Статті в журналах з теми "Good Will Farm (Hinckley, Me.)"

In a multi-enterprise agriculture model, six different cropping systems have been evaluated at research farm of CSSRI Karnal for nutrient availability in surface soil. All the cropping systems left tremendous effect on soil quality. Among the different cropping systems, sorghum-berseem maintained lowest soil pH (8.14) followed by cowpea-cauliflower-potato cropping system (8.35). Sorghum-berseem cropping system was significantly build-up of soil fertility in terms of available nitrogen, (221.1kg/ha) and soil organic carbon (0.59%) as compared to other cropping systems. However, phosphorus (59.80 kg/ha) availability was higher in vegetable system followed by wheat-green gram cropping systems (48.85 kg/ha) than the other cropping systems. Vegetable system of multi-enterprise agriculture model showed more availability of Ca (3.20 me/L), Mg (2.63 me/L) and S (11.71 me/L) than other cropping systems. Higher amount of Fe (8.44 mg/kg) was observed in maize-wheat-green gram cropping system, whereas higher Mn (6.37 mg/kg) was noticed in sorghum-berseem fodder system than the other cropping system. Zn and Cu availability was relatively higher in vegetable system. Under prevailing climatic conditions of Karnal, sorghum-berseem fodder system was found to be the best with respect to soil quality and ready adaptability by the farmers as it was not much changed by climatic variability over the last 6 years. Vegetable system and fruits + vegetable were more or less similar in accelerating the availability of nutrients. Thus, leguminous crop (green gram) in any cropping system helped in improving the soil health, which is a good indicator of soil productivity.

Writing this biography forced me to look back over my career as a scientist, teacher, wife, and mother. To my surprise, a lifelong theme emerged that I was unaware of, that is, the role of maintaining balance between work and family, science and teaching, mentorship and administration, and personal values and challenges. My primary mentor, Dr. Doris Calloway, demonstrated the importance of maintaining balance. My interest in nutrition started as a preschooler living on a farm where I learned firsthand the importance of balancing the expense of providing good nutrition to the livestock with potential income. In our small high school, I became acquainted with the fascinating field of chemistry, but found it critical to balance that interest with a politically correct field of study for a woman in the early 1960s. I chose dietetics for its strong roots in chemistry. As a US Army dietitian, I learned firsthand how to conduct metabolic studies and knew, immediately, that I had to balance that interest with future opportunities feasible for a dietitian. I chose the University of California, Berkeley, for my PhD because it needed to train dietitians in research to balance an emerging need to offer undergraduates a practicum in dietetics. My subsequent faculty appointment there enabled me to develop novel isotopic approaches for studying zinc and prenatal nutrition, and balance my research with teaching and administrative responsibilities. During the next 40 years, my work as a Berkeley professor led to appointments at the Western Human Nutrition Research Center and Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, while balancing my responsibilities as a wife and a mother to my two sons. Balance is defined as a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. It is extremely satisfying to look back and see evidence of successfully balancing the disparate elements of my career.

AbstractThis research communication addresses the hypothesis that Southeast dairy producers' self-reported bulk tank somatic cell count (BTSCC) was associated with producers' response to three statements (1) ‘a troublesome thing about mastitis is the worries it causes me,’ (2) ‘a troublesome thing about mastitis is that cows suffer,’ and (3) ‘my broad goals include taking good care of my cows and heifers.’ Surveys were mailed to producers in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia (29% response rate, N = 596; final analysis N = 574), as part of a larger survey to assess Southeastern dairy producers' opinions related to BTSCC. Surveys contained 34 binomial (n = 9), Likert scale (n = 7), and descriptive (n = 18) statements targeted at producer self-assessment of herd records, management practices, and BTSCC. Statements 1 and 2 were assessed on a 5-point Likert scale from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree.’ Statement 3 was assessed on a 5-point Likert scale from ‘very unimportant’ to ‘very important.’ Reported mean BTSCC for all participants was 254 500 cells/ml. Separate univariable logistic regressions using generalized linear mixed models (SAS 9.4, Cary, NC, USA) with a random effect of farm, were performed to determine if BTSCC was associated with probability for a producer's response to statements. If BTSCC was significant, forward manual addition was performed until no additional variables were significant (P ≤ 0.05), but included BTSCC, regardless of significance. Bulk tank somatic cell count was associated with ‘a troublesome thing about mastitis is the worries it causes me,’ but not with Statements 2 or 3. This demonstrates that >75% of Southeastern dairy producers are concerned with animal care and cow suffering, regardless of BTSCC. Understanding Southeast producers' emphasis on cow care is necessary to create targeted management tools for herds with elevated BTSCC.

The present work determined the nutritional quality of Piptocoma discolor and Cratylia argentea as non-timber forest products used in animal feed in the Amazonian foothills in Caquetá province - Colombia, where the grasses B. decumbens and B. humidicola predominate in the pastures.A random selection of 50 farms was made, identifying that in each of them the shrub species Piptocoma discolor, Cratylia argentea and areas of grasslands for grazing where Brachiarias decumbens and B. humidicola predominate. One sample per species was taken from each farm. The samples were subjected to chemical analysis (CP, ADF, NDF, ADL, cellulose, hemicellulose, EE, ash and IVDDM, OMD, TDN, DE, ME). An analysis of variance was performed for each of the variables evaluated using a linear mixed model, considering the species factor as a fixed effect and municipality was considered a random effect. The model assumptions were evaluated by graphical inspection of residual. A multivariate synthesis to see the interrelation between variables and species was performed using a biplot graphic obtained by principal component analysis. C. argentea and P. discolor presented higher CP levels than the grasses in the pastures (17.7; 13.1; and 6.15%, respectively) with good levels of energy intake, confirming that C. argentea and P. discolor are non-timber forest resources with forage potential.

The fruitful activity of Valeriu Cupcea in the 1960s was manifested in the identity of his plays. In the comedy Take, Yanke, and Kadar by I. Popa, this is a union of people overcoming national and religious prejudices. In the socio-psychological drama from the life of a collective farm village The Wheel of Time by A. Lupan, this is the drama of the era, manifested in life situations, in dramatic collisions of the characters in the play. In the philosophical drama about the life and death of A. Levada’s Faust and Death, this is a clash of human destinies, in the struggle of worldviews. The play I Don’t Want You To Do Good For Me Anymore by G. Malarciuc is a satire against favoritism and nepotism. In the play Two Lives and the Third by F. Vidrascu, this is psychological certainty in revealing the spiritual dramas of the heroes. In the play The Crane Feathers by J. Kinoshita this is a poetical and philosophical reading of an old Japanese legend. In the play Eminescu by M. Stefanescu, this is a highly artistic embodiment of the images of Eminescu, Creanga, Alecsandri. In the play Blanduzia’s Fountain by V. Alecsandri, this is the disclosure of the tragic life of a poet who selflessly strives to bring love and goodness to people and dooms himself to death. And others.

Direct seeded rice (DSR) with conservation agriculture (CA) can be a good option to replace the highly water consuming puddle transplanted rice (Oryza sativa L.) for producing more per unit area with less water. The predictionof rice productivity through crop growth model is significant for further planning in water savings. There are various crop growth models used for predicting rice yield, but less information available on prediction of direct seeded rice under conservation agriculture. Therefore, the water driven FAO AquaCrop model (v.5.0) which requires minimum datasets was applied to the data generated from two years (2014 and 2015) field experimentation carried out in Research Farm, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design in continuing experiment (5-6th year) with six CA practices in DSR and two puddle transplanted rice treatments and rice variety was PRH 10. The model was calibrated and validated using the data sets of kharif seasons of 2014 and 2015, respectively. The validated model prediction error statistics, i.e. root mean square error (RMSE), model efficiency (ME), index of agreement (d) and coefficient of determination (R2) for grain yield, were 0.58, 0.72, 0.93, 0.96, and for biomass 1.11, 0.85, 0.95, 0.96, respectively, for all the treatments under CA based DSR treatments. It was observed under conservation agriculture with different levels of crop residues, the predicted yield have a good fit with the observed values with acceptable accuracy. Thus, water-driven FAO AquaCrop model can be applied to predict the yield of direct seeded rice grown under conservation agriculture in the semi-arid regions of India, particularly Indo-Gangetic plain (IGP).

Van Donge's comment on my reassessment of agrarian change on the Uluguru Mountains, Tanzania, raises a number of issues that go beyond the specificities of the location under scrutiny. Before dealing with these, however, let me restate my argument, which van Donge has reconstructed only selectively. In my article (Ponte 2001a), I argued that rural households are not ‘trapped in decline’ on the Uluguru Mountains, as depicted in previous literature. Although agriculture is not going through an easy transition in the area, and some options are becoming more limited, others are being more skilfully utilised. On the Uluguru Mountains, land scarcity is the main feature of agriculture; deforestation and soil erosion are major problems; and inputs have become increasingly expensive. Under these circumstances, the main ways households can improve their quality of life – short of leaving the area altogether, and in addition to relying on remittances from outside – are to expand land cultivated in other locations, to experiment with alternative farming systems, and to increase non-farm incomes. I observed that Uluguru households were doing all of these in the mid-1990s, and that their income levels and housing characteristics had improved. This was intriguing and challenging to me, since farmers' adaptations to changing markets had not led to higher incomes in other areas that I had researched in Tanzania. Finally, I suggested that economic diversification can play an important role in improving rural livelihoods, but that this process is more likely to take place in locations with well-established economic ties and relatively good access to major markets.Van Donge has a variety of problems with my argument. These can be grouped around three main themes: (1) issues of methodology; (2) a perceived misunderstanding of his argument; and (3) the impact of liberalisation. Due to space limitations, in my reply to van Donge I deal with these larger themes. A more detailed response covering specific evidence and technicalities is available from this author and has been sent to van Donge.

Everybody loves a success story, and in Canadian theatre they don’t come much bigger than Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy. Within a mere two years of its first presentation at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille, and twenty-nine years after Paul Thompson’s seminal The Farm Show (from which it drew its life), The Drawer Boy has been staged at more than twenty theatres across Canada in a dozen original productions; won its author the 1999 Dora, Chalmers and Governor General’s Awards; received three professional productions in Toronto alone, including a six-week, eighty-nine per cent capacity run at the 1,000-seat Winter Garden Theatre; been produced with a star-studded cast by the famed Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago; and met with standing ovations wherever it was staged. In addition, another co-production this fall will take the play to the National Arts Centre, the Vancouver Playhouse, the Edmonton Citadel and Hamilton’s Aquarius Theatre; Michael Healey himself will direct the play at Vienna’s legendary English Theatre (where works by the likes of Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee received world premieres); discussions are underway to render the play for the big screen; and, finally, there is enough pent-up demand for the play from many American regional theatres, theatres across Britain and Australia and from amateur theatres worldwide to provide Healey with a handsome residual income for a very long time. While Michael Healey seems to take his success in stride – “It’s made me less grumpy” and “I think my new Jetta is a little too big for me, I may replace it with a Golf” (Healey, personal interview)1 – how good are we, collectively, as a young theatre culture at handling “our own” successes, especially when they are reproduced throughout the continent? How well do we respond to these re-productions, as both participating artists and critics, and what are some of the issues which concern us with re-productions staged in a context that is not our own?

The agri-food sector generates substantial quantities of waste material on farm and during the processing of these commodities, creating serious social and environmental problems. However, these wastes can be resources of raw material for the production of valuable chemicals with applications in various industrial sectors (e.g., food ingredients, nutraceuticals, bioderived fine chemicals, biofuels etc.). The recovery, purification and biotransformation of agri-food waste phytochemicals from this microbial spoilage-prone, complex agri-food waste material, requires appropriate fast pre-treatment and integration of various processes. This review provides a brief summary and discussion of the unique advantages and the importance of membrane technology in sustainable recycling of phytochemicals from some of the main agri-food sectors. Membrane-based pressure -driven processes present several advantages for the recovery of labile compounds from dilute streams. For example, they are clean technologies that can operate at low temperature (20–60 °C), have low energy requirements, there is no need for additional chemicals, can be quite automated and electrifiable, and have low space requirements. Based on their permselective properties based on size-, shape-, and charge-exclusion mechanisms, membrane-based separation processes have unpaired efficiency in fractionating biological components while presenting their properties. Pressure-driven membrane processes, such as microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF) and nanofiltration (NF), as well as other advanced membrane-based processes such as membrane bioreactors (MBR), membrane emulsification (ME) and membrane distillation (MD), are presented. The integration of various membrane technologies from the initial recovery of these phytochemicals (MF, UF, NF) to the final formulation (by ME) of commercial products is described. A good example of an extensively studied agri-food stream is the olive processing industry, where many different alternatives have been suggested for the recovery of biophenols and final product fabrication. Membrane process integration will deliver in the near future mature technologies for the efficient treatment of these streams in larger scales, with direct impact on the environmental protection and society (production of compounds with positive health effects, new job creation, etc.). It is expected that integration of these technologies will have substantial impact on future bio-based societies over forthcoming decades and change the way that these chemicals are currently produced, moving from petrochemical-based linear product fabrication to a sustainable circular product design based in agri-food waste biomass.

There is no success without errors. Three keys to success are to learn from your errors, to learn from successful people, and to have mentors or role models whose advice and counsel you may follow to minimize errors. It takes more than knowledge and skill to develop a successful Cooperative Extension program. Programs need to be research-based, part of a team effort, and may involve using research and extension programs conducted and developed by others.The best advice given to me on my first real job was, “The only way you’re not going to make mistakes is if you’re not doing your job” (Laubhan, 1972). Another quote from Henry Ford, “Theonly real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing,” added tomy philosophical base (Ford and Crowther, 1922). Without the wisdom conveyedby Laubhan and Ford, plus Oklahoma State University colleague Phil Kenkel’s (1990) famous quote, “How hard can it be?,” mine could have been just another mediocre career.As a dairy and farm boy from Muskogee County, Oklahoma, with a new Ph.D. in agricultural economics, I set out to educate producers in the area of marketing and risk management. I noticed that attendance at meetings and workshops was good. Participants were interested and listened. They even triedsome of my ideas. Nearly all of them, if not all, reverted back to decisions and techniques they had used before my meetings or workshops.Observant and inquisitive soul that I was, I conducted research to determine who was right. The results indicated that the producers were mostly right! If research-based information and education were to be transferred, and management practices were to be changed, either the subject matter and/or the method of delivery had to change.

Most of Indonesian oil fi eld had been categorized as mature fi led in which production had been declinedfor some time. Therefore EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery) technology is a must to be implemented to thesekinds of fi eld. There are several EOR technologies had been employed successfully in laboratory and alsofi eld scales, including gas, thermal, and chemical injection. Most Indonesian oil fi elds have productivelayers depths below 2200ft that will not suitable for gas injection. So that chemical injections become animportant alternative that can be implemented to more wide range of depths. These technologies coveralkaline, surfactant, and polymer injection. This paper will highlight the selection and formulation ofsurfactant formulated from MES (Methyl Ester Sulfonates) produced from Palm Oils. These palm oils areavailable very abundant in Indonesia due to plenty farm palm oil in Indonesia. Normally Surfactants areformulated from petroleum sulfonates which are generated from petroleum base. By Using Surfactant that willbe manufactured from palm oil, it will be expected that the price will be cheaper compare to the surfactantfrom petroleum. A series of researches have been done to select the sources of palm oils, producing MESby sulfonation processes, and fi nally surfactant screening for EOR. Several types of MES produced fromvaries of palm oil taken from market such as: CPO (crude palm oil), several packed palm oils of differenttrademarks have been generated. These MES, then, have been given codes to differentiate among these MESsuch as: 1. CCO-MES (A), 2. CCO ME-MES (B), 3. Oleic Acid- MES (C), 4. Natrium Bisulfi t- MES1 (D),5. ME+H2SO4-MES2 (E), 6. CPO-MES (F). These MES production, then, have been formulated to becomesurfactant formula by adding some chemicals and solvent. After that alkaline ((Na2CO3) with optimizedconcentrations were added to generate the best EOR properties. All those Surfactant-MES have been testedusing Lemigas standard laboratory EOR screening; those are compatibility tests, IFT measurements, thermalstability, adsorption, fi ltration, phase behavior, imbibitions and core fl ooding. The result of the screening ofthe MES-chemicals mixtures shows that mixture of CPO-MES (F) with chemical and solvent with the mixturecomposition denoted as FChS811 has the best performance. 1% of this mixture has the best properties forEOR after adding 0.1% of Alkaline (Na2CO3). Laboratory test results indicates that fulfi ll screening criteriasuh as good compatibility and no precipitation, low IFT, thermal stability, low adsorption, low fi ltrationratio, Winsor type-I phase behavior, high RF on imbibition and core fl ooding tests. This Surfactant-MESmixture has a potential to be implemented for a fi eld trial with Huff and Puff method.

<p>Produktivitas lahan, tanaman dan pendapatan pctani pekebun kelapa pada umumnya rendah. Salah satu usaha untuk mengatasinya adalah dengan menanam berbagai jenis tanaman sela di antara kelapa atau disebut polatanam campuran. Untuk mengetahui penggunaan dua model pola¬ tanam padi dan kacang tanah di antara kelapa yang lebih produktif dan menguntungkan telah dilakukan penelitian di Desa Caringinnunggal, Kecamatan Ciracap, Kabupaten Sukabumi, Propinsi Jawa Barat dengan jenis tanah podsolik merah kuning, tipe iklim Cl (Oldeman), dan kctinggian tempat 250 m dpi. Penelitian dilaksanakan secara on farm dengan menggunakan mctode observasi dimulai dai bulan Juni 1999 sampai dengan Maret 2000. Perlakuan yang diuji adalah dua model polatanam yaitu : (1) padi dan kacang tanah (75% : 25%); (2) padi dan kacang tanah (50% 50%) dengan dasar kelapa. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa penggunaan dua model polatanam (padi + kacang tanah) campuran berpengaruh positif terhadap tanaman pokok kelapa, khususnya pada karaktcr jumlah daun, jumlah bunga betina, setting buah dan produksi nira. Produktivitas tanaman sela padi pada dua model yang diuji sangat rendah. Produktivitas padi pada model satu adalah 798 kg dan model dua 496 kg gabah kenngpanen atau masing-masing setara dengan 1 064 kg dan 992.0 kg gabah keing panen/ha petanaman kelapa. Produktivitas tanaman sela kacang tanah pada dua model yang diuji cukup tinggi. Produktivitas kacang tanah pada model satu adalah 670 kg dan model dua I 220 kg polong basah atau masing-masing setara dengan 2 680 kg dan 2 440 kg polong basah/ha petanaman kelapa. Hasil. analisis finansial menunjukkan, bahwa model polatanam satu memberikan keuntungan Rp. 904 300/ha/th, B/C ratio 1.12 dan LKM 0.0495, sedang model dua membei keuntungan Rp. 1 367 800/ha/th, B/C ratio 1.17 dan LKM 0.0333.</p><p>Kata kunci: Cocos nucifera, Oryza saliva, Arachis hipogea, polatanam campuran, Sukabumi</p><p> </p><p><strong>ABSTRACT </strong></p><p><strong>Two model of rice (Oryza sativa&gt; and peanut (Arachis hipogea) cropping system on coconut land in Sukabumi Regency -West Java</strong></p><p>The productivity of coconut smallholder's income, in general, is still low. One of the solutions to overcome this problem is to introduce some intercrops in the coconut land. This study was conducted in Cainginnunggal Village, Ciracap, Sukabumi Regency, West Java Province, rom June 1999 to March 2000. The soil is red yellow podsolic, the climate is C (Oldeman), the altitude is 250 m above sea level. This research used on-farm method with two models, namely (1) ice and peanut 75%: The results of the research showed that the intercropping of rice and peanut on coconut land had good effect on coconut as the main crop, particularly on the coconut leaf number, female lower number, ruit setting, and toddy production. The productivity of ice as the intercrop was very low. On the first model was 798 kg and on the second model was 496 kg harvest dry seed or eqivalent to 1.046 kg and 992 kg harvest dry seed/ha of coconut land. The productivity of peanut as Ihe intercrop was better. On the first model was 670 kg and on the second model was I 220 kg resh pods/ha of coconut land. The results of the financial analysis indicated that the first model gave profit Rp. 904 300/ha/year, B/C ratio 1. 12 and minimum farm size is 0.0495; while me second model gave Rp. 1 367 800/ha/year, B/C ratio 1.17 and minimum farm size 0.0333.</p><p>Key words : Cocos nucifera, Oryza sativa, Arachis hipogea, coconut cropping pattern, Sukabumi</p>

Pasture is the primary feed source for NZ deer production with the greatest proportion grazed in situ. The quantity and quality of the pastures available to grazing deer varies markedly as a result of environmental factors and feed planning decisions by deer farmers. The grazing behaviour of deer responds to changes in pasture height and mass and the effect of pasture variables (height, pre -and post-grazing pasture mass and pasture allowance) on deer productivity are presented. These show that maximum levels of deer production from pasture will be achieved at a pasture height of around 8 cm (continuously stocked or post-grazing) although there is some evidence that for large genotypes, higher pasture availability is required. The relationship of liveweight gain of young deer with pasture availability shows marked seasonal effects. At the same level of pasture availability liveweight gain in spring is about twice that in winter, with autumn and summer intermediate. Increasing pasture availability cannot compensate for seasonal differences in liveweight gain. Furthermore, liveweight gain increases at a greater rate in spring than winter to increasing pasture availability, thus it is more important that appropriate pasture allowances are provided in spring than in winter. There is more variability in liveweight gain at a similar pasture availability in summer than in other seasons because of the greater variation in pasture quality in summer with the potential accumulation of seedheads and dead material. Alternative forage species are used in deer production for times of the year when quantity and quality of perennial ryegrass-based pastures limit productivity. Relative to weaner red deer grazed on perennial ryegrass/ white clover pasture, grazing on pure swards of red clover or chicory increased growth during autumn by 26-47% and during spring by 10-14%. The proportion of stags attaining target slaughter liveweight at 12 months of age increased from 75 to 94%. Pre-weaning growth during lactation was increased by approximately 20%. Red clover and chicory produce a greater proportion of their total DM during late summer and autumn than does perennial ryegrass/white clover pasture, and are therefore better aligned with deer feed requirements, particularly those of lactating hinds. Grazing on sulla in autumn and spring increased the growth of weaner deer by 33 and 10%, relative to pasture fed deer. Indoor studies showed that relative to perennial ryegrass, chicory was of higher organic matter digestibility, disintegrated more rapidly in the rumen with a low rumination time and had shorter mean retention time of material in the rumen. This explains differences in voluntary feed intake which were 56, 26 and 15% higher for deer grazing chicory than perennial ryegrass/white clover pastures during summer, autumn and spring respectively. Similar r esults have been found for the digestion of red clover versus perennial ryegrass by red deer. Plant density in stands of both chicory and red clover declines with time, with their lifetime under deer grazing being approximately 4 years. A mixture of both plants offers a food option as specialist forage for increasing deer growth and also fixing nitrogen. To ensure good persistence such forages should not be grazed in periods of prolonged wet weather. Best persistence is obtained when these are managed as specialist forages for increasing deer growth on a small area of the farm, (10- 20% total area), rather than being sown as a mixture with grasses over large areas of the farm. There is no specific comparison of deer production under different stocking systems and both continuous grazing and rotational grazing are used. Based on evidence and practices with other species, choice of stocking system has more to do with pasture/forage species, feed budgeting, pasture management and animal behaviour than with productivity. At high stocking densities (150 deer/ha), the grazing time of subordinate animals is reduced. Where possible, without inducing undue stress (e.g. at weaning), young deer should be grouped for grazing by liveweight. Deer production systems have a seasonal pattern of energy demand that does not match that of pasture growth in most NZ environments. This calls for manipulation of the feed demand by integration of livestock systems and/ or modification of the feed supply through conservation and supplementation. The most commonly used supplements are pasture and lucerne silage/baleage and grain. The quality (ME/kg DM) has a significant impact on the resulting liveweight gain.

KoustrupA medieval thorp in Western JutlandIn the mid-1980s, a farmer ploughed up stones and clay on some fields adjoining an old road in an area known as Koustrup in the parish of Velling near Ringkøbing (fig. 1). Following this, amateur archaeologists investigated the area and located five medieval farm sites. Four farm sites were on the southern side and one was on the northern side of an east-west running road, which may go back to the Middle Ages. Some of the farm sites were visible on aerial photos (fig. 2).The farms were built on a moor in the early Middle Ages, and the settlement was probably inhabited until the 14th century. Ringkøbing Museum investigated the westernmost farm site in 1992 without recovering definite house remains. The second farm site from the East was excavated in the summers of 1994 to 1996.This paper presents the results of these in vestigations.The area to be excavated was divided into two large areas, I and II. A dwelling house and its surroundings were excavated in area I (fig. 3), and the remains of farm buildings and other structures in area II.The dwelling house first appeared as an oblong clay area: the clay floor (fig. 4). Along the edges of this floor, some large stones appeared. They were arranged in a row, and although some were missing, it was clearly the remains of a sill. In the middle of the northern row of sill stones there was a bay-like projection (fig. 5). There were only a few post holes in the house, and although some were following the axis of the house, the house did not seem to have had central roof-carrying posts. More likely, the walls were carrying the roof. Some postholes aligned across the house towards each end may indicate partition walls that divided the house into a large middle room and two smaller gable rooms. The gables were difficult to distinguish, but two oval pits containing stones may be the remains of the western gable (fig. 6), whereas a very deep posthole towards the south-east marked one corner of the eastern gable. The oldest fireplace in the house was a pit, which may have had a wooden superstructure, perhaps a spark-catcher (fig. 7). Along the inside of the northern wall east of the projection were the remains of an oven, which had had a mud-built vault. This oven belongs to the latest phase of the house. There were also traces of a couple of fireplaces on the clay floor. Postholes outside the house indicate a couple of light wooden buildings close to the dwelling house. Traces of another oven were found at the middle of the southern house wall. In the eastern end of the house was a 3-m long stone-lined pit (fig. 8), which is interpreted as a low cellar. Two stone-paved areas were excavated at the east end of the house. They may be connected with entrances in the eastern gable.The majority of the finds from the dwelling house are potsherds of the local brown/grey, coarsely tempered ware also known from the oldest layers of Ringkøbing (fig. 9). The numerous rimsherds with flanged rims indicate that the clay vessels are mainly of the gloular type (fig. 10). The rimsherds could be divided into three main groups: A, with a curved flanged rim (fig. 11); B, with a rim bent outward in an almost right angle (fig. 12); and C, with a pronounced bend between the neck and the rim and a wide rim meant to support a lid (fig. 13). Apart from sherds from globular vessels, there were sherds of unglazed jugs, dishes, and bowls (fig. 14). Only a few sherds from glazed jugs were found, one with a twisted handle (fig. 15). Other artifacts from the dwelling house were whetstones made from Norwegian micaschist (fig. 16) and some rusty iron objects, mainly nails and spikes.The dwelling house remains in area I are well preserved, although marked by cultivation in modern times. The house had a width of 5.5 meters and a length of 18 meters. Charcoal from the cooking pit and from a waste layer outside the projection were C14-dated. The result shows that the house was in use in the decades around 1250. Together with the artifacts, this point s at the 13th century as the function period.The knowledge of medieval country houses in Western Jutland is sparse, as it is limited to just a few finds. The dwelling house of an excavated medieval farm by Fjand also had a row of sill stones, but in this case, the sill was supporting massive turf walls, and the roof was supported by central roof-carrying posts. Turf walls in combination with central roof-bearing posts were common in areas with sparse timber. However, in Koustrup there was enough timber available for building, and the walls were probably half-timbered and fixed in a sill beam resting on the sill stones. The small projection in the north wall is unusual in the Danish material.Area II was situated south east of area I. It was laid out in order to locate the farm buildings of the medieval farm. Aerial photos showed faint house silhouettes in th is place. However, very little was preserved (fig. 17).The northern part of the area was characterized by a large peat layer, which had been filled into a 60- cm deep hole dug into the hill from the east – perhaps a store for house building, or for bedding in the stables. Later, a small peat-wall building with an oven (C, fig. 1 8) was erected on top of the layer. The surface had traces of two more fireplaces: A, by the western edge of the area, and B, some four meters from the western edge. In and around these structures were several medieval potsherds (fig. 19).South of the large peat blotch were the traces from a building running north-south. Unfortunately, only traces of the western wall were found, but enough of this was left for three building phases to be established. The older phase was represented by a row of postholes, which could be followed for 15 meters. The southernmost 9.5 meters consisted of six pairs of double posts. When the building was altered, these walls were replaced by peat walls resting in foundation trenches. When these walls were later replaced, new foundation trenches were dug into the old ones. However, this time stones were placed in the ditches before the peatwalls were erected on top (fig. 24). In the middle of the long wall was an interval without stones, perhaps indicating a door.Area II did not provide as much pottery as area I. Some sherds from globular vessels with the rim forms A, B, and C were collected, but just a single glazed sherd. A quern stone of garnet micaschist originates from Norway (fig. 21). Several rusty iron items were found in the area, mainly nails.The most interesting single find was a small Romanesque bronze cross (fig. 22). It was found using a metal detector and measures 3.6 x 2.8 cm. The weight is 7 g. The cross is from c. 1200 and has an ornamentation of engraved lines with traces of gilt. A missing cross arm may indicate that the cross was broken off a casket or other item.Although there were no instantly recognizable house sites, we have established medieval activity in area II. Whether the structural remains are from the farm’s stables and barns, or the remains of an older croft settlement is unknown.Aerial photos and investigation of the two areas showed trenches and ditches that may have been part of the demarcation of the medieval croft (fig. 24). A ditch running along the northern side of the dwelling house in area I may indicate the northern end of the croft. In area II, the structural remains were cut by two succeeding north-south running ditches, the assumed eastern end of the croft. Southernmost in area II was a large peat-filled ditch running east-west, which may indicate the southern perimeter (fig. 23).The early Middle Ages were times of prosperity for North-western Europe, and so the populations grew. New land was put under the plough, and many left their villages in order to found new settlements, the so-called thorps. In Denmark, around 4000 localities with the name ending ”- torp ” or the derivatives ” -tarp ”, or ”-trup ” are known. Around half of these belong to existing settlements, such as Koustrup. This name was supposedly created from the personal name of ”Kok” and ”torp”. The village was first mentioned as ”Coxtrup” in a written source from the mid-15th century.After the good times of the many thorp foundations, Denmark suffered a drastic recession in the first half of the 14th century. Civil wars and crop failure was followed by the plague, and many thorps and farms were deserted. Perhaps the Koustrup settlement was given up at that time. At least the area was uninhabited then, but new investigation has shown that Koustrup was revived in the late Middle Ages some two hundred meters to the south of the 13th century settlement. Some of the farms in this ”new” Koustrup were mentioned in late medieval sources,and three of the farms still exist (fig. 25).The excavations in Koustrup have increased our knowledge of the country settlement in Western Jutland in the late Middle Ages. Many questions have been answered, and new ones have been asked. It is a fascinating thought that the inhabitants of the first Koustrup may have witnessed both the erection of the Veiling Church and so me hundred years later the sprouting up of the market town of Ringkøbing.Helle HenningsenRingkøbing MuseumTranslated by Annette Lerche Trolle

