Bad Will Hunting
Just back from a fabulous week in New York. Doing the family thang and all that. Saw one mediocre play (Reckless) and one fabulous show (Cookin'). Too many great meals to list. Thanksgiving vegetarian creation for this year: Pumpkin Ravioli in Cinnamon Brown Butter. Very easy. Cook ravioli. Brown butter - just throw some butter in a sauce pan, heat over a medium-low flame, skim off foam as it develops, cook until nicely brown. Add some cinnamon to taste, toss in some dried cranberries. Serve with toasted walnuts and pepitas. Yum. Also got together with my college don (faculty advisor to you poor souls who attended neither Sarah Lawrence nor Oxford). Really great time all around.
One sour note: discussion of impending bear hunt in New Jersey. I understand the issues about managing wildlife on the human/nature interface, and it is quite complex.
To those who don't think it's complex, or think it's just wrong to kill the animals, I strongly recommend The Beast In The Garden which is about mountain lions in Boulder, Colorado. But I have a hard time reconciling killing bears with preserving suburban life in New Jersey. Serious disconnect. Not to mention that I really like bears. In any case, this brings up one of my pet peeves. This whole concept of hunting as 'sport.' It seems to me that one of the fundamental rules of sport is that there is a requirement for fairness. You talk to hunters and they will talk about matching wits with animals, and insist that it is a sport because the animal has a chance of getting away. Sorry, but this doesn't fit my definition of sport. This definition makes hunting a skill, which I don't question. But sport? No. To be sport we need a guarantee of equivalent stakes for both sides. 'I win you die, you win I live' is clearly unfair.
To truly be sport there must be an equal chance of either the hunter or the hunted being killed. This can be easily controlled by choice of weapon, although it clearly rules out some prey. Otherwise, it's just organized slaughter. Those who protest would do well to remember the example set by Theodore Roosevelt. When he was presented with a penned-up bear for slaughtering, he refused to pull the trigger (thus the Teddy Bear was born, by the way). The so-called hunt in New Jersey will be, I suspect, closer to the slaughter TR refused to be part of than the sport the participants will claim. If you are going up against a small bear with a high-powered rifle and state-of-the-art scope, you are not a sportsman, just a butcher. I think it's time to bring back that old truism: Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you. It's only sporting.
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