The Ethics of Working for SeaWorld (repost)

*reposted from June 28, 2007* - My understanding about the orcas/killer whales held at SeaWorld has changed substantially since I wrote this post.  I will be writing a follow-up in the near future to address some of what I say below. Click here for the original with comments.
 
A long while ago I decided to apply for a trainer position with SeaWorld, and lo! - I actually made it through the first round of cuts. They invited me to come for a personal interview and swim test. It was the swim test that intimidated me the most. I had to be able to free dive to 30 feet. No problem. I had to be able to swim the length of a pool underwater. Again, no problem. But I also had to swim 250 feet in a certain amount of time, a little over a minute, I think, and do a graceful dive off a 6 foot board.

Problem. When I swim, I am neither fast nor graceful. It's the result of twelve years of scuba diving. We divers are accustomed to swim very quietly with our hands at our sides, controlling every movement with a flick of the fin, able to dart forward or backward or hover in one place effortlessly, like a fish. Subtlety and slowness are key, because it lets you maneuver into tight places and glide alongside underwater creatures without alarming them. (Try swimming quickly into a school of fish and see how many are still there when you stop. Answer - none.) I take my time. I see things. This is the way I swim.

Take my fins away, and I am about as subtle as a cat in a bathtub. I thrash and flail and generally feel that I'm not actually going anywhere, like I've gone from being a dolphin to being a Lincoln Log. And since breathing is not much concern to a diver, I still haven't figured out that whole business about taking breaths during a stroke. It has something to do with timing, I think - breathe in when your head is above water, breathe out when it's underwater- but I never can get the order quite right. My version is - don't do anything while your head is above water, breathe in when it's underwater, cough and sputter, repeat.

I won't even begin to describe how I look when I try to dive off a board. (Picture a skydiver who has just realized his parachute isn't working...) Again, we scuba divers just strap on 50lbs of equipment and fall over the side of the boat in a giant splash. Sadly, my splash is about the same size even when I don't have the equipment. My dive method would best be described as "cinder block."

So there was that holding me back from the interview, the idea of making myself look like a drown victim in front of the other applicants, who were probably still eating glue and crayons when I was first learning to scuba. I had plenty of time to practice the speed thing, and the grace thing, if I wanted to. And besides the complete humiliation factor, I could at least go and have a lovely behind-the-scenes tour of SeaWorld, meet a few trainers, perhaps cuddle with a dolphin. The tests were to be held early - freakin' early - in the morning, before the park opened, so I would have a free ticket for the rest of the day in Sea World. Not bad, right?

Oh, the curse of principles.

The more I looked into what SeaWorld embraced, the more I realized that I would not be happy working for them, and I've never fancied humoring interviewers for a job I didn't actually want. Perhaps I passed on a fantastic opportunity, but here is the line of thinking that led me there.

I visited SeaWorld as a kid, and loved it. Loved it then, loved the concept of it even as I began researching what it would be like to work for them. Man and whale, coexisting in peace and cooperation as an example to the world... That was my childhood depiction of the place. But now, after doing much research, it seems to have changed to - man and whale, coexisting in a corporate driven illusion as a means to great gobs of money.

I ask myself, is this disenchanted adult cynicism, or a grasp of reality that comes with age and learning? It's a bit sad, either way. My inner debate about SeaWorld echoes the same qualms I have about all zoos and aquariums, after being both tourist and keeper, and boils down to three cons and two pros.

Cons
1. Wild Capture - Captive breeding cannot sustain the number of whales SeaWorld needs. Up until 1995, whales were being caught from the wild, sometimes using tremendously unethical methods (ie explosives). Although the current policy states that they no longer will acquire animals directly from the wild, they continue to purchase wild-caught whales from international water parks, supporting the trade.

2. Captivity - The orcas at SeaWorld average a lifespan of 20 years, compared to 60 years in the wild. Boredom is an issue, as well as aggression.

3. Glitz - SeaWorld presents its prized orcas in a display of flash and glamour that is as far removed from a natural experience as a bear on a bicycle. Their new show takes place in a stadium with three massive video screens and a sound system that blares the type of music you'd expect in a "Best of the NFL" montage. There are the prerequisite (and forced) "magical moments" that involve some lucky audience child bonding with Shamu (who is thinking, "Feed me the fish already!") and the overly perky trainers hamming it up. (Do they get to wear ear protection, or do they just go deaf from the ridiculously loud music?)

Seriously, the only way I think I could ever be like one of those trainers would have to involve either some sort of head trauma or drugs. For the interview, I was required to memorize and, in a showman's voice, say, "I’d like to introduce you to a special pair of whales. This is Sandy, and right next to her is her baby, Cassie. Cassie was born right here in this pool just a year and a half ago. I was fortunate to be there when she was born. That was a long but very exciting night. Since then, Cassie has learned a lot from her mom and the rest of the whales in her family. She’s currently learning how to jump like her mom, who is one of our most spectacular jumpers. And even though Cassie’s not quite ready to match her –you’ll see that she tries. Now diving to the bottom of the pool and speeding into a jump well over three times her body length, here’s the amazing Sandy… and baby Cassie!"

Woo! Gaaag! I tried practicing it in an ultra-perky voice, and... yeah. It was equivalent to swallowing a handful of pixie sticks while watching the Teletubbies in a television store. Gag. And yet the showmanship of SeaWorld mirrors much of the Hollywood culture of Southern California, which (have you been to a movie lately?) is a wee bit out of touch with the rest of the world.