In the Garden of EdenThe covers of the first three volumes of Kuml show photographs of fine Danish antiquities. Inside the volumes have articles on the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Jutland, which is to be expected as Kuml is published by the Jutland Archaeological Society. However, in 1954 the scene is moved to more southern skies. This year, the cover is dominated by a date palm with two huge burial mounds in the background. In side the book one reads no less than six articles on the results from the First Danish Archaeological Bahrain Expedition. P.V. Glob begins with: Bahrain – Island of the Hundred Thousand Burial Mounds, The Flint Sites of the Bahrain Desert, Temples at Barbar and The Ancient Capital of Bahrain, followed by Bibby’s Five among Bahrain’s Hundred Thousand Burial Mounds and The Well of the Bulls. The following years, reports on excavations on Bahrain and later in the sheikhdoms of Qatar, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi are on Kuml’s repertoire.However, it all ends wit h the festschrift to mark Glob’s 60th anniversary, Kuml 1970, which has three articles on Arab archaeology and a single article in 1972. For the past thirty years almost, the journal has not had a single article on Arabia. Why is that? Primarily because the character of the museum’s work in the Arabian Gulf changed completely. The pioneers’ years of large-scale reconnaissance and excavations were succeeded by labourous studies of the excavated material – the necessary work preceding the final publications. Only in Abu Dhabi and Oman, Karen Frifelt carried on the pioneer spirit through the 1970s and 1980s, but she mainly published her results in in ternational, Englishlanguage journals.Consequently, the immediate field reports ended, but the subsequent research into Arab archaeology – carried out at the writing desk and with the collections of finds– still crept into Kuml. From 1973 , the journal contained a list of the publications made by the Jutland Archaeological Society (abbreviated JASP), and here, the Arab monographs begin to make their entry. The first ones are Holger Kapel’s Atlas of the Stone Age Cultures of Qatar from 1967 and Geoffrey Bibby’s survey in eastern Saudi Arabia from 1973. Then comes the Hellenistic excavations on the Failaka island in Kuwait with Hans Erik Mathiesen’s treatise on the terracotta figurines (1982), Lise Hannestad’s work on the ceramics (1983) and Kristian Jeppesen’s presentation of the temple and the fortifications (1989). A similar series on the Bronze Age excavations on Failaka has started with Poul Kjærum’s first volume on the stamp and cylinder seals (1983) and Flemming Højlund’s presentation of the ceramics (1987). The excavations on the island of Umm an-Nar in Abu Dhabi was published by Karen Frifelt in two volumes on the settlement (1991) and the graves (1995), and the ancient capital of Bahrain was analysed by H. Hellmuth Andersen and Flemming Højlund in two volumes on the northern city wall and the Islamic fort (1994) and the central, monumental buildings (1997) respectively.More is on its way! A volume on Islamic finds made on Bahrain has just been made ready for printing, and the Bronze Age temples at the village of Barbar is being worked up. Danish and foreign scholars are preparing other volumes, but the most important results of the expeditions to the Arabian Gulf have by now been published in voluminous series.With this, an era has ended, and Moesgård Museum’s 50th anniversary in 1999 was a welcome opportunity of looking back at the Arabian Gulf effort through the exhibition Glob and the Garden ef Eden. The Danish Bahrain expeditions and to consider what will happen in the future.How then is the relation ship between Moesgård Museum and Bahrain today, twenty-three years after the last expedition – now that most of the old excavations have been published and the two originators of the expeditions, P.V. Glob and Geoffrey Bibby have both died?In Denmark we usually consider Bahrain an exotic country with an exciting past. However, in Bahrain there is a similar fascination of Denmark and of Moesgård Museum. The Bahrain people are wondering why Danish scholars have been interested in their small island for so many years. It was probably not a coincidence when in the 1980s archaeologist and ethnographers from Moesgård Museum were invited to take part in the furnishing of the exhibitions in the new national museum of Bahrain. Today, museum staff from Arab countries consider a trip to Moesgård a near-pilgrimage: our collection of Near East artefacts from all the Gulf countries is unique, and the ethnographic collections are unusual in that they were collected with thorough information on the use, the users and the origin of each item.The Bahrain fascination of Moesgård Museum. was also evident, when the Bahrain minister of education, Abdulaziz Al-Fadl, visited the museum in connection with the opening of the Bahrain exhibition in 1999.Al-Fadl visited the museum’s oriental department, and in the photo and film archive a book with photos taken by Danish members of the expeditions to the Arabian Gulf was handed over to him. Al-Fadl was absorbed by the photos of the Bahrain of his childhood – the 1950s and 1960s – an un spoilt society very different from the modern Bahrain. His enthusiasm was not lessened when he saw a photo of his father standing next to P.V. Glob and Sheikh Salman Al Khalifa taken at the opening of Glob’s first archaeological exhibition in Manama, the capital. At a banquet given by Elisabeth Gerner Nielsen, the Danish minister of culture, on the evening following the opening of the Glob exhibition at Moesgård, Al-Fadl revealed that as a child, he had been on a school trip to the Danish excavations where – on the edge of the excavation – he had his first lesson in Bahrain’s prehistory from a Danish archaeologist (fig. 1).Another example: When attending the opening of an art exhibition at Bahrain’s Art Centre in February 1999, I met an old Bahrain painter, Abdelkarim Al-Orrayed, who turned out to be a good friend of the Danish painter Karl Bovin, who took part in Glob’s expeditions. He told me, how in 1956, Bovin had exhibited his paintings in a school in Manama. He recalled Bovin sitting in his Arabian tunic in a corner of the room, playing a flute, which he had carved in Sheikh Ibrahim’s garden.In a letter, Al-Orrayed states: ”I remember very well the day in 1956, when I met Karl Bovin for the first time. He was drawin g some narrow roads in the residential area where I lived. I followed him closely with my friend Hussain As-Suni – we were twentythree and twenty-one years old respectively. When he had finished, I invited him to my house where I showed him my drawings. He looked at them closely and gave me good advice to follow if I wanted to become a skilful artist – such as focusing on lines, form, light, distance, and shadow. He encouraged me to practice outdoors and to use different models. It was a turning point in our young artists’ lives when Hussein and I decided to follow Bovin’s instructions. We went everywhere – to the teahouses, the markets, the streets, and the countryside – and practised there, but the sea was the most fascinating phenomenon to us. In my book, An Introduction to Modern Art in Bahrain, I wrote about Bovin’s exhibitions in the 1950s and his great influence on me as an artist. Bovin’s talent inspired us greatly in rediscovering the nature and landscape on Bahrain and gave us the feeling that we had much strength to invest in art. Bovin contributed to a new start to us young painters, who had chosen the nature as our main motif.”Abdelkarim Al-Orrayed was the first Bahrain painter to live of his art, and around 1960 he opened a studio from which he sold his paintings. Two of his landscape watercolours are now at Moesgård.These two stories may have revealed that Bahrain and Moesgard Museum have a common history, which both parts value and wish to continue. The mutual fascination is a good foundation to build on and the close bonds and personal acquaintance between by now more generations is a valuable counterbalance to those tendencies that estrange people, cultures, and countries from one another.Already, more joint projects have been initiated: Danish archaeology students are taking part in excavations on Bahrain and elsewhere in the Arabic Gulf; an ethnography student is planning a long stay in a village on Bahrain for the study of parents’ expectations to their children on Bahrain as compared with the conditions in Denmark; P.V. Glob’s book, Al-Bahrain, has been translated into Arabic; Moesgård’s photos and films from the Gulf are to become universally accessible via the Internet; an exhibition on the Danish expeditions is being prepared at the National Museum of Bahrain, and so forth.Two projects are to be described in more detail here: New excavations on Bahrain that are to investigate how fresh water was exploited in the past, and the publication of a book and three CDs, Music in Bahrain, which will make Bahrain’s traditional music accessible not just to the population of Bahrain, but to the whole world.New excavations on BahrainFor millennia, Bahrain was famous for its abundance of fresh water springs, which made a belt of oases across the northern half of the island possible. Natural fertility combined with the favourable situation in the middle of the Arab Gulf made Bahrain a cultural and commercial centre that traded with the cities of Mesopotamia and the IndusValley already in the third millennium BC.Fresh water also played an important part in Bahrain’s ancient religion, as seen from ar chaeological excavations and Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets: A magnificent temple of light limestone was built over a spring, and according to old texts, water was the gods’ gift to Bahrain (Dilmun).Although fresh water had an overwhelming importance to a parched desert island, no studies have been directed towards the original ”taming” of the water on Bahrain. Therefore, Moesgård Museum is now beginning to look into the earliest irrigation techniques on the island and their significance to Bahrain’s development.Near the Bahrain village of Barbar, P.V. Glob in 1954 discovered a rise in the landscape, which was excavated during the following years. It turned out that the mound covered three different temples, built on top of and around each other. The Barbar temple was built of whitish ashlars and must have been an impressive structure. It has also gained a special importance in Near East research, as this is the first and only time that the holy spring chamber, the abzu, where the god Enki lived, has been un earthed (fig. 2).On the western side of the Barbar temple a monumental flight of steps, flank ed on both sides by cult figures, was leading through a portal to an underground chamber with a fresh water spring. In the beautiful ashlar walls of this chamber were three openings, through which water flowed. Only the eastern out flow was investigated, as the outside of an underground stonebuilt aqueduct was found a few metres from the spring chamber.East of the temple another underground aqueduct was followed along a 16-m distance. It was excavated at two points and turned out almost to have the height of a man. The floor was covered with large stones with a carved canal and the ceiling was built of equally large stones (fig. 3).No doubt the spring chamber was a central part of the temple, charge d with great importance. However, the function of the aqueducts is still unknown. It seems obvious that they were to lead the fresh water away from the source chamber, but was this part of a completely ritual arrangement, or was the purpose to transport the water to the gardens to be used for irrigation?To clarify these questions we will try to trace the continuations of the aqueducts using different tracing techniques such as georadar and magnetometer. As the sur roundings of Barbar temple are covered by several metres of shifting sand, the possibilities of following the aqueducts are fine, if necessary even across a great distance, and if they turn out to lead to old gardens, then these may be exposed under the sand.Underground water canals of a similar construction, drawing water from springs or subsoil water, have been used until modern times on Bahrain, and they are still in use in Iran and on the Arabian Peninsula, especially in Oman, where they supply the gardens with water for irrigation. They are called qanats and are usually considered built by the Persians during periods when the Achaemenid or Sassanid kings controlled Arabia (c. 500 BC-c. 600 AD). However, new excavation results from the Oman peninsula indicate that at least some canal systems date from c. 1000 BC. It is therefore of utmost interest if similar sophisticated transportation systems for water on Bahrain may be proven to date from the time of the erection of the Barbar temple, i.e. c. 2000 BC.The finds suggest that around this time Bahrain underwent dramatic changes. From being a thinly inhabited island during most of the 3rd millennium BC, the northern part of the island suddenly had extensive burial grounds, showing a rapid increase in population. At the same time the major settlement on the northern coast was fortified, temples like the one at Barbar were built, and gigantic ”royal mounds” were built in the middle of the island – all pointing at a hierarchic society coming into existence.This fast social development of Dilmun must have parallelled efficiency in the exploitation of fresh water resources for farm ing to supply a growing population with the basic food, and perhaps this explains the aqueducts by Barbar?The planned excavatio ns will be carried out in close cooperation between the National Museum of Bahrain and Aarhus University, and they are supported financially by the Carlsberg Foundation and Bahrain’s Cabinet and Information Ministry.The music of BahrainThe composer Poul Rovsing Olsen (1922-1982) was inspired by Arab and Indian music, and he spent a large part of his life studying traditional music in the countries along the Arabian Gulf. In 1958 and 1962-63 he took part in P.V. Glob’s expeditions to Arabia as a music ethnologist and in the 1970s he organised stays of long duration here (fig. 4).The background for his musical fieldwork was the rapid development, which the oil finds in the Gulf countries had started. The local folk music would clearly disappear with the trades and traditions with which they were connected.” If no one goes pearl fishing anymore, then no one will need the work songs connected to this work. And if no one marries according to tradition with festivity lasting three or sometimes five days, then no one will need the old wedding songs anymore’’.It was thus in the last moment that Rovsing Olsen recorded the pearl fishers’ concerts, the seamen’s shanties, the bedouin war songs, the wedding music, the festival music etc. on his tape recorder. By doing this he saved a unique collection of song and music, which is now stored in the Dansk Folkemindesamling in Copenhagen. It comprises around 150 tapes and more than 700 pieces of music. The instruments are to be found at the Musikhistorisk Museum and Moesgård Museum (fig. 5).During the 1960s and 1970s Rovsing Olsen published a number of smaller studies on music from the Arabian Gulf, which established his name as the greatest connoisseur of music from this area – a reputation, which the twenty years that have passed since his death have not shaken. Rovsing Olsen also published an LP record with pearl fisher music, and with the music ethnologist Jean Jenkins from the Horniman Museum in London he published six LP records, Music in the World of Islam with seven numbers from the Arabian Gulf, and the book Music and Musical Instruments in the World of Islam (London 1976).Shortly before his death, Rovsing Olsen finished a comprehensive manuscript in English, Music in Bahrain, where he summed up nearly twenty-five years of studies into folk music along the Arabian Gulf, with the main emphasis on Bahrain. The manuscript has eleven chapters, and after a short introduction Rovsing Olsen deals with musical instruments, lute music, war and honour songs of the bedouins, festivity dance, working songs and concerts of the pearl fishers, music influenced front Africa, double clarinet and bag pipe music, religious songs and women’s songs. Of these, eighty-four selected pieces of music are reproduced with notes and commented in the text. A large selection of this music will be published on three CDs to go with the book.This work has been anticipated with great expectation by music ethnologists and connoisseurs of Arabic folk music, and in agreement with Rovsing Olsen’s widow, Louise Lerche-Lerchenborg and Dansk Folkemindesamling, Moesgård Museum is presently working on publishing the work.The publication is managed by the Jutland Archaeological Society and Aarhus University Press will manage the distribution. The Carlsberg Foundation and Bahrain’s Cabinet and Information Ministry will cover the editing and printing expenses.The publication of the book and the CDs on the music of Bahrain will be celebrated at a festivity on Bahrain, at the next annual cultural festival, the theme of which will be ”mutual inspiration across cultural borders” with a focus on Rovsing Olsen. In this context, Den Danske Trio Anette Slaato will perform A Dream in Violet, a music piece influenced by Arabic music. On the same occasion singers and musicians will present the traditional pearl fishers’ music from Bahrain. In connection with the concert on Bahrain, a major tour has been planned in cooperation with The Danish Institute in Damascus, where the Danish musicians will also perform in Damascus and Beirut and give ”masterclasses” in chamber music on the local music academies. The concert tour is being organised by Louise Lerche-Lerchenborg, who initiated one of the most important Danish musical events, the Lerchenborg Musical Days,in 1963 and organised them for thirty years.ConclusionPride of concerted effort is not a special Danish national sport. However,the achievements in the Arabian Gulf made by the Danish expeditions from the Århus museum are recognised everywhere. It is only fair to use this jubilee volume for drawing attention to the fact that the journal Kuml and the publications of the Jutland Archaeological Society were the instruments through which the epoch-making investigations in the Gulf were nude public nationally and internationally.Finally, the cooperationon interesting tasks between Moesgård Museum and the countries along the Arabian Gulf will continue. In the future, Kuml will again be reporting on new excavations in the palm shadows and eventually, larger investigation s will no doubt find their way to the society’s comprehensive volumes.Flemming HøjlundMoesgård MuseumTranslated by Annette Lerche Trolle

As new graduates, we are all trying to find our “place” in the veterinary world. I will discuss how I found my niche within the practice and have watched it grow over the last several years. For me, it started as a particular interest that expanded to be a good revenue generator for the practice, and a way for me to learn more about dairy practice and help clients with milk quality. I will also discuss considerations for starting your own in-clinic lab, as well as considerations for on-farm culture.

I grew up on a farm on the Western Slopes of New South Wales where in a good year the annual rainfall was 18 inches (450 mm). That amount of rain can fall in a matter of days in Far North Queensland and the frogs are of a size and colour that was unimaginable to me who had handled only the tiny frogs of the drylands. To top it off, in the last five years I have endured two Category-5 cyclones, Larry and Yasi both of which hit us at Mission Beach where I spend my summers and as much of the year as I can. And then I went to India, South India where the monsoons fill the streets with water.

In dairy practice many of my most frustrating cases used to be cows that cycle regularly (every 20-22 days), palpate normal on rectal exam, show dramatic and appropriate length heats, but fail to conceive after repeated inseminations. Many times dairymen will ask me about these cows when I am at the farm for another reason and the problem cow has just "returned" again that day for the sixth time. For a few years I would palpate the cow and mumble "she feels good, breed her again and give her GnRH this time." It was after dairymen began saying "But Doc, you said the same thing two heats ago," that I began to develop a somewhat more sophisticated approach to these cows. I no longer fear these cows, but view them as an opportunity. Getting a dairyman's best cow pregnant can be quite a practice builder.

It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here this morning -- and to have the opportunity to address you at this Plenary Session. Even though I've spent a good part of my life traveling and working in over sixty countries of the world -- I haven't had many opportunities to be in such close association with people of your profession. When I was growing up on a depression era farm in North Dakota, we usually didn't call the vet until our cow or horse was almost dead -- and so there was usually little reason for him to spend much time on our farm -- except to administer the last rites. I remember after he left, my father and I would quickly skin the dead animal and sell the hide so we could pay his nominal fee. In more recent years, it seems, the only times I've talked to veterinarians has usually been with dogs barking in the background and my own undisciplined dog straining at his leash. So I quickly accepted when I was asked to address you, for I knew this would be a more favorable environment -- or at least I hoped it would be! Today, I've been asked to look into my crystal ball and tell you what I see ahead for the livestock industry.

It is doubtful that many of today's dairy herds, fed rations balanced to NRC standards, experience reproductive problems solely because of nutrition. Nutrients and how their deficiencies and excesses affect reproduction have been reviewed.1,6 Further research is needed to investigate combinations of nutrients and the subsequent effect on reproduction. Some veterinary practitioners are convinced that there are profound interrelationships between the nutritional status of dairy cattle and their reproductive performance. This clinical impression was fostered because in many cases regular reproductive tract examinations alone were not adequate to ensure good herd reproductive health and reproductive efficiency. In some cases this impression is justified, but in many cases nutrition is the scapegoat for environment, stress, disease and the main problem of missed heats and other poor reproductive management practices. This paper will discuss body condition scoring cows on a large dairy farm in north Florida, and its effect upon reproductive performance and 305-day mature equivalent four percent fat-corrected milk (ME 305).

In 1998 a three-year dairy farm monitoring programme funded by AGMARDT (Agricultural Marketing and Research Development Trust) was established on twelve dairy farms in the southern North Island of New Zealand where policy had changed from a focus on high production per ha through high stocking rate to a management based on reduced stocking rate and strategic use of supplements to enhance both production per cow and per ha. The project involved a detailed three-year data collection which included measurements of the quantity and composition of pasture and supplements consumed as well as animal performance. Analysis of the results of the third year (2000/2001) on nine of these farms with complete data sets identified a range of metabolisable energy (ME) intake (50669 - 70135 MJ ME/cow/yr). Supplementary feed represented on average 24% (21 - 27 %) of the total intake of ME, the main supplements being pasture silage (summer to winter), turnips (summer) and maize silage (autumn and winter) consumed by lactating cows, and grazing off by dry stock. There was a range of milksolids (MS) production per cow (372 - 424 kg/year) and per hectare (921 - 1264 kg/year). The average economic farm surplus per hectare of NZ$3077 (NZ$2425 - NZ$3867) for the case-study farms was approximately 43% higher than the top 25% farms in the Manawatu region. Mean values of return on assets for the case-study farms (12.9%) and top 25% farms in Manawatu (13.0%) were similar. Good pasture management based on controlled preand post-grazing herbage mass targets (mean 2650 and 1900 kg DM/ha, respectively), strategic use of supplementary feed to control pasture deficits, and moderate stocking rates (overall mean 2.7 cows/ha), provided high allowances of high quality herbage (organic matter digestibility ranging from 742 to 845 g/kg DM) and maintained high levels of milk production (411 kg MS/cow and 1100kg MS/ha). The comparison with industry data showed that the casestudy farms were highly productive and profitable dairy systems, at least under the conditions of the 2000/2001 season. However, the result indicated the need to improve management skills to limit feed wastage under generous feeding management, and also the limitation of conventional procedures for monitoring pasture consumption in farming systems. Keywords: animal performance, dairy systems, energy intak e, herbage quality, pasture management, profitability

<p>My name is Bernardino Cruces Pedraza, I am 85 years old, and I am a producer of asparagus (<em>Asparagus officinalis</em>; editor’s note) in the ejido of Acuescomac, municipality of Atenco, State of Mexico. Many important things have happened in the country throughout my life, but nothing like the pandemic we are going through. At first, I thought it was fake news, I thought it was only meant to scare the people. I remembered the news about the ‘chupacabra’ in 1994. Or maybe it was something similar to the flu, which in my opinion was just a fleeting, harmless cold.To tell you the truth, I have never believed everything the news says, but as the months went by, I realized that this disease was really dangerous. I began to understand its importance when they closed the Iztapalapa supply center since that is where I sell my asparagus. The buyer told me that the government had made the decision to close the center due to a damn virus and that, as a consequence, the price of my product would go down, which would obviously affect me economically, me and my workers. In talks with friends, we made fun of and joked about the disease. It was rumored that it was just a government ploy to weed out the senior population as it couldn’t keep paying so much support. That made me angry, made me want to curse because people from the countryside do not live off the government. We work hard and our work is the most honest and the most worthy… We are not a burden to the government. By then it was the Spring-Summer season, and I was sowing asparagus, corn, and cabbage, in order to take advantage of the good rain and temperature of May, the month of my birthday. I felt safe in the field since I knew that the air there was good and that is why I would not be infected with anything; indeed, my lungs would be cleaned. That is why I did not wear a face mask, especially when I was working on my crops. Being in the field reassures me. When I’m weeding the field, my mind fills with memories of my childhood...memories from my entire life...memories of when we were not aware of anything else in the world, not like today...memories of my father, Mr. Narciso Cruces. He dedicated his life to working in the fields and raising cattle. Ever since I had use of reason, I helped him with that work, until I was 14 years old. It was then that American household appliance companies arrived, and I started working in the General Electric factory as a welder. Through hard work, I became a floor supervisor. I worked for that company for 40 years. Despite the hard work I did in the factory, I never left my father alone with the farm and livestock activities. It was only when I retired that I returned to work full-time to crop production. I changed from corn to vegetables due to a desire to relive my childhood. I know that working in the fields does not reward sentimentality. Working in the field requires hard work, commitment, and effort. It is true that the government provides some to agricultural producers in the form of livestock feed, fertilizer, tools, and agrochemicals, but I don’t like to depend on anyone. That is why I strive not to depend on external help but to be self-sufficient, with my own work.</p>

Percy was a put upon pig. Everywhere he went, others pointed and stared. It was never Percy’s intention to be the focus of gossip and innuendo, but it seemed that from the moment he was born, other animals were destined to imbue him with all sorts of various—and often competing—meanings. Percy had asked for none of it. He thought of life as a rather simple affair. What made it complex and often baffling had more to do with what his farmyard friends projected onto him rather than anything that Percy would describe as pig related. As such, Percy had decided early on in life, that he would have no truck with superstition of any kind. The horses would grimace as he walked by; the cows would shake their heads and smile as if … well, Percy could never work out what the ‘as if’ stood in for. It obviously, though, had something to do with long, long ago. Recently, Percy had begun thinking about leaving the farm. This was not a decision to be taken lightly; in fact, it required a great deal of thought and careful planning: mulling over possible outcomes, unforeseen dangers and bends in the road. All clichés of course, but so many elements of any journey are. It was in the setting off, Percy reasoned, that the clichéd nature of any journey ended, and the individual narrative began. Percy’s one friend in the farmyard was Ian the carpet snake, and like Percy, he was unpopular with the other animals. Ian was something of a philosopher and Percy enjoyed their occasional conversations, particularly when things were going poorly for him with the other animals. Which was generally often and generally for reasons that had to do with ancient history rather than any particular matter at hand. “I think that it’s my body that’s the problem”, Percy sighed to Ian as he trotted into the barn. Ian was never quick to respond, reluctant as he was to withdraw from whatever band of sunlight he had managed to slither into. “And what problem is that little pig”, Ian demurred, unable to open his eyes just yet. “Oh well, the same problem as ever I expect”, Percy replied, obviously troubled by his relationships with the other animals in the farmyard. “They’ve been at it again have they?” Ian asked. “The thing is they’re never not at it”, Percy said grumpily. “And I’m sick of trying to work out why it is that everyone has such problems with me”. “Perhaps if you weren’t the only pig in the farmyard …” “But that’s just it, I am the only pig in the farmyard and it’s becoming intolerable. I have no understanding as to why, for the horses, I am an utter disgrace: to the cows, I’m something to pity; the birds see me as an object of ridicule and the chickens … are so arrogant toward me. Chickens! For goodness sake!” “And how is all this related to your body?” Ian asked. “Well,” Percy began, “I can’t help but think I’m somehow flawed. It’s as if my body is a joke of some kind. And it’s a joke that everyone else seems to understand but me. And no one, and I do mean no one, is prepared to tell me the joke to my face. If only I could understand why they feel so strongly about my very presence I might be able to argue my case, assure them that I am somehow different to the pigs they have in their minds”. “Mmm”, Ian muttered as he slithered into a coil and out of his sunlight. This was always the moment of commitment with Ian; the moment that signified a conversation was becoming interesting to the point where he might be encouraged to say something deep and wise; profound even. “Well, they do have a point, Percy”, Ian said. “You are enormously fat, your legs are very short, and your tail curls in disgrace at the size of your behind”. “But that’s just who I am”, squealed Percy in despair. “I can’t help the form my body takes”. Percy was close to tears, his frustration beginning to overwhelm him. “Do not cry or I will not talk to you”, Ian demanded, suddenly forceful. “Oh not you too. Can’t you see I’m distressed? My body”, Percy began, “is constantly hungry. It gives me no relief and my legs … can’t you see they have to be this way in order to support my frame? Being short means my legs are very powerful, they can move me about at more than a fair clip. It’s not right that the horses belittle me. It’s as if all the other animals think I’ve somehow asked to be born this way. As if … no one can see my good points”. “And tell me, Percy”, Ian asked kindly, “what are your good points?” “Well”, Percy replied, “I’m not fussy. I’m very pragmatic. I’m not a dreamer like the cows, or vain like the horses. Nor am I unable to commit like the birds. I have a great capacity to enlighten others as to the possibilities of pleasure and”, Percy continued, a little less sure, “I am loyal and kind”. “Mmm”, Ian demurred once more, “and yet the others are still unkind to you”. “The grasshoppers say that it’s a hangover from the dark ages; that no one actually remembers why it is they should hate me … it’s just that everyone’s sure that is what they’re supposed to do”. “Perhaps,” began Ian, “If you ate a little less?” “But you don’t understand either”, Percy cried. “You’re meant to be my friend, Ian. My one and only friend and yet you criticise me just like they do. As if … as if, my very pig-ness offends you”. “Well I do know how you feel if that is any consolation, Percy. Trust me when I say that my fan club are not people you want to hang out with. Honestly, snake lovers are troubled folk. They simple don’t understand a snake’s desire to be left alone”. “Well I don’t want to be left alone. I want to belong!” shouted Percy. So loud did Percy shout, that the horses standing outside the barn overheard him. And the idea of Percy wanting to belong made them laugh and neigh so loudly that the noise threatened to bring the humans over. Which was never a good idea. Except at feeding time. “Oh, Percy”, Ian sighed, as the horses cantered off shaking their manes in the breeze. “You can’t escape your identity. You think I want to be a carpet snake? Well, I don’t. I want to be an eagle. I’d do anything to be an eagle but that’s just not going to happen. One has to accept ones fate. And unfortunately for you, what being a pig means in this particular moment, is … well”, Ian said rationally, “rather a sad thing. But I will say this, being a pig is better than being a rat. Rats are foul and nasty creatures and you will not find anyone to disagree”. “Except perhaps a rat”, Percy exclaimed. “Oh, they know what foul creatures they are alright”, Ian corrected Percy. “But only because everyone thinks poorly of them”, Percy implored. “Such reasons exist for good … reason”, Ian stated. “Well I’m sure that the reason there are so many rats is because they know they have to stick together. They know the world is against them through no fault of their own”. “For goodness sake, Percy … our identities are put upon us all. Depending upon who our parents are, what time and place we are born into. Tell me this … if you were born a hundred years ago in a different country, do you think you would be the same pig? Do you think you would even speak the same language?” “Well … I don’t know. I’m sure I would have the same pig qualities”. “Indeed. But those qualities belong to your body, to your pig-ness rather than to who Percy is”. “But who Percy is … is constantly put-upon. Constantly manufactured by the other animals. It’s as if my fate was already decided when I was born; as if, just being born a pig was somehow wrong; somehow a disgraceful, offensive thing”. “Exactly”, Ian agreed enthusiastically. “Well, it’s not logical. It’s offensive and cruel”, Percy replied, suddenly agitated. “No one … not one single other animal has ever thought to address me as Percy. They simply see me as a pig. And the absolute worst thing about that is, being a pig, is somehow a dreadful thing for each and every other animal in the farmyard. No one thinks highly of pigs. Not even the dreadful fox who despite his cruel nature would never think to eat pork”. “Well … I’m sure if you lost a little weight’, Ian suggested. “Oh, you’re no help at all”, Percy exclaimed, suddenly angry. “Well I’m not going to take it anymore. I’m going to find a place where I belong. A place where other pigs like me have opportunities and the chance …”, Percy broke off, his courage suddenly deserting him. “The chance for what?” Ian enquired rather cynically. “It doesn’t matter”, Percy replied. “Oh, I think it does” Ian added. “You do, after all, need to know the reason for setting off”. “The reason I’m setting off is because I’m tired of being the only pig; the only animal in the barn who is put-upon is such vicious ways. Why have such dreadful meanings attached themselves to my pig-ness? It’s not fair. I want the chance”, Percy continued. “I want the chance to like my pig-ness, to celebrate my short, fat body and curly tail. I want to find a place where what it means to be a pig is normal rather than something obscure or somehow something to be ridiculed”. “Mmm”, Ian muttered once more as he stretched his long body into the fading band of light. “Good luck and God speed little pig”. “And I’m not a little pig!” Percy exclaimed as he trotted away from Ian, into the reassuring squalor of his pen. Later that night, after all the other animals had fallen asleep, Percy gently opened the latch that kept the gate of his pen closed, walked to the open door of the barn, then disappeared into the bright and starry night. The next morning there was much commotion in the barnyard. The farmer, upon realising that Percy had disappeared, mounted a short though thorough search of the farm. All the other animals were surprised by the farmer’s obvious concern for Percy. It was a concern that the other animals did not share. “Good thing, too”, said the horses amongst each other. “Dreadful little animal”, said the cows. “The neighbourhood is so much cleaner already”, tweetered the birds. “And less smelly”, chimed in the chickens. “Good riddance”, agreed Ian the carpet snack, who was keen to use the occasion to ingratiate himself with the other animals. “You know …” said the oldest and wisest of the cows. “To be born a pig is a punishment from the Gods”. “Yes I know”, said the horse standing next to the cow. “That pig must have killed someone in a past life”. “Yes”, replied the cow, “I never did like the way he tried to be so friendly when he was obviously such a foul creature”. “His very pig-ness disgusted me”, agreed Ian. “Still …”, replied the old cow somewhat suspiciously to Ian. “You did talk with him from time to time”. “It wasn’t that I liked talking to the pig”, corrected Ian. “The pig would simply trot over to where I was … on those dreadful, stumpy, trotting legs and talk and talk and talk. Last time he did so I was asleep; I didn’t wake up until he’d uttered his last sentence”. “You were giggling like a couple of school children yesterday”, corrected the horse. “It wasn’t me…”, Ian replied, attempting to correct the impression that Percy and he were somehow friends. “If you really want to know what happened to the pig last night … I ate him”. The other animals were suddenly dumbfounded. “Liar”, said the old cow. “Yes, liar”, agreed the horse. “It’s not a lie. I always hated that pig and last night …. When everyone else was asleep, I ate the pig”, Ian lied. “You’re a liar, snake. I saw the pig leave early this morning. He opened the latch on the gate to his pen and walked out the barn door without so much as a backwards glance”. Ian looked around at the other animals. Then he slithered away. “That damn snake is just as bad as the pig”, snorted horse. “Worse”, suggested the wise old cow. “You know snakes are compelled to live their lives so close to the ground because the Gods cut off all their legs after one of them lied about what he was capable of”. “Sounds just like that horrible carpet snake”, sneered chicken. “And carpet snakes are called carpet snakes because they came from that dreadful country over the hill that makes the rugs that humans love so much”. “Dreadful, dreadful, slithering snake”, hissed the blackest of the horses. Percy trotted merrily in the bright morning sun, just off to the side of the dirt road. He found that constantly travelling suited him. The whole idea of living in a pen was actually not something he ever wanted to return to. In fact, despite his initial fears when he set off the night before, Percy decided there was very little he liked about his past life. Now that he had his freedom he was determined to keep it; treasure it like the most precious of things. All the animals had decided at a hastily convened meeting that Ian the carpet snake had to be disposed of. Everyone agreed that the farm would be a much friendlier place without both the pig and the snake. “This is our one chance”, horse said very slowly and seriously. “If we don’t grasp it now, we will be forever condemned to share our farm with creatures who none of us like”. “It is a rare opportunity”, mused the cow. “Well it simply has to happen”, said the chicken haughtily. “What we need”, suggested the horse. “Is a plan”. “Yes”, agreed the cow. “Well I already have a plan”, said the bird from up in the tree. “And what’s that?” asked the horse. “Well, because the snake always eats all the mice before any of us birds have a chance to indulge, our plan is to poison a mice and then … just before it dies, place it near the carpet snake so he eats it and in so doing, poisons himself”. The other animals all looked up at the two birds on the branch above their heads. “You’ve really thought about this”, horse said. “Well, of course we have”, fumed the other bird. “Why just yesterday I was swooping down on a little mouse and just as I reached out to grab it in my claws, that evil snake swooped from nowhere and swallowed it whole”. “The snake is very greedy”, mused the cow. “Yes. Nobody likes the snake. Am I right?” asked the horse. “Hear, hear”, everyone agreed. “Right. Put your plan into action then birds and let’s all meet back here in an hour”, commanded the horse. “Good luck”, called the chickens after the birds. Percy couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d heard the noise in the distance as he trotted along in the sun, and then, from out of nowhere, a truck had turned a corner on the winding dirt road and driven straight past him. On board the truck was layer upon layer of pigs; what seemed to Percy like millions of pigs. A whole high-rise city of moving pigs, all squealing and talking in a language that was unfamiliar to him. And as the truck that was filled with pigs rolled past Percy, all he could do was follow it with his eyes. Suddenly Percy was overcome with a sense that his destiny lay onboard that truck; that if only he could manage to get inside the city of moving pigs then he would finally feel that he had found somewhere he could belong. Percy set off at a furious pace, running as fast as he could after the truck. As he got closer and closer, he realised that all the pigs were calling out to him. They seemed to be cheering him on, excited … no, desperate for him to succeed. Percy thought that if he could just run up alongside the driver’s window and somehow get his attention—perhaps by squealing very, very loudly—that the driver would stop the truck and ... The city of pigs continued to squeal desperately at Percy as he raced past their many faces. And Percy squealed back as best he could, desperate to get to the front of the truck and draw the driver’s attention. The truck suddenly slowed to negotiate a bump in the dirt road and Percy found himself in front off the cab. He turned back to face the slowly rolling wheels of the truck and squealed at the top of his voice. The truck’s air brakes hissed noisily and then the whole countryside went quiet for a beat. Percy was breathing very heavily; his face was deep red as he looked desperately up at the windscreen of the cab. Both doors of the truck opened at once and the driver and his passenger hopped to the ground. “Never seen that before”, said the passenger to the driver. “No. Wonder where he came from?” asked the driver. “I think he wants to get on board”, suggested the passenger. Then both the men laughed as they whistled to Percy and slapped at their legs, encouraging the pig to join them at the back of the truck. All the other pigs suddenly squealed as one, desperate to get Percy’s attention. Percy had never heard such a noise; it was both completely familiar though unintelligible. The other pigs seemed somehow overwhelmed by his presence … as if, they’d never seen a pig quite like Percy before. And Percy, as he trotted up the ramp of the truck into the comforting squalor of a million other pigs, squealed happily back at them, finally knowing what it felt like to belong.

Veterinaria México OA ISSN: 2448-6760Cite this as:Losada-Espinosa N,Trujillo Ortega ME, Galindo F. The welfare of pigs in rustic and technified production systems using the Welfare Quality protocols of pigs in Mexico: Validity of indicators of animal welfare as part of the sustainability criteria of pig production systems. Veterinaria México OA. 2017;4(4). doi: 10.21753/vmoa.4.4.521.The Welfare Quality® (WQ) protocols have been developed as a tool for the assessment of farm animal welfare based on scientific evidence. Animal welfare (AW) is part of the sustainability criteria of livestock production. A study was carried out in four states of Central Mexico in seven rustic (rPS) and six technified (tPS) production systems using the WQ protocol with the objective of providing an initial approximation of the welfare of animals and to discuss the validity of indicators of AW. The results showed that the animals housed in rustic units presented better results in the Good Health category and with respect to the criterion expression of social behaviour, while the frequency of criteria concerning Positive emotional states was higher in animals in the technified units. In the changing context in which the farms operate, including changing agricultural policies, new environmental and food safety regulations, variability of climatic conditions, and volatility in prices of inputs and outputs, it is not only the attributes referring to productivity and efficiency that become relevant. It is concluded that the criteria related to the WQ principles of health and behaviour are sensitive to changes in the housing and management of pigs. The high occurrences of health and behaviour problems recorded in technified systems are an indicator of poor welfare.Figure 4. Classification of rustic (RS) and technified (TS) production units within the welfare categories proposed by the Welfare Quality protocol.

Thai basil (Ocimum basilicum var. thyrsiflora) is an important ethnic aromatic herb native to Southeast Asia. According to the Vegetable Production Handbook of Florida 2020-2021, Asian vegetables are currently grown on more than 4,000 ha in Florida, and Thai basil is one of the most commonly grown among these. Meloidogyne spp. cause severe damage to different basil cultivars (Brito et al. 2007). During May-July 2020, plant stunting and galled root symptoms were observed on Thai basil plants sampled from a commercial Asian vegetable farm in Wimauma, Florida (27°44.951' N; 82°16.271’ E); 1,972 root-knot nematode second-stage juveniles (J2s) were extracted from 200 cm3 soil. A pathogenicity test was performed in September 2020 at the University of Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center, Wimauma, Florida. Ten of 20, three-week-old nematode-free Thai basil plants were inoculated with 5,000 eggs of field nematode cultures. Two months after inoculation (temperature = 22.8 ± 3.8 °C, relative humidity = 85.6 ± 14.0 %), average gall index (Bridge and Page 1980) = 5.4 ± 1.1 were only observed in inoculated plants, and 69,276 ± 18,904 eggs were extracted from roots using the NaClO method (Hussey and Barker 1973); 5 ± 7 J2s / 200 cc soil were recovered by the modified Baermann funnel technique (Forge and Kimpinski 2007). Nematode reproduction factor (RF) = 13.86 ± 3.78 (Nicol et al. 2010). Morphological measurements (mean, standard deviation and range) of J2s (n=20) included body length = 394.0 ± 22.3 (362.8 - 437.9) µm, body width = 15.7 ± 1.2 (13.6 - 18.3) µm, and stylet length = 12.8 ± 1.1 (10.4-14.5) µm. The perineal pattern of matured female (n=5) was oval-shaped with coarse and smooth striate; the dorsal arch was high and round; no lateral line presented. Morphological characteristics of females and J2s were consistent with those described for M. enterolobii (Yang and Eisenback 1983). DNA was extracted from a single female picked from infected Thai basil root using NaOH digestion method (Hübschen et al. 2004). The D2-D3 expansion segment of 28S rDNA and the COXII region on mitochondrial DNA were amplified by PCR using the primers 28S391a/28S501 and C2F3/1108 (Ye et al. 2020); the species was also confirmed with species-specific primers Me-F/Me-R (Ye et al. 2020). PCR products were sequenced by the Genomic Sciences Laboratory (North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA) and the results were recorded in the NCBI with GeneBank Accession Nos. MW488150 and MW507374. The sequences showed 100% identity with M. enterolobii in D2/D3 (KP901079, KP411230) and COXII (MN809527, KX214350). M. enterolobii (M. mayaguensis) has been reported on sweet basil in Florida (Brito et al. 2008). To our knowledge, this is the first detection of M. enterolobii on Thai basil in Hillsborough County, Florida. It is not clear to what extent M. enterolobii reduces the yield of Thai basil, but the RF value obtained in the pathogenicity test indicates the crop is certainly a very good host. Limited information is available on the distribution of M. enterolobii in Florida and the US. M. enterolobii is known to break down the root-knot resistance of crops including soybean, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes (Philbrick et al. 2020). This nematode is considered one of the major emerging threats to agriculture in the southeastern US. A multistate research and outreach program (FINDMe program) was initiated in 2019 to study the distribution and management of this nematode in the southeastern US.

