Sunday Special: Fruit Species

One summer I decided I wanted to try new foods. I bugged all my friends to tell me about traditional fruits from their homes and find some to bring me. Thus, I was able to try Cebu dried mango straight from the Phillipines, Durians, Lychee, and mangosteen among other culinary adventures. It was a great summer.

In my quest to find out 'what I'm missing' and enlighten my mind and pallette I came across a wonderful site, Fruit Species.

Fruit Species is a wonderful blog that highlights those fruits that may not have the press they deserve. There, one can learn about the succulence of the Longan and the unique nature of the Soursop - a fruit I'd never heard of before.

For those who like new and intriguing fruits, head on over to Fruit Species and make your Sunday Special.

If you have a site you think would make Sunday Special, please leave me a link. This is something I'd like to continue each Sunday. Be it filled with cuteness, happiness, awesome artwork, or just plain positive energy feel free to let me know! Anything that would be of interest on a lazy hazy Sunday morning is up for review.

Happy Sunday!!

(image source: Tomomarusan)

Why Penny Was The Best Cat In The World (#1) – or – Stupid People I Pass On The Way To Work

(pastels on dollar store paper)

This post would be entirely different had I not just seen what I did while I walked to work. It also would have been posted earlier.

I saw a woman walking her cat on a leash.

Actually, I don’t mind that act at all. Penny had her pretty black harness with glitter and a lead. We walked in the country when I lived upstate or in the apartment building when I lived in the city. I still remember the first time I put the harness on. R. and I were roommates and she had a cat as well. Since we lived in more of a suburban land, we thought it would be good to harness train our pets to take them outside. When I went to put the harness on Penny for the first time, she just leaned against my leg and looked up at me lovingly as I fumbled with the straps and tried to figure it out. R’s cat hissed and sank to the floor. In the end, R. gave her cat a nice drag across the carpet while Penny and I went outside to sniff the flowers and sit down in the sun while she nibbled on grass.

Walking a cat is different than walking a dog. They are abiding your wishes by wearing the harness, but you go where they want to go. Also, not all cats take to the harness (plus, for some it just takes time and patience). Penny walked like a bulldog down my apartment hallways whenever we went walking in her harness. However, the minute she got spooked she zoomed into my arms or into the apartment, and she had the right to do so.

The first time I saw someone (non me or R) walking a cat on a harness was at a rabies clinic I was a volunteer for. The woman took her cat out of the box, it was on a leash, and the cat flipped out. The feline started spinning on its back and hissing. It was stressed, and should never have been taken out of the box while on that leash except by someone trained to handle it. The woman, worried that the cat in its spinning would strangle its poor furry self, reached in to soothe it and a stream of blood shot across the room. Her wrist had been slashed by a flurry of furry anxiety.

The second time was by a truly stupid person. I think Romero has it right and zombies are now, his movies are just a warning to us all. I was volunteering at a dogs walk against cancer, and a person had brought out a cat on a leash thinking it would be ‘funny’. The cat was cowering, whimpering, and frightened as it tried to escape but had nowhere to go. The owner was laughing as dogs surrounded the trapped feline, and I was livid. I do think he was kicked out of the event.

Now, I have seen responsible cat walkers, those who know their cats. There is one in my neighborhood who takes her feline out to the park to nibble grass. The cat’s temperament is one for the walk; it just ambles along looking at everything, gazing up at its human partner with affection, and is generally unafraid. Together they sit in the grass and watch the birds fly by. If that is the animal’s temperament, then go for it! I love it, it’s responsible stewardship.

But today, today as I was walking to work in Midtown Manhattan – a place populated by a lot of suits rushing to work, a lot of cars, a lot of emissions – I saw a woman walking her cat and the cat was terrified. It was as low to the ground as it could possibly get, its tail was twitching back and forth, ears back. Every time it passed one of the tiny ‘beautification’ trees the city has put up, the cat darted up as far as it could go then the body would snap as the end of the leash was reached. She was walking it with just a collar, not a full harness, so its neck was pulling against the collar which could cause so much damage to the poor fuzzy.

This was not a cat meant to be walked in such a high population area, at least, not yet. The woman was smiling and laughing each time the cat zoomed up a tree, and I was seething. The poor thing was traumatized.

I implore pet owners to take the time to learn their pet’s personalities, to not enforce your ideals on an animal that can’t comprehend things the way we do. Show the same devotion to them they show to you, and even more as we are the stewards of the planet and all living creatures on it. We need to protect, empathize, love, and listen to our surroundings and our companion animals. Don’t stress them out for some ideal that may either take time or never be reached.

What Are You A Slave Too? Another Beggar's Tale

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo: Brother Juniper and the Beggar (Oil on canvas)
The stories of the homeless are always interesting to me, having lived a life of austere poverty when young. I often read that a high portion of the homeless in NYC are mentally ill, that they really need more help than a hand-out. This I believe. We were without a home because of my mother’s bi-polar disorder, and I can only imagine the myriad of illnesses that keep people sleeping on grates and cardboard boxes rather than a home. Granted, some, like the beggar in my last tale, see it as a profession and aren’t really homeless. Then you run into the case that I’m about to tell you about.

It was a long night and I was coming home from a wrap party. I used to work in film a lot more than I do now, just simple things, but also volunteered at all the festivals held in NYC. So it was a nice party, open bar (I don’t really drink, but was talked into trying a Cosmo by some devotee of Sex In The City), and a lot of drugged-out wannabes. Not really my scene, but the gift bags were nice!

I left the party a little early and famished as the pot-smokers always bogard the hors d’oeuvres at these types of functions. As I’m walking I spy a Burger King – yeah! Affordable food. Now, as with many establishments, there is someone begging at the door. It’s funny, because they tend to not want food – just the money. Once, I asked the gentleman begging outside the door if he wanted to come in and I’d buy him a burger, he told me, “No way, that food’s too unhealthy for me!” Beggars can’t be – oh well, they can. Another time I actually bought bagels for this person who was lying on the ground and pitifully moaning about how hungry he was. He told me, in a non-moaning voice, that he was on Atkins, thanks. When I went to return the bagels there was a girl returning muffins – who had bought them for the same reason as I- and was pissed that he did take the water she bought for herself.

Anyway, while in line gazing at my limited choices (no beef for me, and at the time, no chicken either, so probably just some fries to tide me over) I overhear this woman on the phone – she works for MTV! I had been wondering about getting a job there. She’s very cordial, and we start to talk. Then matters turn to the gentleman outside the door, as I think he came in and asked her for money – by name – and she gave him a couple dollars.

“That is the greatest musician that will never be,” she sighs to me. “We found him one day, beating, just amazing sounds. This guy is wonderful. And here he is homeless! We get him in and record some stuff and then offer him this huge contract, millions of dollars.”

I’m hooked then – this homeless guy begging for money outside a BK is so profound?

“Oh yeah,” she tells me, “just amazing. So we get him out of here and put him up in a nice hotel. Only thing is, he’s a user. So we have to detox him. That’s the condition – he has to be clean. The contract is signed, there it is, millions of dollars, he just can’t use.”

Well, we already know the ending of the story. He walked away from a life of music, of living up to his potential as the best thing around, to hold the door open as people enter a fast food restaurant in hopes of getting enough spare change to get his next fix. She looks truly devastated as she tells me this, and I think my jaw went slack. To give up so much of your future, for some immediate fabricated ‘feeling’ that a drug will provide.

That scene has long stuck with me, perhaps as a guidepost, as a bench marker. To make sure that my future isn’t obscured my immediate fleeting desires, to see that I still have control of my dreams.