Waldo Jaquith

Well, when I watched Departures, they were using a regular Hearse.

Posted by tx2vadem on 28 June 2010 @ 10pm

Want bluefin tuna sushi? -go kill it yourself. You can’t; it lives in a place more likely to kill you. Better yet, quit buying sushi.

Posted by Bubby Hussein, Hillbilly Sheikh on 29 June 2010 @ 9am

somebody was telling me just yesterday that in Japan, Christmas isn’t considered a “family” holiday, but instead is a “romantic” holiday — love hotels with Xmas themes are fully booked months in advance. who knew?

Posted by James on 29 June 2010 @ 1pm

That’s really cool, James—that’s going on the blog tonight. :)

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 29 June 2010 @ 4pm

The Japanese hearse didn’t hold a candle to the weirdness of the motorcycle hearse pictured just a few lines down.

Posted by Sam on 29 June 2010 @ 4pm

Re the bluefin problem, I like the Neil Sims approach. As bluefin gets closer to commercial extinction, and the price renders it virtually unobtainable, aqua-farmers like Sims will reap the benefit… and my guess is that sushi lovers won’t skip a beat. They’ll just switch over to the next thing, not give a shit (or even know) that it’s a farmed fish, and enjoy their meal.

Let’s just hope that most of us listen to guys like Sims, and not to envirowhackjobs like Casson Trenor.

Posted by I.Publius on 29 June 2010 @ 9pm

That might solve the eating-tuna problem, but it wouldn’t do much for the tuna-gone problem. Presumably tuna serve some sort of an ecological purpose, fill some kind of a niche, and their loss will have larger effects. (Famously, herds of bison turned over the soil on the prairie. No more bison, no more turning over soil. Which was one of the causes of the Dust Bowl. Also, “prairie” turns out to be hard to spell.)

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 29 June 2010 @ 10pm

Un-turned over soil as a cause of the Dust Bowl?

o_0

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that.

Posted by Michael on 30 June 2010 @ 12pm

Tilled soil is more productive. Fertilized soil is more productive. A lack of plant growth was the essence of the Dust Bowl, though with a handful of causes (all man-made). By eliminating the major source of fertilization and the only source of turning over the soil, vast stretches of this country were made far less productive and prone to desertification.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 30 June 2010 @ 1pm

I’m not sure that’s entirely correct, though. The reason The Plow That Broke the Earth became notable was because of too much tilled soil. Too many farmers following the disasterous idea that rain followed the plow, tearing out of grasslands for room to plant wheat, coupled with drought, coupled with suitcase farmers who left their fields barren when they skipped town, and a whole bunch of other reasons were more of a cause than the lack of bison.

Although, they are connected. The big cattle ranchers saw the bison, thought, “hey, great area for cattle, right?” and started fencing off great swaths of the High Plains. Little by little, towns popped up, and land speculators sold land to unsuspecting prospectors under the guise of it being great farm land and gorgeous towns. All combined, driving the bison from the plains (along with the other “kill buffalo” type things in the late 1800s/early 1900s).

http://www.amazon.com/Worst-Hard-Time-Survived-American/dp/061834697X

I found this book to be quite informative as it’s hard to think about actual individuals surviving the Dust Bowl rather than the Okies as portrayed in Grapes of Wrath, etc.

Posted by Michael on 30 June 2010 @ 1pm

My mistake: “The Plow That Broke the Plains”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122662/

Been a little while since I watched it. :-)

Posted by Michael on 30 June 2010 @ 1pm

I’d never heard of “The Plow that Broke the Plains”—it sounds interesting.

I think that the information that both of us have about this might be accurate. Farmers plowing up the ground and using pesticides was bad, because it left vast tracts of dirt exposed for 6-8 months out of the year, prone to erosion and, famously, being picked up by wind. But the failure of the light, widespread plowing by bison was also bad, because it didn’t turn over the soil. That’s very different than plowing soil, since the hoof-turned soil still has grasses and seeds in it, and presumably the soon-dead plant matter was rapidly reincorporated into the ground, allowing new grass to grow there. You know, kind of like how people aerate and fertilize their lawns.

But now I want to learn more about all of this!

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 1 July 2010 @ 10pm

I got really interested in the Dust Bowl a while back (and I still can’t get over that it wasn’t that long ago… especially reading about the sod houses and the conditions within). It doesn’t make any sense to think that it was going on at the same time that Hollywood was putting out things like The Thin Man, Snow White, and (just before, mostly) the Wizard of Oz. I kept repeating to my wife while reading The Worst Hard Time, “it just doesn’t make any sense.” We were so advanced already as a society (technology wise, etc.) but people were living in such squalor that you might expect to have seen in the pioneering days of the Oregon Trail or earlier.

In history class, most people study a little of WWI, and go straight into the Great Depression (with maybe a sentence on the Dust Bowl), and then go onto WWII. People might read the Grapes of Wrath… which does a good job of showing what it was like for the people that got out, but does a bad job showing what it was actually like. It’s a shame really, since there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn to today’s soil conservation efforts/environmental happenings.

None of this is to say that killing off so many bison wasn’t a bad thing. Or tuna, for that matter. I wish we could get rid of mosquitoes (because I don’t care if they fill a niche, it’s not a niche that needs filled!) :-)

Posted by Michael on 2 July 2010 @ 10am

Funny—I just read a similar (and similarly titled) book last month: Hard Times, by Studs Terkel. That’s about the Depression, not the Dust Bowl, but the Dust Bowl is a recurring theme, of course. A lot of people were poor, but surviving, until the Dust Bowl came along. One woman talked about how when the wind would kick up, dust would just stream in through the walls, through every crack and gap, filling their house with the stuff. I guess it’s a reminder that no matter how bad things seem, they can probably be worse.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 2 July 2010 @ 11am

Studs Terkel… whatta name!

Posted by Michael on 2 July 2010 @ 11am

If you ever get the chance, try and find the Black Blizzard to watch. It was a “documentary” from the History Channel, and the author of the Worst Hard Time tries and recreates a dust storm and the conditions within a home (like insulating/weatherstripping with pieces of cloth soaked in a starchy paste). I gave a quick look, and I can’t seem to find a good source.

It may be available on DVD, but the best I can find is parts of it on YouTube. Here’s a piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJNLDOn_rv8

Enjoy!

Posted by Michael on 2 July 2010 @ 11am