My father killed the boar when he was 16. He’d dreamed of killing the boar for some time. My father’s brother had killed a boar when he was only fifteen. My father’s brother was five years older than him. Like most big brothers, he treated his little brother with intolerant contempt. He’d been saying for months that my father would never kill a boar. He was too weak. He was a girl. He was useless. And, just the day before, he told him he was so worthless he better finish the fence on the bottom paddock before dusk or he could expect a kicking. The family farm was gradually being cleared from the bush and the fencing slow and arduous. My father finished the fence. My father was very good with his hands and in truth a much better fencer than his brother, which didn’t help matters between them. That night my father didn’t go to sleep in the room he shared with his brother. Instead he went out into the bush past the bottom paddock, where the boars roamed, his rifle strapped over his shoulder and a knife in his ankle scabbard. The cleared ground was rough and uneven, a broken landscape created by the eruptions and outpourings of the volcanoes Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. In the bush, the terrain was even rougher, jagged rises and deep gullies, all ripe with the verdant vegetation flourishing on the rich volcanic soil. My father found himself a niche in a cliff on the edge of the bush above a small clearing near the creek. He huddled there in his woollen coat and dungarees and waited. He’d brought the dogs with him and they drove the boar out of the bush and into the clearing among the tree ferns just before dawn. By then my father was hunched on a rock, out of the way. The dogs worried the boar. They grabbed its tail, snapped at its balls, sank their teeth into its legs. The boar fought back. It lashed at them with its tusks. It caught one and tossed it into a tree fern, the dog yelping from the pain of its ripped rib cage. The boar roared, stomping and rooting. The dogs continued to circle. My father had waited all night in the cold, his rifle loaded and the safety catch off. My father was a very good shot. Better than his brother. That was why his parents had splurged on his birthday gift and bought him a .303 rifle. His brother had a .22, but he couldn’t shoot pigeons or ducks. My father, though, could use his brother’s gun to bring down a brace of ducks. Another reason his brother treated him like a piece of dirt. But out in the bush he couldn’t shoot the boar for fear of killing one of the dogs. He slipped the catch on and laid the gun down beside him. He took a knife from the scabbard on his belt. He waited until the boar was facing away from him, dogs in front and behind it. He jumped from the rock, and kicked the boar’s right hind leg out. The boar went down. My father threw himself on its back and plunged the knife in between the shoulders. Deep, to cut the spine and throat. The boar squealed, thrashed and subsided. My father thrust himself upright, knife still in blood-soaked hand, and stood away from the boar. The boar rolled over, the dogs still nipping at it. My father used the knife again, slashing deep across the boar’s throat. It screamed and lunged at him with head and tusks. He leapt away, falling over one of the dogs. The boar didn’t die straight away. It thrashed about on the ground, snorting and sighing at first, then whimpering as blood gushed out, steamed on the cold ground and coagulated in the crushed ferns. Eventually it was just panting, and slowly at that. Finally it was dead. My father shooed the dogs away. He cut off the boar’s balls and pizzle and tossed them to the dogs. He slit the boar from arse to belly and began the process of removing its warm innards, first working with the bladder to attempt to keep its contents from having too much contact with his game. His hands reached right inside to disentangle the intestines. His shirt and jacket were soaked with its blood. His hands were greasy with blood and shit. He washed himself as best as he could in the freezing water of the creek. He manoeuvred the boar so that it was half sitting on the ground then he lowered himself down and backed between the boar’s front legs, his head under its chin. Taking the weight of the beast on his shoulders, he slowly stood and began to trudge out of the bush and through the rough paddocks towards his family home on the top of the rise. The dogs kept him company for a bit, but the lure of home was too much for them and they took off up the hill in a barking frenzy. All except the one that had been tossed by the boar. It slunk at his heels, blood on its flank where the tusk had ripped through. His father and brother were waiting for him on the veranda. His brother glared and yelled at him because he had missed the morning milking of the cows, but his father told him to take the boar to the meat shack. This was behind the house. It was a rough weatherboard structure on the cool, south-side. It was secure against dogs and vermin and big enough to hang several carcases. A sheep and legs of ham were already there. The shack had a smooth stone floor with drainage channels grooved into it. My father laid the boar on the floor of the shack. He cut the hock of each hind leg just behind the tendon to make a space for the gambrel hook. He inserted the hook then used the hoist in the shack to raise the boar up to the rail that ran down the centre of the room and from which the meat hung. My father then began to skin the boar, stripping back the black bristled outer flesh as much as possible in one piece. Once it was scrubbed of the bristles and tanned, the skin would be soft and supple, suitable for a purse or for covering a saddle. He washed the carcass. Later, when the day’s farm work was over, the whole family would work on preparing and preserving the boar. His mother had already fired up the copper to boil water for the cleaning and salting. Lastly, he sawed off the boar’s head. He placed it on the butcher’s block in the shack and worked at the tusks. On this big beast the tusks were almost five inches long, curved and very sharp. They were much larger than the tusks from his brother’s boar. Once he had the tusks out of the boar’s mouth, he stripped of all but his underpants and washed himself as best as he could at the tap of the water tank at the back of the house. The water was icy and there was a stiff breeze from the snow on the mountains. It was still winter. But my father hardly noticed. He was still warm from the blood of the boar and the sight of his brother’s face when he had seen the size of it. Two months later, he took the tusks into the town of Taumaranui. He sought advice from the jeweller in the main street, who had made a speciality of working with tusks. The jeweller was known all over the King Country. The jeweller talked about how the tusks might be mounted. He suggested a band of gold, edges engraved with delicate leaves, to join the tusks base to base, so that the points formed a semicircle. Just below the points, he suggested two gold bands joined with a delicate gold chain, from which the tusks could be hung. And that is what my father agreed to. The jeweller took one month then my father claimed his tusks and took them home to mount on his bedroom wall, where his brother was forced to see them every day. My father signed up for the Air Force when he was 18. He wanted to fly away from his brother and the cows and the fencing and digging the rocks out of the paddock and that is exactly what he did. He learned to fly, something he’d dreamed of doing, same as he had dreamed of killing a boar. My father was a great dreamer. He left the tusks at home with his mother. She took them out of the bedroom them and placed them on the wall of the family room to remind her of him. His brother would turn them back to front. My father sent home photographs of himself: one from Cairo with him in tropical gear, sparkling eyes and a jaunty smile under his new moustache; another from Waddingham in his Sergeant pilot’s uniform standing with his crew in front of their Lancaster as it is loaded with bombs; a last one from an unknown place but he is wearing his Flying Officer’s uniform for he had been promoted and there are ribbons on his chest, too, but his eyes do not shine and he does not smile. As they arrived from the other side of the world in the slow mail his mother placed these photographs on the sideboard in the family room under my father’s tusks. In a mood after the Sunday roast his brother would turn them face down, saying my father wouldn’t be coming back so why did he have to be reminded of him. But he did come back, which even his brother had to acknowledge. He was 23. He was a shell of the boy who had killed the boar. He had been gutted by the war, though he showed no outward signs of the mutilation. It was all within, deep within, embedded in him like tusks in the jaw of a boar. My father began studying to be a veterinarian when he was 25. As part of his repatriation package, he was paid to study at the University of Sydney. He took the tusks down from his mother’s wall and packed them into one of the suitcases he and my mother took with them on the flying boat to Sydney. The tusks hung on the wall of the semi in Enmore they lived in for the five years he studied. Then after he had graduated they went back across the Tasman and my father began his work with animals. The animals received his ministrations with passive indifference and helped resolve the horror in his head, an unremitting memory of the perilous flights under attack across black skies and terrain, the fires unleashed by the phosphorous bombs released from his plane’s bomb bay let alone the destruction from other ordnance, the morning briefings after what was left of the squadron had returned and he learned which of his mates was no longer. He drank a bit. Maybe too much, but nobody ever sat down with him and talk about what he had been through. He had some medals and his old flying jacket and it was expected that he just get on with life. Which he did, overall. Once my parents were back in New Zealand, he set up practice in Waikato, with dairy cattle his most frequent patients. The Waikato district lies to the north of the King Country where my father had killed the boar. His family were not so far away, but he didn’t visit them that often. His brother was running things down there. His brother held vets in contempt and made that clear on the rare occasions my father did visit. Then his father, my grandfather, died. The farm went to his older brother as was the custom of those times. His widowed mother moved up to Auckland, so my father had no reason to visit the farm or his brother any more. Maybe it was only a matter of moving away from his brother but he lost and found himself in Australia. Maybe it was also the fact that a few years after he had made the move, the phone rang one night and he found he was talking to his brother’s wife. His brother had shot himself down in the bottom paddock that morning. It seems my father’s brother was never a very good farmer. From that time on my father mellowed, relaxed and began to enjoy himself. The tusks, though, were always on his bedside table, reminding him of that night he spent out in the bush and killed the boar. My father died three weeks before he was to turn 80. His death was long and painful to those of us who had to watch it, though for him it was ameliorated by painkillers and palliative care given him. It was my job to arrange the details of his funeral. Since his death was no surprise, all of his family, his three sons and his two daughters, grandsons and grand-daughters and his great grand children as well, had already gathered to say goodbye to him. But everybody was now under pressure to get back to jobs and other commitments. I spoke to the undertakers. They arranged the funeral the day following my father’s death in their own chapel. My mother wanted an open casket so my father had to be dressed in his best clothes. My mother and I selected the clothes and I took them to the undertakers. The next morning, before the ceremony, the undertakers called me and asked me to come to their rooms behind the chapel. They asked me to check that my father looked as much as we wanted him to look. He lay in the coffin, only his head and hands showing, the rest of him expertly trussed and dressed for this last display. His hair was neatly brushed and there was a bristle or two of whiskers on his cheek and chin. His eyes were closed and the skin on his face waxy, but cold from wherever he had been stored. I kissed him on his forehead. Then I placed the tusks on his chest, just under his neck and over the tie and jacket my mother had decided he should wear. My father was ready. I drove my mother down to the chapel just before 2 pm. She and I were the last people to be seated. We were both to sit in the front row. She walked straight up the aisle past the other mourners to my father’s coffin and she stood there for a moment looking at her husband of nearly sixty years. She stretched out her arm and stroked the tusks on his chest. Then she turned and I reached out and guided her to her seat. “He’ll like having them,” she whispered to me. Then we sang “There’s a hole in the bucket”. My father always liked that song. The crematorium was miles away. My father travelled there alone. Just as he had faced the boar. References De Hek, Danny. “Hunting regions—King Country: The home of wild pig hunting in New Zealand.” New Zealand’s Information Network 16 Aug. 2010 . Dick, Tim. “The boar wars.” WAtoday.com.au 13 Nov. 2008. 16 Aug. 2010 . Rushmer, Miles. “Bush surfing: That’s a New Zealand pig hunt.” ESPN Outdoors 28 Apr. 2005. 16 Aug. 2010 . Walrond, Carl. “Pig hunting.” Te Ara: The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1 Mar. 2009. 16 Aug. 2010 .

Kangaroo Island has embraced sustainable tourism in the hope that it will maintain its integrity as a close-knit rural community. In the centre of the front cover of the Kangaroo Island 1999 Visitor Guide is a photograph of a group of Australian sea lions on a beach. Between the photograph and the garland of native wildflowers which line the border of the cover is a margin of white space. This, along with the absence of humans, conveys a sense of pristine wilderness. The front cover design with its encompassing wreath and purity of white space simulates an iconographic representation which transforms the sea lion picture into a sacred object. The garland of flowers honours the seal in its natural habitat -- the most appealing aspect of the island for the tourist (Warren, personal communication). However, hovering ambiguously among the wildflowers is the possibility that the front cover's frame represents a funeral wreath -- perhaps in memory of those early days when fur traders turned the South Australian island into a slaughterhouse. Or maybe it is as a foreshadowing of the consequences of a tourist "invasion". Despite the sacralising of the seal, the marine mammal remains a commodity to be "consumed" by those who visit. Kangaroo Islanders are aware that tourism has sounded the death knell for many small communities -- in the 1950s the Gold Coast was a small fishing village, in the 1970s Cairns was a sugar cane town -- and are attempting to impose management practices which will control the amount and type of tourism consumption in order to prevent destruction of the island's native wildlife, its fragile biological systems and the authenticity of the local community. Residents' acceptance of the significance of native fauna and flora in recent years is, to some degree, driven by a pragmatism not dissimilar to that of early fur traders: both view the seal as a commodity, although behaviour towards these protected mammals contrasts strongly with past behaviour when sealing was an especially lucrative industry. Although seal numbers have increased, their classification as an endangered species is a legacy to those days when "fur seals [and Australian sea lions] made a valuable contribution to the economy of the colony of New South Wales" as the sale of the skins enabled the new colony to buy imports (Newnham 34). By the end of the nineteenth century changing market demands and severely depleted sources meant native animal skins were no longer a major source of income. Problems of land and wildlife management increased when sheep farming was introduced. With the allocation of land to farming for soldier/settler communities in the twentieth century, heavy tree clearing and overgrazing resulted in problems of soil erosion and increasing salinity levels, problems which also confront those in mainland rural communities. Following the decline in rural commodity prices for sheep, wool and beef in the 1990s, the local community has targetted tourism as one of the preferred alternative industries. Despite some opposition, the majority of locals feel that with proper management and monitoring, sustainable tourism will offer salvation rather than destruction of their island community. Local views are evident in the high profile given to tourism by the Kangaroo Island Economic Development Board (KIDB), "whose 1998-1999 Annual Plan has identified a number of opportunities to develop the Island's tourism infrastructure, and encourage visitors to stay longer and provide more value to the Island" (Islander 9 July 1998). From 1991 to 1993-1994, 85,000 visits per annum of at least one night stay were recorded with an estimated 50,000 additional annual visitors from day trips (Kangaroo Island Regional Tourism Profile 1). By 1998 over 160,000 visitors arrive on Kangaroo Island each year. KIDB's year long visitor exit survey shows viewing the island's wildlife is the main reason why international and interstate tourists travel to the island and is one of the main reasons why intrastate visitors come (Islander 9 July 1998: 6). However, KIDB is aware of local community concern "to [facilitate] development processes particularly towards sustainable development" (UNCSD, Paper 16 22). Community concerns that tourism must be carefully managed to avoid invasion has led to a number of initiatives including the publication of the Tourism Management and Development on Kangaroo Island Working Party Report in 1984 (KI Tourism Policy 1). The publication in 1991 of the Kangaroo Island Tourism Policy acknowledged a need for the island to "diversify and strengthen its economic base" by aiming to be a "specialised destination that emphasises quality before quantity" (12). Kangaroo Island's increasing importance as an tourism destination is also significant to South Australia's ailing economy -- a fact which could impede rather than aid the island's goal to maintain control tourism management. To date they have successfully prevented large scale development. However, Democrats spokesman on Regional Development and Small Business, and local resident of the island, Ian Gilfillan, is reported to be alarmed at the South Australian government's plan to fast-track tourism development. The government's Kangaroo Island Working Group Report talks of "bypassing normal planning procedures" and claims that tourism developments should not have a maximum size imposed upon them but rather should be "determined by commercial factors". Gilfillan fears that the government's "fast-track" development policies "will not only jeopardise Kangaroo Island's unique environment, but will also ensure that profits from tourism will mostly leave the Island and go to the mainland, interstate or overseas" (Islander 22 January 1998: 1). In 1998 a residents' survey conducted by the KIDB indicated that 89 per cent of islanders felt that tourism was either "good" or "very good" for the island (Islander 14 May 1998: 2), whereas the proposed tuna farm at Penneshaw was least supported with only 17 per cent saying it was "good" or "very good" and 60 per cent saying it was "bad" or "very bad". Residents' opposition to the tuna farm is evident in a number of letters to the editor of the Islander. Newspaper articles express concern about the impact of the industry upon the local Australian sea lion population, the island's major tourist drawcard. Besides discouraging tourism, the industry might lead to the "attraction of sharks, entanglement of marine mammals and waste disposal" problems. Support from "CSIRO experts and marine researchers" also lent weight to the local position (Islander 9 Apr. 1998: 1&3). The Kangaroo Island 1999 Visitor Guide markets the island as "nature's pleasure island" implying that it welcomes low impact tourism for those who want to experience a combination of wilderness and comfort. Words such as "visitor", "guests" and "invited" construct an image of the island as a destination for those who might willingly fit Urry's definition of the Romantic traveller -- those wishing to escape so called mass or intensive tourism (46-7). A number of Letters to the Editor of the Islander reinforce the concept of the island as a supportive and hospitable community, as excerpts from the following letter illustrate: The island is magic, but it is magic because it is what it is, and the locals are unpretentious, fun loving, good hearted and innovative. Tart up the island too much and impact negatively on the natural environment and laid back style, and visitors will find somewhere else to go. Kangaroo Island is one of the last places on earth where we can experience what the planet might have been like if we hadn't wrecked it in the pursuit of wealth and power. And the locals remind us stressed out city folk of the joys of a simpler life style. (Islander 2 April 1998: 9) Trish Edwards has visited the island eight times. She advises the islanders that "visitors want to meet locals and get a feel of what it is like to live in such a magical place" and that tourism "needs the anchor of human interaction to make [a location] memorable". Her enjoyment of the island is based upon the seeming lack of "front stage/backstage" hospitality and tourist performance (MacCannell 92-93). Her letter reinforces the concern some local residents expressed to me in interviews I conducted, namely, that tourism must be contained and kept under the control of the local community so that an "invasion" does not destroy what is at the very heart of the island's appeal: its authenticity as a small rural community in a location of great natural beauty where visitors can view wildlife in its natural habitat with minimum impact to that environment. But is this realistic? Tourism is a massive global industry based on our consumer society with its insatiable demand for new experiences and new places. Travel and tourism is the world's largest industry, directly and indirectly accounting for 11.7 per cent of world's gross domestic product in 1999 (WTTC 1). There were 650 million international travellers in 1998, and predictions are that the number will double in the next decade. An estimated 30 to 40 per cent of tourist demand is for nature-based experiences (WTTC 1). This 21st century threat of invasion will be very difficult for Kangaroo Islanders to contain. References Centre for Tourism and Hotel Management Research, Griffith University, Gold Coast. Kangaroo Island Regional Tourism Profile. Adelaide: South Australian Tourism Commission, 1996. "Commission Hears of KI's Concerns." Islander 9 Apr. 1998: 1&3. Eastick, A.B. "Tourism Key to Island's Continued Growth." Islander 9 July 1998: 6. Edwards, Trish. Islander. 2 Apr. 1998: 9. "Focus is on Tourism." Islander 14 May 1998: 1-2. Kangaroo Island Tourism Commission Survey. Kent Town: Tan Research, 1998. Newnham, W.H. Kangaroo Island Sketchbook. Adelaide: Rigby, 1975. "Report Not Looking at Real Issues." Islander 22 Jan. 1998: 1. Tourism Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island South Australia 1999 Visitor Guide. TKI Inc. 1999. United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. Briefing Papers, 1999. Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage, 1990. Warren, M. Personal interview. 16 Sep. 1998. World Travel and Tourism Council. Travel and Tourism Economic Impacts: March 1999. London: WTTC, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Sandra Brunet. "Is Sustainable Tourism Really Sustainable? Protecting the Icon in the Commodity at Sites of Invasion." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.2 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/tourism.php>. Chicago style: Sandra Brunet, "Is Sustainable Tourism Really Sustainable? Protecting the Icon in the Commodity at Sites of Invasion," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 2 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/tourism.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Sandra Brunet. (1999) Is sustainable tourism really sustainable? Protecting the icon in the commodity at sites of invasion. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/tourism.php> ([your date of access]).

[Editors’ note: this lyric essay was presented as the keynote address at Edith Cowan University’s CREATEC symposium on the theme Catastrophe and Creativity in November 2012, and represents excerpts from the author’s publication Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry. Regina, SK: Hagios Press, 2011. Reproduced with the author’s permission].Essay and verse and anecdote are the ways I have chosen to apprentice myself to loss, grief, faith, memory, and the stories we use to tie and untie them. Cat’s cradle, Celtic lines, bends and hitches are familiar: however, when I write about loss, I find there are knots I cannot tie or release, challenging both my imagination and my craft. Over the last decade, I have been learning that writing poetry is also the art of tying together light and dark, grief and joy, of grasping and releasing. Language is a hinge that connects us with the flesh of our experience; it is also residue, the ash of memory and imagination. (Threading Light 7) ———Greek katastrophé overturning, sudden turn, from kata down + strophe ‘turning” from strephein to turn.Loss and catastrophe catapult us into the liminal, into a threshold space. We walk between land we have known and the open sea. ———Mnemosyne, the mother of the nine Muses, the personification of memory, makes anthropologists of us all. When Hermes picked up the lyre, it was to her—to Remembrance —that he sang the first song. Without remembrance, oral or written, we have no place to begin. Stone, amulet, photograph, charm bracelet, cufflink, fish story, house, facial expression, tape recorder, verse, or the same old traveling salesman joke—we have places and means to try to store memories. Memories ground us, even as we know they are fleeting and flawed constructions that slip through our consciousness; ghosts of ghosts. One cold winter, I stayed in a guest room in my mother’s apartment complex for three days. Because she had lost her sight, I sat at the table in her overheated and stuffy kitchen with the frozen slider window and tried to describe photographs as she tried to recall names and events. I emptied out the dusty closet she’d ignored since my father left, and we talked about knitting patterns, the cost of her mother’s milk glass bowl, the old clothes she could only know by rubbing the fabric through her fingers. I climbed on a chair to reach a serving dish she wanted me to have, and we laughed hysterically when I read aloud the handwritten note inside: save for Annette, in a script not hers. It’s okay, she said; I want all this gone. To all you kids. Take everything you can. When I pop off, I don’t want any belongings. Our family had moved frequently, and my belongings always fit in a single box; as a student, in the back of a car or inside a backpack. Now, in her ninth decade, my mother wanted to return to the simplicity she, too, recalled from her days on a small farm outside a small town. On her deathbed, she insisted on having her head shaved, and frequently the nursing staff came into the room to find she had stripped off her johnny shirt and her covers. The philosopher Simone Weil said that all we possess in the world is the power to say “I” (Gravity 119).Memory is a cracked bowl, and it fills endlessly as it empties. Memory is what we create out of what we have at hand—other people’s accounts, objects, flawed stories of our own creation, second-hand tales handed down like an old watch. Annie Dillard says as a life’s work, she’d remember everything–everything against loss, and go through life like a plankton net. I prefer the image of the bowl—its capacity to feed us, the humility it suggests, its enduring shape, its rich symbolism. Its hope. To write is to fashion a bowl, perhaps, but we know, finally, the bowl cannot hold everything. (Threading Light 78–80) ———Man is the sire of sorrow, sang Joni Mitchell. Like joy, sorrow begins at birth: we are born into both. The desert fathers believed—in fact, many of certain faiths continue to believe—that penthos is mourning for lost salvation. Penthus was the last god to be given his assignment from Zeus: he was to be responsible for grieving and loss. Eros, the son of Aphrodite, was the god of love and desire. The two can be seen in concert with one another, each mirroring the other’s extreme, each demanding of us the farthest reach of our being. Nietzsche, through Zarathustra, phrased it another way: “Did you ever say Yes to one joy? O my friends, then you have also said Yes to all Woe as well. All things are chained, entwined together, all things are in love.” (Threading Light 92) ———We are that brief crack of light, that cradle rocking. We can aspire to a heaven, or a state of forgiveness; we can ask for redemption and hope for freedom from suffering for ourselves and our loved ones; we may create children or works of art in the vague hope that we will leave something behind when we go. But regardless, we know that there is a wall or a dark curtain or a void against which we direct or redirect our lives. We hide from it, we embrace it; we taunt it; we flout it. We write macabre jokes, we play hide and seek, we walk with bated breath, scream in movies, or howl in the wilderness. We despair when we learn of premature or sudden death; we are reminded daily—an avalanche, an aneurysm, a shocking diagnosis, a child’s bicycle in the intersection—that our illusions of control, that youthful sense of invincibility we have clung to, our last-ditch religious conversions, our versions of Pascal’s bargain, nothing stops the carriage from stopping for us.We are fortunate if our awareness calls forth our humanity. We learn, as Aristotle reminded us, about our capacity for fear and pity. Seeing others as vulnerable in their pain or weakness, we see our own frailties. As I read the poetry of Donne or Rumi, or verse created by the translator of Holocaust stories, Lois Olena, or the work of poet Sharon Olds as she recounts the daily horror of her youth, I can become open to pity, or—to use the more contemporary word—compassion. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that works of art are not only a primary means for an individual to express her humanity through catharsis, as Aristotle claimed, but, because of the attunement to others and to the world that creation invites, the process can sow the seeds of social justice. Art grounds our grief in form; it connects us to one another and to the world. And the more we acquaint ourselves with works of art—in music, painting, theatre, literature—the more we open ourselves to complex and nuanced understandings of our human capacities for grief. Why else do we turn to a stirring poem when we are mourning? Why else do we sing? When my parents died, I came home from the library with stacks of poetry and memoirs about loss. How does your story dovetail with mine? I wanted to know. How large is this room—this country—of grief and how might I see it, feel the texture on its walls, the ice of its waters? I was in a foreign land, knew so little of its language, and wanted to be present and raw and vulnerable in its climate and geography. Writing and reading were my way not to squander my hours of pain. While it was difficult to live inside that country, it was more difficult not to. In learning to know graveyards as places of comfort and perspective, Mnemosyne’s territory with her markers of memory guarded by crow, leaf, and human footfall, with storehouses of vast and deep tapestries of stories whispered, sung, or silent, I am cultivating the practice of walking on common ground. Our losses are really our winter-enduring foliage, Rilke writes. They are place and settlement, foundation and soil, and home. (Threading Light 86–88) ———The loseability of our small and larger worlds allows us to see their gifts, their preciousness.Loseability allows us to pay attention. ———“A faith-based life, a Trappistine nun said to me, aims for transformation of the soul through compunction—not only a state of regret and remorse for our inadequacies before God, but also living inside a deeper sorrow, a yearning for a union with the divine. Compunction, according to a Christian encyclopaedia, is constructive only if it leads to repentance, reconciliation, and sanctification. Would you consider this work you are doing, the Trappistine wrote, to be a spiritual journey?Initially, I ducked her question; it was a good one. Like Neruda, I don’t know where the poetry comes from, a winter or a river. But like many poets, I feel the inadequacy of language to translate pain and beauty, the yearning for an embodied understanding of phenomena that is assensitive and soul-jolting as the contacts of eye-to-eye and skin-to-skin. While I do not worship a god, I do long for an impossible union with the world—a way to acknowledge the gift that is my life. Resonance: a search for the divine in the everyday. And more so. Writing is a full-bodied, sensory, immersive activity that asks me to give myself over to phenomena, that calls forth deep joy and deep sorrow sometimes so profound that I am gutted by my inadequacy. I am pierced, dumbstruck. Lyric language is the crayon I use, and poetry is my secular compunction...Poets—indeed, all writers—are often humbled by what we cannot do, pierced as we are by—what? I suggest mystery, impossibility, wonder, reverence, grief, desire, joy, our simple gratitude and despair. I speak of the soul and seven people rise from their chairs and leave the room, writes Mary Oliver (4). Eros and penthos working in concert. We have to sign on for the whole package, and that’s what both empties us out, and fills us up. The practice of poetry is our inadequate means of seeking the gift of tears. We cultivate awe, wonder, the exquisite pain of seeing and knowing deeply the abundant and the fleeting in our lives. Yes, it is a spiritual path. It has to do with the soul, and the sacred—our venerating the world given to us. Whether we are inside a belief system that has or does not have a god makes no difference. Seven others lean forward to listen. (Threading Light 98–100)———The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a rare thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. – Simone Weil (169)I can look at the lines and shades on the page clipped to the easel, deer tracks in the snow, or flecks of light on a summer sidewalk. Or at the moon as it moves from new to full. Or I can read the poetry of Paul Celan.Celan’s poem “Tenebrae” takes its title from high Christian services in which lighting, usually from candles, is gradually extinguished so that by the end of the service, the church is in total darkness. Considering Celan’s—Antschel’s—history as a Romanian Jew whose parents were killed in the Nazi death camps, and his subsequent years tortured by the agony of his grief, we are not surprised to learn he chose German, his mother’s language, to create his poetry: it might have been his act of defiance, his way of using shadow and light against the other. The poet’s deep grief, his profound awareness of loss, looks unflinchingly at the past, at the piles of bodies. The language has become a prism, reflecting penetrating shafts of shadow: in the shine of blood, the darkest of the dark. Enlinked, enlaced, and enamoured. We don’t always have names for the shades of sorrows and joys we live inside, but we know that each defines and depends upon the other. Inside the core shadow of grief we recognise our shared mortality, and only in that recognition—we are not alone—can hope be engendered. In the exquisite pure spot of light we associate with love and joy, we may be temporarily blinded, but if we look beyond, and we draw on what we know, we feel the presence of the shadows that have intensified what appears to us as light. Light and dark—even in what we may think are their purest state—are transitory pauses in the shape of being. Decades ago my well-meaning mother, a nurse, gave me pills to dull the pain of losing my fiancé who had shot himself; now, years later, knowing so many deaths, and more imminent, I would choose the bittersweet tenderness of being fully inside grief—awake, raw, open—feeling its walls, its every rough surface, its every degree of light and dark. It is love/loss, light/dark, a fusion that brings me home to the world. (Threading Light 100–101) ———Loss can trigger and inspire creativity, not only at the individual level but at the public level, whether we are marching in Idle No More demonstrations, re-building a shelter, or re-building a life. We use art to weep, to howl, to reach for something that matters, something that means. And sometimes it may mean that all we learn from it is that nothing lasts. And then, what? What do we do then? ———The wisdom of Epictetus, the Stoic, can offer solace, but I know it will take time to catch up with him. Nothing can be taken from us, he claims, because there is nothing to lose: what we lose—lover, friend, hope, father, dream, keys, faith, mother—has merely been returned to where it (or they) came from. We live in samsara, Zen masters remind us, inside a cycle of suffering that results from a belief in the permanence of self and of others. Our perception of reality is narrow; we must broaden it to include all phenomena, to recognise the interdependence of lives, the planet, and beyond, into galaxies. A lot for a mortal to get her head around. And yet, as so many poets have wondered, is that not where imagination is born—in the struggle and practice of listening, attending, and putting ourselves inside the now that all phenomena share? Can I imagine the rush of air under the loon that passes over my house toward the ocean every morning at dawn? The hot dust under the cracked feet of that child on the outskirts of Darwin? The gut-hauling terror of an Afghan woman whose family’s blood is being spilled? Thich Nhat Hanh says that we are only alive when we live the sufferings and the joys of others. He writes: Having seen the reality of interdependence and entered deeply into its reality, nothing can oppress you any longer. You are liberated. Sit in the lotus position, observe your breath, and ask one who has died for others. (66)Our breath is a delicate thread, and it contains multitudes. I hear an echo, yes. The practice of poetry—my own spiritual and philosophical practice, my own sackcloth and candle—has allowed me a glimpse not only into the lives of others, sentient or not, here, afar, or long dead, but it has deepened and broadened my capacity for breath. Attention to breath grounds me and forces me to attend, pulls me into my body as flesh. When I see my flesh as part of the earth, as part of all flesh, as Morris Berman claims, I come to see myself as part of something larger. (Threading Light 134–135) ———We think of loss as a dark time, and yet it opens us, deepens us.Close attention to loss—our own and others’—cultivates compassion.As artists we’re already predisposed to look and listen closely. We taste things, we touch things, we smell them. We lie on the ground like Mary Oliver looking at that grasshopper. We fill our ears with music that not everyone slows down to hear. We fall in love with ideas, with people, with places, with beauty, with tragedy, and I think we desire some kind of fusion, a deeper connection than everyday allows us. We want to BE that grasshopper, enter that devastation, to honour it. We long, I think, to be present.When we are present, even in catastrophe, we are fully alive. It seems counter-intuitive, but the more fully we engage with our losses—the harder we look, the more we soften into compassion—the more we cultivate resilience. ———Resilience consists of three features—persistence, adaptability transformability—each interacting from local to global scales. – Carl FolkeResilent people and resilient systems find meaning and purpose in loss. We set aside our own egos and we try to learn to listen and to see, to open up. Resilience is fundamentally an act of optimism. This is not the same, however, as being naïve. Optimism is the difference between “why me?” and “why not me?” Optimism is present when we are learning to think larger than ourselves. Resilience asks us to keep moving. Sometimes with loss there is a moment or two—or a month, a year, who knows?—where we, as humans, believe that we are standing still, we’re stuck, we’re in stasis. But we aren’t. Everything is always moving and everything is always in relation. What we mistake for stasis in a system is the system taking stock, transforming, doing things underneath the surface, preparing to rebuild, create, recreate. Leonard Cohen reminded us there’s a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in. But what we often don’t realize is that it’s we—the human race, our own possibilities, our own creativity—who are that light. We are resilient when we have agency, support, community we can draw on. When we have hope. ———FortuneFeet to carry you past acres of grapevines, awnings that opento a hall of paperbarks. A dog to circle you, look behind, point ahead. A hip that bends, allows you to slidebetween wire and wooden bars of the fence. A twinge rides with that hip, and sometimes the remnant of a fall bloomsin your right foot. Hands to grip a stick for climbing, to rest your weight when you turn to look below. On your left hand,a story: others see it as a scar. On the other, a newer tale; a bone-white lump. Below, mist disappears; a nichein the world opens to its long green history. Hills furrow into their dark harbours. Horses, snatches of inhale and whiffle.Mutterings of men, a cow’s long bellow, soft thud of feet along the hill. You turn at the sound.The dog swallows a cry. Stays; shakes until the noise recedes. After a time, she walks on three legs,tests the paw of the fourth in the dust. You may never know how she was wounded. She remembers your bodyby scent, voice, perhaps the taste of contraband food at the door of the house. Story of human and dog, you begin—but the wordyour fingers make is god. What last year was her silken newborn fur is now sunbleached, basket dry. Feet, hips, hands, paws, lapwings,mockingbirds, quickening, longing: how eucalypts reach to give shade, and tiny tight grapes cling to vines that align on a slope as smoothlyas the moon follows you, as intention always leans toward good. To know bones of the earth are as true as a point of light: tendernesswhere you bend and press can whisper grace, sorrow’s last line, into all that might have been,so much that is. (Threading Light 115–116) Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Dr. Lekkie Hopkins and Dr. John Ryan for the opportunity to speak (via video) to the 2012 CREATEC Symposium Catastrophe and Creativity, to Dr. Hopkins for her eloquent and memorable paper in response to my work on creativity and research, and to Dr. Ryan for his support. The presentation was recorded and edited by Paul Poirier at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My thanks go to Edith Cowan and Mount Saint Vincent Universities. ReferencesBerman, Morris. Coming to Our Senses. New York: Bantam, 1990.Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.Folke, Carl. "On Resilience." Seed Magazine. 13 Dec. 2010. 22 Mar. 2013 ‹http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_resilience›.Franck, Frederick. Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Miracle of Mindfulness. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976.Hausherr, Irenee. Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1982.Neilsen Glenn, Lorri. Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry. Regina, SK: Hagios Press, 2011. Nietzsche, Frederick. Thus Spake Zarathustra. New York: Penguin, 1978. Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Oliver, Mary. “The Word.” What Do We Know. Boston: DaCapo Press, 2002.Rilke, Rainer Maria. Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. (Tenth Elegy). Ed. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Random House/Vintage Editions, 2009.Weil, Simone. The Need for Roots. London: Taylor & Francis, 2005 (1952).Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. London: Routledge, 2004.Further ReadingChodron, Pema. Practicing Peace in Times of War. Boston: Shambhala, 2006.Cleary, Thomas (trans.) The Essential Tao: An Initiation into the Heart of Taoism through Tao de Ching and the Teachings of Chuang Tzu. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1993.Dalai Lama (H H the 14th) and Venerable Chan Master Sheng-yen. Meeting of Minds: A Dialogue on Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism. New York: Dharma Drum Publications, 1999. Hirshfield, Jane. "Language Wakes Up in the Morning: A Meander toward Writing." Alaska Quarterly Review. 21.1 (2003).Hirshfield, Jane. Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Trans. Arthur Waley. Chatham: Wordsworth Editions, 1997. Neilsen, Lorri. "Lyric Inquiry." Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. Eds. J. Gary Knowles and Ardra Cole. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008. 88–98. Ross, Maggie. The Fire and the Furnace: The Way of Tears and Fire. York: Paulist Press, 1987.

