopt children and then be the only parents to show up at parent teacher conferences, and a family that flew to Africa for their daughters jump rope competition. I hated that my dad wanted this trophy, I was uncomfortable with the redneck image of hunting, but our family ate the meat and while growing up I never heard too much hunting as sport talk except the good natured jabbing that goes on between brothers. If he was simply going to hunt for the food and the enjoyment of being outdoors, I couldn't complain, because I definitely had more respect for someone who got their meat if they were going to eat it, locally, organically and certainly not factory farmed. Still the stuffed and mounted decor of our house made me wonder if there weren't a significant element of sport involved if the evidence hung all over our walls.
So when the Sun article arrived, I felt like I often do when I meet people who believe in God but aren't asshole evangelists, gay haters, anti-abortion nut jobs, war supporters and the general hypocrite variety. A breath of fresh air- not really interested in hunting for myself, but I guess if you're going to do it as David Petersen does, "ethically" then I guess, I gotta respect. Well that was the easy reading of it... I didn't think too much about it, I just figured, this guys all right, and hopefully there's a lot more hunter's like him, who can see how the sport hunters out there are a bunch of jackasses, who can look at what he does, question whether he does it ethically, and acknowledge that a lot don't.
The first printed letter to the editor, was someone who 'a cause de' the Sun having printed an interview of David Petersen, was canceling his subscription. Which seemed, well, extreme, hasty... I mean, does he imagine that every writer, photographer and worker for the Sun is a vegetarian? I can see writing in and saying as some people did that David Petersen misled readers about vegan diets and the like, but the one thing I love about the Sun is that I get to read something that I often didn't know about, and then, think... Thinking, self-reflection, debate, all of these things, seem far superior then resting high on your horse with unquestioned faith that yours is the superior way. It's often so easy to look at the guy on the other side of the table and feel superior; generalizing that all those guys over there, are bad. Good for the Sun for printing reader's letters to follow-up, it made me think twice about David Petersen, he may be a hypocrite for eating bacon, but I wonder how many of us have shaky integrity from time to time. I enjoyed the article, it seems that all we ever talk about these days is the environment- pretty overwhelming, and critical to our times, so it was nice to read another thread in the story of our times...
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