WHICH HINDU GOD IS IN OBAMA'S POCKET?

The Hindu gods are everywhere in India – streetcorner shrines, home shrines, temples on every block and images painted on walls. They really are a part of daily life, worshiped every day, and everyone has his favorite.

My favorite is Ganesh, the elephant-headed god who is the Remover of Obstacles. In Jaisalmar, when there is a marriage, Lord Ganesh is painted on the outside wall with the date of the wedding and the names of the bride and groom. It makes it easy to keep tabs on your neighbors.

When we were touring the Taj Mahal in Agra, our guide, Komar, was describing the attributes of the various gods (like super heroes, they all have their own special powers) and he told us that President-elect Obama always carries in his pocket an image of Ganesh, the Elephant god. We didn’t argue, because Komar seemed so confident he was right. (After all, Obama could have gotten to know the Hindu gods when he was a schoolboy in Indonesia.)

The people of India are ecstatic about Obama’s election and consider him one of their own. Last week someone forwarded a YouTube link to a catchy Hindi pop song with English subtitles—a tribute to Obana. (Check it out at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h96qtbEviUU ) “Obama, we love you” goes one repeated lyric. ”He is ruling everyone’s heart despite skin color”

About halfway through the song the lyrics say, ”“A follower of Hanuman [the Monkey god] he has Ghandian beliefs.”

Well, I don’t know which Hindu god is Obama’s favorite. Hanuman, the Monkey god is a symbol of strength and tenacity. In Varanasi we went to a Hanuman temple that was jam-packed with worshipers and live monkeys. I had been warned about monkey bites --India does not have the right rabies vaccine and I would have to be flown out of the country immediately. Although I was keeping my distance, two separate monkeys grabbed hold of the pashmina shawl I was wearing and I had to do a tug of war both times to get my shawl back.

On our last morning in Varanasi we had breakfast on the roof of the Shiva Ganges View guesthouse overlooking the town, and we watched a number of monkeys leaping from roof to roof. A mother monkey, with her baby clinging to her back, jumped down to the balcony of a English guest house where a door had been left open. She emerged from the room with toast, then went back and got an orange, flying to a higher roof to eat it. After the English tourist inside yelled at her and slammed the door , she came back in through the window and stole the girl’s book and raced away. I think Hanuman the monkey god should be a symbol of craftiness and maybe the god of thieves.

In Jaisalmar I bought a beautiful carved “traveling altar” allegedly made of camel bone, (it’s old) in the shape of two hands doing the “Namaste” salute that is used to welcome friends everywhere. (It means “I salute your inner being”.) When the hands are opened you can see my pal Ganesh riding on his vehicle (a mouse or rat) and Laksmi, the goddess of Prosperity, who is riding on her vehicle – an owl.

When daughter Eleni was beside the Ganges, a statue of Laksmi washed up at her feet and she took it home and is still waiting for prosperity to come in the window like a monkey. There are about 300 Hindu gods, but about nine are the important ones, from Shiva the Destroyer to Krishna the Supreme being to Kali, the dark mother of death and Parvati, the fair and lovely divine mother.

I think Obama should probably carry all of them in his pocket along with his Blackberry—he could use all the help he can get.

CHILD BEGGARS IN INDIA

Everyone who has not yet seen the film “Slumdog Millionaire” should do so at once. It’s an unrealistic fairy tale with an unlikely feel-good ending, but it graphically illustrates the lives of the countless millions of India’s children who live on the street with only one concern: “How will I manage to find enough to eat today so that I’ll be alive tomorrow?”

Everywhere you go in India you will find beggars. This is particularly true in the large cities like Delhi and Mumbai.

Mumbai is a city of 18 MILLION people and HALF of those people are homeless. That means that they live on the streets or in shacks made of tin or cardboard. A night-time drive from the airport in Delhi to Agra gave insights into these hovels and the families who consider home to be a piece of the median strip of the highway. It took an hour just to drive out of the city on a road that was jammed with rickshaws, camels, sacred cows and many, many beggars.