Okay, enough of my heckling. Now the Pros.

1. Education - People who come for an ADD day of cheap thrills and expensive souvenirs might actually walk away learning something. Heck, they might even change the way they live for a day or two. (One less pop can ring in the ocean!)

2. The Child Factor - Now I've come full circle. I loved SeaWorld as a kid, slept with a stuffed dolphin underneath a wall hanging of Shamu, played with whale toys in the bathtub. The park help build a love of the sea that continues to this day. Though I struggle to see it now, at age 8 the man/whale interaction was magical. So maybe I was a one-in-a-thousand kid, the kid who wanted to touch the stingrays more than see a show with fake pirates. I'm sure there are plenty of kids walking out of the park today who still find that unscripted magic, and remember it.

Therein lies my puzzlement. So many good things, so many iffy ones. A corporation run by Anheuser-Busch, using beer money to help fund worldwide conservation and research. Is it mitigation? Is it a good organization with questionable practices, or a glutinous entity that tries to gloss over its financial priorities?

In the end, I decided that my, er, shortcomings in swimming, my disdain for fakiness, and my obnoxious hangups with ethics were enough to make me say, "No thanks, artificial corporate-driven... I mean, SeaWorld." (Cheery smile and wave.) But who knows? Maybe my perspective will change again some day.

Choose Your Loop

This weekend is the annual spring beach cleanup in my hometown, an event that separates the passionate, determined, save-our-coast visionaries from the dry people. It's usually a day that pours rain, you see. This is Oregon, after all.

Thinking about this upcoming weekend made the reflect on something I've been reading up on lately, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the under-reported problem of plastics in the ocean.

Thus inspired, I thought for today's post I should write a photo essay* about a problem near to my heart (and my home!) - a problem that you, dear reader, should probably know a thing or two about.

*All photos are mine unless otherwise stated.


Plastics are Forever

Long ago when Hypercolor shirts and Koosh Balls were flying off the shelves, when I was but a young and innocent thing watching nature documentaries and dreaming of travelling the world, there was a cartoon that featured dancing dinosaurs singing, "Recycle, reduce, reuse, and close the loop! We can close the loop!" It popped up every now and then between TV commercials, lodging itself forever into my subconscious.

Recently I went looking for it out of curiosity. Thank you, Internet - I found it, and learned that it was part of an awareness campaign put on by California's Department of Recycling. It only aired locally, I guess, which means that most of the nation hasn't had this little earbug ("We can close the loop!") stuck in their head for the past twenty years.

Here it is. You've been forewarned:



Gosh, what a flashback. (Don't worry, I have no idea what the end means either.) That was, I suppose, my first introduction to the concept of the three R's. It aired at a time when there were no recycling facilities anywhere close to my hometown, not counting the 5 cents you could get for returned bottles. I remember looking at the little arrow symbol on the bottom of plastic and thinking, "Huh," before throwing it away. I didn't have an alternative. But the idea of "Recycle, Reduce, Reuse" stuck, if nothing else.

Fun little dinosaur ditties are a great introduction to pressing issues like overconsumption and pollution. (Much better than the alternative, "Hey kid, look at this picture of a thousand dead sea turtles!") Still, some things have to be seen first-hand before they hit home.

The first time I participated in my town's twice-annual beach cleanup, I was shocked by the amount of garbage I picked up. Detergent bottles, food wrappers, cigarette lighters, and countless unidentifiable chunks of plastic. "Where does it all come from?" I wondered. "Are the people in my area really that trashy?"

Jump forward many years, and I'm living on the Galapagos, researching wildlife. My island was at the farthest end of the archipelago, 600 miles from mainland South America, pretty much as far from civilization as a person can get. Yet it never ceased to amaze me what sorts of things washed up on the beach.

A bucket lid, bottle, broken chunks of plastic, and two albatrosses going into their courtship ritual.

It was exactly the same as back home in Oregon, but far more inexplicable. Nylon rope, a shoe, potato chip bags, PVC pipe, torn nets...how far did these things have to travel to get here? Even in the middle of nowhere, so isolated, I felt...invaded, like each piece of trash represented the person who last touched it, their ghost lingering alongside it, haunting one of the last truly wild places on earth.

A sea lion pup takes a nap inside an old tire. Photo courtesy my friend Tiff.

Plastic takes a long time to degrade even under the best conditions, but once it hits the water, that process is halted. Plastics in the ocean never truly go away. Eventually they break down into polymers, smaller and smaller bits of "microplastic" that begin to look something like this:

Microplastics. Photo courtesy C-MORE.

In 2008, C-MORE (The Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research & Education, based in Hawaii) took an expedition to study the infamous stretch of ocean called "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch," or the North Pacific Gyre. A gyre is an area where wind and currents converge to form giant, slow-moving whirlpools - there are five of them worldwide.

The five gyres. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

Anything in the ocean that can't move under its own power eventually collects in one of the gyres. Now if you hear "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," you might, like me, be envisioning floating garbage so thick you can walk across it. Not so, the C-MORE expedition found. There's not much visible trash, but pull up a sample of water from the gyre and what you find is a thick soup of tiny microplastics drawn together from the farthest reaches of the ocean.


So What?

