My husband is not a vegetarian. I am not a vegetarian. With a Master’s degree in ecology I am deeply familiar with and a big believer in the food chain. Humans are designed to be omnivorous. Should I feel bad about eating a cow? Does a lion? Of course not. I suppose it could be argued that lions, unlike (most) humans, don’t have a sense of morality, wherein lies my crux. In my house, we watch The Simpsons, a lot. I know it isn’t exactly appropriate viewing, but it’s the only cartoon besides Futurama (which we also watch) that I can stand, and that we can watch together without me wanting to stick my head in the oven.

I think The Simpsons is one of the best things American culture has to offer. It’s clever, hilarious, and subversive. No matter how many times I’ve seen an episode, I frequently find something new and funny that I’ve missed before, and I never tire of it. I also think Lisa, who is strong, intelligent, and skeptical, is a good role model. There is one particular episode however, that I blame for my current predicament with my daughter– Lisa The Vegetarian. As you can tell by the title, Lisa decides to become a vegetarian in this episode after bonding with an adorable baby lamb at a petting zoo. Marge serves lamb chops that night at dinner—which speak to Lisa “Lisa, I thought you loved meeeeee?” in a little lamb voice. Lisa declares that she thinks eating animals is wrong, and is a vegetarian in the series from that episode on.

Now my daughter has seen this episode at least three times, because I think it’s one of the funnier ones. However, when she recently claimed that she wanted to be a vegetarian (we hadn’t watched that episode in at least three months prior to this exclamation, but I can’t figure out anywhere else she would get the idea) I wasn’t so sure how funny I thought it was anymore.

Prior to this my daughter had eaten hot dogs, turkey, and ham with gusto. I was a little curious if she really understood what she was saying, so I asked her,

“Honey, what does being a vegetarian mean?”

“It means you don’t eat meat”.

“And why do you want to be a vegetarian?”

“Because I think killing animals to eat them is cruel”. She’s 4.

We then had a discussion about the food chain, but I can’t really argue with her logic. If she can articulate her objection that well, I am willing to support it, doing otherwise would become a power struggle and I want to encourage her to think for and express herself. From there however, we have gotten into a bit of semantics.

“Mom, where does milk come from?”

“Cows”

“Do you have to kill them to get it?”

“No honey, getting milk from a cow doesn’t hurt it, remember when you milked a cow at the State Fair?” (of course, this technically is true, but I didn’t tell her what happens to cows that run out of milk or where they go when they get old).

“Ok, then I’ll drink it”. She looked pensive for a few seconds and then said,

“What about eggs?”. Hello grey area.

Sept. 27th 2006

 Well her vegetarianism lasted about two months.  Today in the store she asked

“What are sausages made from?”

“Pigs honey”.  She looks thoughtful for a few moments….

“Well I don’t like pigs so I’ll eat that”.

 I then tried in vain to explain hypocrisy, but gave up.

Also the last episode of The Simpsons we watched mentioned “Hookers” since I don’t feel like explaining the meaning of that word to my very curious 4 year old we will no longer be watching it.

New urbanism is one of my main interests.  The reason it is one of my main interests is until four years ago, I didn’t really know what it was, and didn’t realize why I was so desperately unhappy living in a traditional, sprawling, beige suburban subdivision–I didn’t know I had a choice. 

My husband and I had seen Prospect New Town (pics above), on the south side of Longmont http://www.prospectnewtown.com  when it was first being built in 1997-1998, and we loved it, but at the time, couldn’t afford to live there (which is ironic because the house we were looking at was $300,000 and is now $700,000).  We had been living in a traditional suburban subdivision for four years in Fort Collins and we decided to move to Denver.  I knew I wanted something different, but wasn’t sure what, I wanted something like Prospect but didn’t want to live in Longmont for commuting reasons.  Then we found our current community-a new urbanist one, and it totally changed my life when we moved here.

In my old subdivision, I had gone from being a research scientist–a very intellectually stimulating job–to being a stay at home parent, which for me was a huge adjustment, and a very difficult one.  I felt stranded, extremely lonely, and screamingly BORED.  My subdivision was a beige ghost town, the only time I ever saw anyone was when they left in their cars in the morning, and when they drove in at night–there were really no public spaces in my subdivision for people to hang out or go to, so they all just retreated to their simulacra of “little cabin in the woods”. There was nowhere to walk to, to get anywhere I had to spend at least 10 minutes in the car.  Every house was the same or very similar design and color–there must have been 13 slightly different colors of non-offensive beige in there.  It sucked.

In my new community, there is an emphasis on shared public spaces.  Every house is 5 minutes walking distance from a pocket park, and 5-10 minutes walking distance from restaurants, offices, and services such as a day care center, a school, and a church.  Here I can walk to the following things in 5-10 minutes:

A grocery store
A pharmacy
16 restaurants ranging from fast food to sit down steakhouse
A car service place (I frequently drop my car off to get service and can walk home and then back to get it)
3 bars including a great family owned pub 5 minutes from my house
7 parks, including a very large one built by the city with soccer fields, baseball, basketball, and enormous playground equipment
An organic community garden
13 other types of stores including a smelly stuff store (bath products, perfume and the like)

Now, being able to walk to things won’t be a big revelation to anyone who has lived in a city, but I never have–I’m a child of the suburbs, so this idea is new to me.

