Farm News 09-23-07

Sunday morning, after chores. Today the Autumnal Equinox occurs: the day and night are both 12 hours long.

Barn News

Earlier this summer, Buck, the male goat, died, probably of old age. This left me coming into goat breeding season without a male breeder; Lucy is beginning to complain. Gestation for goats is 5 months. Now that breeding season has started, Lucy will come into standing heat, ready to breed, every two or three weeks until winter, probably. She will be making a lot of noise, constantly looking for ways to get through the fence, and generally being a nuisance until she is bred. Even so, I want to wait for a while. April is a better time for babies than is March.

Suzette is due to have bunnies in a week. She is acting like she always does, napping in her cage. Domestic rabbits can lead a pretty quiet life. I a few pieces of wood in the hutches to give them something to chew. They play with their sticks a bit, but rabbits don't seem to be much for playing with sticks. There are four young rabbits in the rearing hutch who need to be moved out, so it's time to butcher. Yuk. Not fun.

Shotgun is walking around looking like a bag of flour with cat legs, head, and tail attached. The kitten countdown is beginning, but we don't know when it will end; sometime soon, I imagine. Late kittens grow more slowly, which means we have cute little kittens in the barn for a longer period of time.

Weasel, the Low-Rider Labrador, is a nice animal; she likes children, seldom jumps up on someone, and, occasionally, will bark at predators. Her greatest skill is in finding dead animals, nice, ripe, dead animals, and rolling in their remains. Now, she might think this makes her a hot item; I'm sure any male dog that visits would love to sniff her aroma. Humans, on the other hand, do not seem to have the ability to appreciate the nuances of the aroma of rotting skunk. We are expecting guests for a brunch on Sunday, so Weasel found a dead something and rolled in it on Friday. Paula gave her a bath, and Weasel behaved herself during the procedure, but I am certain she will go back out Sunday morning, just before the guests begin to arrive, and roll again in whatever dead thing it was that she found. Man's best friend.

Daily Planning

I thought that, when I retired, I was finished with 'living by the book', carrying an appointment book to keep track of what I was supposed to do and when I was supposed to do it. Isn't retirement supposed to bring freedom from such constraints imposed by the world of work? Well, I've decided to start using an appointment book again.

I don't have a lot of appointments to remember, but, all too frequently, I can't remember those few. Most of my appointments are health care related, I see the dentist and optometrist twice a year, and at each visit they generally find some reason for me to make another appointment to take care of something else. The dentist is the worst.

Twice a year I go to the dentist, lie back in a comfortable chair, and let a pretty woman with golden flowers in her hair poke around inside my mouth with strange instruments. After she has extracted what pleasure she can from the act of poking around inside my mouth with strange instruments, the dentist comes in to check her work. He, also, seems to experience some sort of strange pleasure when poking around in my mouth with strange instruments, a situation which might or might not have some relationship with the fact that he is married to a dentist.

After the dentist has poked around for a while and said, “Hmm,” a few times, he then tells the pretty woman with golden flowers in her hair to make an appointment for me to “fix up number 7 distal cusp,” a procedure that I am certain I won't like. Then I have to get up out of the comfortable chair, which I was starting to enjoy, so the pretty woman with golden flowers in her hair can take me by the hand and lead me to the reception area, pull out a large book, and write my name in it with a quill made of a buzzard's feather dipped in blood instead of ink. She then writes the information on a small card, hands the card to me, smiles, and says, “Goodbye.”

All that rigmarole costs a ridiculous amount of money. For that kind of money, instead of a pretty woman with golden flowers in her hair, I should get a nude exotic dancer putting strange instruments in my mouth.

Anyway, I return home, where I transcribe the information on the little card to my appointment book, and then put the little card on the front of the refrigerator, near the pictures of grandchildren. A week before the appointment is due, and then, again, a day before, another pretty woman will call me to remind me of the upcoming appointment. It is as if an army of forces is marshaled to make certain I go to the dental office for the appointment.

I'm too old to rebel any more. I just want to do what I have to do to satisfy all these demands and hope they don't increase in either quantity or intensity. The new appointment book is lying on the table, where I will see it as I sit down for breakfast each morning. Again, I will live by the book.

Psychopathy

There is no index entry in DSM-III, the official taxonomy of mental disorders, for psychopathy, yet this week I heard a psychiatrist use the word on NPR. She was talking about sex offenders, saying that pedophiles generally have a higher degree of psychopathy than other sex offenders. I've had the opportunity to talk to two convicted violent pedophiles and discuss their sexual deviations with them. They were not nice guys, in fact, they gave me the creeps after I had talked to them for awhile. Here is how Wikipedia defines psychopathy:

Psychopathy is defined in psychiatry and clinical psychology as a condition characterized by lack of empathy or conscience, and poor impulse control or manipulative behaviors. It is a term derived from the Greek psyche (soul, breath hence mind) and pathos (to suffer), and was once used to denote any form of mental illness, often being confused with psychosis. The term is often used interchangeably with sociopathy and antisocial personality disorder, but there are differences among the three.