Until my time on the Galapagos, I never understood the true importance - and fragility - of the ocean. It seems like a mighty thing, doesn't it? Off the coast of my hometown the waves crash down in 40-foot thunderclaps, ripping boulders from the jetty and sweeping away people foolish enough to turn their backs on it. The ocean seems as infinite, impassive, and untouchable as the distant stars.

But when I lived on the island, I depended on it for everything. The only other water I had was precious drinking water stored in closed 50-gallon drums, so it was to the ocean that I went to bathe, wash my clothes, clean my dishes, and even get water for cooking. When the tide was out I could do nothing but wait. Sometimes, for reasons I still don't understand, the water returned as a foul raging current of dirt and waste, scourging the shoreline clean. There were times I was swimming when this current came, suddenly finding myself surrounded by feathers, sticks, carcasses, and brown floating objects I dared not identify. When the water was like this, it was the same as a low tide - useless.

The ocean is the dishwasher, the washing machine, the bathtub of the world. When it works right, it takes the worst of our waste and turns it back into usable minerals and nutrients. But if it gets dirty, what washes the washing machine? Hmm.

Where I lived, I loved watching the gannet chicks in the nearby seabird colony. They were incredibly curious, and would play with anything they could reach.

A feather makes a good toy.

Yes, anything, even if they had no clue what it was.

A stick? A feather? Close enough!

As adults, man-made objects continue to confuse them. They'll eat bits of trash, assuming it's food, and slowly starve themselves (or their chicks) as they fill up with indigestible plastic.

Photo by Chris Jordan, a photographer who travelled to Midway Island to document the death of plastic-filled albatrosses. Visit his site to see more.

Plastic works into the food chain in more insidious ways, too. If all of the plastic in the ocean did consist of giant, original-sized pieces, we might make some progress in gradually fishing it out. But because it breaks down into such small pieces, collecting it means collecting everything else along with it, including the plankton that form the base of the food chain. The smallest particles of microplastic are ingested by tiny zooplankton, who themselves are eaten by small fish and shrimp.

How much plastic is inside this shrimp?

The plastic travels through the food chain, unchanged, from shrimp to salmon, from herring to shark, back into the water, through barnacles, through whales, until some of it finally ends up here:

Russian roulette, seafood style.

Eating microplastics by themselves might not be such a bad thing, as long as they don't jam up your plumbing - I don't know, I haven't chewed on my crayons lately - but according to the NOAA Marine Debris Program, plastic, being a petroleum product, soaks up oil-based chemicals in the water like DDT, PCBs, pesticides, and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

No one knows for sure how much of these chemicals our bodies absorb when we eat microplastic-laden seafood, but studies are increasingly revealing their possible effects - cancer, infertility, a weakened immune system, developmental disabilities...the list goes on. In my neck of the woods, I hear stories of young orcas that wash up dead on the shores, their bodies so contaminated with POPs that they have to be handled like toxic waste. The POPs come to them through their mother's milk. (The mothers, with more body mass, can handle larger concentrations of POPs.) So what are these chemicals doing to us?

We've given the ocean, the great washing machine of the planet, the reverse Midas touch. It's poisoning whatever it contacts, including us.

Plastic fish in a plastic sea.

Go Team Us!

Now might be a good time to go back and watch the dancing dinosaurs again. Isn't pollution depressing? Tell me about it. Tell anyone who's worked as a field biologist. It's a constant cycle of fighting, falling down, and getting back up for one more fight. But we fight to protect the things we love.

So what can we do about the gigantic plastic soup formerly known as our ocean? Well, everyone's got their own strengths, their own unique contribution they can make to the problem.

Mine is teaching. I've been doing it for this entire post...or trying to, at least.

Part of the trouble is that many people simply haven't heard about microplastics or POPs or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Part of the trouble is that those who know don't care. That's where I like to jump in.

Education simply means knowing. Science is just that - from the Latin scire, "to know." If you know something, you begin to understand it. If you understand it, you begin to love it. If you love it, you will want to protect it. Maybe even fight to protect it.

So I try to share my love for the ocean with as many people as I can. I get excited when I see a piece of bull kelp, show people how to look for the delicate dancing legs of barnacles, teach them the difference between a sea lion and a seal. During my time working as an outdoor educator on a sailing ship, I got to do this all the time. There is nothing, nothing, like hearing a tough, angry inner-city kid suddenly say, "Oh man, look at those salmon jumping! Wow, you guys! Wow!"

Marine Biology - Dig It!

One of the lessons I helped design and lead was the Watershed Class. "Where's your watershed?" I'd ask. "Is it the building in your yard where you store all your water?" (Insert hearty belly laugh.) Actually, few kids even knew what a watershed was, so we'd go over the map, starting with the smallest creek and working our way up to the biggest river, the Columbia, which drains a vast part of North America.

"Is that the biggest watershed you can find?" I would ask. Sure, yeah, said the kids...and then I pointed out that the Pacific drains our watershed too. In truth, we all live in the same watershed. The ocean is downstream of everything.

The Watershed Class.

The funky little model that I used to illustrate this point was a cooking pan with wads of tinfoil covered with a plastic bag, a mini-watershed. (A good example of "reusing" trash, yay!) The water of the "ocean" started clean, then we started squirting drops of pollutants (in fact just coffee, mud, or food coloring) into different areas of the watershed, watching as they oozed down and gradually turned the "ocean" into a nasty mess. For my final act, I'd say, "Now suppose you happen to throw your candy wrapper away as you're walking home from school..." I would suddenly whip a wrapper out of my pocket and drop it into the middle of the gross "ocean," which covered it almost completely.