All houses here have porches, and everyone uses them.  Because my new community encourages people to be out in public, I have met almost all my neighbors–and not just the ones on my street, I know everyone on my street, the three streets behind me, and almost everyone in the other phase of the development.  If I need help, or just want to do something, there are at least 15 people in here I can call.  The most indicative I think is my cell phone.  90% of the numbers in my cell phone directory are my neighbors; people who are now close friends and with who I do things weekly.  Here, if my daughter wants to play with someone, (or if I do), they’re right out the front door. There are people around outside all day, every day, the place is vibrant and social.  Walking to the mailbox which is 5 minutes away can take 2 hours, because I run into people along the way and we stop and chat, I NEVER feel lonely here. 

Since moving here, I’ve realized how much the design of our daily surroundings influences our lives, so I’ve done a lot of reading and talking to people about new urbanism.  One of the aspects of new urbanism is social engineering by design.  The idea is to design to encourage people to be in public, instead of retreating to their homes and staying there.  To this end, new urbanist communities create pedestrian friendly environments, create things for people to walk to close to their homes (stores, restaurants, services etc..), and build many public spaces such as pocket parks, in the hope that people will get out, meet each other, and develop a sense of community so sorely lacking in most suburban subdivisions.  In my reading about new urbanism I’ve seen many people (planners, critics, developers, architects), debate if this social engineering by design works or not.  What I have not seen, is someone writing about this that actually lives in a new urbanist community.  Well I do, and it does.

I have also seen some very unfair criticism of new urbanism-the primary one being that new urbanist communities are about nostalgia for a “simpler time” (like there ever was such a thing); that people are attracted to them because they all want to be with racist, bourgeois consumers like themselves.  This criticism seems to primarily arise because most new urbanist communities are composed of neo-traditional architecture, and these critics equate neo-traditional architecture with negative ideologies such as racism (any traditional Southern style such as plantation ), or fascism (neo-classical style).  Got news, architecture is not ideology.  Classic designs are classic for a reason.  PEOPLE LIKE THEM.  That’s it, no nefarious scheme here.  My personal preference is for a mix of neo-traditional and modern architecture, like Prospect.  But currently, that’s pretty rare in new urbanism for a variety of reasons.

New urbanism is a response to the social isolation of traditional suburbia, as well as an environmentally sensible approach to planning-reduce car trips, and it works. Do I still use my car?  Of course.  But I unquestionably use it less than I did when I lived in sprawlsville. 

Does new urbanism have problems?  Yes, primarily affordability.  New urbanism creates places people want to live, which in a free market drives up prices.  And yes, sometimes the neo-traditional architecture lends itself to the creepy sense of a Hollywood set (the set of “Desperate Housewives” looks a bit like my neighborhood, and like a street in Prospect). However, unless critics have a better approach to community planning, SHUT UP.

I have always hated garden gnomes.  I’ve viewed them as prototypical objects of American kitsch along with howling coyotes in any form (if you are from the Southwest you know exactly what I mean), chainsaw bears with a “Wipe Yer Paws” sign (if you live in the mountains), and the eternal syrup–foisted on every women in the 30s-80s demographic who reads shelter or women’s magazines– of Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light”.   However, Ikea changed my mind (slightly).

I am currently debating the prudence of getting my soon to be 5 year old daughter a pet, but as I’ve had rather negative dealings with hamsters in the past, you can be sure she won’t be getting one of those.

When I was 6, my family lived in Eden Praire, Minnesota. I wanted a pet I could keep in my room.  First, my parents got me a gerbil and a Habbitrail set–this modernist plastic cage with see through tubes and small nesting areas (they still sell them).  They also got my brother Mark a gerbil and cage set-up.  Well my gerbil didn’t last long, several days later that unfortunate creature broke its neck when it got stuck in a elbow section of the Habbitrail.  I was very upset and cried but Mark laughed, apparently tempting the poetic justic Gods because his hamster froze to death (inside the house!  That’s Minnesota in the winter for you) that very same night.  To replace the gerbil, my parents bought me a hamster I for some reason named Buffy (the Habbitrail however, went in the trash). 

He lasted at least a few months and then made his escape.  He was gone a long time and we assumed that he had gotten out of the house and died-we were partially correct.  One day my mom’s friend’s visiting British daughter was in the laundry room and noticed that the sink was not draining.  So she attempted to pull out the obstruction which I imagine she thought was a hair clog-once again, partially correct.  She screamed bloody murder and we all ran in.  She had extracted the corpse of my poor hamster Buffy from the pipe; the corpse was unnaturally elongated from the suction.  I have no idea how the poor creature came to such an end, but sufficed to say I did not get any more small rodents as pets.