IntroductionThis article is about the transformation of coffee, from having no place in the everyday lives of the people of Bangladesh, to a new position as a harbinger of liberal values and Western culture. The context is a group of Australian photojournalism students who embarked on a month-long residency in Bangladesh; the content is a Nescafé advertisement encouraging the young, middle-class Bangladesh audience to consume coffee, in a marketing campaign that promotes “my first cup.” For the Australian students, the marketing positioning of this advertising campaign transformed instant coffee into a strange and unfamiliar commodity. At the same time, the historic association between Bangladesh and tea prompted one of the photographers to undertake her own journey to explore the hidden side of that other Western staple. This paper explores the tradition of tea culture in Bangladesh and the marketing campaign for instant coffee within this culture, combining the authors’ experiences and perspectives. The outline of the Photomedia unit in the Bachelor of Creative Industries degree that the students were working towards at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia states that:students will engage with practices, issues and practicalities of working as a photojournalist in an international, cross cultural context. Students will work in collaboration with students of Pathshala: South Asian Institute of Photography, Dhaka Bangladesh in the research, production and presentation of stories related to Bangladeshi society and culture for distribution to international audiences (ECU). The sixteen students from Perth, living and working in Bangladesh between 5 January and 7 February 2012, exhibited a diverse range of cultures, contexts, and motivations. Young Australians, along with a number of ECU’s international students, including some from Norway, China and Sweden, were required to learn first-hand about life in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries. Danielle Fusco and ECU lecturer Duncan Barnes collaborated with staff and students of Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute (Pathshala). Their recollections and observations on tea production and the location are central to this article but it is the questions asked by the group about the marketing of instant coffee into this culture that provides its tensions. Fusco completed a week-long induction and then travelled in Bangladesh for a fortnight to research and photograph individual stories on rural and urban life. Barnes here sets the scene for the project, describing the expectations and what actually happened: When we travel to countries that are vastly different to our own it is often to seek out that difference; to go in search of the romanticised ideals that have been portrayed as paradise in films, books and photographs. “The West” has long been fascinated with “The East” (Said) and for the past half century, since the hippie treks to Marrakesh and Afghanistan, people have journeyed overland to the Indian sub-continent, both from Europe and from Australia, yearning for a cultural experience they cannot find at home. Living in Perth, Western Australia, sometimes called the most isolated capital city in the world, that pull to something “different” is like a magnet. Upon arrival in Dhaka, you find yourself deliciously overwhelmed by the heavy traffic, the crowded markets, the spicy foods and the milky lassie drinks. It only takes a few stomach upsets to make your Western appetite start kicking in and you begin craving things you have at home but that are hard to find in Bangladesh. Take coffee for example. I recently completed a month-long visit to Bangladesh, which, like India, is a nation of tea drinkers. Getting any kind of good coffee requires that you be in what expatriates call “the Golden Triangle” of Dhaka city—within the area contained by Gulshan-Banani-Baridhara. Here you find the embassies and a sizeable expatriate community that constitutes a Western bubble unrepresentative of Bangladesh beyond these districts. Coffee World is an example of a Western-style café chain that, as the name suggests, serves coffee beverages. It has trouble making a quality flat white. The baristas are poorly trained, the service is painfully slow, yet the prices are comparable to those in the West. Even with these disadvantages, it is frequented by Westerners who also make use of the free WiFi. In contrast, tea is available at every road junction for around 5 cents Australian. It’s ready in seconds: the kettle is always hot due to a constant turnover of local customers. It was the history of tea growing in Bangladesh, and a desire to know more about a commodity that people in the West take for granted, that most attracted Fusco’s interest. She chose to focus on Bangladesh’s oldest commercial tea garden (plantation) Sylhet, which has been in production since 1857 (Tea Board). As is the case with many tea farms in the Indian sub-continent, the workers at Sylhet are part of Bangladesh’s Hindu minority. Fusco left Dhaka and travelled into the rural areas to investigate tea production: Venturing into these estates from the city is like entering an entirely different world. They are isolated places, and although they are close in distance, they are completely separate from the main city. Spending time in the Khadim tea estate amongst the plantations and the workers’ compounds made me very aware of the strong relationship that exists between them. The Hindu teaching of Samsara refers to the continuous cycle of repeated birth, life, death and rebirth [Hinduism], which became a metaphor for me, for this relationship I was experiencing. It is clear that neither farm [where the tea is grown] nor village [which houses the people] could live without each other. The success and maintenance of the tea farm relies on the workers just as much as the workers rely on the tea gardens for their livelihood and sustenance. Their life cycles are intertwined and in synch. There are many problems in the compounds. The people are extremely poor. Their education opportunities are limited, and they work incredibly hard for very little money for their entire lives. They are bound to stay and work here and as those generations before them, were born, worked and died here, living their whole lives in the community of the tea farm. By documenting the lives of the people, I realised I was documenting the process of the lives of the tea trees at the same time. This is how I met Lolita.Figure 1. Bangladeshi tea worker, Lolita, stands in a small section of the Khadim tea plantation in the early morning. Sylhet, Bangladesh (Danielle Fusco, Jan. 2012). This woman emulated everything I was seeing and feeling about the village and the garden. She spoke about the reliance on the trees, especially because of the money and, therefore, the food, they provide for her and her husband. I became aware of the injustice of this system because the workers are paid so little while this industry is booming. It was obvious that life here is far from perfect, but as Lolita explains, they make do. She has worked on the tea estate for decades. As her husband is no longer working, she is the primary income earner. They are able, however, to live in relative comfort now their children have all married and left and it is just the two of them. Lolita describes that money lies within these trees. Money for her means that she can eat that day. Money for the managers means industrial success. Either way, whether it is in the eyes of the individual or the industry, tea always comes down to Taka [the currency of Bangladesh]. Marketing Coffee in a Culture of Tea and Betel Nut With such a strong culture of tea production and consumption and a coffee culture just existing on the fringe, a campaign by Nescafé to encourage Bangladeshi consumers to have “my first cup” of Nescafé instant coffee at the time of this study captured the imagination of the students. How effective can the marketing of Nescafé instant coffee be in a society that is historically a producer and consumer of tea, and which also still embraces the generations-old use of the betel nut as an everyday stimulant? Although it only employs some 150,000 (Islam et al.) in a nation of 150 million people, tea makes an important contribution to the Bangladesh economy. Shortly after the 1971 civil war, in which East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) became independent from West Pakistan (now Pakistan), the then-Chairman of the Bangladesh Tea Board, writing in World Development, commented:In the highly competitive marketing environment of today it is extremely necessary for the tea industry of Bangladesh to increase production by raising the per acre yield, improve quality by adoption of finer plucking standards and modernization of factories and reduce per unit cost of production so as to be able to sell more of our teas to foreign markets and thereby earn higher amounts of much needed foreign exchange for the country as well as generate additional resources within the industry for ploughing back for further development (Ali 55). In Bangladesh, tea is a cash crop that, even in the 1970s following vicious conflicts, is more than capable of meeting local demand and producing an export dividend. Coffee is imported commodity that, historically, has had little place in Bangladeshi life or culture. However important tea is, it is not the traditional Bangladesh stimulant. Instead, over the years, when people in the West would have had a cup of tea or coffee and/or a cigarette, most Bangladeshis have turned to the betel nut. A 2005 study of 100 citizens from Araihazar, Bangladesh, conducted by researchers from Columbia University, found that coffee consumption is “very low in this population” (Hafeman et al. 567). The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of betel quids (the wad of masticated nut) and the chewing of betel nuts, upon tremor. For this reason, it was important to record the consumption of stimulants in the 98 participants who progressed to the next stage of the study and took a freehand spiral-drawing test. While “26 (27%) participants had chewed betel quids, 23 (23%) had smoked one or more cigarettes, [and] 14 (14%) drank tea; on that day, only 1 (1%) drank caffeinated soda, and none (0%) drank coffee” (Hafeman et al. 568). Given its addictive and carcinogenic properties (Sharma), the people who chewed betel quids were more likely to exhibit tremor in their spiral drawings than the people who did not. As this (albeit small) study suggests, the preferred Bangladeshi stimulant is more likely to be betel or tobacco rather than a beverage. Insofar as hot drinks are consumed, Bangladesh citizens drink tea. This poses a significant challenge for multinational advertisers who seek to promote the consumption of instant coffee as a means of growing the global market for Nescafé. Marketing Nescafé to Bangladesh In Dhaka, in January 2012, the television campaign slogan for Nescafé is “My first cup”, with the tagline, “Time you started.” This Nescafé television commercial (NTC) impressed itself upon the Australian visitors, both in terms of its frequency of broadcast and in its referencing of Western culture and values. (The advertisement can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E8mFX43oAM). The NTC’s three stars, Vir Das, Purab Kohli, and leading Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone, are highly-recognisable to young Bangladeshi audiences and the storyline is part of a developing series of advertisements which together form a mini-soap opera, like that used so successfully to advertise the Nescafé Gold Blend brand of instant coffee in the West in the 1980s to 1990s (O’Donohoe 242; Beale). The action takes place in Kohli’s affluent, Western-style apartment. The drama starts with Das challenging Kohli regarding whether he has successfully developed a relationship with his attractive neighbour, Padukone. Using a combination of local language with English words and sub-titles, the first sequence is captioned: “Any progress with Deepika, or are you still mixing coffee?” Suggesting incredulity, and that he could do better, Das asks Kohli, according to the next subtitle, “What are you doing dude?” The use of the word “dude” clearly refers to American youth culture, familiar in such movies as Dude, where’s my car? This is underlined by the immediate transition to the English words of “bikes … biceps … chest … explosion.” Of these four words only “chest” is pronounced in the local tongue, although all four words are included as captions in English. Kohli appears less and less impressed as Das becomes increasingly insistent, with Das going on to express frustration with Kohli through the exclamation “u don’t even have a plan.” The use of the text-speak English “u” here can be constructed as another way of persuading young Bangladeshi viewers that this advertisement is directed at them: the “u” in place of “you” is likely to annoy their English-speaking elders. Das continues speaking in his mother tongue, with the subtitle “Deepika padukone [sic] is your neighbour and you are only drinking coffee,” with the subsequent subtitle emphasising: “Deepika and only coffee.” At this point, Padukone enters the apartment through the open door without knocking and confidently says “Hi.” Kohli explains the situation by responding (in English, and subtitled) “my school friend, Das”. Padukone, in turn, responds in a friendly way to both men (in English, and subtitled) “You guys want to have coffee?” Instead of responding directly to this invitation, Das models to Kohli what it is to take the initiative in this situation: what it is to have a plan. “Hello” (he says, in English and subtitled) “I don’t have coffee but I have a plan. You and me, my bike, right now, hit the town, party!” Kohli looks down at the floor, embarrassed, while Padukone looks quizzically at him over Das’s shoulder. Kohli smiles, and points to himself and Padukone, clearly excluding Das: “I will have coffee” (in English, and subtitle). “Better plan”, exclaims Padukone, “You and me, my place, right now, coffee.” She looks challengingly at Das: “Right?,” a statement rather than a request, and exits, with Kohli following and Das left behind in the apartment. Cue voice-over (not a subtitle, but in-screen speech bubble) “[It’s] time you started” (spoken) “the new Nescafé” (shot change) “My first cup” (with an in-screen price promotion). This commercial associates coffee drinking with Western values of social and personal autonomy. For young women in the traditional Muslim culture of Bangladesh, it suggests a world in which they are at liberty to spend time with the suitors they choose, ignoring those whom they find pushy or inappropriate, and free to invite a man back to “my place, right now” for coffee. The scene setting in this advertisement and the use of English in both the spoken and written text suggests its target is the educated middle class, and indicates that sophisticated, affluent, trend-setters drink coffee as a part of getting to know their neighbours. In line with this, the still which ends the commercial promotes the Facebook page “Know your neighbours.” The flirtatious nature of the actors in the advertisement, the emphasis on each of the male characters spending time alone with the female character, and the female character having both power and choice in this situation is likely to be highly unacceptable to traditional Bangladeshi parental values and, therefore, proportionately more exciting to the target audience. The underlying suggestion of “my first cup” and “time you started” is that the social consumption of that first cup of coffee is the “first step” to becoming more Western. The statement also has overtones of sexual initiation. The advertisement aligns itself with the world portrayed in the Western media consumed in Bangladesh, and the implication is that—even if Western liberal values are not currently a possible choice for all—it is at least feasible to start on the journey towards these values through drinking that first cup of coffee. Unbeknownst to the Bangladesh audience, this Nescafé marketing strategy echoes, in almost all material particulars, the same approach that was so successful in persuading Australians to embrace instant coffee. Khamis, in her essay on Australia and the convenience of instant coffee, argues that, while in 1928 Australia had the highest per capita consumption of tea in the world, this had begun to change by the 1950s. The transformation in the market positioning of coffee was partly achieved through an association between tea and old-fashioned ‘Britishness’ and coffee and the United States: this discovery [of coffee] spoke to changes in Australia’s lifestyle options: the tea habit was tied to Australia’s development as a far-flung colonial outpost, a daily reminder that many still looked to London as the nation’s cultural capital: the growing appeal of instant coffee reflected a widening and more nuanced cultural palate. This was not just ‘another’ example of the United States postwar juggernaut; it marks the transitional phase in Australia’s history, as its cultural identity was informed less by the staid conservativism of Britain than the heady flux of New World glamour (219). Coffee was associated with the USA not simply through advertising but also through cultural exposure. By 1943, notes Khamis, there were 120,000 American service personnel stationed in Australia and she quotes Symons (168) as saying that “when an American got on a friendly footing with an Australian family he was usually found in the kitchen, teaching the Mrs how to make coffee, or washing the dishes” (168, cited in Khamis 220). The chances were that “the Mrs”—the Australian housewife—felt she needed the tuition: an Australian survey conducted by Gallup in March 1950 indicated that 55 per cent of respondents at that time had never tried coffee, while a further 24 per cent said they “seldom” consumed it (Walker and Roberts 133, cited in Khamis 222). In a newspaper article titled, “Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here”, Munro describes the impact of exposure to the first American troops based in Australia during this time, with a then seven year old recalling: “They were foreign, quite a different culture from us. They spoke more loudly than us. They had strange accents, cute expressions, they were really very exotic.” The American troops caused consternation for Australian fathers and boyfriends. Dulcie Wood was 18 when she was dating an American serviceman: They had more money to spend (than Australian troops). They seemed to have plenty of supplies, they were always bringing you presents—stockings and cartons of cigarettes […] Their uniforms were better. They took you to more places. They were quite good dancers, some of them. They always brought you flowers. They were more polite to women. They charmed the mums because they were very polite. Some dads were a bit more sceptical of them. They weren’t sure if all that charm was genuine (quoted in Munro). Darian-Smith argues that, at that time, Australian understanding of Americans was based on Hollywood films, which led to an impression of American technological superiority and cultural sophistication (215-16, 232). “Against the American-style combination of smart advertising, consumerism, self-expression and popular democracy, the British class system and its buttoned-up royals appeared dull and dour” writes Khamis (226, citing Grant 15)—almost as dull and dour as 1950s tea compared with the postwar sophistication of Nescafé instant coffee. Conclusion The approach Nestlé is using in Bangladesh to market instant coffee is tried and tested: coffee is associated with the new, radical cultural influence while tea and other traditional stimulants are relegated to the choice of an older, more staid generation. Younger consumers are targeted with a romantic story about the love of coffee, reflected in a mini-soap opera about two people becoming a couple over a cup of Nescafé. Hopefully, the Pathshala-Edith Cowan University collaboration is at least as strong. Some of the overseas visitors return to Bangladesh on a regular basis—the student presentations in 2012 were, for instance, attended by two visiting graduates from the 2008 program who were working in Bangladesh. For the Australian participants, the association with Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute, and Drik Photo Agency brings recognition, credibility and opportunity. It also offers a totally new perspective on what to order in the coffee queue once they are home again in Australia. Postscript The final week of the residency in Bangladesh was taken up with presentations and a public exhibition of the students’ work at Drik Picture Agency, Dhaka, 3–7 February 2012. Danielle Fusco’s photographs can be accessed at: http://public-files.apps.ecu.edu.au/SCA_Marketing/coffee/coffee.html References Ali, M. “Commodity Round-up: Problems and Prospects of Bangladesh Tea”, World Development 1.1–2 (1973): 55. Beale, Claire. “Should the Gold Blend Couple Get Back Together?” The Independent 29 Apr 2010. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/advertising/should-the-gold-blend-couple-get-back-together-1957196.html›. Darian-Smith, Kate. On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime 1939-1945. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2009. Dude, Where’s My Car? Dir. Danny Leiner. Twentieth Century Fox, 2000. Edith Cowan University (ECU). “Photomedia Summer School Bangladesh 2012.” 1 May 2012 .Grant, Bruce. The Australian Dilemma: A New Kind of Western Society. Sydney: Macdonald Futura, 1983. Hafeman, D., H. Ashan, T. Islam, and E. Louis. “Betel-quid: Its Tremor-producing Effects in Residents of Araihazar, Bangladesh.” Movement Disorders 21.4 (2006): 567-71. Hinduism. “Reincarnation and Samsara.” Heart of Hinduism. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://hinduism.iskcon.org/concepts/102.htm›. Islam, G., M. Iqbal, K. Quddus, and M. Ali. “Present Status and Future Needs of Tea Industry in Bangladesh (Review).” Proceedings of the Pakistan Academy of Science. 42.4 (2005): 305-14. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.paspk.org/downloads/proc42-4/42-4-p305-314.pdf›. Khamis, Susie. “It Only Takes a Jiffy to Make: Nestlé, Australia and the Convenience of Instant Coffee.” Food, Culture & Society 12.2 (2009): 217-33. Munro, Ian. “Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here.” The Age 27 Feb. 2002. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/02/26/1014704950716.html›. O’Donohoe, Stephanie. “Raiding the Postmodern Pantry: Advertising Intertextuality and the Young Adult Audience.” European Journal of Marketing 31.3/4 (1997): 234-53 Pathshala. Pathshala, South Asian Media Academy. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.pathshala.net/controller.php›. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Sharma, Dinesh. “Betel Quid and Areca Nut are Carcinogenic without Tobacco.” The Lancet Oncology 4.10 (2003): 587. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.lancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(03)01229-4/fulltext›. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia. Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1984. Tea Board. “History of Bangladesh Tea Industry.” Bangladesh Tea Board. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.teaboard.gov.bd/index.php?option=HistoryTeaIndustry›. Walker, Robin and Dave Roberts. From Scarcity to Surfeit: A History of Food and Nutrition in New South Wales. Sydney: NSW UP, 1988.

IntroductionWe are increasingly being told to make ethical food choices, often by high-profile chefs advocating what they view as ethical consumption habits. Some actively promote vegetarian or vegan diets, with a growing number of high-profile restaurants featuring only or mainly plant-based meals. However, what makes food or restaurant menus ethical is not assessed by most of us using one standardised definition. Our food values differ based on our outlooks, past experiences, and perhaps most importantly, how we balance various trade-offs inherent in making food choices under different circumstances and in diverse contexts.Restaurants can face difficulties when trying to balance ethical considerations. For instance, is it inconsistent to promote foraging, seasonality, local products, and plant-based eating, yet also serve meat and other animal-derived protein products on the same menu? For example, Danish chef Rene Redzepi, co-owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant Noma in Copenhagen who recently had an extended stay in Australia (Redzepi), recently offered a purely vegetarian menu featuring foraged native ingredients. However, Redzepi followed this with a meat-based menu including teal, moose leg, reindeer tongue, and wild duck brain. These changes make clear that although Redzepi was still conflicted about serving animal products (Ankeny and Bray), he thinks that options for ethical eating are not limited to plants and that it is important to utilise available, and especially neglected, resources in novel ways.In this article, we argue that celebrity and other high-profile chefs have roles to play in conversations about the emerging range of new meat consumption norms, which might include humanely produced meat, wild meat, or other considerations. However, we contend that restaurants and popular media may be limited spaces in which to engage consumers in these conversations. Ultimately, celebrity and high-profile chefs can help us not only to reflect on our eating habits, but also to engage us in ways that help us to ask the right questions rather than encouraging reliance on set answers from them or other supposed experts.Chefs and New Meat NormsChefs are now key voices in the politics of lifestyle, shaping both the grammars and the practices of ethical consumption, which is further reinforced by the increasing mediatisation of food and food politics (Phillipov, Media). Contemporary trends toward ethical consumption have been much critiqued; nevertheless, ethical consumption has become a dominant means through which individuals within contemporary marketised, neoliberal economies are able to invest lifestyle choices with ethical, social, and civic meanings (Barnett et al.; Lewis and Potter). While vegetarianism was once considered a central pillar of ethical diets, the rise of individualized and diverse approaches to food and food politics has seen meat (at least in its “ethical” form) not only remain firmly on the menu, but also become a powerful symbol of “good” politics, taste, and desirable lifestyles (Pilgrim 112).Chefs’ involvement in promoting ethical meat initially began within restaurants catering for an elite foodie clientele. The details provided about meat producers and production methods on the menu of Alice Waters’ Californian restaurant Chez Panisse and her cookbooks (Waters), or the focus by Fergus Henderson on “nose to tail” eating at his London restaurant St. John (Henderson) has led many to cite them as among the originators of the ethical meat movement. But the increasing mediatisation of food and the emergence of chefs as celebrity brands with their own TV shows, cookbooks, YouTube channels, websites, sponsorship deals, and myriad other media appearances has allowed ethical meat to move out of elite restaurants and into more quotidian domestic spaces. High profile UK and US exposés including “campaigning culinary documentaries” fronted by celebrity chefs (Bell, Hollows, and Jones 179), along with the work of popular food writers such as Michael Pollan, have been instrumental in the mainstreaming of diverse new meat norms.The horrifying depictions of intensive chicken, beef, and pork farming in these exposés have contributed to greater public awareness of, and concern about, industrialised meat production. However, the poor welfare conditions of animals raised in battery cages and concentrated animal feeding operations often are presented not as motivations to eschew meat entirely, but instead as reasons to opt for more ethical alternatives. For instance, Hugh’s Chicken Run, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s 2008 television campaign for chicken welfare, resulted in making more free-range products available in British supermarkets (Johnston). More recently, there have been significant expansions in markets for variously defined categories such as grass-fed, free-range, organic, welfare-certified, humane, and/or environmentally friendly meat products in Australia and elsewhere, thanks in part to increased media attention to animal welfare issues (Arcari 169).As media has emerged as a “fundamental component of contemporary foodscapes, how they ‘perform’ and function, and the socio-material means by which they are produced” (Johnston and Goodman 205), ethical meat has increasingly been employed as a strategic resource in mainstream media and marketing. Ethical meat, for example, has been a key pillar in the contemporary rebranding of both of Australia’s major supermarkets (Lewis and Huber 289). Through partnerships that draw upon the “ethical capital” (290) of celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver and Curtis Stone, and collaborations with animal welfare organisations such as the RSPCA, ethical meat has become central to supermarket advertising campaigns in recent years. Such campaigns have been especially successful for Coles supermarkets, which controls almost 30% of Australia’s highly concentrated grocery market (Roy Morgan). The retailer’s long-term sponsorship of MasterChef Australia (Network 10, 2009–)—a show that presents meat (or, as they term it, “protein”) as an essential component of most dishes and which regularly rates in the top 10 of Australian television programs (OzTAM)—further helps to emphasise that the solution to ethical problems is not to avoid meat, but to choose (Coles’) “better” meat (see fig. 1). This is promoted on the basis of a combination of ethics, price, and taste, and, remarkably, is able to deliver “better welfare at no extra cost to you” (Parker, Carey, and Scrinis 209). In short, chefs are making major contributions to awareness of ethical norms relating to meat consumption in a variety of settings. Figure 1: An example of a current meat product on the shelf at a major Australian retailer with packaging that makes a range of claims relating to production practices and quality, among other attributes. (Emily Buddle)“The Good Life”Lifestyle media has been a key site through which meat eating is normalised and recuperated into “ethical” frameworks (Arcari 169). Utopian visions of small-scale animal agriculture are a key feature of popular texts from the River Cottage Australia (Foxtel Networks, 2013–) series to Gourmet Farmer (SBS, 2010–) and Paddock to Plate (Foxtel Networks, 2013–). These programs are typically set in bucolic rural surrounds and centre on the host’s “escape” from the city to a more fulfilling, happier existence in the country (Phillipov, “Escaping”). Rural self-sufficiency is frequently framed as the solution to urban consumers’ alienation from the sources of their food, and a means of taking responsibility for the food they eat. The opening credits of Gourmet Farmer, for instance, outline host Matthew Evans’s quest to “know and trust what [he] eat[s]”, either by growing the food himself or being “no more than one degree of separation from the person who does”.This sense of connection to one’s food is central to how these programs make meat consumption ethical. Indeed, the production of animals for food reinforces particular notions of “the good life” in which the happiness of the animal is closely aligned with the happiness of its human producer. While texts sometimes show food animals’ full lifecycle from birth to slaughter, lifestyle media focuses mainly on their happy existence while still alive. Evans gives his pigs names that foreground their destiny as food (e.g., Prosciutto and Cassoulet), but he also pampers them as though they are pets, feeding them cherries and apples, and scratching them behind the ears much like he would his dog. These bucolic televisual images serve to anchor the programs’ many “spin-off” media texts, including blog posts, cookbooks (e.g. Evans), and endorsements, that instruct urban audiences who do not have the luxury of raising their own meat on how to source ethical alternatives. They also emphasise the deliciousness of meat raised and killed in humane, “natural” conditions, as opposed to those subjected to more intensive, industrialised production systems.Some argue that the notion of “ethical meat” merely masks the realities of humans’ domination over animals (Arcari). However the transition from “happy animals” to “happy meat” (Pilgrim 123) has been key to lifestyle media’s recuperation of (certain kinds of) meat production as a “humane, benevolent and wholly ‘natural’ process” (Parry 381), which helps to morally absolve the chefs who promote it, and by extension, their audiences.The Good DeathMeat consumption has been theorised to be based on the invisibility of the lives and deaths of animals—what has been termed the “absent referent” by feminist philosopher Carol J. Adams (14; see also Fiddes). This line of argument holds that slaughter and other practices that may raise moral concerns are actively hidden from view, and that animals are “made absent” within food consumption practices (Evans and Miele 298). Few meat consumers, at least those in Western countries, have seen animal slaughter first hand, and a disconnect between meat and animal is actively maintained through current retail practices (such as pre-packaged meat with few identifying cues), as well as in our language use, at least in English where most of the names of the meat are different to those of the animal (Plous; Croney) and where euphemisms such as “harvesting” abound (Abrams, Zimbres, and Carr). In many locales, including Australia, there is squeamishness about talking about slaughter and the processes by which “animal” becomes “meat” which in turn prevents open discussion about the origins of meat (Bray et al., “Conversation”).Campaigning culinary documentaries by chefs, including Matthew Evans’s recent For the Love of Meat (SBS, 2016), aim to reconnect animal and meat in order to critique modern meat production methods. In addition, Gourmet Farmer and River Cottage Australia both feature depictions of hunting (skinning and butchering of the animals is shown but viewers are rarely exposed to the kill itself) and emphasise the use of highly skilled hunters in order to bring about a quick death. By highlighting not only a good life but also what constitutes a “good death”, celebrity chefs and others are arguably generating discussion about what makes meat ethical by emphasizing that the quality of death is as important as the quality of life. In many of these programs, the emphasis is on more boutique or small-scale production systems which typically produce meat products that are higher priced and more difficult to source.Given that such products are likely out of reach for many potential consumers because of price point, convenience, or both, perhaps unsurprisingly the emphasis in many of these programs is on the consumer rather than the consumed. Hence these programs tend to be more about constructing an “ethical meat consumer”, defined implicitly as someone who acknowledges the meat/animal connection through conscious exposure to the realities of animal slaughter (for example, by watching a documentary), by “meeting your meat” such as in the BBC series Kill It, Cook It, Eat It (BBC, 2007; Evans and Miele), or by actively participating in the slaughter process as Evans did with his own chickens on Gourmet Farmer. As anthropologist Catie Gressier notes in her study of wild meat consumers in Australia, “hunting meat is seen as more noble than purchasing it, while wild meat is seen as preferable to farmed” (Gressier 58). Gressier also describes how one of her participants viewed hunting (and eating locally) as preferable to veganism because of the “animal violence that is the inevitable outcome of mass-crop agriculture” (58). However some scholars have argued that highly graphic depictions of slaughter in the popular media are becoming more commonplace as a masculinised type of “gastro-snuff” (a term referring to food-related visual depictions of brutal killings) (Parry 382). These types of efforts thus may fail to create dialogue about what constitutes ethical meat or even an ethical meat consumer, and may well reinforce more traditional ideas about human/non-human hierarchies.In contrast to coverage in popular media, detailed descriptions of commercial slaughter, in particular pre-slaughter (lairage) conditions, are yet to make it on to restaurant menus, despite the connections between meat quality and pre-slaughter conditions being well recognised even by consumers (Evans and Miele). Commercial slaughter conditions are one of the reasons that hunting is framed as more ethical than “ethically farmed” animals. As an Internet post, quoted in Adams (“Redneck” 50), puts it: “Hunting? A creature is peacefully in its own domain, it is shot. How is that worse than being carried for hours in a truck, being forced into a crush, hearing the bellows of other creatures, being physically restrained at the peak of terror, then culled?” Although determining precise rates of consumption of wild meat is methodologically difficult (Conservation Visions 28), available rates of hunting together with limited consumption data indicate that Australians currently eat less game or wild-caught meat per capita than those in Europe or North America. However, there is a sector of the community in Australia who pursue hunting as part of their ethical food habits (Bray et al., “Ferals”) with the largest proportion of wild-meat consumers being those who hunted it themselves (Gressier).In many cases, descriptions of animal lives (using descriptors such as “free range” or “grass fed”) serve implicitly as proxies for assurances that the animals’ deaths also have been good. One exception is the increasing awareness of the use of halal slaughter methods in part due to more transparent labelling, despite limited public awareness about the nature of these methods, particularly in the Australian context where they in fact comply with standard animal welfare requirements such as pre-slaughter stunning (Bergeauld-Blackler). Detailed descriptions of post-mortem conditions (e.g., aging conditions and time) are more common on restaurant menus, although arguably these no longer draw attention to the connections between the animal and the meat, and instead focus on the meat itself, its flavour and other physical qualities, rather than on ethical attributes.Thus, although it would seem obvious that ethical meat consumption should involve considerations about slaughter conditions or what makes a “good death”, most efforts have focused on encouraging people to make better and more reflexive consumer choices, rather than promoting deeper engagement with slaughter processes, perhaps underscoring that this domain may still represent one of the final food taboos. Although it might seem to be counterintuitive that wild or hunted meat could be viewed as an ethical food choice, particularly if vegetarianism or veganism is taken as the main point of comparison, these trends point toward the complexities inherent in food choice and the inevitable trade-offs in values that occur in these processes.Problems with Promoting Ethical Meat Norms: Ways ForwardIt is undeniable that many people are reflecting on their consumption habits in order to pursue decisions that better reflect their values. Attempting to be an “ethical meat consumer” clearly fits within these broader trends. However there are a number of problems associated with current approaches to ethical meat consumption, and these raise questions as to whether such efforts are likely to result in broader changes. First, it is not clear that restaurants are the most appropriate spaces for people to engage with ethical considerations, including those relating to meat consumption. Many people seek to try something new, or to treat themselves when dining out, but these behaviours do not necessarily translate into changes in everyday eating habits. Reasons are varied but include that people cannot reproduce the same types of dishes or concepts at home as what they get at restaurants (or see on TV shows for that matter), and that many products may be out of an acceptable price range or inconvenient for daily consumption. Others want to escape from ethical decisions when dining out by relying on those preparing the food to do the work for them, and thus sometimes simply consume without necessarily investigating every detail relating to its production, preparation, and so on.Perhaps more importantly, many are sceptical about the promotion of various meat-related values by high-profile or celebrity chefs, raising questions about whether ethical categories are merely packaging or window dressing designed to sell products, or if they are truly tied to deeper values and better products. Such concerns are reinforced by tendencies to emphasize one type of meat product—say free-range, grass-fed, or humanely-raised—as better than all others, or even as the only right choice, and thus can at times seem to be elitist in their approaches, since they emphasize that only certain (often extremely expensive boutique products) count as ethical. As scholars have noted about the classed nature of many of these consumption practices (see, for example, Bell and Hollows; Naccarato and LeBesco), these types of value judgments are likely to be alienating to many people, and most importantly will not foster deeper reflections on our consumption habits.However it is clear that celebrity and other high-profile chefs do get the public’s attention, and thus can play important roles in shaping conversations about fostering more ethical ways of eating, including meat consumption. We contend that it is important not to emphasize only one right way of eating, but to actively consider the various trade-offs that we make when choosing what to buy, prepare, and consume. Promoting answers by nominating certain meat products or production methods as always better in all circumstances, no matter how these might be in conflict with other values, such as preferences for local, organic, alignment with cultural or religious values, sustainable, fair trade, and so on, is not likely to result in meaningful public engagement. Critiques of Pollan and other food activists make similar points about the potential elitism and hence limited value of promoting narrow forms of ethical eating (e.g., Guthman et al.; Zimmerman).In addition, such food categories often serve as proxies for deeper values, but not necessarily for the same values for all of us. Simply relying on categories or types of products thus fails to allow engagement with the underlying rationale for various choices. More generally, promoting individual consumer decision-making and market demand as the keys to ethical consumption overlooks the broader systemic issues that limit our choices, and in turn limits attention to changes that might be made in that system (e.g., Lavin; Guthman et al.; DeLind; Ankeny).Thus instead of promoting one right way of eating meat, or a narrow number of acceptable choices, celebrities, chefs, and restauranteurs should consider how they can help to promote dialogue and the posing of the right types of questions to consumers and diners, including about trade-offs inherent in meat consumption and choices of other products, ethical and otherwise. They also should use their roles as change-makers to consider how they might influence the broader food system, but without promoting a single right way of eating. Parallel to recent calls from scientists for a new planetary health diet which promotes increased vegetable consumption and reduced meat consumption for environmental, health, and other reasons, by providing a range of trade-offs to support a diet that that allows individuals to make personalised choices (Willett et al.), hybrid approaches to ethical eating are more likely to have influence on consumers and in turn on changing eating habits.ReferencesAbrams, Katie M., Thais Zimbres, and Chad Carr. “Communicating Sensitive Scientific Issues: The Interplay between Values, Attitudes, and Euphemisms in Communicating Livestock Slaughter.” Science Communication 37 (2015): 485–505.Adams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory. London: Continuum, 2000.Adams, Michael. “‘Redneck, Barbaric, Cashed Up Bogan? 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Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.Pilgrim, Karyn. “‘Happy Cows’, ‘Happy Beef’: A Critique of the Rationales for Ethical Meat.” Environmental Studies 3 (2013): 111–27.Plous, S.S. “Psychological Mechanisms in the Human Use of Animals.” Journal of Social Issues 49 (1993): 11–52.Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. London: Penguin, 2006.Redzepi, Rene. “Redzepi on Redzepi: The Noma Australia Exit Interview.” Gourmet Traveller 30 Mar. 2016. 20 Mar. 2019 <https://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/news/restaurant-news/redzepi-on-redzepi-the-noma-australia-exit-interview-3702>.Roy Morgan. “Woolworths Increases Lead in $100b+ Grocery War.” Roy Morgan 23 Mar. 2018. 20 Mar. 2019 <http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/7537-woolworths-increases-lead-in-$100b-plus-grocery-war-201803230113>.Waters, Alice. The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. London: Chatto and Windus / The Hogarth Press, 1982.———. “The Farm-Restaurant Connection.” A Slice of Life: Contemporary Writers on Food. Ed. 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At a time when almost every human transgression, illness, profession and other personal aspect of life has been chronicled in autobiographical writing (Rak)—in 1998 Zinsser called ours “the age of memoir” (3)—writing about fat is one of the most recent subjects to be addressed in this way. This article surveys a range of contemporary autobiographical texts that are titled with, or revolve around, that powerful and most evocative word, “fat”. Following a number of cultural studies of fat in society (Critser; Gilman, Fat Boys; Fat: A Cultural History; Stearns), this discussion views fat in socio-cultural terms, following Lupton in understanding fat as both “a cultural artefact: a bodily substance or body shape that is given meaning by complex and shifting systems of ideas, practices, emotions, material objects and interpersonal relationships” (i). Using a case study approach (Gerring; Verschuren), this examination focuses on a range of texts from autobiographical cookbooks and memoirs to novel-length graphic works in order to develop a preliminary taxonomy of these works. In this way, a small sample of work, each of which (described below) explores an aspect (or aspects) of the form is, following Merriam, useful as it allows a richer picture of an under-examined phenomenon to be constructed, and offers “a means of investigating complex social units consisting of multiple variables of potential importance in understanding the phenomenon” (Merriam 50). Although the sample size does not offer generalisable results, the case study method is especially suitable in this context, where the aim is to open up discussion of this form of writing for future research for, as Merriam states, “much can be learned from […] an encounter with the case through the researcher’s narrative description” and “what we learn in a particular case can be transferred to similar situations” (51). Pro-Fat Autobiographical WritingAlongside the many hundreds of reduced, low- and no-fat cookbooks and weight loss guides currently in print that offer recipes, meal plans, ingredient replacements and strategies to reduce fat in the diet, there are a handful that promote the consumption of fats, and these all have an autobiographical component. The publication of Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes in 2008 by Ten Speed Press—publisher of Mollie Katzen’s groundbreaking and influential vegetarian Moosewood Cookbook in 1974 and an imprint now known for its quality cookbooks (Thelin)—unequivocably addressed that line in the sand often drawn between fat and all things healthy. The four chapter titles of this cookbook— “Butter,” subtitled “Worth It,” “Pork Fat: The King,” “Poultry Fat: Versatile and Good For You,” and, “Beef and Lamb Fats: Overlooked But Tasty”—neatly summarise McLagan’s organising argument: that animal fats not only add an unreplaceable and delicious flavour to foods but are fundamental to our health. Fat polarised readers and critics; it was positively reviewed in prominent publications (Morris; Bhide) and won influential food writing awards, including 2009 James Beard Awards for Single Subject Cookbook and Cookbook of the Year but, due to its rejection of low-fat diets and the research underpinning them, was soon also vehemently criticised, to the point where the book was often described in the media as “controversial” (see Smith). McLagan’s text, while including historical, scientific and gastronomic data and detail, is also an outspokenly personal treatise, chronicling her sensual and emotional responses to this ingredient. “I love fat,” she begins, continuing, “Whether it’s a slice of foie gras terrine, its layer of yellow fat melting at the edges […] hot bacon fat […] wilting a plate of pungent greens into submission […] or a piece of crunchy pork crackling […] I love the way it feels in my mouth, and I love its many tastes” (1). Her text is, indeed, memoir as gastronomy / gastronomy as memoir, and this cookbook, therefore, an example of the “memoir with recipes” subgenre (Brien et al.). It appears to be this aspect – her highly personal and, therein, persuasive (Weitin) plea for the value of fats – that galvanised critics and readers.Molly Chester and Sandy Schrecengost’s Back to Butter: A Traditional Foods Cookbook – Nourishing Recipes Inspired by Our Ancestors begins with its authors’ memoirs (illness, undertaking culinary school training, buying and running a farm) to lend weight to their argument to utilise fats widely in cookery. Its first chapter, “Fats and Oils,” features the familiar butter, which it describes as “the friendly fat” (22), then moves to the more reviled pork lard “Grandma’s superfood” (22) and, nowadays quite rarely described as an ingredient, beef tallow. Grit Magazine’s Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient utilises the rhetoric that fat, and in this case, lard, is a traditional and therefore foundational ingredient in good cookery. This text draws on its publisher’s, Grit Magazine (published since 1882 in various formats), long history of including auto/biographical “inspirational stories” (Teller) to lend persuasive power to its argument. One of the most polarising of fats in health and current media discourse is butter, as was seen recently in debate over what was seen as its excessive use in the MasterChef Australia television series (see, Heart Foundation; Phillipov). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that butter is the single fat inspiring the most autobiographical writing in this mode. Rosie Daykin’s Butter Baked Goods: Nostalgic Recipes from a Little Neighborhood Bakery is, for example, typical of a small number of cookbooks that extend the link between baking and nostalgia to argue that butter is the superlative ingredient for baking. There are also entire cookbooks dedicated to making flavoured butters (Vaserfirer) and a number that offer guides to making butter and other (fat-based) dairy products at home (Farrell-Kingsley; Hill; Linford).Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef is typical among chef’s memoirs in using butter prominently although rare in mentioning fat in its title. In this text and other such memoirs, butter is often used as shorthand for describing a food that is rich but also wholesomely delicious. Hamilton relates childhood memories of “all butter shortcakes” (10), and her mother and sister “cutting butter into flour and sugar” for scones (15), radishes eaten with butter (21), sautéing sage in butter to dress homemade ravoli (253), and eggs fried in browned butter (245). Some of Hamilton’s most telling references to butter present it as an staple, natural food as, for instance, when she describes “sliced bread with butter and granulated sugar” (37) as one of her family’s favourite desserts, and lists butter among the everyday foodstuffs that taste superior when stored at room temperature instead of refrigerated—thereby moving butter from taboo (Gwynne describes a similar process of the normalisation of sexual “perversion” in erotic memoir).Like this text, memoirs that could be described as arguing “for” fat as a substance are largely by chefs or other food writers who extol, like McLagan and Hamilton, the value of fat as both food and flavouring, and propose that it has a key role in both ordinary/family and gourmet cookery. In this context, despite plant-based fats such as coconut oil being much lauded in nutritional and other health-related discourse, the fat written about in these texts is usually animal-based. An exception to this is olive oil, although this is never described in the book’s title as a “fat” (see, for instance, Drinkwater’s series of memoirs about life on an olive farm in France) and is, therefore, out of the scope of this discussion.Memoirs of Being FatThe majority of the other memoirs with the word “fat” in their titles are about being fat. Narratives on this topic, and their authors’ feelings about this, began to be published as a sub-set of autobiographical memoir in the 2000s. The first decade of the new millennium saw a number of such memoirs by female writers including Judith Moore’s Fat Girl (published in 2005), Jen Lancaster’s Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer, and Stephanie Klein’s Moose: A Memoir (both published in 2008) and Jennifer Joyne’s Designated Fat Girl in 2010. These were followed into the new decade by texts such as Celia Rivenbark’s bestselling 2011 You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl, and all attracted significant mainstream readerships. Journalist Vicki Allan pulled no punches when she labelled these works the “fat memoir” and, although Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s influential categorisation of 60 genres of life writing does not include this description, they do recognise eating disorder and weight-loss narratives. Some scholarly interest followed (Linder; Halloran), with Mitchell linking this production to feminism’s promotion of the power of the micro-narrative and the recognition that the autobiographical narrative was “a way of situating the self politically” (65).aken together, these memoirs all identify “excess” weight, although the response to this differs. They can be grouped as: narratives of losing weight (see Kuffel; Alley; and many others), struggling to lose weight (most of these books), and/or deciding not to try to lose weight (the smallest number of works overall). Some of these texts display a deeply troubled relationship with food—Moore’s Fat Girl, for instance, could also be characterised as an eating disorder memoir (Brien), detailing her addiction to eating and her extremely poor body image as well as her mother’s unrelenting pressure to lose weight. Elena Levy-Navarro describes the tone of these narratives as “compelled confession” (340), mobilising both the conventional understanding of confession of the narrator “speaking directly and colloquially” to the reader of their sins, failures or foibles (Gill 7), and what she reads as an element of societal coercion in their production. Some of these texts do focus on confessing what can be read as disgusting and wretched behavior (gorging and vomiting, for instance)—Halloran’s “gustatory abject” (27)—which is a feature of the contemporary conceptualisation of confession after Rousseau (Brooks). This is certainly a prominent aspect of current memoir writing that is, simultaneously, condemned by critics (see, for example, Jordan) and popular with readers (O’Neill). Read in this way, the majority of memoirs about being fat are about being miserable until a slimming regime of some kind has been undertaken and successful. Some of these texts are, indeed, triumphal in tone. Lisa Delaney’s Secrets of a Former Fat Girl is, for instance, clear in the message of its subtitle, How to Lose Two, Four (or More!) Dress Sizes—And Find Yourself Along the Way, that she was “lost” until she became slim. Linden has argued that “female memoir writers frequently describe their fat bodies as diseased and contaminated” (219) and “powerless” (226). Many of these confessional memoirs are moving narratives of shame and self loathing where the memoirist’s sense of self, character, and identity remain somewhat confused and unresolved, whether they lose weight or not, and despite attestations to the contrary.A sub-set of these memoirs of weight loss are by male authors. While having aspects in common with those by female writers, these can be identified as a sub-set of these memoirs for two reasons. One is the tone of their narratives, which is largely humourous and often ribaldly comic. There is also a sense of the heroic in these works, with male memoirsts frequently mobilising images of battles and adversity. Texts that can be categorised in this way include Toshio Okada’s Sayonara Mr. Fatty: A Geek’s Diet Memoir, Gregg McBride and Joy Bauer’s bestselling Weightless: My Life as a Fat Man and How I Escaped, Fred Anderson’s From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man. As can be seen in their titles, these texts also promise to relate the stratgies, regimes, plans, and secrets that others can follow to, similarly, lose weight. Allen Zadoff’s title makes this explicit: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. Many of these male memoirists are prompted by a health-related crisis, diagnosis, or realisation. Male body image—a relatively recent topic of enquiry in the eating disorder, psychology, and fashion literature (see, for instance, Bradley et al.)—is also often a surprising motif in these texts, and a theme in common with weight loss memoirs by female authors. Edward Ugel, for instance, opens his memoir, I’m with Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks, with “I’m haunted by mirrors … the last thing I want to do is see myself in a mirror or a photograph” (1).Ugel, as that prominent “miserable” in his subtitle suggests, provides a subtle but revealing variation on this theme of successful weight loss. Ugel (as are all these male memoirists) succeeds in the quest be sets out on but, apparently, despondent almost every moment. While the overall tone of his writing is light and humorous, he laments every missed meal, snack, and mouthful of food he foregoes, explaining that he loves eating, “Food makes me happy … I live to eat. I love to eat at restaurants. I love to cook. I love the social component of eating … I can’t be happy without being a social eater” (3). Like many of these books by male authors, Ugel’s descriptions of the food he loves are mouthwatering—and most especially when describing what he identifies as the fattening foods he loves: Reuben sandwiches dripping with juicy grease, crispy deep friend Chinese snacks, buttery Danish pastries and creamy, rich ice cream. This believable sense of regret is not, however, restricted to male authors. It is also apparent in how Jen Lancaster begins her memoir: “I’m standing in the kitchen folding a softened stick of butter, a cup of warmed sour cream, and a mound of fresh-shaved Parmesan into my world-famous mashed potatoes […] There’s a maple-glazed pot roast browning nicely in the oven and white-chocolate-chip macadamia cookies cooling on a rack farther down the counter. I’ve already sautéed the almonds and am waiting for the green beans to blanch so I can toss the whole lot with yet more butter before serving the meal” (5). In the above memoirs, both male and female writers recount similar (and expected) strategies: diets, fasts and other weight loss regimes and interventions (calorie counting, colonics, and gastric-banding and -bypass surgery for instance, recur); consulting dieting/health magazines for information and strategies; keeping a food journal; employing expert help in the form of nutritionists, dieticians, and personal trainers; and, joining health clubs/gyms, and taking up various sports.Alongside these works sit a small number of texts that can be characterised as “non-weight loss memoirs.” These can be read as part of the emerging, and burgeoning, academic field of Fat Studies, which gathers together an extensive literature critical of, and oppositional to, dominant discourses about obesity (Cooper; Rothblum and Solovay; Tomrley and Naylor), and which include works that focus on information backed up with memoir such as self-described “fat activist” (Wann, website) Marilyn Wann’s Fat! So?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologise, which—when published in 1998—followed a print ’zine and a website of the same title. Although certainly in the minority in terms of numbers, these narratives have been very popular with readers and are growing as a sub-genre, with well-known actress Camryn Manheim’s New York Times-bestselling memoir, Wake Up, I'm Fat! (published in 1999) a good example. This memoir chronicles Manheim’s journey from the overweight and teased teenager who finds it a struggle to find friends (a common trope in many weight loss memoirs) to an extremely successful actress.Like most other types of memoir, there are also niche sub-genres of the “fat memoir.” Cheryl Peck’s Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs recounts a series of stories about her life in the American Midwest as a lesbian “woman of size” (xiv) and could thus be described as a memoir on the subjects of – and is, indeed, catalogued in the Library of Congress as: “Overweight women,” “Lesbians,” and “Three Rivers (Mich[igan]) – Social life and customs”.Carol Lay’s graphic memoir, The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude, has a simple diet message – she lost weight by counting calories and exercising every day – and makes a dual claim for value of being based on both her own story and a range of data and tools including: “the latest research on obesity […] psychological tips, nutrition basics, and many useful tools like simplified calorie charts, sample recipes, and menu plans” (qtd. in Lorah). The Big Skinny could, therefore, be characterised with the weight loss memoirs above as a self-help book, but Lay herself describes choosing the graphic form in order to increase its narrative power: to “wrap much of the information in stories […] combining illustrations and story for a double dose of retention in the brain” (qtd. in Lorah). Like many of these books that can fit into multiple categories, she notes that “booksellers don’t know where to file the book – in graphic novels, memoirs, or in the diet section” (qtd. in O’Shea).Jude Milner’s Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! is another example of how a single memoir (graphic, in this case) can be a hybrid of the categories herein discussed, indicating how difficult it is to neatly categorise human experience. Recounting the author’s numerous struggles with her weight and journey to self-acceptance, Milner at first feels guilty and undertakes a series of diets and regimes, before becoming a “Fat Is Beautiful” activist and, finally, undergoing gastric bypass surgery. Here the narrative trajectory is of empowerment rather than physical transformation, as a thinner (although, importantly, not thin) Milner “exudes confidence and radiates strength” (Story). ConclusionWhile the above has identified a number of ways of attempting to classify autobiographical writing about fat/s, its ultimate aim is, after G. Thomas Couser’s work in relation to other sub-genres of memoir, an attempt to open up life writing for further discussion, rather than set in placed fixed and inflexible categories. Constructing such a preliminary taxonomy aspires to encourage more nuanced discussion of how writers, publishers, critics and readers understand “fat” conceptually as well as more practically and personally. It also aims to support future work in identifying prominent and recurrent (or not) themes, motifs, tropes, and metaphors in memoir and autobiographical texts, and to contribute to the development of a more detailed set of descriptors for discussing and assessing popular autobiographical writing more generally.References Allan, Vicki. “Graphic Tale of Obesity Makes for Heavy Reading.” Sunday Herald 26 Jun. 2005. Alley, Kirstie. How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2005.Anderson, Fred. From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man. USA: Three Toes Publishing, 2009.Bhide, Monica. “Why You Should Eat Fat.” Salon 25 Sep. 2008.Bradley, Linda Arthur, Nancy Rudd, Andy Reilly, and Tim Freson. “A Review of Men’s Body Image Literature: What We Know, and Need to Know.” International Journal of Costume and Fashion 14.1 (2014): 29–45.Brien, Donna Lee. “Starving, Bingeing and Writing: Memoirs of Eating Disorder as Food Writing.” TEXT: Journal of Writers and Writing Courses Special Issue 18 (2013).Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. “Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace.” M/C Journal 10.4 (2007).Brooks, Peter. Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Chester, Molly, and Sandy Schrecengost. Back to Butter: A Traditional Foods Cookbook – Nourishing Recipes Inspired by Our Ancestors. Vancouver: Fair Winds Press, 2014.Cooper, Charlotte. “Fat Studies: Mapping the Field.” Sociology Compass 4.12 (2010): 1020–34.Couser, G. Thomas. “Genre Matters: Form, Force, and Filiation.” Lifewriting 2.2 (2007): 139–56.Critser, Greg. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World. New York: First Mariner Books, 2004. Daykin, Rosie. Butter Baked Goods: Nostalgic Recipes from a Little Neighborhood Bakery. New York: Random House, 2015.Delaney, Lisa. Secrets of a Former Fat Girl: How to Lose Two, Four (or More!) Dress Sizes – and Find Yourself along the Way. New York: Plume/Penguin, 2008.Drinkwater, Carol. The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love and Olive Oil in the South of France. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2001.Farrell, Amy Erdman. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011.Farrell-Kingsley, Kathy. The Home Creamery: Make Your Own Fresh Dairy Products; Easy Recipes for Butter, Yogurt, Sour Cream, Creme Fraiche, Cream Cheese, Ricotta, and More! North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2008.Gerring, John. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Gill, Jo. “Introduction.” Modern Confessional Writing: New Critical Essays, ed. Jo Gill. London: Routledge, 2006. 1–10.Gilman, Sander L. Fat Boys: A Slim Book. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.———. Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008.Grit Magazine Editors. Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2012.Gwynne, Joel. Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism: The Politics of Pleasure. Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013.Halloran, Vivian Nun. “Biting Reality: Extreme Eating and the Fascination with the Gustatory Abject.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 4 (2004): 27–42.Hamilton, Gabrielle. Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. New York: Random House, 2013.Heart Foundation [Australia]. “To Avoid Trans Fat, Avoid Butter Says Heart Foundation: Media Release.” 27 Sep. 2010.Hill, Louella. Kitchen Creamery: Making Yogurt, Butter & Cheese at Home. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2015.Jordan, Pat. “Dysfunction for Dollars.” New York Times 28 July 2002.Joyne, Jennifer. Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir. Guilford, CT: Skirt!, 2010.Katzen, Mollie. The Moosewood Cookbook. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1974.Klein, Stephanie. Moose: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.Kuffel, Frances. Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self. New York: Broadway, 2004. Lancaster, Jen. Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer. New York: New American Library/Penguin, 2008.Lay, Carol. The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude. New York: Villard Books, 2008.Levy-Navarro, Elena. “I’m the New Me: Compelled Confession in Diet Discourse.” The Journal of Popular Culture 45.2 (2012): 340–56.Library of Congress. Catalogue record 200304857. Linder, Kathryn E. “The Fat Memoir as Autopathography: Self-Representations of Embodied Fatness.” Auto/biography Studies 26.2 (2011): 219–37.Linford, Jenny. The Creamery Kitchen. London: Ryland Peters & Small, 2014.Lorah, Michael C. “Carol Lay on The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude.” Newsarama 26 Dec. 2008. Lupton, Deborah. Fat. Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2013.Manheim, Camryn. Wake Up, I’m Fat! New York: Broadway Books, 2000.Merriam, Sharan B. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.McBride, Gregg. Weightless: My Life as a Fat Man and How I Escaped. Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press, 2014.McLagan, Jennifer. Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2008.Milner, Jude. Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006.Mitchell, Allyson. “Big Judy: Fatness, Shame, and the Hybrid Autobiography.” Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography, eds. Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 64–77.Moore, Judith. Fat Girl: A True Story. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005. Morris, Sophie. “Fat Is Back: Rediscover the Delights of Lard, Dripping and Suet.” The Independent 12 Mar. 2009. Multiple Sclerosis Society, New York. “Books for a Better Life Awards: 2007 Finalists.” Book Reporter 2006. Okada, Toshio. Sayonara Mr. Fatty: A Geek’s Diet Memoir. Trans. Mizuho Tiyishima. New York: Vertical Inc., 2009.O’Neill, Brendan. “Misery Lit … Read On.” BBC News 17 Apr. 2007. O’Shea, Tim. “Taking Comics with Tim: Carol Lay.” Robot 6 16 Feb. 2009. Peck, Cheryl. Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs. New York: Warner Books, 2004. Phillipov, M.M. “Mastering Obesity: MasterChef Australia and the Resistance to Public Health Nutrition.” Media, Culture and Society 35.4 (2013): 506–15.Rak, Julie. Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013.Rivenbark, Celia. You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl: Observations on Life from the Shallow End of the Pool. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011.Rothblum, Esther, and Sondra Solovay, eds. The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2009.Smith, Shaun. “Jennifer McLagan on her Controversial Cookbook, Fat.” CBC News 15. Sep. 2008. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.Stearns, Peter N. Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West. New York and London: New York University Press, 2002.Story, Carol Ann. “Book Review: ‘Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Women’.” WLS Lifestyles 2007. Teller, Jean. “As American as Mom, Apple Pie & Grit.” Grit History Grit. c. 2006. Thelin, Emily Kaiser. “Aaron Wehner Transforms Ten Speed Press into Cookbook Leader.” SF Gate 7 Oct. 2014. Tomrley, Corianna, and Ann Kaloski Naylor. Fat Studies in the UK. York: Raw Nerve Books, 2009.Ugel, Edward. I’m with Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks. New York: Weinstein Books, 2010.Vaserfirer, Lucy. Flavored Butters: How to Make Them, Shape Them, and Use Them as Spreads, Toppings, and Sauces. Boston, MA: Harvard Common Press, 2013.Verschuren, Piet. “Case Study as a Research Strategy: Some Ambiguities and Opportunities.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 6.2 (2003): 121–39.Wann, Marilyn. Fat!So?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1998.———. Fat!So? n.d. Weitin, Thomas. “Testimony and the Rhetoric of Persuasion.” Modern Language Notes 119.3 (2004): 525–40.Zadoff, Allen. Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press, 2007.Zinsser, William, ed. Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Media critics tend to think about reviews in two ways: either as autonomous acts of creative intervention or as necessary fodder for publicity campaigns. Rather than elevate either of these options, I offer an account of my own reviewing experience as anecdotal evidence of the interrelation between creative intervention and commodification at work in every printed newspaper review. As Frederick Jameson argued long ago in his essay “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture”, capitalist culture always contains elements of utopian or counter-hegemonic fantasy, but these elements are quickly absorbed and squelched within the market. Indeed, the appearance of literary criticism itself is bound up with the transformation of cultural activity into commodity form. In order to appreciate how reviews function within the economy of literary journalism, one should underestimate neither the ease with which even the most insightful review has always already been absorbed into the process of commodification nor how this process can work against the market’s own best interests. (For a study of the economic impact of reviewing, see Cameron. For the complications involved in writing a history of reviews and reviewers, see Fosdick.) For the last few years, I have written book reviews primarily for my local newspaper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen. As a 15,000-run newspaper, the Press-Citizen is listed in the small newspaper category for journalism awards and is one of the smallest newspapers owned by the giant media conglomerate, Gannett. Because Iowa City is home to the Big Ten, 30,000-student University of Iowa, the Press-Citizen has a more highly educated audience than that of other newspapers with similar press runs. Yet the educated readership also means that the local population expects a journalistic product with the sophistication of the New Yorker while the marketplace is only slightly larger than that of the little old ladies in Dubuque. Because of budget limitations, the Press-Citizen’s cultural reporting occupies a small percentage of its local news pages. As a result, the editorial staff deems newsworthy only those reviews demonstrating a clear local angle. From one perspective, this decision represents a commitment to the community. In practical terms, however, the policy means that the newspaper solicits reviews only for the authors who participate in “Live from Prairie Lights”, a reading series jointly sponsored by the university’s not-for-profit, public radio station, WSUI, and one of the city’s independently owned bookstores, Prairie Lights. The reading series owes its reputation, in part, to the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, consistently hailed by U.S. News and World Report as the number one MFA creative writing program in the nation. Because the Workshop attracts established alumni (such as Michael Cunningham and John Irving) as well as ambitious younger writers, Prairie Lights has become a popular stop for authors touring in the geographical pentagram between Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, and St. Louis. Before I even type a word, therefore, any review I send to the Press-Citizen already has been commodified by the editorial staff’s decision to base its definition of newsworthiness on the publicity needs of a network of local businesses. Furthermore, if I decide not to write a review – or if the editorial staff decides it cannot afford to pay any correspondent for the review – the newspaper simply saves money and hassle by reprinting wire reviews published in any of the other 100 Gannett newspapers in the U.S. In order to add to the variety – to increase heterogeneity in the public sphere – I must first submit to a very restricted notion of what that sphere is. While Gannett’s business model involves absorbing and centralising local media outlets, Prairie Lights’s business model tends to undermine such a corporate mindset through its role as the area’s largest independent bookstore. Sponsoring “Live from Prairie Lights” is one way that the store, with help from the radio station, fights for its survival against superstore chains and discounted on-line giants. My review’s extra publicity for Prairie Lights, then, helps a brick-and-mortar independent bookstore maintain its independence. To the bookstore staff, the fact that my review appears in the local paper matters more than whether I denounce or celebrate a visiting writer. So, again, before I type a single word, my reviews simultaneously participate within a compromised commercial system and undermine the corporate policies of my newspaper’s parent company by helping support the independent mindset of a key local business. Just as my printed review is always already framed by the local editorial policies of a media conglomerate and the promotional needs of a large independent bookstore, it is also automatically placed in conversation with the paratextual press releases, plot synopses, and blurbs provided by the publishing houses. Even if I approach the work from a completely different angle than the publicists suggest, readers will readily align my perspective against the myriad of uncritical, press-release-based reviews to be found on Google News, Lexis-Nexis, or Metacritic.com. And even if local readers manage to avoid those reviews, they will still be exposed to the official publicity information if they listen to WSUI’s “Live from Prairie Lights”. Despite the commitment of Iowa Public Radio to an independent assessment of news and culture, the introductions provided by the program’s host nearly always regurgitate the publicity information as the homogenizing conceptual frame into which all aberrant discussions of the work become mere exceptions that prove the rule. The interrelation between creativity and commodification becomes apparent even in best-case scenarios. In September 2002, for example, the University of Iowa Press published a book of recently rediscovered Farm Service Agency photographs from the 1930s that proved complementary to the more familiar photographs of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. An Iowa writer worked with the photographer’s surviving family members and wrote a well-documented, insightful, historical narrative to contextualise the photos. Anticipating local interest in the collection, Prairie Lights ordered hundreds of copies and moved the radio broadcast from the bookstore to a larger auditorium. Because of the Iowa connections at every phase of the project, it was easy to convince the Press-Citizen to run a lengthy review accompanied by several photos. After sifting through the photographs, digesting the narrative, and skeptically perusing the university press’s promotional material, I challenged myself to do something more than regurgitate the information provided me. Giving a cultural studies twist to Anatole France’s romantic dictum of the good critic relating the adventures of his soul among masterpieces, I decided to provide my own analysis of the photographs as cultural objects and only then turn to the narrative as a contrasting explanation of the uncanny vibrancy of these images of the last century. While I was sometimes critical of her evaluation, the author was impressed enough with my efforts that she called my editor to inform him personally that my review was the best she had read and that I was the only reviewer who had actually looked beyond the press release. Having never before been so complimented by an author, I decided to attend the reading and meet her face-to-face. Not surprisingly, the experience proved disillusioning. The writer proved as insightful in the program’s question and answer session as she had been in her prose, and the photos were as intriguing on the video screen as they were in the book. Yet the mobile radio production equipment and the portable cashier station – even more so, its constant beeping – made clear just how my investment of time and intellect served crossed purposes. While I was helping my readership make sense of these rediscovered photos from the past, I was also helping the University of Iowa Press and Prairie Lights sell books even as I was helping the Press-Citizen sell ads for the press and bookstore. The photo collections brought enough pleasure that many of the audience members were buying several copies to give as gifts, but that pleasure was both preconditioned for and a by-product of the cycle of production and publicity. At the moment when my review proved insightful enough to warrant a commendatory phone call from the author, it was most at risk of becoming a mere cog in the process of commodification. Rather than declare with any finality that reviews are either inspired or ingratiating, media critics need to continue to account for such interconnections between the creative and commercial factors of publication. References Cameron, Samuel. “On the Role of Critics in the Culture Industry.” Journal of Cultural Economics 19.4 (December 1995): 321-31. Fosdick, Scott. “From Discussion Leader to Consumer Guide.” Journalism History 30.2 (Summer 2004): 91-7. Jameson, Fredric. “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture.” Social Text 1 (1979): 130-48. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Charis-Carlson, Jeffrey. "Creativity, Commodification, and the Making of a Middlebrow Book Review." M/C Journal 8.5 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/04-charis-carlson.php>. APA Style Charis-Carlson, J. (Oct. 2005) "Creativity, Commodification, and the Making of a Middlebrow Book Review," M/C Journal, 8(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/04-charis-carlson.php>.