The Wikipedia definition strikes the nail on the head with “. . . lack of empathy or conscience . . .,” from the basis of my limited experience. Both of the child molesters left me thinking that, for them, it wasn't the sex, it was showing the world that they could do such things without any pangs of remorse, that they were 'stronger' because they could rape babies and never regret it.

The image I had previously carried of a psychopath was that of a person who was driven by what he perceived as demons to commit horrendous acts. These guys weren't driven by demons, they were the demons. They were incapable of feeling guilt for their behavior, not by choice, but by birth, it appeared. They had no recollections of ever having experienced guilt or remorse for any of their actions.

Not all criminals are psychopaths, nor are all psychopaths criminals, nor do we have a way of measuring the degree of psychopathy exhibited by any individual, nor do we know just what are the exact symptoms of psychopathy. Nevertheless, using the rough description, 'lack of empathy or conscience', most of us can say, “I know such a person.”

We seem to be genetically coded to respond with anger toward anyone who we see 'cheating', whether it is pushing in at the head of the line, or murdering children. To survive, psychopaths must be careful to learn all the rules. Without any internal guides to proper behavior, they can commit horrendous crimes, never realizing that they are doing something wrong. However, it is that very lack of comprehension which we must take into account when calling a psychopath to account for his behavior. Unlike most of us, the psychopath lacks the ability to understand the wrongness of their acts, meaning that saying, “You should have known better,” makes no sense, because the psychopath cannot 'know better'.

As a society, what should we do with psychopathic criminals? Many citizens think child molesters should be executed, but I have a real problem with a government executing its citizens. In a democracy, under the rule of law, we can judge the wrongness of their acts, but I question the morality of trying to judge their right to live. Thus, I think we should lock them up for life, not as a punishment, but as a way to protect our children from them. Punishing them will not grant them the ability to feel guilt, it only fulfills our desire for vengeance. Lock them away, feed them decently, give them access to entertainment, provide health care, and treat them with compassion, an emotion they cannot understand.

War Against Youth

Ever hear of the 'zoot suit riots'? They occurred in 1943, in Los Angeles, and seemed to be mostly a few street fights between US Navy sailors and young local men of Latin American extraction. Here is what Wikipedia says about 'zoot suit':

A zoot suit has high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed pegged trousers (called tramas) and a long coat (called the carlango) with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. Often zoot suiters wear a felt hat with a long feather (called a tapa or tanda) and pointy, French-style shoes (called calcos). A young Malcolm X described the zoot suit as: "a killer-diller coat with a drape shape, reet pleats and shoulders padded like a lunatic's cell." Zoot suits usually featured a key chain dangling from the belt to the knee or below, then back to a side pocket.

Zoot suits were for special occasions – such as a dance or a birthday party. The amount of material and tailoring required made them luxury items. Many young people wore a more moderate version of the "extra-bagged" pants or styled their hair in the signature "duck tail."

The oversized suit was an extravagant personal style and a declaration of freedom and auto-determination; although many people still consider it a "rebellious garment to the era."

I thought that my generation invented the duck tail hair style, but now I find out that the zoot suiters wore it, too. And, the zoot suiters invented baggy pants. It's so difficult to be original. Zoot suits originally became popular among Spanish speaking young men. The current baggy pants first became popular among African-American young men. Perhaps minority cultures are the environment in which extravagant styles tend to originate. In 1954 I had a great duck tail, and in 1944 zoot suiters had duck tails. Today young men wear weird pants, in 1937 young men wore strange pants. Damn! It's really hard to be original.

The hippies seemed to have a lot of originality. They were pretty, for one thing. Most rebellious youths seem to be intent on presenting a harsh, uninviting, appearance. Hippies, with their brightly colored clothing, flowers, and bells, presented a very warm, pretty appearance. Their message of peace, love, and dope wasn't terribly dangerous to civilization as we know it, but, still, they generated a tremendous amount of anger and fear, mostly over the long hair on males.

What is so scary about young men with long hair, or baggy pants, or body piercings? We all know what is on their minds: sex, the subject that has occupied at least 85% of the conscious thought of young men for at least 5,000 years. What is so scary about them if they look like something only the silliest of teen-age girls would choose for a sex partner? Perhaps the problem is that we think teen-age girls are as foolish as they appear.

If we would read between the lines of our 5,000 years of history, we would know that females are genetically inclined to select reliable mates, and to avoid pregnancy until those mates have committed to lifelong fidelity. And, we should know from the same history that reliability is not determined by hair length, trouser design, or quantity of facial hardware. Finally, we should know from that history that our opinions of young people are generally nonsense.