Frommer’s Guide to India in the “Mumbai” section deals with the problem of beggars: ”Families of beggars will twist and weave their way around the cars at traffic lights, hopping and even crawling to your window with displays of open wounds, diseased sores, crushed limbs, and starving babies, their hollow eyes imploring you for a few life-saving rupees…. In the worst of these tales of horror, children are maimed to up the ante by making them appear more pathetic. The choice is stark: Either lower the window and risk having a sea of unwelcome faces descend on you, or stare ahead and ignore them. To salve your conscience tip generously those who have made it onto the first rung of employment”

In India you quickly steel yourself to the crowds of children who are grabbing your arm, knocking on the window of your car, thrusting flowers into your pockets, repeating endlessly the only words of English they know: “Hello Madame, food, hungry, money, please, eat…”

If you give any of them money or even move toward your pocket or purse, their number suddenly increases tenfold and you cannot move for all the hands clutching at you.

In Mumbai, just outside our hotel, when we walked onto the shopping street of Colava Causeway, lined with stores on the right and street sellers’ booths on the left, all shouting their wares, there were two families of children who were particularly aggressive, following us for blocks, especially a girl of about 11 who kept thrusting flowers onto me anywhere they would stick, and her little brother who seemed to have no adult watching him as he skittered in front of us. I was so annoyed by them constantly clutching at me, but then one night, returning home about 11:30, I saw the family sound asleep on the sidewalk, the children curled into the prone body of their mother, and I felt guilt-stricken. The next day, before I left, I managed to give the girl a hundred rupees without anyone else noticing, and instead of unleashing a crowd on me, she grabbed it, grinned and ran. (It was worth only about $2.00 but that was probably a good day’s income to her.)

The beautiful and sad little girl from Jodhpur in the photo above, who was dressed and painted to look like a Hindu goddess, has a good gimmick, because the Hindu religion emphasizes giving money and food to holy persons as well as to sacred cows. On every street you can see poor Indians putting necklaces of flowers on the ubiquitous cows and feeding them. They also share their food with the bearded sadhus (holy men) dressed only in saffron loin cloths. These holy men live entirely on charity, renouncing all their worldly goods. Feeding them, like feeding the cows, is good karma for the Indians.

The little girls along the Ganges who sell small candles nestled in leaf-bowls are not strictly beggars – they’re actually young entrepreneurs, because everyone who comes to the Ganges wants to sail these candles into the river as an offering (as we did.) At night the boys in their rowboats row the pilgrims and tourists into large log-jams of boats gathered to watch the priests do their twilight fire worshipping on shore and the children selling floral chains, candles and pots of tea scramble agilely from one boat to another.

The children in India who manage to learn decent English are miles ahead of the ones who don’t—because they can move themselves and their families out of poverty and a life on the streets. All the tourists we saw – Japanese, Russian, Italian, Australian – use English as the lingua franca.

We hired Mark, a young man about 18—when we encountered him in Varanasi in a craft store that caters to tourists. His business card said he drove a rowboat and because his English was good, we booked him (at the usual rate of 150 rupees per person per hour) for a dawn trip down the Ganges the next morning.

As Mark paddled through the fog and darkness while the river woke up and the faithful began to bathe themselves and their cattle and their laundry, I asked him if the little girls who sold the candles went to school. He said all but one of them did – her parents couldn’t afford the 300 rupees ($6.00) per month that school cost. He also said that he personally was paying for one child to go to school. I learned that Mark was supporting his entire family of two parents and seven children with his three jobs (rowboat guide, craft store salesman and factory worker.) His father, formerly a carpenter, had TB. His mother had to stay home and care for his six younger siblings.

The biggest surprise was that Mark told us he, himself, despite his impressive business cards, could not read or write. “But how did you learn such good English?” we asked.

“From tourists in the store” he replied. If Mark had the leisure to go to school and become literate, he would probably become the Donald Trump of Varanasi.

I would like to find a philanthropy through which I could sponsor one or two children in India at six dollars a month to attend school rather than begging in the streets. (I already sponsor children through Plan but that goes to the community in Nepal not to the little girl herself.) I’ve been googling, trying to find such a philanthropy with access to Indian children, but without any luck so far, so if you have any suggestions, write me at joanpgage@yahoo.com.

It’s really appalling that a country like India, which is now enjoying a huge boom in industry and technical know-how; a country that has a very wealthy class evident in cities like Mumbai and Delhi, cannot manage to provide free schooling for the millions of Indian children who live on the streets.

INDIA WAS UNBELIEVABLE

Every day during our travels around India—three weeks in half a dozen cities—we encountered sights that left us gaping in disbelief. Some things were beautiful beyond belief – the temples, the Taj Mahal, the silks and jewelry and tapestries and palaces. Others were just shocking: bodies being cremated on the side of the Ganges, the families of beggars sleeping on the sidewalks, the traffic snarl of trucks and camels and water buffalo and rickshaws all playing chicken while driving on the left side of the overcrowded highways.