Fig. 1: “Pink Flamingo Furby” (2000), “Peachy Furby Baby” (1999), and “Owl Furby” (1999) Sunlight Up (“Dah-ay-loh oo-tye”): Introduction As playthings at the junction of human experience and imagination, toys like Furby present an interesting touch point to explore cultural imaginations, hopes, and fears about zoomorphic robots and AI toys. This year marks their 25th anniversary. Created by Dave Hampton and Caleb Chung, Furby publicly debuted at the American International Toy Fair in 1998. Originally released by Tiger Electronics, this toy was later sold to Hasbro in 2005 to 2007. Since their introduction to the market, Furbys have been occupying our shelves and basements, perceived as “annoying little owl-like dolls with embedded sound-recording chips” (Gullin) that speak their own language “furbish” (shown throughout in parenthesis). Early reportage likened Furby to all kinds of cute critters: mogwais, hamsters, and Star Trek’s tribbles. Narratively Furbys are framed as a benevolent, alien species, living in space in a cloud known as Furbyland. For motivations not revealed, Furbys, in looking down on our planet, were so struck by the beautiful view of nature and its signs of peacefulness — “no worry (boo boh-bay)” — that they jumped, plummeting to us like tiny fluffy asteroids. Little did they know that their arrival would spark an intergalactic diplomatic incident. During its introduction in 1998, the initial discourse in media reportage emphasised anxieties of the unknown. What lies beneath the surface of Furby, as a toy that might blur the line between the real and imagined for children? What technologies might it harbour? As a hybrid of technology and animal, Furby appeared as a creepy-cute cultural icon that simultaneously delighted and horrified children and adults alike. Today adult fans reimagine Furby through play and customisation as part of their reflections on their childhood experiences of this cultural moment, and as a way of exploring new futures. Furby provides an opportunity to reflect on adults’ interactions with toys, including parents, members of the public, and fans motivated by nostalgia. At the time of its release Furby presented adults with moments of “dissonance” towards new horrifying technologies that “might occur at the seams [of] … monumental cultural shifts” (Powell 4). But for adult fans today, as a childhood memory, the toy represents both strangeness and future possibilities; it has become a tool of “disrupt[ing] and challeng[ing] beliefs and connections” (Rand 9). In this article I primarily analyse the “original” Furbys of 1998 to 2002, but also mention a range of later versions. This includes: the Emoto-tronic Furbys (2006) which were designed to have more expressive faces; the Furby Boom (2003), a toy whose personality changes according to the level of care it is provided with; and the Furby Connect (2016), which has bluetooth capacity. This discussion is supported by a thematic analysis of 3800 news articles about Furby from 1998 to 2000, visual analysis of both the original and customised iterations of Furby, as well as my reflections as a member of the Furby fandom community. You Play? (U-nye-loo-lay-doo?): Furby Encounters A key part of the discourse around Furby since its introduction in 1998 was, “who would want one?” Indeed, the answer at the time appeared to be “several million of us, the toy demons hope” (Weeks). After their release in American toy stores on 2 October 1998 in limited supplies, a Furbish frenzy ensued, resulting in altercations between shoppers and staff (e.g. Munroe; Warmbir; Associated Press). Aged 10, I recall my little black and white Furby, Coco, waiting for me on the shelves of the electronics section of Big W in Australia, fortunately with no such commotion. Furby is classed by the Guinness World Records as the world’s first AI toy, but it was certainly not the first electronic toy to enter the market; at the time of Furby’s release, Tickle Me Elmo and My Interactive Pooh presented competition, and by the late 1980s there was already concern about how electronic pet toys might erode emotion and connection (Turkle, “Authenticity”; Turkle, “Nascent”). Speculation over the reason for the Furby mass hysteria ensued. Some suggested the appeal was the toy’s status symbol status (Beck), whereas others cited its broad appeal: “it's not gender specific; it doesn't appeal to a particular age group; and most important, it's affordable and doesn't require additional equipment or a computer” (Davis). Some experts offered their commentary of the cyberpet phenomena in general, suggesting that it is a way of dealing with isolation and loneliness (Yorkshire Post). Indeed, all of these features are important to note when we consider the transformation of Furby into queer icon. Central to Furby’s cultural narrative is the idea of contact, or a meeting between robot and user; through play children “teach” their new pet Earth’s new ways (Marsh, “Coded”; Marsh, “Uncanny”). And with this contact also comes a sense of the unknown: what lies beneath the creature’s surface? In their study of zoomorphic robots, Hirofumi Katsumi and Daniel White suggest that Donna Haraway’s work on animal encounters might help us understand this idea of contact. As “animal-like” creature, Furby recalls the transformative potentials of meeting with the more-than-human. Furby’s presence on toy shelves, in classrooms and in homes was one of the first times society had to consider what it meant to “enter the world of becoming with” zoomorphic robots, and to reflect on “who or what ... is precisely at stake” in this entanglement (Haraway 19). What do we learn about ourselves and the unknown through our encounters with Furby? “Monster” (Moh-moh): Technological Threat, Monstrous Other In media reportage, Furby is framed as both new and innovative, but also as a threatening fluffy anarchist. With its technology largely unknown, Furby at the time of its release presented society with a sense of “technohorror” and “imaginings of [social] collapse” (Powell 24). A common concern was that Furby might record and repeat inappropriate language in an act of rebellion. Occasionally tabloid newspapers would report claims such as, "MUM … was horrified when she sat down to play with her daughter's new Furby toy and it squeaked: "F*** me" (The Sun). Some concerns were quite serious, including that Furby could emit electromagnetic fields that would create interference for medical devices and aircraft instruments; this was later disproven by engineers (Tan and Hinberg; Basky; Computer Security). Other urban myths pointed to a more whimsical Furby, whose sensors had the capacity to launch spacecraft (Watson). One persistent concern was the surveillance potentials of Furby. In 1999 the US National Security Agency (NSA) issued a ban on Furby in their Fort Mead headquarters, with concern that they might record and repeat confidential information (Gullin; Ramalho; Borger). This was denied by Tiger Electronics, who emphatically stated “Furby is not a spy” (Computer Security). Engineers performing “autopsies” on Furbys quickly put much of this anxiety to rest (Phobe). This was met with mirthful rebuttals of how future Furbys might be transformed into cute and ubiquitous “wireless furby transmitters” to gather intelligence in warzones (Gullin). As a result, the initial anxiety about surveillance and toys dissipated. However, academics continue to remind us of the real risks of smart toys (e.g. Lupton; Milkaite and Lievens). The 2016 Furby Connect, equipped with voice recognition and Bluetooth capacities has been shown to be hackable (Williams). Further, Maria Ramalho has reported Snowden’s 2014 claims that both NSA and the UK Government Communication Headquarters have been accessing the data collected. In this context, Furby has become “Big Brother transmogrified into ambiguous, cute” unaccountable creature (Ramalho). Through this, we can see how our entanglement with Furby as an object of technohorror speaks both to our anxieties and the real possibilities of technology. In order to craft a narrative around Furby that speaks to this monstrous potential, many have drawn comparisons between Furby and the character Gizmo from the Gremlins franchise. This reference to Gizmo appears in the majority of the media articles sampled for this research. Gizmo is a “mogwai” (trans. demon) with both cute and monstrous potential; like Furby, it also has the potential to transform into a threat to “good society” (Chesher 153-4). This comparison speaks to Gremlins as an anti-technology statement (Sale). However, when we consider how media rhetoric has framed Furby as something to be tamed and controlled, it’s important we approach this comparison with caution in light of the Orientalist underpinnings of the Gremlins franchise. Wendy Allison Lee highlights how Gremlins reflects xenophobic themes of invasion and assimilation. While Gizmo is a “cute, well-behaved” character who “strives to assimilate” much like how Furby might, through play with children, it also harbours a threat to order. In this encounter are resonances of “racist love” that can sometimes underpin our affection for cuteness (Bow). Further reflection is needed on how we might unentangle ourselves from this framing and imagine more inclusive futures with toys like Furby. Fig. 2: Interactive Gizmo, a “Furby Friend” produced by Hasbro, Tiger and Warner Bros in 1999 Big Fun! (Dah doo-ay wah!): Queer Re-Imaginings of Furby Fig. 3: Party time! Adult fans around the world now gather under the “Furby” banner, participating in a colourful array of playful mischief. Reddit forum r/furby (11,200 subscribers) creates a fun space to enjoy the whimsy of Furby, transforming the figure into a sweet and kind companion. Under this umbrella, r/oddbodyfurby (997 subscribers) explore the horrifying potentials of Furby to its playful and surprising ends, which I discuss in this section. In other forums, such as Furby Collectors and Customisers (4.1k members) on Facebook, these different interests come together in a playful and creative space. There was also an active community on Tumblr, where some of the most creatively generative activities around Furby have occurred (Tiffany). In Japan, there is a lively community of fans on Twitter who dress and photograph Emoto-tronic Furbys in a range of cute and charming ways. This forms part of a broader network of creatives, such as “Circuit Benders” who tear down toys and rework them into instruments in a process known as “frankensteining”, such as Look Mum No Computer’s Furby Organ (Deahl). As fans and artists, people act as “queer accessories” to help Furby escape the world and narrative that sought to enclose it, so it might enact its revenge or transcend as a non-binary queer icon (Rand 9-11). As small, collectible and customisable friends, images of happy and creepy Furbys are part of a network of cute media that provides my generation with a source of comfort during times of precarity, occupying our spaces with their own vitality and presence as soothing companions (e.g. Stevens; Allison; Yano). Cuteness as media also lends itself to hybridisation; a mixing and matching with seemingly “opposing” aesthetics. For many fans, the charm of Furby lies in its nostalgic pull as a creature of childhood creepy-cute nightmares. Indeed, it seems that early concerns that Furby may “blur the line between the real and imagined for many children” were in fact valid (Knowlton). While we knew they weren’t “alive” in the true sense, to us they appeared “sort of alive” as our everyday environments became increasingly technological with a dazzling array of electronics (Turkle, “Authenticity”). As Allison (179) explains, we had to “adjust to a world where the border between the imaginary and the real” began to shift rapidly, leaving us open to dream, imagine, and craft narratives populated by a fear of the mechanised undead. Many Millennials were convinced as children that their Furby was waiting for them in the dark, watching, chuckling (“he he heeeee”). Patrick Lenton, diarising his adventures with a rescue Furby this year recalls his childhood toy as “a riot of noise and fury, the kind of demonic household terror”. Some adults, recalling these memories now refer to Furby as “it” or “evil” (Marsh, “Uncanny” 59). In 2020, adult Furby fans, thinking back to their childhood toys, speculated if the positioning of Furby’s eyes at the front of its head meant it was a predator (Watson). Some suggested that their short legs meant they are ambush predators, their infra-red sensor enabling them to detect prey in the dark. Other playful lore suggested that they were made of real cat and dog fur. Through this act of imaginative play, adults reach back to the playful horrors of their childhoods, combining their sense of dread with glee. This has been recently animated by films such as The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021), where Furbys equipped with “PAL” chips transmogrify into a horrific pack of menacing creatures, and exact revenge. The main contributing factor to this experience is in part the puppetry of Furby. The 1999 Furby presents an exaggerated performance that is both “alive” and “unalive”, its wild rocking, owlish blinking, and cackling creating a sense of “dread and creeping horror” (Freud 2; Marsh, “Uncanny”). Through a blend of animation and imagination, agency is diffused between toy and child to give Furby “life” (Silvio 423). Interestingly, studies of the 2016 Furby Connect and its friendly and social programming that is designed to encourage positive care and engagement has counteracted some of this experience for children (Marsh, “Uncanny” 54). Likewise, in discussing the 2013 Furby Boom Chesher (151) describes this animation as “zany”, working with Sianne Ngai’s conceptualisation of this aesthetic and its relationship to cuteness. While some might praise these later developments in the Furby franchise as having saved another generation of children from nightmares, compared to the original Furby these later editions are less popular among fans; perhaps there is less “material” to work with. Fans as adults now draw on Furby as a playful and cute text to experiment with and hybridise with a variety of horrifying and surprising potentials. This leans into Furby’s design as a chimera, as it uses a combination of cute features to create a “short-hand” for life and also evoke the “idea” or “character” of appealing animals that form part of cultures “charismatic megafauna” (Nishimura 179; Stuck and Rogers; Gn). With cat-like ears, a tuft of hair that drifts with sympathetic movement, two wide eyes, framed with coquettish false lashes, a bird’s beak, and two paws, Furby both suspends and confounds our disbelief. Following the principles of the Kindchenschema (Lorenz) to a “100% ratio” its body is reduced to a round form, its most dominant feature its large eyes (Borgi, Cogliati-Dezza, Brelsford Meints, and Cirulli). While large eyes generally are thought to have an affective pull to them (Harris 4), their fixed placement in the original Furby’s skull creates a dead-pan gaze, that morphs into a Kubrik stare as the toy tilts forward to greet the viewer. Fig. 4: Kindschenschema at work in Furby’s design Furby fans mischievously extend this hybridisation of Furby’s body further through a range of customisation practices. Through “skinning”, Furby’s faux fur surfaces are removed and replaced with a fantastic array of colours and textures. Through breaking into their mechatronic shell – a practice known as “shucking” – their parts are repaired or modified. This results in a range of delightfully queer, non-binary representations of Furby with a range of vibrant furs, piercings, and evocative twinkling and gentle eyes (“tee-wee-lah!”). These figures act as both avatars and as companions for fans. Sporting earrings and rainbow bead necklaces, they are photographed resting in grassy fields, soft crochet rainbows, and bookshelves: they are an expression of all that is joyful in the world. Some fans push the customisation further to create whimsical creatures from another dimension. Some Furbys appear with moss and lichen for fur, sprouting tiny toadstools. Furbys are also transformed into “oddbodies” of varying species. Some appear both as winged fairies, and as transcendental multi-eyed and winged “biblically accurate” angels. Others are hybridised with plush toys or are reworked into handbags. Some veer into the realm of body horror, using doll limbs and bodies to create humanoid forms. The most iconic is the “long furby”, created by Tumblr user FurbyFuzz in 2018. Elongated and insect-like, the Long Furby wriggles into homes and curls up on soft furnishings. Collectors gather “haunted photos from the dark recesses of the internet” to document their escapades (Long Furby). Sometimes, hybridised Furbys appear not through creator interventions but rather emerge from nature itself. One such mythical creature is Murby, an original Furby unearthed in 2013 on an old farm property. Once toy, now woodland spirit, Murby gazes upon and blesses fans with dreamy, clouded eyes, its body an entanglement of thick moss, rich earth and time. Furby’s queerness, strangeness, and hybridity speaks to fans in different ways. Personally, as a neurodivergent person, I experience the coding and the playful reimaginings of Furby as a reflection of my own life experience. Neurodivergent people have a high capacity for care and empathy for objects as curiosities, supports, and friends (e.g. Atherton and Cross; White and Remington; Clutterbuck, Shah and Livingston). Like Furby, I am an alien whom people want to tame. My body and movement are treated with the same infantilising bemusement and suspicion. I feel like a chimera myself; an entanglement of many parts that make a whole, each on their own charming, but together forming a chaotic attempt to connect with neurotypicals. For me, what lies beneath Furby’s surface is my own psyche; rescuing and customising Furbys is a symbolic act, a creative expression of my desire to transcend and resist ableist forces. Together my Furbys and I revel in our strangeness in solidarity, plotting our mischievous revenge (“party time!”). This micro-level resistance will not overturn ableism but brings me a sense of reprieve as I work with my allies to bring socio-cultural change. Fig. 5: The author, Furby Queen. Photo by Sherbet Birdie Photography. Through their creative work, fans explore how Furbys could be reimagined. While fannish activities may at first glance appear fringe or frivolous, they hold up a mirror to our own limitations, anxieties, and practices as a society. The future is Furby. Go to Sleep Now (U-nye-way-loh-nee-way): Conclusions As a source of technohorror and queer potential, Furby provides a vessel by which we can imagine the futures of toys. Through encounter and contact, this seemingly harmless fluffy robot brought about disruption and chaos as a threat to securities and social fabrics. Adult fans, now recalling this cultural moment, lean into this creature’s promise of new possibilities, queering its cultural narrative. Through exploring adults’ interactions with toys, we explore new potentials for change and futures that are playful and creative. Acknowledgments This article was produced with the support of a Vitalities Lab Scholarship and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. I also thank Deborah Lupton and David Eastwood for their support in the production of an arts-based project that draws on this research into cyberpet histories. References Allison, Anne. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. Berkeley: U of California P, 2006. Associated Press. “Two Injured in Flurry over Furby.” Charleston Daily Mail 28 Nov. 1998. Atherton, Gray, and Liam Cross. “Seeing More than Human: Autism and Anthropomorphic Theory of Mind.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018): 1–18. Basky, Greg. “Furby Not Guilty as ‘Charged’.” The Western Journal of Medicine 172 (2000): 59. Beck, Rachel. “‘Must-Have’ Toys Created by Intense Publicity Campaigns.” AP Business Writer 16 Oct. 1998. 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In Ireland today, we eat more pigmeat per capita, approximately 32.4 kilograms, than any other meat, yet you very seldom if ever see a pig (C.S.O.). Fat and flavour are two words that are synonymous with pig meat, yet scientists have spent the last thirty years cross breeding to produce leaner, low-fat pigs. Today’s pig professionals prefer to use the term “pig finishing” as opposed to the more traditional “pig fattening” (Tuite). The pig evokes many themes in relation to cuisine. Charles Lamb (1775-1834), in his essay Dissertation upon Roast Pig, cites Confucius in attributing the accidental discovery of the art of roasting to the humble pig. The pig has been singled out by many cultures as a food to be avoided or even abhorred, and Harris (1997) illustrates the environmental effect this avoidance can have by contrasting the landscape of Christian Albania with that of Muslim Albania.This paper will focus on the pig in Irish cuisine and culture from ancient times to the present day. The inspiration for this paper comes from a folklore tale about how Saint Martin created the pig from a piece of fat. The story is one of a number recorded by Seán Ó Conaill, the famous Kerry storyteller and goes as follows:From St Martin’s fat they were made. He was travelling around, and one night he came to a house and yard. At that time there were only cattle; there were no pigs or piglets. He asked the man of the house if there was anything to eat the chaff and the grain. The man replied there were only the cattle. St Martin said it was a great pity to have that much chaff going to waste. At night when they were going to bed, he handed a piece of fat to the servant-girl and told her to put it under a tub, and not to look at it at all until he would give her the word next day. The girl did so, but she kept a bit of the fat and put it under a keeler to find out what it would be.When St Martin rose next day he asked her to go and lift up the tub. She lifted it up, and there under it were a sow and twelve piglets. It was a great wonder to them, as they had never before seen pig or piglet.The girl then went to the keeler and lifted it, and it was full of mice and rats! As soon as the keeler was lifted, they went running about the house searching for any hole that they could go into. When St Martin saw them, he pulled off one of his mittens and threw it at them and made a cat with that throw. And that is why the cat ever since goes after mice and rats (Ó Conaill).The place of the pig has long been established in Irish literature, and longer still in Irish topography. The word torc, a boar, like the word muc, a pig, is a common element of placenames, from Kanturk (boar’s head) in West Cork to Ros Muc (headland of pigs) in West Galway. The Irish pig had its place in literature well established long before George Orwell’s English pig, Major, headed the dictatorship in Animal Farm. It was a wild boar that killed the hero Diarmaid in the Fenian tale The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne, on top of Ben Bulben in County Sligo (Mac Con Iomaire). In Ancient and Medieval Ireland, wild boars were hunted with great fervour, and the prime cuts were reserved for the warrior classes, and certain other individuals. At a feast, a leg of pork was traditionally reserved for a king, a haunch for a queen, and a boar’s head for a charioteer. The champion warrior was given the best portion of meat (Curath Mhir or Champions’ Share), and fights often took place to decide who should receive it. Gantz (1981) describes how in the ninth century tale The story of Mac Dathó’s Pig, Cet mac Matach, got supremacy over the men of Ireland: “Moreover he flaunted his valour on high above the valour of the host, and took a knife in his hand and sat down beside the pig. “Let someone be found now among the men of Ireland”, said he, “to endure battle with me, or leave the pig for me to divide!”It did not take long before the wild pigs were domesticated. Whereas cattle might be kept for milk and sheep for wool, the only reason for pig rearing was as a source of food. Until the late medieval period, the “domesticated” pigs were fattened on woodland mast, the fruit of the beech, oak, chestnut and whitethorn, giving their flesh a delicious flavour. So important was this resource that it is acknowledged by an entry in the Annals of Clonmacnoise for the year 1038: “There was such an abundance of ackornes this yeare that it fattened the pigges [runts] of pigges” (Sexton 45). In another mythological tale, two pig keepers, one called ‘friuch’ after the boars bristle (pig keeper to the king of Munster) and the other called ‘rucht’ after its grunt (pig keeper to the king of Connacht), were such good friends that the one from the north would bring his pigs south when there was a mast of oak and beech nuts in Munster. If the mast fell in Connacht, the pig-keeper from the south would travel northward. Competitive jealousy sparked by troublemakers led to the pig keepers casting spells on each other’s herds to the effect that no matter what mast they ate they would not grow fat. Both pig keepers were practised in the pagan arts and could form themselves into any shape, and having been dismissed by their kings for the leanness of their pig herds due to the spells, they eventually formed themselves into the two famous bulls that feature in the Irish Epic The Táin (Kinsella).In the witty and satirical twelfth century text, The Vision of Mac Conglinne (Aisling Mhic Conglinne), many references are made to the various types of pig meat. Bacon, hams, sausages and puddings are often mentioned, and the gate to the fortress in the visionary land of plenty is described thus: “there was a gate of tallow to it, whereon was a bolt of sausage” (Jackson).Although pigs were always popular in Ireland, the emergence of the potato resulted in an increase in both human and pig populations. The Irish were the first Europeans to seriously consider the potato as a staple food. By 1663 it was widely accepted in Ireland as an important food plant and by 1770 it was known as the Irish Potato (Mac Con Iomaire and Gallagher). The potato transformed Ireland from an under populated island of one million in the 1590s to 8.2 million in 1840, making it the most densely populated country in Europe. Two centuries of genetic evolution resulted in potato yields growing from two tons per acre in 1670 to ten tons per acre in 1800. A constant supply of potato, which was not seen as a commercial crop, ensured that even the smallest holding could keep a few pigs on a potato-rich diet. Pat Tuite, an expert on pigs with Teagasc, the Irish Agricultural and Food Development Authority, reminded me that the potatoes were cooked for the pigs and that they also enjoyed whey, the by product of both butter and cheese making (Tuite). The agronomist, Arthur Young, while travelling through Ireland, commented in 1770 that in the town of Mitchelstown in County Cork “there seemed to be more pigs than human beings”. So plentiful were pigs at this time that on the eve of the Great Famine in 1841 the pig population was calculated to be 1,412,813 (Sexton 46). Some of the pigs were kept for home consumption but the rest were a valuable source of income and were shown great respect as the gentleman who paid the rent. Until the early twentieth century most Irish rural households kept some pigs.Pork was popular and was the main meat eaten at all feasts in the main houses; indeed a feast was considered incomplete without a whole roasted pig. In the poorer holdings, fresh pork was highly prized, as it was only available when a pig of their own was killed. Most of the pig was salted, placed in the brine barrel for a period or placed up the chimney for smoking.Certain superstitions were observed concerning the time of killing. Pigs were traditionally killed only in months that contained the letter “r”, since the heat of the summer months caused the meat to turn foul. In some counties it was believed that pigs should be killed under the full moon (Mahon 58). The main breed of pig from the medieval period was the Razor Back or Greyhound Pig, which was very efficient in converting organic waste into meat (Fitzgerald). The killing of the pig was an important ritual and a social occasion in rural Ireland, for it meant full and plenty for all. Neighbours, who came to help, brought a handful of salt for the curing, and when the work was done each would get a share of the puddings and the fresh pork. There were a number of days where it was traditional to kill a pig, the Michaelmas feast (29 September), Saint Martins Day (11 November) and St Patrick’s Day (17 March). Olive Sharkey gives a vivid description of the killing of the barrow pig in rural Ireland during the 1930s. A barrow pig is a male pig castrated before puberty:The local slaughterer (búistéir) a man experienced in the rustic art of pig killing, was approached to do the job, though some farmers killed their own pigs. When the búistéirarrived the whole family gathered round to watch the killing. His first job was to plunge the knife in the pig’s heart via the throat, using a special knife. The screeching during this performance was something awful, but the animal died instantly once the heart had been reached, usually to a round of applause from the onlookers. The animal was then draped across a pig-gib, a sort of bench, and had the fine hairs on its body scraped off. To make this a simple job the animal was immersed in hot water a number of times until the bristles were softened and easy to remove. If a few bristles were accidentally missed the bacon was known as ‘hairy bacon’!During the killing of the pig it was imperative to draw a good flow of blood to ensure good quality meat. This blood was collected in a bucket for the making of puddings. The carcass would then be hung from a hook in the shed with a basin under its head to catch the drip, and a potato was often placed in the pig’s mouth to aid the dripping process. After a few days the carcass would be dissected. Sharkey recalls that her father maintained that each pound weight in the pig’s head corresponded to a stone weight in the body. The body was washed and then each piece that was to be preserved was carefully salted and placed neatly in a barrel and hermetically sealed. It was customary in parts of the midlands to add brown sugar to the barrel at this stage, while in other areas juniper berries were placed in the fire when hanging the hams and flitches (sides of bacon), wrapped in brown paper, in the chimney for smoking (Sharkey 166). While the killing was predominantly men’s work, it was the women who took most responsibility for the curing and smoking. Puddings have always been popular in Irish cuisine. The pig’s intestines were washed well and soaked in a stream, and a mixture of onions, lard, spices, oatmeal and flour were mixed with the blood and the mixture was stuffed into the casing and boiled for about an hour, cooled and the puddings were divided amongst the neighbours.The pig was so palatable that the famous gastronomic writer Grimod de la Reyniere once claimed that the only piece you couldn’t eat was the “oink”. Sharkey remembers her father remarking that had they been able to catch the squeak they would have made tin whistles out of it! No part went to waste; the blood and offal were used, the trotters were known as crubeens (from crúb, hoof), and were boiled and eaten with cabbage. In Galway the knee joint was popular and known as the glúiníns (from glún, knee). The head was roasted whole or often boiled and pressed and prepared as Brawn. The chitterlings (small intestines) were meticulously prepared by continuous washing in cool water and the picking out of undigested food and faeces. Chitterlings were once a popular bar food in Dublin. Pig hair was used for paintbrushes and the bladder was occasionally inflated, using a goose quill, to be used as a football by the children. Meindertsma (2007) provides a pictorial review of the vast array of products derived from a single pig. These range from ammunition and porcelain to chewing gum.From around the mid-eighteenth century, commercial salting of pork and bacon grew rapidly in Ireland. 1820 saw Henry Denny begin operation in Waterford where he both developed and patented several production techniques for bacon. Bacon curing became a very important industry in Munster culminating in the setting up of four large factories. Irish bacon was the brand leader and the Irish companies exported their expertise. Denny set up a plant in Denmark in 1894 and introduced the Irish techniques to the Danish industry, while O’Mara’s set up bacon curing facilities in Russia in 1891 (Cowan and Sexton). Ireland developed an extensive export trade in bacon to England, and hams were delivered to markets in Paris, India, North and South America. The “sandwich method” of curing, or “dry cure”, was used up until 1862 when the method of injecting strong brine into the meat by means of a pickling pump was adopted by Irish bacon-curers. 1887 saw the formation of the Bacon Curers’ Pig Improvement Association and they managed to introduce a new breed, the Large White Ulster into most regions by the turn of the century. This breed was suitable for the production of “Wiltshire” bacon. Cork, Waterford Dublin and Belfast were important centres for bacon but it was Limerick that dominated the industry and a Department of Agriculture document from 1902 suggests that the famous “Limerick cure” may have originated by chance:1880 […] Limerick producers were short of money […] they produced what was considered meat in a half-cured condition. The unintentional cure proved extremely popular and others followed suit. By the turn of the century the mild cure procedure was brought to such perfection that meat could [… be] sent to tropical climates for consumption within a reasonable time (Cowan and Sexton).Failure to modernise led to the decline of bacon production in Limerick in the 1960s and all four factories closed down. The Irish pig market was protected prior to joining the European Union. There were no imports, and exports were subsidised by the Pigs and Bacon Commission. The Department of Agriculture started pig testing in the early 1960s and imported breeds from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. The two main breeds were Large White and Landrace. Most farms kept pigs before joining the EU but after 1972, farmers were encouraged to rationalise and specialise. Grants were made available for facilities that would keep 3,000 pigs and these grants kick started the development of large units.Pig keeping and production were not only rural occupations; Irish towns and cities also had their fair share. Pigs could easily be kept on swill from hotels, restaurants, not to mention the by-product and leftovers of the brewing and baking industries. Ed Hick, a fourth generation pork butcher from south County Dublin, recalls buying pigs from a local coal man and bus driver and other locals for whom it was a tradition to keep pigs on the side. They would keep some six or eight pigs at a time and feed them on swill collected locally. Legislation concerning the feeding of swill introduced in 1985 (S.I.153) and an amendment in 1987 (S.I.133) required all swill to be heat-treated and resulted in most small operators going out of business. Other EU directives led to the shutting down of thousands of slaughterhouses across Europe. Small producers like Hick who slaughtered at most 25 pigs a week in their family slaughterhouse, states that it was not any one rule but a series of them that forced them to close. It was not uncommon for three inspectors, a veterinarian, a meat inspector and a hygiene inspector, to supervise himself and his brother at work. Ed Hick describes the situation thus; “if we had taken them on in a game of football, we would have lost! We were seen as a huge waste of veterinary time and manpower”.Sausages and rashers have long been popular in Dublin and are the main ingredients in the city’s most famous dish “Dublin Coddle.” Coddle is similar to an Irish stew except that it uses pork rashers and sausage instead of lamb. It was, traditionally, a Saturday night dish when the men came home from the public houses. Terry Fagan has a book on Dublin Folklore called Monto: Murder, Madams and Black Coddle. The black coddle resulted from soot falling down the chimney into the cauldron. James Joyce describes Denny’s sausages with relish in Ulysses, and like many other Irish emigrants, he would welcome visitors from home only if they brought Irish sausages and Irish whiskey with them. Even today, every family has its favourite brand of sausages: Byrne’s, Olhausens, Granby’s, Hafner’s, Denny’s Gold Medal, Kearns and Superquinn are among the most popular. Ironically the same James Joyce, who put Dublin pork kidneys on the world table in Ulysses, was later to call his native Ireland “the old sow that eats her own farrow” (184-5).The last thirty years have seen a concerted effort to breed pigs that have less fat content and leaner meat. There are no pure breeds of Landrace or Large White in production today for they have been crossbred for litter size, fat content and leanness (Tuite). Many experts feel that they have become too lean, to the detriment of flavour and that the meat can tend to split when cooked. Pig production is now a complicated science and tighter margins have led to only large-scale operations being financially viable (Whittemore). The average size of herd has grown from 29 animals in 1973, to 846 animals in 1997, and the highest numbers are found in counties Cork and Cavan (Lafferty et al.). The main players in today’s pig production/processing are the large Irish Agribusiness Multinationals Glanbia, Kerry Foods and Dairygold. Tuite (2002) expressed worries among the industry that there may be no pig production in Ireland in twenty years time, with production moving to Eastern Europe where feed and labour are cheaper. When it comes to traceability, in the light of the Foot and Mouth, BSE and Dioxin scares, many feel that things were much better in the old days, when butchers like Ed Hick slaughtered animals that were reared locally and then sold them back to local consumers. Hick has recently killed pigs for friends who have begun keeping them for home consumption. This slaughtering remains legal as long as the meat is not offered for sale.Although bacon and cabbage, and the full Irish breakfast with rashers, sausages and puddings, are considered to be some of Ireland’s most well known traditional dishes, there has been a growth in modern interpretations of traditional pork and bacon dishes in the repertoires of the seemingly ever growing number of talented Irish chefs. Michael Clifford popularised Clonakilty Black Pudding as a starter in his Cork restaurant Clifford’s in the late 1980s, and its use has become widespread since, as a starter or main course often partnered with either caramelised apples or red onion marmalade. Crubeens (pigs trotters) have been modernised “a la Pierre Kaufman” by a number of Irish chefs, who bone them out and stuff them with sweetbreads. Kevin Thornton, the first Irish chef to be awarded two Michelin stars, has roasted suckling pig as one of his signature dishes. Richard Corrigan is keeping the Irish flag flying in London in his Michelin starred Soho restaurant, Lindsay House, where traditional pork and bacon dishes from his childhood are creatively re-interpreted with simplicity and taste.Pork, ham and bacon are, without doubt, the most traditional of all Irish foods, featuring in the diet since prehistoric times. Although these meats remain the most consumed per capita in post “Celtic Tiger” Ireland, there are a number of threats facing the country’s pig industry. Large-scale indoor production necessitates the use of antibiotics. European legislation and economic factors have contributed in the demise of the traditional art of pork butchery. Scientific advancements have resulted in leaner low-fat pigs, many argue, to the detriment of flavour. Alas, all is not lost. There is a growth in consumer demand for quality local food, and some producers like J. Hick & Sons, and Prue & David Rudd and Family are leading the way. The Rudds process and distribute branded antibiotic-free pig related products with the mission of “re-inventing the tastes of bygone days with the quality of modern day standards”. Few could argue with the late Irish writer John B. Keane (72): “When this kind of bacon is boiling with its old colleague, white cabbage, there is a gurgle from the pot that would tear the heart out of any hungry man”.ReferencesCowan, Cathal and Regina Sexton. Ireland's Traditional Foods: An Exploration of Irish Local & Typical Foods & Drinks. Dublin: Teagasc, 1997.C.S.O. Central Statistics Office. Figures on per capita meat consumption for 2009, 2010. Ireland. http://www.cso.ie.Fitzgerald, Oisin. "The Irish 'Greyhound' Pig: an extinct indigenous breed of Pig." History Ireland13.4 (2005): 20-23.Gantz, Jeffrey Early Irish Myths and Sagas. New York: Penguin, 1981.Harris, Marvin. "The Abominable Pig." Food and Culture: A Reader. Eds. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik. New York: Routledge, 1997. 67-79.Hick, Edward. Personal Communication with master butcher Ed Hick. 15 Apr. 2002.Hick, Edward. Personal Communication concerning pig killing. 5 Sep. 2010.Jackson, K. H. Ed. Aislinge Meic Con Glinne, Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1990.Joyce, James. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, London: Granada, 1977.Keane, John B. Strong Tea. Cork: Mercier Press, 1963.Kinsella, Thomas. The Táin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.Lafferty, S., Commins, P. and Walsh, J. A. Irish Agriculture in Transition: A Census Atlas of Agriculture in the Republic of Ireland. Dublin: Teagasc, 1999.Mac Con Iomaire, Liam. Ireland of the Proverb. Dublin: Town House, 1988.Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín and Pádraic Óg Gallagher. "The Potato in Irish Cuisine and Culture."Journal of Culinary Science and Technology 7.2-3 (2009): 1-16.Mahon, Bríd. Land of Milk and Honey: The Story of Traditional Irish Food and Drink. Cork:Mercier, 1998.Meindertsma, Christien. PIG 05049 2007. 10 Aug. 2010 http://www.christienmeindertsma.com.Ó Conaill, Seán. Seán Ó Conaill's Book. Bailie Átha Cliath: Bhéaloideas Éireann, 1981.Sexton, Regina. A Little History of Irish Food. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998.Sharkey, Olive. Old Days Old Ways: An Illustrated Folk History of Ireland. Dublin: The O'Brien Press, 1985.S.I. 153, 1985 (Irish Legislation) http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1985/en/si/0153.htmlS.I. 133, 1987 (Irish Legislation) http://www.irishstatuebook.ie/1987/en/si/0133.htmlTuite, Pat. Personal Communication with Pat Tuite, Chief Pig Advisor, Teagasc. 3 May 2002.Whittemore, Colin T. and Ilias Kyriazakis. Whitmore's Science and Practice of Pig Production 3rdEdition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