The best part of this lesson was that every time, every time, the kids would get extremely concerned about how I was going to dispose of the "polluted" water after the class. Surely I wasn't going to dump it over the side of the ship? I had to let them watch me empty it into a disposal bucket. Success. Success.

If you don't happen to teach outdoor education classes, there's still plenty you can do. Like the beach cleanup I'll be going on this weekend, if you see a piece of plastic lying on the ground, pick it up. Plastic is forever. It's not going anywhere on its own, except perhaps down to the ocean.

London's creative rubbish cage.

Here's an interesting solution I spotted while I was in London. The sign says, "I EAT RUBBISH! This device restores vitality to the Thames by collecting 40 tonnes of rubbish every year. That's equivalent to 800,000 plastic bottles." Brilliant, simple, and effective.

If you have mixed curbside recycling, as most major cities do, for goodness sakes, use it. Consider yourself lucky. Consider it an elite urban perk, and use it as much as you possibly can.

When I recycle, I have to sort everything into separate categories of green glass, brown glass, colored glass, tin, aluminum, steel, paperboard, cardboard, newspaper, and #1 plastics. (Seriously.) Then I drive it out to the transfer center and carry it into the trailers myself. My county doesn't offer recycling for other plastics, so I let my them accumulate in a bin at home until I have the chance to visit some other city/county/state that will take them. It's like my county tries to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to recycle, but I do it, by golly, jumping through all of those ridiculous hoops. When I remember that trash on the beach, whether it's here or across the globe, I know it's worth it.

So listen - if you have mixed curbside recycling, a service that actually comes to your house and does all that work for you...? For the love of humanity! What excuse do you have not to use it?

According to 5 Gyres, a group devoted to raising awareness about plastic pollution, "We currently recover only 5% of the plastics we produce. What happens to the rest of it? Roughly 50% is buried in landfills, some is remade into durable goods, and much of it remains 'unaccounted for', lost in the environment where it ultimately washes out to sea."

The way I see it, plastic can cycle around in one of two loops. One is the loop the dinosaurs sang about, where plastic polymers are shaped into products, used, and reshaped into new products. Then there's the other loop, the one where plastic polymers are released into the ocean, return into the bodies of people and wildlife, and are someday released into the ocean again. In both cycles, the plastic comes back. There is no "away" in "throwing away."

The moment a piece of plastic leaves your hand, you've started it on its cycle. Which one is up to you.

Choose your loop.

The man who did not beg

A page from my Prague journal. Not a happy story. I debate whether to share it. But travelling is sometimes less sightseeing and more just plain seeing:

Friday. A day originally planned for hedonism. Wandered down to Husava near Bethlehem Square. A walk filled with traffic and city, working people, playing children, tourists. Found the small memorial to victims of Communism, including Jan Palach (a student who set himself on fire) beneath the shrubs near the statue of St. Wenceslas. Sat beside the memorial for the longest time, thinking. Nazis, Communists, riots, water cannons, freedom, replaced now with the callousness and complacency, shallowness, consumption, rush, that comes with capitalism. A generation who does not struggle, a gift won by their parents. Do they realize? Tourists who drift and gape. No one weeping in the square. No one laying flowers on the graves. Yes, don't waste flowers in this way. There are better ways to honor the dead.

I escaped into Old Town Square intending to eat myself silly, searching the market for bramboraky (potato pancakes) and trdelník (round pastry)...Paid 10KC for a public bathroom. Highway robbery. Trying to decide between 100g of Old Prague Ham or a duck sandwich, I stopped to take pictures of a weaver at a loom. Nearby an old man was reaching into a trashcan. Did not notice him at first, but then after finishing my pictures realized the man had pulled out first one and then another coffee cup - one was a Starbucks - and was trying to sip what little was left from them.

Is it possible for a man who has lived through the Nazis, through the Communists, to stand in the very heart of this city and drink drops of coffee from the trash while all around people pay for painted eggs, tours, candy, great hunks of meat, sugared pastries, overpriced restaurants, admission to a clock? Why does no one stop? Why aren't we lifting this man on our shoulders and celebrating him?

Once I realized, I scrambled for money to give him, and came up the quickest with two 20KC coins just as he was leaving. "Prosim!" I said, holding it out to him. He said thank you in Czech, nodded and smiled - he had not been begging; he had not asked for it. "Prosim," I said again, stupidly, not knowing what else to say, because prosim means please, here you go, and you're welcome. I felt greater and lesser all at once, a saint for charity, and the lowest sinner for my gluttony, that I could think of eating pastries while men still suffer.

Here was a black hole in the marketplace, a void that sucked into it all joy, all color, all bustle. Not from the man, for he was blameless - a saint himself, an angel speaking Czech. The darkness came from what minutes before had been the cheerful crowd, the crowd who had ignored this man with sinister blindness. Where is human kindness? And now I, wracked with guilt, walked towards the Karlův Most, not caring about the traffic. Why hadn't I given him more? Why not have emptied my pockets? What is it to me? No grand lunch for me; I found a 30KC sausage and ate it gratefully, thinking that the man could buy that with my 40KC, at least...But why hadn't I given him more? He might buy himself a whole cup of coffee now, but why hadn't I given him more? He disappeared into the market, humble and bowed with age, and I, stunned, walked towards the bridge.

