Plans changed

This past weekend, Gillian and I ventured to Asheville. No mission objective, just getting out of town for a few hours and enjoying the drive. I managed to acquire a few things--some zine I have yet to read, a Crimethinc mag, and a collection of some of Edward Abbey's writings. She got a book with some of Plato's writings and Slaughterhouse-Five (I was proud about that.)

Anyway, what transpired on this mini-trip was the decision to re-route the coming years to North Carolina instead of Virginia. Gillian can transfer to NC State and save a lot of money (she's out-of-state at Radford University), and I can avoid coming back to school at RU. Right now, the plan is for the both of us to move to Raleigh sometime during the coming summer, possibly living together. I'll have to live in the state for a year to gain that status which lowers my tuition costs, and I plan on trying to enter the English graduate department at NC State the following year.

This change of plans sets me back another year on entering a master's program, which is bothersome and unnerving. Simultaneously, it should give me a greater sense of freedom and exposure to culture. I guess. I don't think I could tolerate another two years in Radford; the students are rarely engaged in their studies, the school itself doesn't tend to cater to intellectual growth outside of the classrom, and finally, most of the people I cared about here have moved on or fallen out of my graces (or I out of theirs).

Okay, so right now I'm reading The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter, by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. Singer is already well-known as one of the world's leading animal rights activists, and his book Animal Liberation (1975, I think) is viewed as a manifesto by many. As I near my third year as a vegetarian, I'm still not fully absorbed into the animal rights movement, but it's been more result of laziness and not having much money as opposed to any moral (or amoral) convictions.

Halfway through this book, I haven't found many eye-openers; I knew a majority of what's been covered already. But what has gotten to me is the vile treatment that many animals are forced to suffer--without being killed. Not only do Singer and Mason cover the slaughterhouse nightmares (which have been extensively covered already), but they pay particular attention to how food is labeled, transported, marketed, etc. While one may encounter "organic" and "free-range" labels on a variety of supermarket brands, the federal standards to which those corporations are held often aren't standards that actually provide farm animals with the adequate space and enivirons to live life as its respective species type would have it do if it were not in captivity.

Now, not being well-versed in what's been written on the subject (and I don't mean PETA pamphlets), I'm not in the position to compare the duo's work to that of others. I do think that the book's taking into account the detrimental environmental effects of factory farming is one that is often overlooked by mainstream vegetarians, though I don't say that to dismiss even in the slightest the abhorrence of animal cruelty.

More of an update on that when I finish the book...which, if I'm on schedule, should be by Friday. But with my track record of reading half of something and moving on...

I found my copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I wish I was well-read enough to proclaim it the best American novel ever written, but I'm not. Maybe one day, after I've absorbed Faulkner and Hemingway, and lots of others who I'm bound to learn about in the coming years.