Despite the now-traditional tendency of noir scholarship to call attention to the retrospective and constructed nature of this genre— James Naremore argues that film noir is best regarded as a “mythology”— one feature that has rarely come under question is its association with the city (2). Despite the existence of numerous rural noirs, the depiction of urban space is associated with this genre more consistently than any other element. Even in critical accounts that attempt to deconstruct the solidity of the noir genre, the city is left as an implicit inclusion, and the country, an implict exclusion. Naremore, for example, does not include the urban environment in a list of the central tenets of film noir that he calls into question: “nothing links together all the things described as noir—not the theme of crime, not a cinematographic technique, not even a resistance to Aristotelian narratives or happy endings” (10). Elizabeth Cowie identifies film noir a “fantasy,” whose “tenuous critical status” has been compensated for “by a tenacity of critical use” (121). As part of Cowie’s project, to revise the assumption that noirs are almost exclusively male-centered, she cites character types, visual style, and narrative tendencies, but never urban spaces, as familiar elements of noir that ought to be reconsidered. If the city is rarely tackled as an unnecessary or part-time element of film noir in discursive studies, it is often the first trait identified by critics in the kind of formative, characteristic-compiling studies that Cowie and Naremore work against.Andrew Dickos opens Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir with a list of noir’s key attributes. The first item is “an urban setting or at least an urban influence” (6). Nicholas Christopher maintains that “the city is the seedbed of film noir. […] However one tries to define or explain noir, the common denominator must always be the city. The two are inseparable” (37). Though the tendencies of noir scholars— both constructive and deconstructive— might lead readers to believe otherwise, rural locations figure prominently in a number of noir films. I will show that the noir genre is, indeed, flexible enough to encompass many films set predominantly or partly in rural locations. Steve Neale, who encourages scholars to work with genre terms familiar to original audiences, would point out that the rural noir is an academic discovery not an industry term, or one with much popular currency (166). Still, this does not lessen the critical usefulness of this subgenre, or its implications for noir scholarship.While structuralist and post-structuralist modes of criticism dominated film genre criticism in the 1970s and 80s, as Thomas Schatz has pointed out, these approaches often sacrifice close attention to film texts, for more abstract, high-stakes observations: “while there is certainly a degree to which virtually every mass-mediated cultural artifact can be examined from [a mythical or ideological] perspective, there appears to be a point at which we tend to lose sight of the initial object of inquiry” (100). Though my reading of these films sidesteps attention to social and political concerns, this article performs the no-less-important task of clarifying the textual features of this sub-genre. To this end, I will survey the tendencies of the rural noir more generally, mentioning more than ten films that fit this subgenre, before narrowing my analysis to a reading of Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948), Thieves’ Highway (Jules Dassin, 1949), They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1949) and On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). Robert Mitchum tries to escape his criminal life by settling in a small, mountain-side town in Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947). A foggy marsh provides a dramatic setting for the Bonnie and Clyde-like demise of lovers on the run in Gun Crazy (Joseph Lewis, 1950). In The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950), Sterling Hayden longs to return home after he is forced to abandon his childhood horse farm for a life of organised crime in the city. Rob Ryan plays a cop unable to control his violent impulses in On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952). He is re-assigned from New York City to a rural community up-state in hopes that a less chaotic environment will have a curative effect. The apple orchards of Thieves’ Highway are no refuge from networks of criminal corruption. In They Live By Night, a pair of young lovers, try to leave their criminal lives behind, hiding out in farmhouses, cabins, and other pastoral locations in the American South. Finally, the location of prisons explains a number of sequences set in spare, road-side locations such as those in The Killer is Loose (Budd Boetticher, 1956), The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino, 1953), and Raw Deal (Anthony Mann, 1948). What are some common tendencies of the rural noir? First, they usually feature both rural and urban settings, which allows the portrayal of one to be measured against the other. What we see of the city structures the definition of the country, and vice versa. Second, the lead character moves between these two locations by driving. For criminals, the car is more essential for survival in the country than in the city, so nearly all rural noirs are also road movies. Third, nature often figures as a redemptive force for urbanites steeped in lives of crime. Fourth, the curative quality of the country is usually tied to a love interest in this location: the “nurturing woman” as defined by Janey Place, who encourages the protagonist to forsake his criminal life (60). Fifth, the country is never fully crime-free. In The Killer is Loose, for example, an escaped convict’s first victim is a farmer, whom he clubs before stealing his truck. The convict (Wendell Corey), then, easily slips through a motorcade with the farmer’s identification. Here, the sprawling countryside provides an effective cover for the killer. This farmland is not an innocent locale, but the criminal’s safety-net. In films where a well-intentioned lead attempts to put his criminal life behind him by moving to a remote location, urban associates have little trouble tracking him down. While the country often appears, to protagonists like Jeff in Out of the Past or Bowie in They Live By Night, as an ideal place to escape from crime, as these films unfold, violence reaches the countryside. If these are similar points, what are some differences among rural noirs? First, there are many differences by degree among the common elements listed above. For instance, some rural noirs present their location with unabashed romanticism, while others critique the idealisation of these locations; some “nurturing women” are complicit with criminal activity, while others are entirely innocent. Second, while noir films are commonly known for treating similar urban locations, Los Angeles in particular, these films feature a wide variety of locations: Out of the Past and Thieves’ Highway take place in California, the most common setting for rural noirs, but On Dangerous Ground is set in northern New England, They Live by Night takes place in the Depression-era South, Moonrise in Southern swampland, and the most dynamic scene of The Asphalt Jungle is in rural Kentucky. Third, these films also vary considerably in the balance of settings. If the three typical locations of the rural noir are the country, the city, and the road, the distribution of these three locations varies widely across these films. The location of The Asphalt Jungle matches the title until its dramatic conclusion. The Hitch-hiker, arguably a rural noir, is set in travelling cars, with just brief stops in the barren landscape outside. Two of the films I analyse, They Live By Night and Moonrise are set entirely in the country; a remarkable exception to the majority of films in this subgenre. There are only two other critical essays on the rural noir. In “Shadows in the Hinterland: Rural Noir,” Jonathan F. Bell contextualises the rural noir in terms of post-war transformations of the American landscape. He argues that these films express a forlorn faith in the agrarian myth while the U.S. was becoming increasingly developed and suburbanised. That is to say, the rural noir simultaneously reflects anxiety over the loss of rural land, but also the stubborn belief that the countryside will always exist, if the urbanite needs it as a refuge. Garry Morris suggests the following equation as the shortest way to state the thematic interest of this genre: “Noir = industrialisation + (thwarted) spirituality.” He attributes much of the malaise of noir protagonists to the inhospitable urban environment, “far from [society’s] pastoral and romantic and spiritual origins.” Where Bell focuses on nine films— Detour (1945), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Out of the Past (1947), Key Largo (1948), Gun Crazy (1949), On Dangerous Ground (1952), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Split Second (1953), and Killer’s Kiss (1955)— Morris’s much shorter article includes just The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Gun Crazy. Of the four films I discuss, only On Dangerous Ground has previously been treated as part of this subgenre, though it has never been discussed alongside Nicholas Ray’s other rural noir. To further the development of the project that these authors have started— the formation of a rural noir corpus— I propose the inclusion of three additional films in this subgenre: Moonrise (1948), They Live by Night (1949), and Thieves’ Highway (1949). With both On Dangerous Ground and They Live by Night to his credit, Nicholas Ray has the distinction of being the most prolific director of rural noirs. In They Live by Night, two young lovers, Bowie (Farley Granger) and Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), attempt to escape from their established criminal lives. Twenty-three year old Bowie has just been released from juvenile prison and finds rural Texas refreshing: “Out here, the air smells different,” he says. He meets Keechie through her father, a small time criminal organiser who would be happy to keep her secluded for life. When one of Bowie’s accomplices, Chicamaw (Howard DaSilva), shoots a policeman after a robbing a bank with Bowie, the young couple is forced to run. Foster Hirsch calls They Live by Night “a genre rarity, a sentimental noir” (34). The naïve blissfulness of their affection is associated with the primitive settings they navigate. Though Bowie and Keechie are the most sympathetic protagonists of any rural noir, this is no safeguard against an inevitable, characteristically noir demise. Janey Place writes, “the young lovers are doomed, but the possibility of their love transcends and redeems them both, and its failure criticises the urbanised world that will not let them live” (63). As indicated here, the country offers the young lovers refuge for some time, and their bond is depicted as wonderfully strong, but it is doomed by the stronger force of the law.Raymond Williams discusses how different characteristics are associated with urban and rural spaces:On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved center: of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. (1) They Live By Night breaks down these dichotomies, showing the persistence of crime rooted in rural areas.Bowie desires to “get squared around” and live a more natural life with Keechie. Williams’ country adjectives— “peace, innocence, and simple virtue”— describe the nature of this relationship perfectly. Yet, criminal activity, usually associated with the city, has an overwhelmingly strong presence in this region and their lives. Bowie, following the doomed logic of many a crime film character, plans to launch a new, more honest life with cash raised in a heist. Keechie recognises the contradictions in this plan: “Fine way to get squared around, teaming with them. Stealing money and robbing banks. You’ll get in so deep trying to get squared, they’ll have enough to keep you in for two life times.” For Bowie, crime and the pursuit of love are inseparably bound, refuting the illusion of the pure and innocent countryside personified by characters like Mary Malden in On Dangerous Ground and Ann Miller in Out of the Past.In Ray’s other rural noir, On Dangerous Ground, a lonely, angry, and otherwise burned out cop, Wilson (Rob Ryan), finds both love and peace in his time away from the city. While on his up-state assignment, Wilson meets Mary Walden (Ida Lupino), a blind woman who lives a secluded life miles away from this already desolate, rural community. Mary has a calming influence on Wilson, and fits well within Janey Place’s notion of the archetypal nurturing woman in film noir: “The redemptive woman often represents or is part of a primal connection with nature and/or with the past, which are safe, static states rather than active, exciting ones, but she can sometimes offer the only transcendence possible in film noir” (63).If, as Colin McArthur observes, Ray’s characters frequently seek redemption in rural locales— “[protagonists] may reject progress and modernity; they may choose to go or are sent into primitive areas. […] The journeys which bring them closer to nature may also offer them hope of salvation” (124) — the conclusions of On Dangerous Ground versus They Live By Night offer two markedly different resolutions to this narrative. Where Bowie and Keechie’s life on the lam cannot be sustained, On Dangerous Ground, against the wishes of its director, portrays a much more romanticised version of pastoral life. According to Andrew Dickos, “Ray wanted to end the film on the ambivalent image of Jim Wilson returning to the bleak city,” after he had restored order up-state (132). The actual ending is more sentimental. Jim rushes back north to be with Mary. They passionately kiss in close-up, cueing an exuberant orchestral score as The End appears over a slow tracking shot of the majestic, snow covered landscape. In this way, On Dangerous Ground overturns the usual temporal associations of rural versus urban spaces. As Raymond Williams identifies, “The common image of the country is now an image of the past, and the common image of the city an image of the future” (297). For Wilson, by contrast, city life was no longer sustainable and rurality offers his best means for a future. Leo Marx noted in a variety of American pop culture, from Mark Twain to TV westerns and magazine advertising, a “yearning for a simpler, more harmonious style of life, and existence ‘closer to nature,’ that is the psychic root of all pastoralism— genuine and spurious” (Marx 6). Where most rural noirs expose the agrarian myth as a fantasy and a sham, On Dangerous Ground, exceptionally, perpetuates it as actual and effectual. Here, a bad cop is made good with a few days spent in a sparsely populated area and with a woman shaped by her rural upbringing.As opposed to On Dangerous Ground, where the protagonist’s movement from city to country matches his split identity as a formerly corrupt man wishing to be pure, Frank Borzage’s B-film Moonrise (1948) is located entirely in rural or small-town locations. Set in the fictional Southern town of Woodville, which spans swamps, lushly wooded streets and aging Antebellum mansions, the lead character finds good and bad within the same rural location and himself. Dan (Dane Clark) struggles to escape his legacy as the son of a murderer. This conflict is irreparably heightened when Dan kills a man (who had repeatedly teased and bullied him) in self-defence. The instability of Dan’s moral compass is expressed in the way he treats innocent elements of the natural world: flies, dogs, and, recalling Out of the Past, a local deaf boy. He is alternately cruel and kind. Dan is finally redeemed after seeking the advice of a black hermit, Mose (Rex Ingram), who lives in a ramshackle cabin by the swamp. He counsels Dan with the advice that men turn evil from “being lonesome,” not for having “bad blood.” When Dan, eventually, decides to confess to his crime, the sheriff finds him tenderly holding a search hound against a bucolic, rural backdrop. His complete comfortability with the landscape and its creatures finally allows Dan to reconcile the film’s opening opposition. He is no longer torturously in between good and evil, but openly recognises his wrongs and commits to do good in the future. If I had to select just a single shot to illustrate that noirs are set in rural locations more often than most scholarship would have us believe, it would be the opening sequence of Moonrise. From the first shot, this film associates rural locations with criminal elements. The credit sequence juxtaposes pooling water with an ominous brass score. In this disorienting opening, the camera travels from an image of water, to a group of men framed from the knees down. The camera dollies out and pans left, showing that these men, trudging solemnly, are another’s legal executioners. The frame tilts upward and we see a man hung in silhouette. This dense shot is followed by an image of a baby in a crib, also shadowed, the water again, and finally the execution scene. If this sequence is a thematic montage, it can also be discussed, more simply, as a series of establishing shots: a series of images that, seemingly, could not be more opposed— a baby, a universal symbol of innocence, set against the ominous execution, cruel experience— are paired together by virtue of their common location. The montage continues, showing that the baby is the son of the condemned man. As Dan struggles with the legacy of his father throughout the film, this opening shot continues to inform our reading of this character, split between the potential for good or evil.What a baby is to Moonrise, or, to cite a more familiar reference, what the insurance business is to many a James M. Cain roman noir, produce distribution is to Jules Dassin’s Thieves’ Highway (1949). The apple, often a part of wholesome American myths, is at the centre of this story about corruption. Here, a distribution network that brings Americans this hearty, simple product is connected with criminal activity and violent abuses of power more commonly portrayed in connection with cinematic staples of organised crime such as bootlegging or robbery. This film portrays bad apples in the apple business, showing that no profit driven enterprise— no matter how traditional or rural— is beyond the reach of corruption.Fitting the nature of this subject, numerous scenes in the Dassin film take place in the daylight (in addition to darkness), and in the countryside (in addition to the city) as we move between wine and apple country to the market districts of San Francisco. But if the subject and setting of Thieves’ Highway are unusual for a noir, the behaviour of its characters is not. Spare, bright country landscapes form the backdrop for prototypical noir behaviour: predatory competition for money and power.As one would expect of a film noir, the subject of apple distribution is portrayed with dynamic violence. In the most exciting scene of the film, a truck careens off the road after a long pursuit from rival sellers. Apples scatter across a hillside as the truck bursts into flames. This scene is held in a long-shot, as unscrupulous thugs gather the produce for sale while the unfortunate driver burns to death. Here, the reputedly innocent American apple is subject to cold-blooded, profit-maximizing calculations as much as the more typical topics of noir such as blackmail, fraud, or murder. Passages on desolate roads and at apple orchards qualify Thieves’ Highway as a rural noir; the dark, cynical manner in which capitalist enterprise is treated is resonant with nearly all film noirs. Thieves’ Highway follows a common narrative pattern amongst rural noirs to gradually reveal rural spaces as connected to criminality in urban locations. Typically, this disillusioning fact is narrated from the perspective of a lead character who first has a greater sense of safety in rural settings but learns, over the course of the story, to be more wary in all locations. In Thieves’, Nick’s hope that apple-delivery might earn an honest dollar (he is the only driver to treat the orchard owners fairly) gradually gives way to an awareness of the inevitable corruption that has taken over this enterprise at all levels of production, from farmer, to trucker, to wholesaler, and thus, at all locations, the country, the road, and the city.Between this essay, and the previous work of Morris and Bell on the subject, we are developing a more complete survey of the rural noir. Where Bell’s and Morris’s essays focus more resolutely on rural noirs that relied on the contrast of the city versus the country— which, significantly, was the first tendency of this subgenre that I observed— Moonrise and They Live By Night demonstrate that this genre can work entirely apart from the city. From start to finish, these films take place in small towns and rural locations. As opposed to Out of the Past, On Dangerous Ground, or The Asphalt Jungle, characters are never pulled back to, nor flee from, an urban life of crime. Instead, vices that are commonly associated with the city have a free-standing life in the rural locations that are often thought of as a refuge from these harsh elements. If both Bell and Morris study the way that rural noirs draw differences between the city and country, two of the three films I add to the subgenre constitute more complete rural noirs, films that work wholly outside urban locations, not just in contrast with it. Bell, like me, notes considerable variety in rural noirs locations, “desert landscapes, farms, mountains, and forests all qualify as settings for consideration,” but he also notes that “Diverse as these landscapes are, this set of films uses them in surprisingly like-minded fashion to achieve a counterpoint to the ubiquitous noir city” (219). In Bell’s analysis, all nine films he studies, feature significant urban segments. He is, in fact, so inclusive as to discuss Stanley Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss as a rural noir even though it does not contain a single frame shot or set outside of New York City. Rurality is evoked only as a possibility, as alienated urbanite Davy (Jamie Smith) receives letters from his horse-farm-running relatives. Reading these letters offers Davy brief moments of respite from drudgerous city spaces such as the subway and his cramped apartment. In its emphasis on the centrality of rural locations, my project is more similar to David Bell’s work on the rural in horror films than to Jonathan F. Bell’s work on the rural noir. David Bell analyses the way that contemporary horror films work against a “long tradition” of the “idyllic rural” in many Western texts (95). As opposed to works “from Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman to contemporary television shows like Northern Exposure and films such as A River Runs Through It or Grand Canyon” in which the rural is positioned as “a restorative to urban anomie,” David Bell analyses films such as Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that depict “a series of anti-idyllic visions of the rural” (95). Moonrise and They Live By Night, like these horror films, portray the crime and the country as coexistent spheres at the same time that the majority of other popular culture, including noirs like Killer’s Kiss or On Dangerous Ground, portray them as mutually exclusive.To use a mode of generic analysis developed by Rick Altman, the rural noir, while preserving the dominant syntax of other noirs, presents a remarkably different semantic element (31). Consider the following description of the genre, from the introduction to Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide: “The darkness that fills the mirror of the past, which lurks in a dark corner or obscures a dark passage out of the oppressively dark city, is not merely the key adjective of so many film noir titles but the obvious metaphor for the condition of the protagonist’s mind” (Silver and Ward, 4). In this instance, the narrative elements, or syntax, of film noir outlined by Silver and Ward do not require revision, but the urban location, a semantic element, does. Moonrise and They Live By Night demonstrate the sustainability of the aforementioned syntactic elements— the dark, psychological experience of the leads and their inescapable criminal past— apart from the familiar semantic element of the city.The rural noir must also cause us to reconsider— beyond rural representations or film noir— more generally pitched genre theories. Consider the importance of place to film genre, the majority of which are defined by a typical setting: for melodramas, it is the family home, for Westerns, the American west, and for musicals, the stage. Thomas Schatz separates American genres according to their setting, between genres which deal with “determinate” versus “indeterminate” space:There is a vital distinction between kinds of generic settings and conflicts. Certain genres […] have conflicts that, indigenous to the environment, reflect the physical and ideological struggle for its control. […] Other genres have conflicts that are not indigenous to the locale but are the results of the conflict between the values, attitudes, and actions of its principal characters and the ‘civilised’ setting they inhabit. (26) Schatz discusses noirs, along with detective films, as films which trade in “determinate” settings, limited to the space of the city. The rural noir slips between Schatz’s dichotomy, moving past the space of the city, but not into the civilised, tame settings of the genres of “indeterminate spaces.” It is only fitting that a genre whose very definition lies in its disruption of Hollywood norms— trading high- for low-key lighting, effectual male protagonists for helpless ones, and a confident, coherent worldview for a more paranoid, unstable one would, finally, be able to accommodate a variation— the rural noir— that would seem to upset one of its central tenets, an urban locale. Considering the long list of Hollywood standards that film noirs violated, according to two of its original explicators, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton— “a logical action, an evident distinction between good and evil, well-defined characters with clear motives, scenes that are more spectacular than brutal, a heroine who is exquisitely feminine and a hero who is honest”— it should, perhaps, not be so surprising that the genre is flexible enough to accommodate the existence of the rural noir after all (14). AcknowledgmentsIn addition to M/C Journal's anonymous readers, the author would like to thank Corey Creekmur, Mike Slowik, Barbara Steinson, and Andrew Gorman-Murray for their helpful suggestions. ReferencesAltman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 27-41.The Asphalt Jungle. Dir. John Huston. MGM/UA, 1950.Bell, David. “Anti-Idyll: Rural Horror.” Contested Countryside Cultures. Eds. Paul Cloke and Jo Little. London, Routledge, 1997. 94-108.Bell, Jonathan F. “Shadows in the Hinterland: Rural Noir.” Architecture and Film. Ed. Mark Lamster. New York: Princeton Architectural P, 2000. 217-230.Borde, Raymond and Etienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002.Christopher, Nicholas. Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.Cowie, Elizabeth. “Film Noir and Women.” Shades of Noir. Ed. Joan Copjec. New York: Verso, 1993. 121-166.Dickos, Andrew. Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2002.Hirsch, Foster. Detours and Lost Highways: A Map of Neo-Noir. New York: Limelight Editions, 1999.Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden. New York: Oxford UP, 1964.McArthur, Colin. Underworld U.S.A. London: BFI, 1972.Moonrise. Dir. Frank Borzage. Republic, 1948.Morris, Gary. “Noir Country: Alien Nation.” Bright Lights Film Journal Nov. 2006. 13. Jun. 2008 http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/54/noircountry.htm Muller, Eddie. Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1998.Naremore, James. More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley, C.A.: U of California P, 2008.Neale, Steve. “Questions of Genre.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 160-184.On Dangerous Ground. Dir. Nicholas Ray. RKO, 1951.Out of the Past. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. RKO, 1947.Place, Janey. “Women in Film Noir.” Women in Film Noir. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. London: BFI, 1999. 47-68.Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres. New York: Random House, 1981.Schatz, Thomas. “The Structural Influence: New Directions in Film Genre Study.” Film Genre Reader III. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003. 92-102.Silver, Alain and Elizabeth Ward. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. London: Bloomsbury, 1980.They Live by Night. Dir. Nicholas Ray. RKO, 1949.Thieves’ Highway. Dir. Jules Dassin. Fox, 1949.Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.