I want to drink; I want to sip grey coffee in a small and thoughtful place. I need to write to understand this, and now put it to paper on the benches between the Manes and Charles while the happy music from a nearby tent mocks me with its sureness.

Unagi....Nooooo!

Yes, blogging world, I'm still alive.

I've just been avoiding the internet like the plague. Perhaps it's because I'm spending all of my waking hours doing projects that already involve me staring at computer screens, and I'm worried that my long-range vision is well on its way down the tubes without me aggravating it with frivolous internet usage.

But Mr. Frozen Foods Man at the front door was trying to persuade me that his Peruvian mahi-mahi falls in the category of "responsible seafood" - or at least "not from China seafood" - so I had to check out the ol' reliable Seafood Watch page to see if he was telling the truth.

Seafood Watch has updated their site splendidly. If you haven't already gone there to check out your fish choices, you really should. (I've got a link to it on the sidebar just underneath the PNW Tree Octopus photo, yo.) They've added an entire section on sushi, so I dove right into the Things To Avoid category and found...

*cue ominous music*

This!




Aaaa! Freshwater eel ranks closely behind salmon as my most favorite food in the whole wide world, and tonight I discover that not a single fin of it is sustainably raised!

Curse you, ethics and knowledge! Ignorance truly is bliss.

Guess I'm going to be eel-free for a while.

The Shout it Out! Project

I can't decide if this idea is brilliant or terrible, but it'd make a great basis for a thesis paper...

I was over at deviantART surfing for artistic inspiration (and finding it, and wondering why I don't draw every minute of my waking life) when I came across this, a project called Shout it Out!

It's all about writing down on paper the things you don't usually say about yourself - the good, the bad, the quirky - the things that you keep hidden for fear that people will judge you poorly, look at you differently, or ignore what you have to say. It's the chance to shout out who you are as a person, proudly and without fear. Because it's a deviantART project, and because deviantART is geared towards artists, the Shouts are all heavily influenced with each person's own artistic style.

The artist who started it says this:

"Someone told me once, that she believed we make life hard for ourselves by keeping things bottled up inside. Whether it be due to shame, embarrassment, fear, pride or some other emotion we don't share the things that are on our hearts like we should. We wallow in them and never realize that everyone else feels the same way. Our conflicts, our dreams, and the things that make us who we are should be free to be spoken out loud."

When I first found out about this, I loved it. It seems like much of the conflict we have as people stems from a lack of understanding, the not wanting/not trying to get to know each other for who we really are. The more you know a person, I am convinced, the more you will be sympathetic to their point of view, even if you don't agree with it. You will be more likely to compromise, or at least stand your ground with kindness, less likely to hate. I believe that communication without competitiveness is a powerful tool. Knowledge to understanding, understanding to love. It was one of my reasons for beginning to blog, and I wrote about it in my first post.

But as I read through some individual Shouts, I began to have doubts. Many of the artists on this site are teens and college age, lots of angst and emo, and no shortage of frustrated sexuality. People seem drawn to revealing their brokenness, their struggles with depression, self-injury, and suicidal thoughts. There were too many of these in the few samples I read, and I wondered, is it more common to find these dark thoughts in artists? Is it because of their age? Is the next generation struggling more than my own?

Other Shouts were bursting with angry thoughts. The freedom opened floodgates for the type of hate and stereotyping normally held back by our PC culture. One person admitted to being fascinated with Nazism. Another mentioned that they partly enjoyed causing people pain. Reading through these made me increasingly gloomy. True glimpses into the thoughts of others, and yet so much darkness to be seen, so much anger.

And so I wonder... is the Shout it Out! project a good thing? Does revealing yourself free you, or does it make you turn your focus inward too much? If your hidden thoughts include hate, is there anything to be gained by revealing them to people who do not know you, who never will? At that point, the thought becomes stronger than the invisible internet person, and my idea of knowledge leading to love requires a living, breathing person. A person can change, can be reasoned with, but an isolated thought is immutable. It can be ignored or rejected but never killed, and in repetition without argument only gains strength.

Which leads me to think that Shouting it Out best serves a purpose only among people who know you, a tool to help people better understand you. But if you knew who was to see it, would you be honest? Would you expose your deepest self? Wouldn't you still hold back, defeating the whole point?

I'm torn. I can't decide. If you guys have any thoughts, please weigh in.

Thoughtful Consumerism

My personal odyssey of becoming a thoughtful consumer has been carried along by timely boosts and nudges. It started the very first time I need to stock my own pantry, when my only guiding principle was the price and the goal of matching those familiar brand-name labels in my parents' house. But the more I have learned about the story behind each item in my shopping cart, the less automatic the choices have become.

My first great change was deciding that cheaper generic labels were often just as good as familiar brand-names, a convenient discovery for a college kid. My second was in choosing foods and products that were the healthiest for me, which was spurred by a five-month semester in the rainforest, where my diet was simple (rice and beans) and every lotion and detergent had to be biodegradable for the sake of the local river. But my latest change is much bigger and far more encompassing than anything I've tried to do before - to pick products based on what it costs to bring them to my shopping bag.

