And another thing...

[Blue_In_AK]

...I like you guys because you respond to me. It seems like the only times I ever get involved in a discussion "out there," someone ends up locking the thread and then I can't even read the replies when I come back. Does anybody know what finally happened to the thread about "I get persecuted on this site because I'm a vegan," or whatever it was? We were going pretty good for a while last night, talking about all kinds of related and unrelated stuff, and then this morning I saw I had a reply, but the thread was gone. Grr...

[JI7]

1. i think sometimes the administrators remove the threads entirely

you might want to ask in the "ask the administrators forum" if there is any way you can find out what the reply was.

[Blue_In_AK]

2. Sometimes it's pretty obvious why the thread

gets taken down, if it's been obviously freeped or whatever, but this one was just a little back-and-forth between vegetarians and meat-eaters, a little discussion about how PETA is maybe a trifle extreme sometimes. People were disagreeing with each other, but it didn't seem like any more than usual, and there were well over 120 posts when I stopped checking. Somebody must have gotten obnoxious after I went to bed -- which would have been REALLY late in most parts of the country. Or maybe the original persecuted vegan poster got his/her feelings hurt a little too much. I don't know. I only missed my one reply so I guess I won't bother the administrators about it. I was just a little curious about what happened.

[elshiva]

3. I posted on that thread because I felt

I had to speak up for us non-militant vegetarians. We are a quiet group and a lot people stereotype veggies as militant lunatics.

[sandnsea]

4. militant vegetarians

That's too funny. That would be like anarchist vegetable gardeners or something. I live in an area with alot of vegetarians and they're the nicest people around here. I think most people differentiate between radical PETA people and vegetarians. Or maybe I've lived in cool blue Oregon so long, I just don't know what's happpening in the rest of the country!

[elshiva]

5. Vegetarians like me don't try to convert people.

We just lead by example. If someone wants to abstain from meat they are free to join us, but I do not think vegetarianism is for everyone. Some people are too poor. If all you can afford to do is fatten a pig or shoot a deer to feed yourself and your family, I say fine. Then some people can't eat or don't like to eat anything but meat. I don't want anyone to starve.

[sandnsea]

6. Most don't

I've never had a vegetarian try to convert me. But I've had an awful lot of good vegetarian dishes! I would actually like to have a little plot of land so I could raise most of my food myself and not have to deal with all the chemicals. I worry about that the most. In Montana, almost everybody supplemented their food budget with home grown food and animals, plus hunting. What people didn't use themselves was donated to food pantries. Rural people are usually good hearted, they just haven't quite figured out that they've got to expand that generosity to people they don't know.

[elshiva]

7. I live in rural Maryland.

There is a local Methodist Church that has a food bank and some of the hunters donate deer steak to the food bank. That is some of the better food that they offer. It's fairly fresh, but the canned fruit is usually old and sometimes out of date. I have nothing against my neighbors having a half decent meal of deer.
That said, I believe that every thing that lives is holy. That sums it all up. End of sermon!

[Blue_In_AK]

8. Elshiva, I hope that I didn't offend you by anything I said

on that other thread. I've been a vegetarian at different times in my life, too, for several years at a time ... it's just always been too hard for me to stay with it when I've been cooking for a carnivorous family. If I were by myself, I'd probably not eat much meat at all.

As for PETA, I agree with them about the fur farms, caged chickens, a lot of animal research, and so on. I just thought that they had gone a little overboard with trying to tell Alaskans that they should ban king salmon fishing. For the Natives in the villages, salmon is their subsistence, what they live on. The commercial fisheries are a big part of our economy, probably second only to the oil. Wild Pacific salmon is so much better than the farmed Atlantic fish, both in taste and healthwise. Sport fishing is a big part of our tourist draw, as well -- also an economic factor.

