Um, Clarification

Deadlines are powerful enticements. Amazingly, artificial deadlines work just as well as the real-life deadlines with actual consequences. The Saucyman blog was started as a way to make sure I was constantly writing and trying to improve my craft. Being thoughtful though, always a challenging task, is more difficult with 2-3 updates a week. I get about 3 hours to read, research, write, edit and correct each post. On really good days, a draft sits overnight or 24 hours and I get to come back and revise & correct a draft with fresh eyes. On bad days, I throw a post up without taking the time to be careful and accurate.

The other day, apparently I was either a little rough on hunters or wasn’t quite as clear as I could have been. I actually like hunters. I find the activity honest, true. I don’t conflate fall hunting with Bambi killing. It is just not my thing, nor is football, the novels of Ayn Rand, expensive cars, REI shoppers, public radio subscribers and the list goes on…it is always easier to articulate the issues that divide people than affirm what unites us, which is part of the problem.

The current culture war mentality tells us that there are 2 types of people - hunters and candy-assed, urban dwellers who are scared of guns. I refuse to play that game - the world is far more complex than either/or scenarios. Even if the vast majority of gun owners are respectful, careful and contentious – there are certainly enough who aren’t. For the 300,000 hunting permits issued in California annually, there are roughly 13 hunting related injuries, statistically 2 of which are fatal.

Actuarially, hunting is a reasonably safe pastime, on par with heart attacks in recreational sports. Even so there are still people who never should be allowed near a loaded gun. Best example: Dick Cheney’s quail farm experience (no permit, private land) where beer drinking, loaded weapons and shooting at birds with clipped wings lead to farcical outcomes. Yet this style of hunting is presented as a more manly activity than oh, I don’t know, reading books on a couch.

It is ridiculous to pretend that every hunter is noble, respectful and Natty Frickin Bumppo just because they kill their own prey. I take a serious amount of grief for being an urban living, small dog owning, martini sippin’, vegetable loving resident of these United States. Even so it doesn’t give me the right to be snarky or unfair to the people who aren’t my enemies, but are constantly pitted against me.

To share a meal - both the food itself and the act of cooking for others is a rare act of unity in an increasingly fractured society. I want to encourage the love of food and inform about the kitchen arts - to do so in a manner that is funny and entertaining. Funny is the harder one because funny is sometimes goes hand-in-hand with meanness. Still, I think I missed my mark a little the other day, was lazy, went for an easy joke, rather than working a little harder for a better result. I apologize.