It's not the financial cost that I am trying to focus on. It is the cost in principles, in waste and suffering and greed. It is the sort of cost weighed in when, for example, after my recent trip to Ecuador I discovered that the cheap roses you see for sale in the florist section of the local Safeway or Wal-mart or King Sooper's almost all came from plantations in South America. In order to inexpensively mass produce them, these fields of roses have to be drenched in a variety of toxic chemicals, many banned in the US, which leach into the surrounding soil and water. The producers keep costs even lower by failing to supply their mostly female work-force with the necessary protective clothing, and so many suffer the effects of being poisoned. You can read more on this here. These chemical-laden roses have also been blamed for poisoning their US consumers. And yet who, when strolling down the aisle of a Piggly Wiggly's, looks at an affordable bouquet of flowers and thinks of where they were grown, or at what cost? Where is the tag that says, "Front counter price- $5.99. Real price - $dying fish, $miscarriages, $cancer?"

That is the element I am now trying to incorporate into my shopping, trying to find the real cost of each product, deciding from there whether or not it's a cost I want to pay. I've been nudged in this direction increasingly by the consumer alerts about Chinese goods, and now long gone are the days when I cheerfully snatch something of the shelf simply because it looks yummy or pretty or cheap. I remember still the first shopping trips when I started comparing unit prices (feeling quite savvy) and when I began to read the nutritional labels seriously (discovering that, wait a minute... everything has corn syrup in it!) Now my goal is to find the "Made in" label, which is written in teeny tiny writing upside-down on the inside lip of the back packaging, or some other hidden place. (Unless it's made in the USA, in which case it is emblazoned on the front.)

Far more aggravating are food products, which usually say "Distributed by." Those two words are a magical door to a realm where anything is possible, where your Smiling Sun Happy Nut Muffins may have been churned out by a radioactive slave-powered factory in the bowels of an Indonesian brothel and you just don't know, they don't have to tell you, and you have no way of finding out. I am constantly stymied by those two devious words, and so I have come up with two counteractive words of my own, "Farmer's Market."

Future posts will talk about some of the bigger changes I've made and why, but this introduction on the thinking behind thoughtful consumerism is longer than I intended, and it reads as dry as dirt (so if you've made it here, I commend you.) I'm just sitting here going blah blah blah, unedited, the curse of a blogged essay. Anyway, I am attempting to document the changes in my own personal consumerism without whacking people over the head with them, but if I was allowed an "I'd like to teach the world to sing" moment, it would be this - "I'd like to teach the world to pause for a second in the super market and look at that thing they're holding in their hand."

My Loquacious Friends and I

After discovering that everyone and their dog has put up twenty posts on their blogs in the time it's taken me to post one on mine, I feel I must answer by at least doing two in one day.

We here at Fifteen Feet do not feel the need to post unless we have a completed thought to convey. As most of our thoughts never reach this state, we do not post in a reliably predictable manner.

In keeping with the theme of Fifteen Feet, the Management stresses that oxygen is to be conserved while decompressing, as we wish to resurface before we suffocate ourselves.

We also wish to point out that rapid ascent of thoughts will lead to the mental bends, and we do not want to find ourselves drooling in the corner somewhere.

In an unrelated story, I just heard on the news that a bunch of seafood from China has been deemed dangerous - shrimp, dale, catfish, basa, and eel. Add this to recent recalls of Chinese pork, toys, tires, grain, toothpaste, etcetera ad nauseum. Chinese suppliers face tremendous pressure to shave pennies off their products, which means they cut corners in safety, quality, and workers' rights. For instance, the pork suppliers were found to be force feeding their pigs waste water post-inspection to boost their weight, 44lbs of waste to each 250lbs hog. Yummy sewage flavored pork... and super cheap!

With Chinese imports continuing to increase, the percentage of goods that US inspectors can examine continues to shrink. Americans are drawn to the cheap price on the sticker without understanding the far greater price they are paying. The things on the shelf didn't show up there by magic. They have a history, maybe a horrific one. Track your goods, and boycott Wal-Mart!

Funny how one little news story makes me feel like writing. Forgive me if I'm feeling a bit activist-y today.

Sea World

Or "The Ethics of Working for SeaWorld" 

A long while ago I decided to apply for a trainer position with SeaWorld, and lo! - I actually made it through the first round of cuts. They invited me to come for a personal interview and swim test. It was the swim test that intimidated me the most. I had to be able to free dive to 30 feet. No problem. I had to be able to swim the length of a pool underwater. Again, no problem. But I also had to swim 250 feet in a certain amount of time, a little over a minute, I think, and do a graceful dive off a 6 foot board.

Problem. When I swim, I am neither fast nor graceful. It's the result of twelve years of scuba diving. We divers are accustomed to swim very quietly with our hands at our sides, controlling every movement with a flick of the fin, able to dart forward or backward or hover in one place effortlessly, like a fish. Subtlety and slowness are key, because it lets you maneuver into tight places and glide alongside underwater creatures without alarming them. (Try swimming quickly into a school of fish and see how many are still there when you stop. Answer - none.) I take my time. I see things. This is the way I swim.

Take my fins away, and I am about as subtle as a cat in a bathtub. I thrash and flail and generally feel that I'm not actually going anywhere, like I've gone from being a dolphin to being a Lincoln Log. And since breathing is not much concern to a diver, I still haven't figured out that whole business about taking breaths during a stroke. It has something to do with timing, I think - breathe in when your head is above water, breathe out when it's underwater- but I never can get the order quite right. My version is - don't do anything while your head is above water, breathe in when it's underwater, cough and sputter, repeat.