Another thing is that when the fish are in the rivers, they're getting ready to die anyway. They spawn and then they die, so it's not like we're really cutting their lives short or anything by fishing for them. Maybe it seems cruel to hook them, but soon enough their skin is going to be rotting and falling off anyway, and they're just as likely to be eaten by a bear or something as to be caught by a sport fisherman. Sometimes we see live spawned out king salmon, rotting away, but still managing to move somehow, with seagulls already starting to tear off their flesh. It's not a pretty picture. It almost seems more respectful to the fish to catch him when he first comes into the river and is bright and silver, take him home, cook him up, and please all the happy tummies.

So anyway, that was the only point I was trying to make, and I certainly respect you for your own choices.

[elshiva]

10. You did Not offend me. Thanks for the concern.

I agree with you. Native Alaskans always lived off the land, I have no problem with you all living off the land. I agree with eating meat if that's your only subsistence or you just can not live without eating it.

[Blue_In_AK]

11. Thanks, Elshiva

I know people get so shrill at DU sometimes, and I really meant no disrespect to anybody's personal beliefs. By the way, I myself am not Native, although I've lived here for 30 years, so I almost feel like I am. I guess most of us long-time Alaskans get a little testy when people from Outside try to tell us how to live our lives, and PETA seems to have picked on us quite a bit over the years, sometimes very legitimately, as in the case of the aerial wolf kills, and sometimes more questionably as in opposition to the Iditarod sled dog race and this thing with the salmon.

Anyway, I'm glad we got that out of the way. :hug:

[TayTay]

12. The salmon was environmentally sound

Jared Diamond was on C-Span recently talking about his book 'Collapse' and he said that it is perfectly okay to eat Alaskan wild salmon because it was being farmed in a sustainable ecological way. That was one of his success stories.

[elshiva]

13. You're welcome, Blue_In_AK!

I love how the JK forum is so polite! I guess it's cos Kerry is so polite, right?
What did PETA think was wrong with dog sleds? From what I have seen, you Alaskans spoil them dogs...

[Blue_In_AK]

14. They believe the dogs are "abused and exploited"...

I don't know if you've heard of the Iditarod sled dog race, which is from Anchorage to Nome, 1150 miles. The 33rd annual race starts in a couple of weeks. It commemorates a run that was made from Anchorage to Nome in 1925 carrying serum out there to treat a diphtheria epidemic. Granted, it's a grueling race, usually taking between 10 days and two weeks to complete, depending on the weather, but this is what the sled dogs are bred for, and anyone who has ever seen the start of the race here can see that they love what they do and can't wait to get started. The mushers are required to take periodic 24-hour layovers and there are 26 checkpoints all along the way. Most of the mushers have their own veterinarians on retainer, and vets monitor the race the whole way. Truly, these are some very pampered puppy athletes, and the racers love them.

This year there are 79 mushers, averaging about 16 dogs per team.

It's really a pretty exciting time here, and just about everybody gets caught up in following the progress of their favorite musher, and some legendary rivalries have built up over the years. The Iditarod isn't the only long-distance sled dog race here, but it's the most famous. They also have sprint races, which are fun to watch, too.

If you're interested you can go to the web site at www.iditarod.com . If you google Iditarod and PETA you can read their take on it, which, of course, is completely negative. But, you know, I've been watching these races for years and years, and personally I just don't see the cruelty.

[elshiva]

15. I don't think those dogs are abused.

Don't they just yell "mush?" I don't see them even whipping the dogs.

[LittleClarkie]

9. They used to do that at college

They lumped what they considered the "lefties" together. Totally uncompatable. Vegans next to radicals next to the Palestinians next to the Student for Nuclear Disarmament. The Radicals tried to pick fights with the peaceniks and the Vegans while the Palestinians just shook their heads.

One Palestinian girl couldn't sit down to a cheeseburger without a vegan making comments. She finally told that person off.

I can't tell you how many speeches about sentient creatures I heard. Ah, but those sentient creatures are quite delicious.

Same person wouldn't use her artistic talent to make a living because she thought it would cheapen the gift she'd been given to make money off of it. So don't do what you love for a living?