what I've been reading

I've recently finished reading Steve Ross' book. He's become my guru. His book, Happy Yoga is something any yoga student and teacher could learn from. His key point of enjoying yoga, smiling and being happy while doing it, is something that is quickly and easily lost in so many classes I've taken. Teachers who lean too heavily on the physicality of yoga miss the other 80% - the spiritual, deep practice of listening and learning from your body while simultaneously enlightening yourself and coming close (in my estimation) to God.

Another great book I've read recently is No More Bull by Howard F. Lyman. It has, along with Ross' book, pushed me 90% of the way to vegetarianism. I'll probably take the 10% step soon, because suddenly when I see catfish at a fish markets I imagine them scooped up, terrified, in nets - only to die breathless while being filleted alive. Starts taking the enjoyment out of what you're eating when you identify with its slaughter.

I have completely sworn off beef because of the Lyman book though. He paints a clear picture of the dirtiness of american beef and how likely we are, as a society, to find at some point in the future that CJD, Alzheimers, and other brain wasting diseases are prevalent in our beef supply.

And finally, anyone who eats pork is either delusional, heartless, or blind to what pork in doing to our environment. When we lived in Winston-Salem on three occasions I got jammed next to piglet delivery trucks. You see little pink curled tails sticking out of the sides of the trailer, little piglet hooves sticking out, and can see them with cute snouts trying to gasp air above one another.

For anyone who does not know unfortunately North Carolina is a major world exporter of pork and we should consider it our singular shame. These piglets are crammed into huge 18-wheeler trailers with no room to turn around and hauled across the state to the fattening farms. Once there they endured not-short-enough life of hell (torture) and are slaughtered gruesomely. It's an embarrassment to civilization that we silently condone it. It's humiliating to me that no one cares in this state. Tar Heel, NC is the world's largest pork factory in the world. It's a concentration camp for animals. Someday hopefully people will wake up to this.