I won't even begin to describe how I look when I try to dive off a board. (Picture a skydiver who has just realized his parachute isn't working...) Again, we scuba divers just strap on 50lbs of equipment and fall over the side of the boat in a giant splash. Sadly, my splash is about the same size even when I don't have the equipment. My dive method would best be described as "cinder block."

So there was that holding me back from the interview, the idea of making myself look like a drown victim in front of the other applicants, who were probably still eating glue and crayons when I was first learning to scuba. I had plenty of time to practice the speed thing, and the grace thing, if I wanted to. And besides the complete humiliation factor, I could at least go and have a lovely behind-the-scenes tour of SeaWorld, meet a few trainers, perhaps cuddle with a dolphin. The tests were to be held early - freakin' early - in the morning, before the park opened, so I would have a free ticket for the rest of the day in Sea World. Not bad, right?

Oh, the curse of principles.

The more I looked into what SeaWorld embraced, the more I realized that I would not be happy working for them, and I've never fancied humoring interviewers for a job I didn't actually want. Perhaps I passed on a fantastic opportunity, but here is the line of thinking that led me there.

I visited SeaWorld as a kid, and loved it. Loved it then, loved the concept of it even as I began researching what it would be like to work for them. Man and whale, coexisting in peace and cooperation as an example to the world... That was my childhood depiction of the place. But now, after doing much research, it seems to have changed to - man and whale, coexisting in a corporate driven illusion as a means to great gobs of money.

I ask myself, is this disenchanted adult cynicism, or a grasp of reality that comes with age and learning? It's a bit sad, either way. My inner debate about SeaWorld echoes the same qualms I have about all zoos and aquariums, after being both tourist and keeper, and boils down to three cons and two pros.

Cons
1. Wild Capture - Captive breeding cannot sustain the number of whales SeaWorld needs. Up until 1995, whales were being caught from the wild, sometimes using tremendously unethical methods (ie explosives). Although the current policy states that they no longer will acquire animals directly from the wild, they continue to purchase wild-caught whales from international water parks, supporting the trade.

2. Captivity - The orcas at SeaWorld average a lifespan of 20 years, compared to 60 years in the wild. Boredom is an issue, as well as aggression.

3. Glitz - SeaWorld presents its prized orcas in a display of flash and glamour that is as far removed from a natural experience as a bear on a bicycle. Their new show takes place in a stadium with three massive video screens and a sound system that blares the type of music you'd expect in a "Best of the NFL" montage. There are the prerequisite (and forced) "magical moments" that involve some lucky audience child bonding with Shamu (who is thinking, "Feed me the fish already!") and the overly perky trainers hamming it up. (Do they get to wear ear protection, or do they just go deaf from the ridiculously loud music?)

Seriously, the only way I think I could ever be like one of those trainers would have to involve either some sort of head trauma or drugs. For the interview, I was required to memorize and, in a showman's voice, say, "I’d like to introduce you to a special pair of whales. This is Sandy, and right next to her is her baby, Cassie. Cassie was born right here in this pool just a year and a half ago. I was fortunate to be there when she was born. That was a long but very exciting night. Since then, Cassie has learned a lot from her mom and the rest of the whales in her family. She’s currently learning how to jump like her mom, who is one of our most spectacular jumpers. And even though Cassie’s not quite ready to match her –you’ll see that she tries. Now diving to the bottom of the pool and speeding into a jump well over three times her body length, here’s the amazing Sandy… and baby Cassie!"

Woo! Gaaag! I tried practicing it in an ultra-perky voice, and... yeah. It was equivalent to swallowing a handful of pixie sticks while watching the Teletubbies in a television store. Gag. And yet the showmanship of SeaWorld mirrors much of the Hollywood culture of Southern California, which (have you been to a movie lately?) is a wee bit out of touch with the rest of the world.

Okay, enough of my heckling. Now the Pros.

1. Education - People who come for an ADD day of cheap thrills and expensive souvenirs might actually walk away learning something. Heck, they might even change the way they live for a day or two. (One less pop can ring in the ocean!)

2. The Child Factor - Now I've come full circle. I loved SeaWorld as a kid, slept with a stuffed dolphin underneath a wall hanging of Shamu, played with whale toys in the bathtub. The park help build a love of the sea that continues to this day. Though I struggle to see it now, at age 8 the man/whale interaction was magical. So maybe I was a one-in-a-thousand kid, the kid who wanted to touch the stingrays more than see a show with fake pirates. I'm sure there are plenty of kids walking out of the park today who still find that unscripted magic, and remember it.

Therein lies my puzzlement. So many good things, so many iffy ones. A corporation run by Anheuser-Busch, using beer money to help fund worldwide conservation and research. Is it mitigation? Is it a good organization with questionable practices, or a glutinous entity that tries to gloss over its financial priorities?

In the end, I decided that my, er, shortcomings in swimming, my disdain for fakiness, and my obnoxious hangups with ethics were enough to make me say, "No thanks, artificial corporate-driven... I mean, SeaWorld." (Cheery smile and wave.) But who knows? Maybe my perspective will change again some day.

*update, June 4th, 2015* - My understanding about the orcas/killer whales held at SeaWorld has changed substantially since I wrote this post. I will be writing a follow-up in the near future to address some of what I say below.

PETA Amuck

I went and saw "Waitress" the other day. I liked it. It was a good movie. It was good and noble and true.

Whoops... sorry. Still stuck in Hemingway mode.