Introduction This paper offers a survey of familiar popular music performers and songwriters who reference coffee in their work. It examines three areas of discourse: the psychoactive effects of caffeine, coffee and courtship rituals, and the politics of coffee consumption. I claim that coffee carries a cultural and musicological significance comparable to that of the chemical stimulants and consumer goods more readily associated with popular music. Songs about coffee may not be as potent as those featuring drugs and alcohol (Primack; Schapiro), or as common as those referencing commodities like clothes and cars (Englis; McCracken), but they do feature across a wide range of genres, some of which enjoy archetypal associations with this beverage. m.o.m.m.y. Needs c.o.f.f.e.e.: The Psychoactive Effect of Coffee The act of performing and listening to popular music involves psychological elements comparable to the overwhelming sensory experience of drug taking: altered perceptions, repetitive grooves, improvisation, self-expression, and psychological empathy—such as that between musician and audience (Curry). Most popular music genres are, as a result, culturally and sociologically identified with the consumption of at least one mind-altering substance (Lyttle; Primack; Schapiro). While the analysis of lyrics referring to this theme has hitherto focused on illegal drugs and alcoholic beverages (Cooper), coffee and its psychoactive ingredient caffeine have been almost entirely overlooked (Summer). The most recent study of drugs in popular music, for example, defined substance use as “tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and other stimulants, heroin and other opiates, hallucinogens, inhalants, prescription drugs, over-the-counter drugs, and nonspecific substances” (Primack 172), thereby ignoring a chemical stimulant consumed by 90 per cent of adult Americans every day (Lovett). The wide availability of coffee and the comparatively mild effect of caffeine means that its consumption rarely causes harm. One researcher has described it as a ubiquitous and unobtrusive “generalised public activity […] ‘invisible’ to analysts seeking distinctive social events” (Cooper 92). Coffee may provide only a relatively mild “buzz”—but it is now accepted that caffeine is an addictive substance (Juliano) and, due to its universal legality, coffee is also the world’s most extensively traded and enthusiastically consumed psychoactive consumer product (Juliano 1). The musical genre of jazz has a longstanding relationship with marijuana and narcotics (Curry; Singer; Tolson; Winick). Unsurprisingly, given its Round Midnight connotations, jazz standards also celebrate the restorative impact of coffee. Exemplary compositions include Burke/Webster’s insomniac torch song Black Coffee, which provided hits for Sarah Vaughan (1949), Ella Fitzgerald (1953), and Peggy Lee (1960); and Frank Sinatra’s recordings of Hilliard/Dick’s The Coffee Song (1946, 1960), which satirised the coffee surplus in Brazil at a time when this nation enjoyed a near monopoly on production. Sinatra joked that this ubiquitous drink was that country’s only means of liquid refreshment, in a refrain that has since become a headline writer’s phrasal template: “There’s an Awful Lot of Coffee in Vietnam,” “An Awful Lot of Coffee in the Bin,” and “There’s an Awful Lot of Taxes in Brazil.” Ethnographer Aaron Fox has shown how country music gives expression to the lived social experience of blue-collar and agrarian workers (Real 29). Coffee’s role in energising working class America (Cooper) is featured in such recordings as Dolly Parton’s Nine To Five (1980), which describes her morning routine using a memorable “kitchen/cup of ambition” rhyme, and Don't Forget the Coffee Billy Joe (1973) by Tom T. Hall which laments the hardship of unemployment, hunger, cold, and lack of healthcare. Country music’s “tired truck driver” is the most enduring blue-collar trope celebrating coffee’s analeptic powers. Versions include Truck Drivin' Man by Buck Owens (1964), host of the country TV show Hee Haw and pioneer of the Bakersfield sound, and Driving My Life Away from pop-country crossover star Eddie Rabbitt (1980). Both feature characteristically gendered stereotypes of male truck drivers pushing on through the night with the help of a truck stop waitress who has fuelled them with caffeine. Johnny Cash’s A Cup of Coffee (1966), recorded at the nadir of his addiction to pills and alcohol, has an incoherent improvised lyric on this subject; while Jerry Reed even prescribed amphetamines to keep drivers awake in Caffein [sic], Nicotine, Benzedrine (And Wish Me Luck) (1980). Doye O’Dell’s Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves (1952) is the archetypal “truck drivin’ country” song and the most exciting track of its type. It subsequently became a hit for the doyen of the subgenre, Red Simpson (1966). An exhausted driver, having spent the night with a woman whose name he cannot now recall, is fighting fatigue and wrestling his hot-rod low-loader around hairpin mountain curves in an attempt to rendezvous with a pretty truck stop waitress. The song’s palpable energy comes from its frenetic guitar picking and the danger implicit in trailing a heavy load downhill while falling asleep at the wheel. Tommy Faile’s Phantom 309, a hit for Red Sovine (1967) that was later covered by Tom Waits (Big Joe and the Phantom 309, 1975), elevates the “tired truck driver” narrative to gothic literary form. Reflecting country music’s moral code of citizenship and its culture of performative storytelling (Fox, Real 23), it tells of a drenched and exhausted young hitchhiker picked up by Big Joe—the driver of a handsome eighteen-wheeler. On arriving at a truck stop, Joe drops the traveller off, giving him money for a restorative coffee. The diner falls silent as the hitchhiker orders up his “cup of mud”. Big Joe, it transpires, is a phantom trucker. After running off the road to avoid a school bus, his distinctive ghost rig now only reappears to rescue stranded travellers. Punk rock, a genre closely associated with recreational amphetamines (McNeil 76, 87), also features a number of caffeine-as-stimulant songs. Californian punk band, Descendents, identified caffeine as their drug of choice in two 1996 releases, Coffee Mug and Kids on Coffee. These songs describe chugging the drink with much the same relish and energy that others might pull at the neck of a beer bottle, and vividly compare the effects of the drug to the intense rush of speed. The host of “New Music News” (a segment of MTV’s 120 Minutes) references this correlation in 1986 while introducing the band’s video—in which they literally bounce off the walls: “You know, while everybody is cracking down on crack, what about that most respectable of toxic substances or stimulants, the good old cup of coffee? That is the preferred high, actually, of California’s own Descendents—it is also the subject of their brand new video” (“New Music News”). Descendents’s Sessions EP (1997) featured an overflowing cup of coffee on the sleeve, while punk’s caffeine-as-amphetamine trope is also promulgated by Hellbender (Caffeinated 1996), Lagwagon (Mr. Coffee 1997), and Regatta 69 (Addicted to Coffee 2005). Coffee in the Morning and Kisses in the Night: Coffee and Courtship Coffee as romantic metaphor in song corroborates the findings of early researchers who examined courtship rituals in popular music. Donald Horton’s 1957 study found that hit songs codified the socially constructed self-image and limited life expectations of young people during the 1950s by depicting conservative, idealised, and traditional relationship scenarios. He summarised these as initial courtship, honeymoon period, uncertainty, and parting (570-4). Eleven years after this landmark analysis, James Carey replicated Horton’s method. His results revealed that pop lyrics had become more realistic and less bound by convention during the 1960s. They incorporated a wider variety of discourse including the temporariness of romantic commitment, the importance of individual autonomy in relationships, more liberal attitudes, and increasingly unconventional courtship behaviours (725). Socially conservative coffee songs include Coffee in the Morning and Kisses in the Night by The Boswell Sisters (1933) in which the protagonist swears fidelity to her partner on condition that this desire is expressed strictly in the appropriate social context of marriage. It encapsulates the restrictions Horton identified on courtship discourse in popular song prior to the arrival of rock and roll. The Henderson/DeSylva/Brown composition You're the Cream in My Coffee, recorded by Annette Hanshaw (1928) and by Nat King Cole (1946), also celebrates the social ideal of monogamous devotion. The persistence of such idealised traditional themes continued into the 1960s. American pop singer Don Cherry had a hit with Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye (1962) that used coffee as a metaphor for undying and everlasting love. Otis Redding’s version of Butler/Thomas/Walker’s Cigarettes and Coffee (1966)—arguably soul music’s exemplary romantic coffee song—carries a similar message as a couple proclaim their devotion in a late night conversation over coffee. Like much of the Stax catalogue, Cigarettes and Coffee, has a distinctly “down home” feel and timbre. The lovers are simply content with each other; they don’t need “cream” or “sugar.” Horton found 1950s blues and R&B lyrics much more sexually explicit than pop songs (567). Dawson (1994) subsequently characterised black popular music as a distinct public sphere, and Squires (2002) argued that it displayed elements of what she defined as “enclave” and “counterpublic” traits. Lawson (2010) has argued that marginalised and/or subversive blues artists offered a form of countercultural resistance against prevailing social norms. Indeed, several blues and R&B coffee songs disregard established courtship ideals and associate the product with non-normative and even transgressive relationship circumstances—including infidelity, divorce, and domestic violence. Lightnin’ Hopkins’s Coffee Blues (1950) references child neglect and spousal abuse, while the narrative of Muddy Waters’s scorching Iodine in my Coffee (1952) tells of an attempted poisoning by his Waters’s partner. In 40 Cups of Coffee (1953) Ella Mae Morse is waiting for her husband to return home, fuelling her anger and anxiety with caffeine. This song does eventually comply with traditional courtship ideals: when her lover eventually returns home at five in the morning, he is greeted with a relieved kiss. In Keep That Coffee Hot (1955), Scatman Crothers supplies a counterpoint to Morse’s late-night-abandonment narrative, asking his partner to keep his favourite drink warm during his adulterous absence. Brook Benton’s Another Cup of Coffee (1964) expresses acute feelings of regret and loneliness after a failed relationship. More obliquely, in Coffee Blues (1966) Mississippi John Hurt sings affectionately about his favourite brand, a “lovin’ spoonful” of Maxwell House. In this, he bequeathed the moniker of folk-rock band The Lovin’ Spoonful, whose hits included Do You Believe in Magic (1965) and Summer in the City (1966). However, an alternative reading of Hurt’s lyric suggests that this particular phrase is a metaphorical device proclaiming the author’s sexual potency. Hurt’s “lovin’ spoonful” may actually be a portion of his seminal emission. In the 1950s, Horton identified country as particularly “doleful” (570), and coffee provides a common metaphor for failed romance in a genre dominated by “metanarratives of loss and desire” (Fox, Jukebox 54). Claude Gray’s I'll Have Another Cup of Coffee (Then I’ll Go) (1961) tells of a protagonist delivering child support payments according to his divorce lawyer’s instructions. The couple share late night coffee as their children sleep through the conversation. This song was subsequently recorded by seventeen-year-old Bob Marley (One Cup of Coffee, 1962) under the pseudonym Bobby Martell, a decade prior to his breakthrough as an international reggae star. Marley’s youngest son Damian has also performed the track while, interestingly in the context of this discussion, his older sibling Rohan co-founded Marley Coffee, an organic farm in the Jamaican Blue Mountains. Following Carey’s demonstration of mainstream pop’s increasingly realistic depiction of courtship behaviours during the 1960s, songwriters continued to draw on coffee as a metaphor for failed romance. In Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain (1972), she dreams of clouds in her coffee while contemplating an ostentatious ex-lover. Squeeze’s Black Coffee In Bed (1982) uses a coffee stain metaphor to describe the end of what appears to be yet another dead-end relationship for the protagonist. Sarah Harmer’s Coffee Stain (1998) expands on this device by reworking the familiar “lipstick on your collar” trope, while Sexsmith & Kerr’s duet Raindrops in my Coffee (2005) superimposes teardrops in coffee and raindrops on the pavement with compelling effect. Kate Bush’s Coffee Homeground (1978) provides the most extreme narrative of relationship breakdown: the true story of Cora Henrietta Crippin’s poisoning. Researchers who replicated Horton’s and Carey’s methodology in the late 1970s (Bridges; Denisoff) were surprised to find their results dominated by traditional courtship ideals. The new liberal values unearthed by Carey in the late 1960s simply failed to materialise in subsequent decades. In this context, it is interesting to observe how romantic coffee songs in contemporary soul and jazz continue to disavow the post-1960s trend towards realistic social narratives, adopting instead a conspicuously consumerist outlook accompanied by smooth musical timbres. This phenomenon possibly betrays the influence of contemporary coffee advertising. From the 1980s, television commercials have sought to establish coffee as a desirable high end product, enjoyed by bohemian lovers in a conspicuously up-market environment (Werder). All Saints’s Black Coffee (2000) and Lebrado’s Coffee (2006) identify strongly with the culture industry’s image of coffee as a luxurious beverage whose consumption signifies prominent social status. All Saints’s promotional video is set in a opulent location (although its visuals emphasise the lyric’s romantic disharmony), while Natalie Cole’s Coffee Time (2008) might have been itself written as a commercial. Busting Up a Starbucks: The Politics of Coffee Politics and coffee meet most palpably at the coffee shop. This conjunction has a well-documented history beginning with the establishment of coffee houses in Europe and the birth of the public sphere (Habermas; Love; Pincus). The first popular songs to reference coffee shops include Jaybird Coleman’s Coffee Grinder Blues (1930), which boasts of skills that precede the contemporary notion of a barista by four decades; and Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee (1932) from Irving Berlin’s depression-era musical Face The Music, where the protagonists decide to stay in a restaurant drinking coffee and eating pie until the economy improves. Coffee in a Cardboard Cup (1971) from the Broadway musical 70 Girls 70 is an unambiguous condemnation of consumerism, however, it was written, recorded and produced a generation before Starbucks’ aggressive expansion and rapid dominance of the coffee house market during the 1990s. The growth of this company caused significant criticism and protest against what seemed to be a ruthless homogenising force that sought to overwhelm local competition (Holt; Thomson). In response, Starbucks has sought to be defined as a more responsive and interactive brand that encourages “glocalisation” (de Larios; Thompson). Koller, however, has characterised glocalisation as the manipulative fabrication of an “imagined community”—whose heterogeneity is in fact maintained by the aesthetics and purchasing choices of consumers who make distinctive and conscious anti-brand statements (114). Neat Capitalism is a more useful concept here, one that intercedes between corporate ideology and postmodern cultural logic, where such notions as community relations and customer satisfaction are deliberately and perhaps somewhat cynically conflated with the goal of profit maximisation (Rojek). As the world’s largest chain of coffee houses with over 19,400 stores in March 2012 (Loxcel), Starbucks is an exemplar of this phenomenon. Their apparent commitment to environmental stewardship, community relations, and ethical sourcing is outlined in the company’s annual “Global Responsibility Report” (Vimac). It is also demonstrated in their engagement with charitable and environmental non-governmental organisations such as Fairtrade and Co-operative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE). By emphasising this, Starbucks are able to interpellate (that is, “call forth”, “summon”, or “hail” in Althusserian terms) those consumers who value environmental protection, social justice and ethical business practices (Rojek 117). Bob Dylan and Sheryl Crow provide interesting case studies of the persuasive cultural influence evoked by Neat Capitalism. Dylan’s 1962 song Talkin’ New York satirised his formative experiences as an impoverished performer in Greenwich Village’s coffee houses. In 1995, however, his decision to distribute the Bob Dylan: Live At The Gaslight 1962 CD exclusively via Starbucks generated significant media controversy. Prominent commentators expressed their disapproval (Wilson Harris) and HMV Canada withdrew Dylan’s product from their shelves (Lynskey). Despite this, the success of this and other projects resulted in the launch of Starbucks’s in-house record company, Hear Music, which released entirely new recordings from major artists such as Ray Charles, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Elvis Costello—although the company has recently announced a restructuring of their involvement in this venture (O’Neil). Sheryl Crow disparaged her former life as a waitress in Coffee Shop (1995), a song recorded for her second album. “Yes, I was a waitress. I was a waitress not so long ago; then I won a Grammy” she affirmed in a YouTube clip of a live performance from the same year. More recently, however, Crow has become an avowed self-proclaimed “Starbucks groupie” (Tickle), releasing an Artist’s Choice (2003) compilation album exclusively via Hear Music and performing at the company’s 2010 Annual Shareholders’s Meeting. Songs voicing more unequivocal dissatisfaction with Starbucks’s particular variant of Neat Capitalism include Busting Up a Starbucks (Mike Doughty, 2005), and Starbucks Takes All My Money (KJ-52, 2008). The most successful of these is undoubtedly Ron Sexsmith’s Jazz at the Bookstore (2006). Sexsmith bemoans the irony of intense original blues artists such as Leadbelly being drowned out by the cacophony of coffee grinding machines while customers queue up to purchase expensive coffees whose names they can’t pronounce. In this, he juxtaposes the progressive patina of corporate culture against the circumstances of African-American labour conditions in the deep South, the shocking incongruity of which eventually cause the old bluesman to turn in his grave. Fredric Jameson may have good reason to lament the depthless a-historical pastiche of postmodern popular culture, but this is no “nostalgia film”: Sexsmith articulates an artfully framed set of subtle, sensitive, and carefully contextualised observations. Songs about coffee also intersect with politics via lyrics that play on the mid-brown colour of the beverage, by employing it as a metaphor for the sociological meta-narratives of acculturation and assimilation. First popularised in Israel Zangwill’s 1905 stage play, The Melting Pot, this term is more commonly associated with Americanisation rather than miscegenation in the United States—a nuanced distinction that British band Blue Mink failed to grasp with their memorable invocation of “coffee-coloured people” in Melting Pot (1969). Re-titled in the US as People Are Together (Mickey Murray, 1970) the song was considered too extreme for mainstream radio airplay (Thompson). Ike and Tina Turner’s Black Coffee (1972) provided a more accomplished articulation of coffee as a signifier of racial identity; first by associating it with the history of slavery and the post-Civil Rights discourse of African-American autonomy, then by celebrating its role as an energising force for African-American workers seeking economic self-determination. Anyone familiar with the re-casting of black popular music in an industry dominated by Caucasian interests and aesthetics (Cashmore; Garofalo) will be unsurprised to find British super-group Humble Pie’s (1973) version of this song more recognisable. Conclusion Coffee-flavoured popular songs celebrate the stimulant effects of caffeine, provide metaphors for courtship rituals, and offer critiques of Neat Capitalism. Harold Love and Guthrie Ramsey have each argued (from different perspectives) that the cultural micro-narratives of small social groups allow us to identify important “ethnographic truths” (Ramsey 22). Aesthetically satisfying and intellectually stimulating coffee songs are found where these micro-narratives intersect with the ethnographic truths of coffee culture. 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Photo by niu niu on Unsplash ABSTRACT Shackling prisoners has been implemented as standard procedure when transporting prisoners in labor and during childbirth. This procedure ensures the protection of both the public and healthcare workers. However, the act of shackling pregnant prisoners violates the principles of ethics that physicians are supposed to uphold. This paper will explore how shackling pregnant prisoners violates the principle of justice and beneficence, making the practice unethical. INTRODUCTION Some states allow shackling of incarcerated pregnant women during transport and while in the hospital for labor and delivery. Currently, only 22 states have legislation prohibiting the shackling of pregnant women.[1] Although many states have anti-shackling laws prohibiting restraints, these laws also contain an “extraordinary circumstances” loophole.[2] Under this exception, officers shackle prisoners if they pose a flight risk, have any history of violence, and are a threat to themselves or others.[3] Determining as to whether a prisoner is shackled is left solely to the correctional officer.[4] Yet even state restrictions on shackling are often disregarded. In shackling pregnant prisoners during childbirth, officers and institutions are interfering with the ability of incarcerated women to have safe childbirth experiences and fair treatment. Moreover, physicians cannot exercise various ethical duties as the law constrains them. In this article, I will discuss the physical and mental harms that result from the use of restraints under the backdrop of slavery and discrimination against women of color particularly. I argue that stereotypes feed into the phenomenon of shackling pregnant women, especially pregnant women of color. I further assert that shackling makes it difficult for medical professionals to be beneficent and promote justice. BACKGROUND Female incarceration rates in the United States have been fast growing since the 1980s.[5] With a 498 percent increase in the female incarceration population between 1981 and 2021, the rates of pregnancy and childbirth by incarcerated people have also climbed.[6],[7] In 2021, over 1.2 million women were incarcerated in the United States.[8] An estimated 55,000 pregnant women are admitted to jails each year.[9],[10] Many remain incarcerated throughout pregnancy and are transported to a hospital for labor and delivery. Although the exact number of restrained pregnant inmates is unclear, a study found that 83 percent of hospital prenatal nurses reported that their incarcerated patients were shackled.[11] I. Harms Caused by Shackling Shackling has caused many instances of physical and psychological harm. In the period before childbirth, shackled pregnant women are at high risk for falling.[12] The restraints shift pregnant women’s center of gravity, and wrist restraints prevent them from breaking a fall, increasing the risk of falling on their stomach and harming the fetus.[13] Another aspect inhibited by using restraints is testing and treating pregnancy complications. Delays in identifying and treating conditions such as hypertension, pre-eclampsia, appendicitis, kidney infection, preterm labor, and especially vaginal bleeding can threaten the lives of the mother and the fetus.[14] During labor and delivery, shackling prevents methods of alleviating severe labor pains and giving birth.[15] Usually, physicians recommend that women in labor walk or assume various positions to relieve labor pains and accelerate labor.[16] However, shackling prevents both solutions.[17] Shackling these women limits their mobility during labor, which may compromise the health of both the mother and the fetus.[18] Tracy Edwards, a former prisoner who filed a lawsuit for unlawful use of restraints during her pregnancy, was in labor for twelve hours. She was unable to move or adjust her position to lessen the pain and discomfort of labor.[19] The shackles also left the skin on her ankles red and bruised. Continued use of restraints also increases the risk of potentially life-threatening health issues associated with childbirth, such as blood clots.[20] It is imperative that pregnant women get treated rapidly, especially with the unpredictability of labor. Epidural administration can also become difficult, and in some cases, be denied due to the shackled woman’s inability to assume the proper position.[21] Time-sensitive medical care, including C-sections, could be delayed if permission from an officer is required, risking major health complications for both the fetus and the mother.[22] After childbirth, shackling impedes the recovery process. Shackling can result in post-delivery complications such as deep vein thrombosis.[23] Walking prevents such complications but is not an option for mothers shackled to their hospital beds.[24] Restraints also prevent bonding with the baby post-delivery and the safe handling of the baby while breast feeding.[25] The use of restraints can also result in psychological harm. Many prisoners feel as though care workers treat them like “animals,” with some women having multiple restraints at once— including ankles, wrists, and even waist restraints.[26] Benidalys Rivera describes the feeling of embarrassment as she was walking while handcuffed, with nurses and patients looking on, “Being in shackles, that make you be in stress…I about to have this baby, and I’m going to go back to jail. So it’s too much.”[27] Depression among pregnant prisoners is highly prevalent. The stress of imprisonment and the anticipation of being separated from their child is often overwhelming for these mothers.[28] The inhumane action has the potential to add more stress, anxiety, and sadness to the already emotionally demanding process of giving birth. Shackling pregnant prisoners displays indifference to the medical needs of the prisoner.[29] II. Safety as a Pretense While public safety is an argument for using shackles, several factors make escape or violence extremely unlikely and even impossible.[30] For example, administering epidural anesthesia causes numbness and eliminates flight risk.[31] Although cited as the main reason for using shackles, public safety is likely just an excuse and not the main motivator for shackling prisoners. I argue that underlying the shackling exemplifies the idea that these women should not have become pregnant. The shackling reflects a distinct discrimination: the lawmakers allowing it perhaps thought that people guilty of crimes would make bad mothers. Public safety is just a pretense. The language used to justify the use of restraint of Shawanna Nelson, the plaintiff in Nelson v. Correctional Medical Services, discussed below, included the word “aggressive.”[32] In her case, there was no evidence that she posed any danger or was objectively aggressive. Officer Turnesky, who supervised Nelson, testified that she never felt threatened by Nelson.[33] The lack of documented attempts of escape and violence from pregnant prisoners suggests that shackling for flight risk is a false pretense and perhaps merely based on stereotypes.[34] In 2011, an Amnesty International report noted that “Around the USA, it is common for restraints to be used on sick and pregnant incarcerated women when they are transported to and kept in hospital, regardless of whether they have a history of violence (which only a minority have) and regardless of whether they have ever absconded or attempted to escape (which few women have).”[35] In a 2020 survey of correctional officers in select midwestern prisons, 76 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed with restraining pregnant women during labor and delivery.[36] If a correctional officer shackles a pregnant prisoner, it is not because they pose a risk but because of a perception that they do. This mindset is attributed to select law enforcement, who have authority to use restraints.[37] In 2022, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill prohibiting the use of restraints on pregnant inmates. However, legislators amended the bill due to the Tennessee Sherriff Association’s belief that even pregnant inmates could pose a “threat.”[38] Subjecting all prisoners to the same “precautions” because a small percentage of individuals may pose such risks could reflect stereotyping or the assumption that all incarcerated people pose danger and flight risk. To quell the (unjustified) public safety concern, there are other options that do not cause physical or mental harm to pregnant women. For example, San Francisco General Hospital does not use shackles but has deputy sheriffs outside the pregnant women’s doors.[39] III. Historical Context and Race A. Slavery and Post-Civil War The treatment of female prisoners has striking similarities to that of enslaved women. Originally, shackling of female slaves was a mechanism of control and dehumanization.[40] This enabled physical and sexual abuses. During the process of intentionally dehumanizing slaves to facilitate subordination, slave owners stripped slave women of their feminine identity.[41] Slave women were unable to exhibit the Victorian model of “good mothering” and people thought they lacked maternal feelings for their children.[42] In turn, societal perception defeminized slave women, and barred them from utilizing the protections of womanhood and motherhood. During the post-Civil War era, black women were reversely depicted as sexually promiscuous and were arrested for prostitution more often than white women.[43] In turn, society excluded black women; they were seen as lacking what the “acceptable and good” women had.[44] Some argue that the historical act of labeling black women sexually deviant influences today’s perception of black women and may lead to labeling them bad mothers.[45] Over two-thirds of incarcerated women are women of color.[46] Many reports document sexual violence and misconduct against prisoners over the years.[47] Male guards have raped, sexually assaulted, and inappropriately touched female prisoners. Some attribute the physical abuse of black female prisoners to their being depicted or stereotyped as “aggressive, deviant, and domineering.”[48] Some expect black women to express stoicism and if they do not, people label them as dangerous, irresponsible, and aggressive.[49] The treatment of these prisoners mirrors the historical oppression endured by black women during and following the era of slavery. The act of shackling incarcerated pregnant women extends the inhumane treatment of these women from the prison setting into the hospital. One prisoner stated that during her thirty-hour labor, while being shackled, she “felt like a farm animal.”[50] Another pregnant prisoner describes her treatment by a guard stating: “a female guard grabbed me by the hair and was making me get up. She was screaming: ‘B***h, get up.’ Then she said, ‘That is what happens when you are a f***ing junkie. You shouldn’t be using drugs, or you wouldn’t be in here.”[51] Shackling goes beyond punishing by isolation from society – it is an additional punishment that is not justified. B. Reproductive Rights and “Bad Mothers” As with slaves not being seen as maternal, prisoners are not viewed as “real mothers.” A female prison guard said the following: “I’m a mother of two and I know what that impulse, that instinct, that mothering instinct feels like. It just takes over, you would never put your kids in harm’s way. . . . Women in here lack that. Something in their nature is not right, you know?”[52] This comment implies that incarcerated women lack maternal instinct. They are not in line with the standards of what society accepts as a “woman” and “mother” and are thought to have abandoned their roles as caretakers in pursuit of deviant behaviors. Without consideration of racial discrimination, poverty issues, trauma, and restricted access to the child right after delivery, these women are stereotyped as bad mothers simply because they are in prison. Reminiscent of the treatment of female black bodies post-civil war and the use of reproductive interventions (for example, Norplant and forced sterilization) in exchange for shorter sentences, I argue that shackles are a form of reproductive control. Justification for the use of shackles even includes their use as a “punitive instrument to remind the prisoner of their punishment.”[53] However, a prisoner’s pregnancy should have no relevance to their sentence.[54] Using shackles demonstrates to prisoners that society tolerates childbirth but does not support it.[55] The shackling is evidence that women are being punished “for bearing children, not for breaking the law.”[56] Physicians and healthcare workers, as a result, are responsible for providing care for the delivery and rectifying any physical problems associated with the restraints. The issues that arise from the use of restraints place physicians in a position more complex than they experience with regular healthy pregnancies. C. Discrimination In the case of Ferguson v. City of Charleston, a medical university subjected black woman to involuntary drug testing during pregnancy. In doing so, medical professionals collaborated with law enforcement to penalize black women for their use of drugs during pregnancy.[57] The Court held the drug tests were an unreasonable search and violated the Fourth Amendment. Ferguson v. City of Charleston further reveals an unjustified assumption: the medical and legal community seemed suspicious of black women and had perhaps predetermined them more likely to use drugs while pregnant. Their fitness to become mothers needed to be proven, while wealthy, white women were presumed fit.[58] The correctional community similarly denies pregnant prisoners’ medical attention. In the case of Staten v. Lackawanna County, an African American woman whose serious medical needs were treated indifferently by jail staff was forced to give birth in her cell.[59] This woman was punished for being pregnant in prison through the withholding of medical attention and empathy. IV. Failure to Follow Anti-Shackling Laws Despite 22 states having laws against shackling pregnant prisoners, officers do not always follow these laws. In 2015, the Correctional Association of New York reported that of the 27 women who gave birth under state custody, officers shackled 23 women in violation of the anti-shackling laws.[60] The lawyer of Tracy Edwards, an inmate who officers shackled unlawfully during her twelve-hour labor stated, “I don’t think we can assume that just because there’s a law passed, that’s automatically going to trickle down to the prison.”[61] Even with more restrictions on shackling, it may still occur, partly due to the stereotype that incarcerated women are aggressive and dangerous. V. Constitutionality The Eighth Amendment protects people from cruel and unusual punishment. In Brown vs. Plata, the court stated, “Prisoners retain the essence of human dignity inherent in all persons.”[62] In several cases, the legal community has held shackling to be unconstitutional as it violates the Eighth Amendment unless specifically justified. In the case of Nelson v. Correctional Medical Services, a pregnant woman was shackled for 12 hours of labor with a brief respite while she pushed, then re-shackled. The shackling caused her physical and emotional pain, including intense cramping that could not be relieved due to positioning and her inability to get up to use a toilet.[63] The court held that a clear security concern must justify shackling. The court cited a similar DC case and various precedents for using the Eighth Amendment to hold correctional facilities and hospitals accountable.[64] An Arkansas law similarly states that shackling must be justified by safety or risk of escape.[65] If the Thirteenth Amendment applied to those convicted of crimes, shackling pregnant incarcerated people would be unconstitutional under that amendment as well as the Eighth. In the Civil Rights Cases, Congress upheld the right “to enact all necessary and proper laws for the obliteration and prevention of slavery with all its badges and incidents.”[66] Section two of the Thirteenth Amendment condemns any trace or acts comparable to that of slavery. Shackling pregnant prisoners, stripping them of their dignity, and justification based on stereotypes all have origins in the treatment of black female slaves. Viewed through the lens of the Thirteenth Amendment, the act of shackling would be unconstitutional. Nonetheless, the Thirteenth Amendment explicitly excludes people convicted of a crime. VI. Justice As a result of the unconstitutional nature of shackling, physicians should have a legal obligation, in addition to their ethical duty, to protect their patients. The principle of justice requires physicians to take a stand against the discriminatory treatment of their patients, even under the eye of law enforcement.[67],[68] However, “badge and gun intimidation,” threats of noncompliance, and the fear of losing one’s license can impede a physician’s willingness to advocate for their patients. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) finds the use of physical restraints interferes with the ability of clinicians to practice medicine safely.[69] ACOG, The American Medical Association, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, and other organizations oppose using restraints on pregnant incarcerated people.[70] Yet, legislators can adopt shackling laws without consultation with physicians. The ACOG argues that “State legislators are taking it upon themselves to define complex medical concepts without reference to medical evidence. Some of the penalties [faced by OBGYNs] for violating these vague, unscientific laws include criminal sentences.”[71] Legislation that does not consider medical implications or discourages physicians’ input altogether is unjust. In nullifying the voice of a physician in matters pertaining to the patient’s treatment, physicians are prevented from fulfilling the principle of justice, making the act of shackling patients unethical. VII. Principle of Beneficence The principle of beneficence requires the prevention of harm, the removal of harm, and the promotion of good.[72] Beneficence demands the physician not only avoid harm but benefit patients and promote their welfare.[73] The American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation states that physicians must work with other professionals to increase patient safety and improve the quality of care.[74] In doing so, physicians can adequately treat patients with the goal of prevention and healing. It is difficult to do good when law enforcement imposes on doctors to work around shackles during labor and delivery. Law enforcement leaves physicians and healthcare workers responsible not only to provide care for the delivery, but also rectify any ailments associated with the restraints. The issues arising from using restraints place physicians in a position more complex than they experience with other pregnancies. Doctors cannot prevent the application of the shackles and can only request officers to take them off the patient.[75] Physicians who simply go along with shackling are arguably violating the principle of beneficence. However, for most, rather than violating the principle of beneficence overtly, physicians may simply have to compromise. Given the intricate nature of the situation, physicians are tasked with minimizing potential harm to the best of their abilities while adhering to legal obligations.[76] It is difficult to pin an ethics violation on the ones who do not like the shackles but are powerless to remove them. Some do argue that this inability causes physicians to violate the principle of beneficence.[77] However, promoting the well-being of their patients within the boundaries of the law limits their ability to exercise beneficence. For physicians to fulfill the principle of beneficence to the fullest capacity, they must have an influence on law. Protocols and assessments on flight risks made solely by the officers and law enforcement currently undermine the physician’s expertise. These decisions do not consider the health and well-being of the pregnant woman. As a result, law supersedes the influence of medicine and health care. CONCLUSION People expect physicians to uphold the four major principles of bioethics. However, their inability to override restraints compromises their ability to exercise beneficence. Although pledging to enforce these ethical principles, physicians have little opportunity to influence anti-shackling legislation. Instead of being included in conversations regarding medical complexities, legislation silences their voices. Policies must include the physician's voice as they affect their ability to treat patients. Officers should not dismiss a physician's request to remove shackles from a woman if they are causing health complications. A woman's labor should not harm her or her fetus because the officer will not remove her shackles.[78] A federal law could end shackling pregnant incarcerated people. Because other options are available to ensure the safety of the public and the prisoner, there is no ethical justification for shackling pregnant prisoners. An incarcerated person is a human being and must be treated with dignity and respect. To safeguard the well-being of incarcerated women and the public, it is essential for advocates of individual rights to join forces with medical professionals to establish an all-encompassing solution. - [1] Ferszt, G. G., Palmer, M., & McGrane, C. (2018). 