Anyway, I highly recommend it, but not on an empty stomach, because the array of delicious pies they show will drive you nuts. Oftentimes after I see a good movie I like to visit Rottentomatoes.com to see what consensus the reviewers reach, whether or not we agree with each other. (We usually do.)

While I was investigating other highly reviewed movies currently in release, I noticed that "Ten Canoes" has finally come to America. It's a movie about Australian Aborigines which I originally saw on the plane to Sydney. Excellent, excellent. Try to find it if you can.

But then I saw another one listed in the must-see category, a documentary called "Your Mommy Kills Animals." While the documentary is a balanced take on the animal rights/animal welfare movements, the 2003 PETA comic book on which it is based is decidedly not. PETA activists apparently waited outside of performances of "The Nutcracker" nationwide and handed the comic book to kids whose parents, I can only assume, came wearing fur. The cover of the comic shows a brightly colored June Cleaver-type mom gleefully stabbing a horrified bunny. And inside, as if that wasn't bad enough, the "story" goes something like this:

"Do you have a puppy or a kitty that you love? Everyone knows that it's fun to play with our animals friends. But how would you feel if someone took away your animal friend, stomped on its head, and ripped off its fur for a coat? You would feel sad, wouldn't you? There are terrible people who kill our furry friends like that every day. And guess what? One of those terrible people is your mommy. Your mommy kills animals! I bet you didn't know that."

It gets worse and worse, ending with, "Keep your doggie or kitty friends away from mommy - she's an animal killer!"

Far be it from me to even begin to touch on the animal rights debate, but reading this comic incited me to the point of wanting to jump up and down and gesture wildly at the pure idiocy involved in such a campaign. Maybe this is old news for most people. I think I was out of the country for much of 2003, and therefore out of touch with mainstream news, so I hadn't heard of it until now. Could PETA pick a more inept approach to conveying their message? Yeah, let's alienate little kids from their parents. What loony in marketing thought this was a good idea?

It's frustrating that passionate people with a good cause at heart can become so focused on a single issue as to lose track of, well, reality. For me, it's a wake-up call to carefully choose which organizations to support. The documentary "Your Mommy Kills Animals" has been receiving acclaim for delving into the workings of animal rights activists, their tactics and why the FBI has labelled them a threat to the national security. Can't be good for the cause, can it?

People abusing animals... people abusing people who abuse animals. Can't we all just hug a bunny and be happy?

One simple desire

It started as I turned into the parking lot of the grocery store. I was in town to do a few errands, and there on the sidewalk sat a homeless couple holding a cardboard sign. "Please Help. God Bless." Too often I've ignored such signs, wary of giving money straight out of my pocket and ignorant of how else to help. But this is a small town, small enough that we hardly see those signs, and small enough that no one here should ever have to hold one up.

So I decided to help. But what to offer them? Luckily, I had three tools at my disposal: a phone, a town phone book, and last week's church bulletin. I called the church - no answer. I called everyone from my church whose last name I could remember - no one was home. I called other churches in town, knowing that certain ones offer vouchers - no answer. Apparently no one needs God on a Thursday.

Then in my bulletin I noticed a listing for the town's food pantry, open only once a week, which coincidentally happened to be now. So I drove there, hoping they would know of other resources in town. "What do they need?" they said. "I haven't talked to them yet," I said. "We only have food," they said, "and they would need a place to cook it. Try calling the Resource Center."

I called the Resource Center. "There's no place in town for homeless people to stay," they said. "Try calling the Reverend So and So." I tried calling Reverend So and So - no answer.

Now about forty minutes into my wild goose chase, I decided to give up and go chat with the folks, offering at least the food pantry service. Ah, but God has perfect timing, for just then the youth pastor of my church, having heard one of my messages, called from 30 miles away and told me of all the vouchers available from the ministerial association - restaurants, gas, motels. At last I had something to offer.

I went and sat down next to the couple. They had come from halfway across the country, hoping to move to a nearby city with a homeless shelter and start looking for work. They were riding freight trains, camping. They were a brother and sister in Christ. When I mentioned the motel room, their eyes lit up. "Oh, it would be nice to get a good shower," they said.

I told them I'd call my pastor and see what he could do. I gave them directions to the church, in case they were pressed to move on. What better place to camp out than on the lawn of a church? They thanked me. We hugged. I felt good.

I went into the grocery store to finally do my shopping, taking my phone with me, and in between the potato chips and the bottled juice managed to arrange with my pastor which motel to take them to. And instantly I was on a happy high. I said hello to the butcher, one of my neighbors. I talked with a complete stranger about the delicious smell of the peaches. I was eager to get back outside to give the couple a ride to the motel.

But when I emerged, they were gone. Had they found the ride to the city they were looking for? Had they returned to their camp outside of town to fetch their belongings? I drove from one end of town to the other looking for them, but they were nowhere to be found. But there are people in town now who know to look for them, and they have the directions to the church, the means to get help. I hope wherever they are, they are on a road to renewal.

The entire odyssey took two hours of my life. I could not think of a better way to spend two hours. It is one thing to want to walk in the footsteps of Christ, but it is quite another to walk the distance between your parking space and the people on the sidewalk. I have not done enough in my life to reach out to other people; I have not taken the time to see what I can do to help. Even if nothing else was accomplished today, there was an exchange of names, hugs and handshakes, and smiles. Toothless smiles I can remember forever.

Thank you, Lord, for making me read the sign.