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Introduction With a deluge of mouthwatering pre-publicity, the opening of The Spotted Pig, the USA’s first self-identified British-styled gastropub, in Manhattan in February 2004 was much anticipated. The late Australian chef, food writer and restauranteur Mietta O’Donnell has noted how “taking over a building or business which has a long established reputation can be a mixed blessing” because of the way that memories “can enrich the experience of being in a place or they can just make people nostalgic”. Bistro Le Zoo, the previous eatery on the site, had been very popular when it opened almost a decade earlier, and its closure was mourned by some diners (Young; Kaminsky “Feeding Time”; Steinhauer & McGinty). This regret did not, however, appear to affect The Spotted Pig’s success. As esteemed New York Times reviewer Frank Bruni noted in his 2006 review: “Almost immediately after it opened […] the throngs started to descend, and they have never stopped”. The following year, The Spotted Pig was awarded a Michelin star—the first year that Michelin ranked New York—and has kept this star in the subsequent annual rankings. Writing Restaurant Biography Detailed studies have been published of almost every type of contemporary organisation including public institutions such as schools, hospitals, museums and universities, as well as non-profit organisations such as charities and professional associations. These are often written to mark a major milestone, or some significant change, development or the demise of the organisation under consideration (Brien). Detailed studies have also recently been published of businesses as diverse as general stores (Woody), art galleries (Fossi), fashion labels (Koda et al.), record stores (Southern & Branson), airlines (Byrnes; Jones), confectionary companies (Chinn) and builders (Garden). In terms of attracting mainstream readerships, however, few such studies seem able to capture popular reader interest as those about eating establishments including restaurants and cafés. This form of restaurant life history is, moreover, not restricted to ‘quality’ establishments. Fast food restaurant chains have attracted their share of studies (see, for example Love; Jakle & Sculle), ranging from business-economic analyses (Liu), socio-cultural political analyses (Watson), and memoirs (Kroc & Anderson), to criticism around their conduct and effects (Striffler). Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is the most well-known published critique of the fast food industry and its effects with, famously, the Rolling Stone article on which it was based generating more reader mail than any other piece run in the 1990s. The book itself (researched narrative creative nonfiction), moreover, made a fascinating transition to the screen, transformed into a fictionalised drama (co-written by Schlosser) that narrates the content of the book from the point of view of a series of fictional/composite characters involved in the industry, rather than in a documentary format. Akin to the range of studies of fast food restaurants, there are also a variety of studies of eateries in US motels, caravan parks, diners and service station restaurants (see, for example, Baeder). Although there has been little study of this sub-genre of food and drink publishing, their popularity can be explained, at least in part, because such volumes cater to the significant readership for writing about food related topics of all kinds, with food writing recently identified as mainstream literary fare in the USA and UK (Hughes) and an entire “publishing subculture” in Australia (Dunstan & Chaitman). Although no exact tally exists, an informed estimate by the founder of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and president of the Paris Cookbook Fair, Edouard Cointreau, has more than 26,000 volumes on food and wine related topics currently published around the world annually (ctd. in Andriani “Gourmand Awards”). The readership for publications about restaurants can also perhaps be attributed to the wide range of information that can be included a single study. My study of a selection of these texts from the UK, USA and Australia indicates that this can include narratives of place and architecture dealing with the restaurant’s location, locale and design; narratives of directly food-related subject matter such as menus, recipes and dining trends; and narratives of people, in the stories of its proprietors, staff and patrons. Detailed studies of contemporary individual establishments commonly take the form of authorised narratives either written by the owners, chefs or other staff with the help of a food journalist, historian or other professional writer, or produced largely by that writer with the assistance of the premise’s staff. These studies are often extensively illustrated with photographs and, sometimes, drawings or reproductions of other artworks, and almost always include recipes. Two examples of these from my own collection include a centennial history of a famous New Orleans eatery that survived Hurricane Katrina, Galatoire’s Cookbook. Written by employees—the chief operating officer/general manager (Melvin Rodrigue) and publicist (Jyl Benson)—this incorporates reminiscences from both other staff and patrons. The second is another study of a New Orleans’ restaurant, this one by the late broadcaster and celebrity local historian Mel Leavitt. The Court of Two Sisters Cookbook: With a History of the French Quarter and the Restaurant, compiled with the assistance of the Two Sisters’ proprietor, Joseph Fein Joseph III, was first published in 1992 and has been so enduringly popular that it is in its eighth printing. These texts, in common with many others of this type, trace a triumph-over-adversity company history that incorporates a series of mildly scintillating anecdotes, lists of famous chefs and diners, and signature recipes. Although obviously focused on an external readership, they can also be characterised as an instance of what David M. Boje calls an organisation’s “story performance” (106) as the process of creating these narratives mobilises an organisation’s (in these cases, a commercial enterprise’s) internal information processing and narrative building activities. Studies of contemporary restaurants are much more rarely written without any involvement from the eatery’s personnel. When these are, the results tend to have much in common with more critical studies such as Fast Food Nation, as well as so-called architectural ‘building biographies’ which attempt to narrate the historical and social forces that “explain the shapes and uses” (Ellis, Chao & Parrish 70) of the physical structures we create. Examples of this would include Harding’s study of the importance of the Boeuf sur le Toit in Parisian life in the 1920s and Middlebrook’s social history of London’s Strand Corner House. Such work agrees with Kopytoff’s assertion—following Appadurai’s proposal that objects possess their own ‘biographies’ which need to be researched and expressed—that such inquiry can reveal not only information about the objects under consideration, but also about readers as we examine our “cultural […] aesthetic, historical, and even political” responses to these narratives (67). The life story of a restaurant will necessarily be entangled with those of the figures who have been involved in its establishment and development, as well as the narratives they create around the business. This following brief study of The Spotted Pig, however, written without the assistance of the establishment’s personnel, aims to outline a life story for this eatery in order to reflect upon the pig’s place in contemporary dining practice in New York as raw foodstuff, fashionable comestible, product, brand, symbol and marketing tool, as well as, at times, purely as an animal identity. The Spotted Pig Widely profiled before it even opened, The Spotted Pig is reportedly one of the city’s “most popular” restaurants (Michelin 349). It is profiled in all the city guidebooks I could locate in print and online, featuring in some of these as a key stop on recommended itineraries (see, for instance, Otis 39). A number of these proclaim it to be the USA’s first ‘gastropub’—the term first used in 1991 in the UK to describe a casual hotel/bar with good food and reasonable prices (Farley). The Spotted Pig is thus styled on a shabby-chic version of a traditional British hotel, featuring a cluttered-but-well arranged use of pig-themed objects and illustrations that is described by latest Michelin Green Guide of New York City as “a country-cute décor that still manages to be hip” (Michelin 349). From the three-dimensional carved pig hanging above the entrance in a homage to the shingles of traditional British hotels, to the use of its image on the menu, website and souvenir tee-shirts, the pig as motif proceeds its use as a foodstuff menu item. So much so, that the restaurant is often (affectionately) referred to by patrons and reviewers simply as ‘The Pig’. The restaurant has become so well known in New York in the relatively brief time it has been operating that it has not only featured in a number of novels and memoirs, but, moreover, little or no explanation has been deemed necessary as the signifier of “The Spotted Pig” appears to convey everything that needs to be said about an eatery of quality and fashion. In the thriller Lethal Experiment: A Donovan Creed Novel, when John Locke’s hero has to leave the restaurant and becomes involved in a series of dangerous escapades, he wants nothing more but to get back to his dinner (107, 115). The restaurant is also mentioned a number of times in Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle in relation to a (fictional) new movie of the same name. The joke in the book is that the character doesn’t know of the restaurant (26). In David Goodwillie’s American Subversive, the story of a journalist-turned-blogger and a homegrown terrorist set in New York, the narrator refers to “Scarlett Johansson, for instance, and the hostess at the Spotted Pig” (203-4) as the epitome of attractiveness. The Spotted Pig is also mentioned in Suzanne Guillette’s memoir, Much to Your Chagrin, when the narrator is on a dinner date but fears running into her ex-boyfriend: ‘Jack lives somewhere in this vicinity […] Vaguely, you recall him telling you he was not too far from the Spotted Pig on Greenwich—now, was it Greenwich Avenue or Greenwich Street?’ (361). The author presumes readers know the right answer in order to build tension in this scene. Although this success is usually credited to the joint efforts of backer, music executive turned restaurateur Ken Friedman, his partner, well-known chef, restaurateur, author and television personality Mario Batali, and their UK-born and trained chef, April Bloomfield (see, for instance, Batali), a significant part has been built on Bloomfield’s pork cookery. The very idea of a “spotted pig” itself raises a central tenet of Bloomfield’s pork/food philosophy which is sustainable and organic. That is, not the mass produced, industrially farmed pig which produces a leaner meat, but the fatty, tastier varieties of pig such as the heritage six-spotted Berkshire which is “darker, more heavily marbled with fat, juicier and richer-tasting than most pork” (Fabricant). Bloomfield has, indeed, made pig’s ears—long a Chinese restaurant staple in the city and a key ingredient of Southern US soul food as well as some traditional Japanese and Spanish dishes—fashionable fare in the city, and her current incarnation, a crispy pig’s ear salad with lemon caper dressing (TSP 2010) is much acclaimed by reviewers. This approach to ingredients—using the ‘whole beast’, local whenever possible, and the concentration on pork—has been underlined and enhanced by a continuing relationship with UK chef Fergus Henderson. In his series of London restaurants under the banner of “St. John”, Henderson is famed for the approach to pork cookery outlined in his two books Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking, published in 1999 (re-published both in the UK and the US as The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating), and Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II (coauthored with Justin Piers Gellatly in 2007). Henderson has indeed been identified as starting a trend in dining and food publishing, focusing on sustainably using as food the entirety of any animal killed for this purpose, but which mostly focuses on using all parts of pigs. In publishing, this includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book, Peter Kaminsky’s Pig Perfect, subtitled Encounters with Some Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them, John Barlow’s Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain and Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes (2008). In restaurants, it certainly includes The Spotted Pig. So pervasive has embrace of whole beast pork consumption been in New York that, by 2007, Bruni could write that these are: “porky times, fatty times, which is to say very good times indeed. Any new logo for the city could justifiably place the Big Apple in the mouth of a spit-roasted pig” (Bruni). This demand set the stage perfectly for, in October 2007, Henderson to travel to New York to cook pork-rich menus at The Spotted Pig in tandem with Bloomfield (Royer). He followed this again in 2008 and, by 2009, this annual event had become known as “FergusStock” and was covered by local as well as UK media, and a range of US food weblogs. By 2009, it had grown to become a dinner at the Spotted Pig with half the dishes on the menu by Henderson and half by Bloomfield, and a dinner the next night at David Chang’s acclaimed Michelin-starred Momofuku Noodle Bar, which is famed for its Cantonese-style steamed pork belly buns. A third dinner (and then breakfast/brunch) followed at Friedman/Bloomfield’s Breslin Bar and Dining Room (discussed below) (Rose). The Spotted Pig dinners have become famed for Henderson’s pig’s head and pork trotter dishes with the chef himself recognising that although his wasn’t “the most obvious food to cook for America”, it was the case that “at St John, if a couple share a pig’s head, they tend to be American” (qtd. in Rose). In 2009, the pigs’ head were presented in pies which Henderson has described as “puff pastry casing, with layers of chopped, cooked pig’s head and potato, so all the lovely, bubbly pig’s head juices go into the potato” (qtd. in Rose). Bloomfield was aged only 28 when, in 2003, with a recommendation from Jamie Oliver, she interviewed for, and won, the position of executive chef of The Spotted Pig (Fabricant; Q&A). Following this introduction to the US, her reputation as a chef has grown based on the strength of her pork expertise. Among a host of awards, she was named one of US Food & Wine magazine’s ten annual Best New Chefs in 2007. In 2009, she was a featured solo session titled “Pig, Pig, Pig” at the fourth Annual International Chefs Congress, a prestigious New York City based event where “the world’s most influential and innovative chefs, pastry chefs, mixologists, and sommeliers present the latest techniques and culinary concepts to their peers” (Starchefs.com). Bloomfield demonstrated breaking down a whole suckling St. Canut milk raised piglet, after which she butterflied, rolled and slow-poached the belly, and fried the ears. As well as such demonstrations of expertise, she is also often called upon to provide expert comment on pork-related news stories, with The Spotted Pig regularly the subject of that food news. For example, when a rare, heritage Hungarian pig was profiled as a “new” New York pork source in 2009, this story arose because Bloomfield had served a Mangalitsa/Berkshire crossbreed pig belly and trotter dish with Agen prunes (Sanders) at The Spotted Pig. Bloomfield was quoted as the authority on the breed’s flavour and heritage authenticity: “it took me back to my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, windows steaming from the roasting pork in the oven […] This pork has that same authentic taste” (qtd. in Sanders). Bloomfield has also used this expert profile to support a series of pork-related causes. These include the Thanksgiving Farm in the Catskill area, which produces free range pork for its resident special needs children and adults, and helps them gain meaningful work-related skills in working with these pigs. Bloomfield not only cooks for the project’s fundraisers, but also purchases any excess pigs for The Spotted Pig (Estrine 103). This strong focus on pork is not, however, exclusive. The Spotted Pig is also one of a number of American restaurants involved in the Meatless Monday campaign, whereby at least one vegetarian option is included on menus in order to draw attention to the benefits of a plant-based diet. When, in 2008, Bloomfield beat the Iron Chef in the sixth season of the US version of the eponymous television program, the central ingredient was nothing to do with pork—it was olives. Diversifying from this focus on ‘pig’ can, however, be dangerous. Friedman and Bloomfield’s next enterprise after The Spotted Pig was The John Dory seafood restaurant at the corner of 10th Avenue and 16th Street. This opened in November 2008 to reviews that its food was “uncomplicated and nearly perfect” (Andrews 22), won Bloomfield Time Out New York’s 2009 “Best New Hand at Seafood” award, but was not a success. The John Dory was a more formal, but smaller, restaurant that was more expensive at a time when the financial crisis was just biting, and was closed the following August. Friedman blamed the layout, size and neighbourhood (Stein) and its reservation system, which limited walk-in diners (ctd. in Vallis), but did not mention its non-pork, seafood orientation. When, almost immediately, another Friedman/Bloomfield project was announced, the Breslin Bar & Dining Room (which opened in October 2009 in the Ace Hotel at 20 West 29th Street and Broadway), the enterprise was closely modeled on the The Spotted Pig. In preparation, its senior management—Bloomfield, Friedman and sous-chefs, Nate Smith and Peter Cho (who was to become the Breslin’s head chef)—undertook a tasting tour of the UK that included Henderson’s St. John Bread & Wine Bar (Leventhal). Following this, the Breslin’s menu highlighted a series of pork dishes such as terrines, sausages, ham and potted styles (Rosenberg & McCarthy), with even Bloomfield’s pork scratchings (crispy pork rinds) bar snacks garnering glowing reviews (see, for example, Severson; Ghorbani). Reviewers, moreover, waxed lyrically about the menu’s pig-based dishes, the New York Times reviewer identifying this focus as catering to New York diners’ “fetish for pork fat” (Sifton). This representative review details not only “an entree of gently smoked pork belly that’s been roasted to tender goo, for instance, over a drift of buttery mashed potatoes, with cabbage and bacon on the side” but also a pig’s foot “in gravy made of reduced braising liquid, thick with pillowy shallots and green flecks of deconstructed brussels sprouts” (Sifton). Sifton concluded with the proclamation that this style of pork was “very good: meat that is fat; fat that is meat”. Concluding remarks Bloomfield has listed Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie as among her favourite food books. Publishers Weekly reviewer called Ruhlman “a food poet, and the pig is his muse” (Q&A). In August 2009, it was reported that Bloomfield had always wanted to write a cookbook (Marx) and, in July 2010, HarperCollins imprint Ecco publisher and foodbook editor Dan Halpern announced that he was planning a book with her, tentatively titled, A Girl and Her Pig (Andriani “Ecco Expands”). As a “cookbook with memoir running throughout” (Maurer), this will discuss the influence of the pig on her life as well as how to cook pork. This text will obviously also add to the data known about The Spotted Pig, but until then, this brief gastrobiography has attempted to outline some of the human, and in this case, animal, stories that lie behind all businesses. References Andrews, Colman. “Its Up To You, New York, New York.” Gourmet Apr. (2009): 18-22, 111. Andriani, Lynn. “Ecco Expands Cookbook Program: HC Imprint Signs Up Seven New Titles.” Publishers Weekly 12 Jul. (2010) 3 Sep. 2010 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/cooking/article/43803-ecco-expands-cookbook-program.html Andriani, Lynn. “Gourmand Awards Receive Record Number of Cookbook Entries.” Publishers Weekly 27 Sep. 2010 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/cooking/article/44573-gourmand-awards-receive-record-number-of-cookbook-entries.html Appadurai, Arjun. 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IntroductionUtopian and forward looking in tenor, official narratives of urban renewal and development implicitly promote normative ideals of progress and necessary civic improvement. Yet an underlying condition of such renewal is frequently the very opposite of building: the demolition of existing urban fabric. Taking as its starting point the large-scale demolition of buildings proposed for the NSW Government’s Sydney Metro rail project, this article interrogates the role of literary treatments of demolition in mediating complex, and often contradictory, responses to transformations of the built environment. Case studies are drawn from literary texts in which demolition and infrastructure development are key preoccupations, notably Louis Aragon’s 1926 Surrealist document of a threatened Parisian arcade, Paris Peasant, and the non-fiction accounts of the redevelopment of London’s East End by British writer Iain Sinclair. Sydney UnbuiltPresently, Australia’s biggest public transport project according to the NSW Government website, the Sydney Metro is set to revolutionise Sydney’s rail future with more than 30 metro stations and a fleet of fully-automated driverless trains. Its impetus extends at least as far back as the Liberal-National Coalition’s landslide win at the 2011 New South Wales state election when Barry O’Farrell, then party leader, declared “NSW has to be rebuilt” (qtd in Aston). Infrastructure upgrades became one of the Coalition’s key priorities upon forming government. Following a second Coalition win at the 2015 election, the state of NSW, or the city of Sydney more accurately, remains today deep amidst widespread building works with an unprecedented number of infrastructure, development and urban renewal projects simultaneously underway.From an historical perspective, Sydney is certainly no stranger to demolition. This was in evidence in Demolished Sydney, an exhibition at the Museum of Sydney that captured the zeitgeist of 2016 with its historical survey of Sydney’s demolished architecture. As the exhibition media release pointed out: “Since 1788 Sydney has been built, unbuilt and rebuilt as it has grown from Georgian town to Victorian city to the global urban centre it is today” (Museum of Sydney). What this evolutionist narrative glosses over, however, is the extent to which the impact of Sydney’s significant reinventions of itself through large-scale redevelopment are often not properly registered until well after such changes have taken place. With the imminent commencement of Sydney Metro Stage 2 CBD works, the city similarly stands to lose a number of buildings that embody the civic urban ideals of an earlier era, the effects of which are unlikely to be fully appreciated until the project’s post-demolition phase. The revelation, over the past year, of the full extent of demolition required to build Sydney Metro casts a spotlight on the project and raises questions about its likely impact in reconfiguring the character of Sydney’s inner city. An Environmental Impact Statement Summary (EISS) released by the NSW Government in May 2016 confirms that 79 buildings in the CBD and surrounding suburbs are slated for demolition as part of station development plans for the Stage 2 Chatswood to Sydenham line (Transport for NSW). Initial assurances were that the large majority of acquisitions would be commercial buildings. Yet, the mix also comprises some locally-heritage listed structures including, most notably, 7 Elizabeth Street Sydney (Image 1), a residential apartment tower of 54 studio flats located at the top end of the Sydney central business district.Image 1: 7 Elizabeth Street Sydney apartment towers (middle). Architect: Emil Sodersten. Image credit: Ella Mudie.As the sole surviving block of CBD flats constructed during the 1930s, 7 Elizabeth Street had been identified by the Australian Institute of Architects as an example of historically significant twentieth-century residential architecture. Furthermore, the modernist block is aesthetically significant as the work of prominent Art Deco architect Emil Sodersten (1899-1961) and interior designer Marion Hall Best (1905-1988). Disregarding recommendations that the building should be retained and conserved, Transport for NSW compulsorily acquired the block, evicting residents in late 2016 from one of the few remaining sources of affordable housing in the inner-city. Meanwhile, a few blocks down at 302 Pitt Street the more than century-old Druids House (Image 2) is also set to be demolished for the Metro development. Prior to purchase by Transport for NSW, the property had been slated for a state-of-the-art adaptive reuse as a boutique hotel which would have preserved the building’s façade and windows. In North Sydney, a locally heritage listed shopfront at 187 Miller Street, one of the few examples of the Victorian Italianate style remaining on the street, faces a similar fate. Image 2. Druids House, 302 Pitt Street Sydney. Image credit: Ella Mudie.Beyond the bureaucratic accounting of the numbers and locations of demolitions outlined in the NSW Government’s EISS, this survey of disappearing structures highlights to what extent, large-scale transport infrastructure projects like Sydney Metro, can reshape what the Situationists termed the “psychogeography” of a city; the critical manner in which places and environments affect our emotions and behaviour. With their tendency to erase traces of the city’s past and to smooth over its textures, those variegations in the urban fabric that emerge from the interrelationship of the built environment with the lived experience of a space, the changes wrought by infrastructure and development thus manifest a certain anguish of urban dynamism that is connected to broader anxieties over modernity’s “speed of change and the ever-changing horizons of time and space” (Huyssen 23). Indeed, just as startling as the disappearance of older and more idiosyncratic structures is the demolition of newer building stock which, in the case of Sydney Metro, includes the slated demolition of a well-maintained 22-storey commercial office tower at 39 Martin Place (Image 3). Completed in just 1972, the fact that the lifespan of this tower will amount to less than fifty years points to the rapid obsolescence, and sheer disposability, of commercial building stock in the twenty first-century. It is also indicative of the drive towards destruction that operates within the project of modernism itself. Pondering the relationship of modernist architecture to time, Guiliana Bruno asks: can we really speak of a modernist ruin? Unlike the porous, permeable stone of ancient building, the material of modernism does not ‘ruin.’ Concrete does not decay. It does not slowly erode and corrode, fade out or fade away. It cannot monumentally disintegrate. In some way, modernist architecture does not absorb the passing of time. Adverse to deterioration, it does not age easily, gracefully or elegantly. (80)In its resistance to organic ruination, Bruno’s comment thus implies it is demolition that will be the fate of the large majority of the urban building stock of the twentieth century and beyond. In this way, Sydney Metro is symptomatic of far broader cycles of replenishment and renewal at play in cities around the world, bringing to the fore timely questions about demolition and modernity, the conflict between economic development and the civic good, and social justice concerns over the public’s right to the city. Image 3: 39 Martin Place Sydney. Image credit: Ella Mudie.In the second part of this article, I turn to literary treatments of demolition in order to consider what role the writer might play in giving expression to some of the conflicts and tensions, as exemplified by Sydney Metro, that manifest in ‘unbuilding’ the city. How might literature, I ask, be uniquely placed to mobilise critique? And to what extent does the writer—as both a detached observer and engaged participant in the city—occupy an ambivalent stance especially sensitive to the inherent contradictions and paradoxes of the built environment’s relationship to modernity?Iain Sinclair: Calling Time on the Grand Projects For more than two decades, British author Iain Sinclair has been mapping the shifting terrain of London and its edgelands across a spectrum of experimental fiction and non-fiction works. In addition to the thematic attention paid to neoliberal capitalist processes of urban renewal and their tendency to implode established ties between place, memory and identity, Sinclair’s hybrid documentary-novels are especially pertinent to the analysis of “writing demolition” for their distinct writerly approach. Two recent texts, Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project (2011) and London Overground: A Day’s Walk around the Ginger Line (2015), highlight an intensification of interest on Sinclair’s part in the growing influence exerted by global finance, hyper consumerism and security fears on the reterritorialisation of the English capital. Written in the lead up to the 2012 London Olympics, Ghost Milk is Sinclair’s scathing indictment of the corporate greed that fuelled the large-scale redevelopment of Stratford and its surrounds ahead of the Games. It is an angry and vocal response to urban transformation, a sustained polemic intensified by the author’s local perspective. A long-term resident of East London, in the 1970s Sinclair worked as a labourer at Chobham Farm and thus feels a personal assault in how Stratford “abdicated its fixed identity and willingly prostituted itself as a backdrop for experimental malls, rail hubs and computer generated Olympic parks” (28). For Sinclair, the bulldozing of the Stratford and Hackney boroughs was performed in the name of a so-called civic legacy beyond the Olympic spectacle that failed to culminate in anything more than a “long march towards a theme park without a theme” (11), a site emblematic of the bland shopping mall architecture of what Sinclair derisorily terms “the GP [Grand Project] era” (125).As a literary treatment of demolition Ghost Milk is particularly concerned with the compromised role of language in urban planning rhetoric. The redevelopment required for the Olympics is backed by a “fraudulent narrative” (99), says Sinclair, a conspiratorial co-optation of language made to bend in the service of urban gentrification. “In many ways,” he writes, “the essential literature of the GP era is the proposal, the bullet-point pitch, the perversion of natural language into weasel forms of not-saying” (125). This impoverishment and simplification of language, Sinclair argues, weakens the critical thinking required to recognise the propagandising tendencies underlying so many urban renewal programs.The author’s vocal admonishment of the London Olympics did not go unnoticed. In 2008 a reading from his forthcoming book Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire (2009), at a local library was cancelled out of fear of providing a public platform for his negative views. In Ghost Milk Sinclair reflects upon the treatment of his not yet published docu-novel as “found guilty, with no right of reply, of being political but somehow outside politics” (115). Confronted with the type of large-scale change that underpins such projects as the Olympic Games, or the Sydney Metro closer to home, Sinclair’s predicament points to the ambiguous position of influence occupied by writers. On the one hand, influence is limited in so far as authors play no formal part in the political process. Yet, when outspoken critique resonates words can become suddenly powerful, radically undermining the authority of slick environmental impact statements and sanctioned public consultation findings. In a more poetic sense, Sinclair’s texts are further influential for the way in which they offer a subjective mythologising of the city as a counterpoint to the banal narratives of bureaucratised urbanism. This is especially apparent in London Overground: A Day’s Walk around the Ginger Line (2015), in which Sinclair recounts a single-day street-level pedestrian exploration of the 35-mile and 33-station circuit of the new London Overground railway line. Surveying with disapproval the “new bridges, artisan bakeries, blue-bike racks and coffee shops” (20) that have sprung up along the route of the elevated railway, the initial gambit of the text appears to be to critique the London Overground as a “device for boosting property values” (23). Rail zone as “generator for investment” (31), and driver of the political emasculation of suburbs like Hackney and Shoreditch. Yet as the text develops the narrator appears increasingly drawn to the curious manner in which the Overground line performs an “accidental re-mapping of London” (24). He drifts, then, in search of: a site in which to confront one’s shadow. In a degraded form, this was the ambition behind our orbital tramp. To be attentive to the voices; to walk beside our shadow selves. To reverse the polarity of incomprehensible public schemes, the secret motors of capital defended and promoted by professionally mendacious politicians capable of justifying anything. (London Overground 127)Summoning the oneiric qualities of the railway and its inclination to dreaming and reverie, Sinclair reimagines it as divine oracle, a “ladder of initiation” (47) bisecting resonant zones animated by traces of the visionary artists and novelists whose sensitivity to place have shaped the perception of the London boroughs in the urban imaginary. It is in this manner that Sinclair’s walks generate “an oppositional perspective against the grand projects of centralized planning and management of space” (Weston 261). In a kind of poetic re-enchantment of urban space, texts like Ghost Milk and London Overground shatter the thin veneer of present-day capitalist urbanism challenging the reader to conceive of alternative visions of the city as heterogeneous and imbued with deep historical time.Louis Aragon: Demolition and ModernityWhile London Overground was composed after the construction of the new railway circuit, the pre-demolition phase of a project is, by comparison, a threshold moment. Literary responses to impending demolition are thus shaped in an unstable context as the landscape of a city becomes subject to unpredictable changes that can unfold at a very swift pace. Declan Tan suggests that the writing of Ghost Milk in the lead up to the London Olympics marks Sinclair’s disapproval as “futile, Ghost Milk is knowingly written as a documentary of near-history, an archival treatment of 2012 now, before it happens.” Yet, paradoxically it is the very futility of Sinclair’s project that intensifies the urgency to record, sharpening his polemic. This notion of writing a “documentary of near-history” also suggests a certain breach in time, which in the case of Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant is mined for its revolutionary energies.First published in book form in 1926, Paris Peasant is an experimental Surrealist novel comprising four collage-like fragments including Aragon’s famous panegyric on the Passage de l’Opéra, a nineteenth-century Parisian arcade slated for demolition to make way for a new access road to the Boulevard Haussmann. Reading the text in the present era of Sydney Metro works, the predicament of the disappearing Opera Arcade resonates with the fate of the threatened Art Deco tower at 7 Elizabeth Street, soon to be razed to build a new metro station. Critical of the media’s overall neglect of the redevelopment, Aragon’s text pays sympathetic attention to the plight of the arcade’s business owners, railing against the injustices of their imminent eviction whilst mourning the disappearance of one of the last vestiges of the more organic configuration of the city that preceded the Haussmann renovation of Paris:the great American passion for city planning, imported into Paris by a prefect of police during the Second Empire and now being applied to the task of redrawing the map of our capital in straight lines, will soon spell the doom of these human aquariums. (Aragon 14)In light of these concerns it is tempting to cast Paris Peasant as a classic anti-development polemic. However, closer interrogation of the narrator’s ambivalent stance points to a more complicated attitude towards urban renewal. For, as he casts a forensic eye across the arcade’s shops it becomes apparent that these threatened sites hold a certain lure of attraction for the Surrealist author. The explanatory genre of the guide-book is subverted in a highly imaginative inventory of the arcade interiors. Touring its baths, brothels and hair salon, shoe shine parlour, run-down theatre, and the Café Certa—meeting place of the Surrealists—the narrator’s perambulation provides a launching point for intoxicated reveries and effervescent flights of fancy. Finally, the narrator concedes: “I would never have thought of myself as an observer. I like to let the winds and the rain blow through me: chance is my only experience, hazard my sole experiment” (88). Neither a journalist nor an historian, Paris Peasant’s narrator is not concerned merely to document the Opera Arcade for posterity. Rather, his interest in the site resides in its liminal state. On the cusp of being transformed into something else, the ontological instability of the arcade provides a dramatic illustration of the myth of architecture’s permanency. Aragon’s novel is concerned then, Abigail Susik notes, with the “insatiable momentum of progress,” and how it “renders all the more visible what could be called the radical remainders of modernity: the recently ruined, lately depleted, presently-passé entities that, for better and for worse, multiply and accumulate in the wake of accelerated production and consumption in industrial society” (34). Drawing comparison with Walter Benjamin’s sprawling Arcades Project, a kaleidoscopic critique of commodity culture, Paris Vaclav similarly characterises Paris Peasant as manifesting a distinct form of “political affect: one of melancholy for the destruction of the arcades yet also of a decidedly non-conservative devotion to aesthetic innovation” (24).Sensitive to the contradictory nature of progress under late capitalist modernity, Paris Peasant thus recognises destruction as an underlying condition of change and innovation as was typical of avant-garde texts of the early twentieth century. Yet Aragon resists fatalism in his simultaneous alertness to the radical potential of the marvellous in the everyday, searching for the fault lines in ordinary reality beneath which poetic re-enchantment challenges the status quo of modern life. In this way, Aragon’s experimental novel sketches the textures and psychogeographies of the city, tracing its detours and shifts in ambience, the relationship of architecture to dreams, memory and fantasy; those composite layers of a city that official documents and masterplans rarely ascribe value to and which literary authors are uniquely placed to capture in their writings on cities. ConclusionUnable to respond within the swift publication timeframes of journalistic articles, the novelist is admittedly not well-placed to halt the demolition of buildings. In this article, I have sought to argue that the power and agency of the literary response resides, rather, in its long view and the subjective perspective of the author. At the time of writing, Sydney Metro is poised to involve a scale of demolition that has not been seen in Sydney for several decades and which will transform the city in a manner that, to date, has largely passed uncritiqued. The works of Iain Sinclair and Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant point to the capacity of literary texts to deconstruct those broader forces that increasingly reshape the city without proper consideration; exposing the seductive ideology of urban renewal and the false promises of grand projects that transform multifaceted cityscapes into homogenous non-places. The literary text thus makes visible what is easily missed in the experience of everyday life, forcing us to consider the losses that haunt every gain in the building and rebuilding of the city.ReferencesAragon, Louis. Paris Peasant. Trans. Simon Taylor Watson. Boston: Exact Change, 1994. Aston, Heath. “We’ll Govern for All.” Sydney Morning Herald 27 Mar. 2011. 23 Feb. 2017 <http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/state-election-2011/well-govern-for-all-20110326-1cbbf.html>. Bruno, Guiliana. “Modernist Ruins, Filmic Archaeologies.” Ruins. Ed. Brian Dillon. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2011. 76-81.Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003.Museum of Sydney. Demolished Sydney Media Release. Sydney: Sydney Living Museums 20 Oct. 2016. 25 Feb. 2017 <http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/2016/12/05/new-exhibition-demolished-sydney>.Paris, Vaclav. “Uncreative Influence: Louis Aragon’s Paysan de Paris and Walter Benjamin’s Passagen-Werk.” Journal of Modern Literature 37.1 (Autumn 2013): 21-39.Sinclair, Iain. Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project. London: Penguin, 2012. ———. Hackney, That Rose Red Empire. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2009.———. London Overground: A Day’s Walk around the Ginger Line. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2015.Susik, Abigail. “Paris 1924: Aragon, Le Corbusier, and the Question of the Outmoded.” Wreck: Graduate Journal of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory 2.2 (2008): 29-44.Tan, Declan. “Review of Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project by Iain Sinclair.” Huffington Post 15 Dec. 2011; updated 14 Feb. 2012. 21 Feb 2017 <http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/declan-tan/ghost-milk-ian-sinclair-review_b_1145692.html>. Transport for NSW, Chatswood to Sydenham: Environmental Impact Statement Summary. 25 Mar. 2017 <http://www.sydneymetro.info>. Sydney: NSW Government, May-June 2016.Weston, David. “Against the Grand Project: Iain Sinclair’s Local London.” Contemporary Literature 56.2 (Summer 2015): 255-79.