Daughters Eleni and Marina and I had great adventures and epiphanies that I want to blog about, but at the moment I’m too sick. Having made it all the way through India without a stomach upset, I flew 14 hours back to JFK from Bombay and got off the plane with a killer cold which has left me too weak to produce eloquent prose just yet, so instead I’m posting photos of some of the colorful people we met—will tell you their stories later. We got to know maharajahs and beggars, thieving monkeys and hard-working camels, temperamental Hindu gods and goddesses and saintly Indian sadhus (holy men.)

Here are photos of two tribal girls (sisters I think) who live in the desert near Jaisalmar and enlivened our camel safari with their dancing. Also an elderly seller of peacock fans in Jaisalmar who was very proud that his photo was once featured on the cover of a German magazine.

In downtown Jodhpur we encountered a little girl beggar who had dressed and painted herself to look like a Hindu goddess, and on the banks of the Ganges, young girls who sell flowers and candles to toss into the Holy River asked us to take their photo. And everywhere we went, sacred cows (and water buffalo) calmly blocked traffic, especially in the narrow streets of Varanasi. That’s Marina on the right trying to maneuver around one. The folks of Varanasi, however, know how to make the best of the sacred cows and water buffalo and the cow pies that make walking such an obstacle path – they mold the cow poop into patties and dry them on the stairs leading down to the Ganges and use the dried patties for fuel.

GOING TO INDIA? A HOLIDAY CLIFFHANGER

It’s the day before Christmas and all through the house the bustle of wrapping gifts has been replaced by the drama of our holiday trip to India – it’s been in the planning stages for a year, but lately has suffered a series of setbacks.

First there was the terrorist attack on Mumbai which led to a State Department warning that U.S. Citizens should not travel to India right about now. (It’s in effect until Dec. 30.) Saturday, Dec. 27 is when daughter Eleni and I are supposed to fly to Mumbai and then to fly the next day to Jodhpur where Eleni’s former roommate Neela Pania, is getting married in a three-day series of parties and ceremonies beginning on New Year’s Eve. Eleni has worked hard all year to plan for us the world’s greatest trip around India, including a camel safari into the desert, visits to the Taj Mahal and a boat trip on the Ganges.

Although most everyone we knew advised us we should NOT go to India just now, we stubbornly stuck to our itinerary. Marina, Eleni’s younger sister, even expanded it into her own trip around the world -- leaving Boston the day after Christmas to stay with friends in Paris, then joining us in India for the wedding, then on to more friends in Sydney, Hawaii and back home to Los Angeles.

Next glitch – Eleni lost her passport with the Indian visa in it. She came home on Friday (during the massive snow storm) after three days spent in NYC on jury duty — days of living out of a suitcase and staying with friends because boarders had moved into her apartment for the month she'll be away. Then, when she got home to Grafton, she discovered that the passport had disappeared during her wandering about New York.

So on Monday Dec. 22 she spent all day at the emergency passport line in Boston and then Tuesday Dec. 23, she traveled with her new passport back to New York City in hopes of getting another visa from the India travel visa folks. She couldn’t get an appointment because they’re all jammed up now, but she stood in the walk-in (no appointment) line. She burst into tears when told she’d have to come back on Christmas Eve, then someone took pity on her and said that if she went to the Indian consulate around noon on Weds. Dec. 24, she could probably get her visa then, which meant, with luck, that she might get back to Grafton in time for joining the rest of the family at a Christmas Eve party followed by the traditional church service (with the children acting out the nativity scene). After church we'll put the angel on the tree and each open one gift and then it’s really Christmas. Let’s hope she makes it back from Manhattan in time.

Eleni has been to India several times with Neela and I was so amazed at the photographs she took that I’ve painted watercolors based on them. The two photos above show the same woman who sells plastic bangle bracelets in the Clock Tower market in Jodhpur (where the wedding will be held.) The first one was taken by Eleni in January 2006, when the woman had her infant son in her lap.

A year later, the little boy was a toddler when Eleni came back to the same spot and handed the woman her photograph. It caused a sensation in the marketplace. The lady had never owned a photograph of herself and was delighted. All her friends wanted their photos taken too.

I’m in such a fever of anticipation to see India that right now I’m afraid to even start packing my bags until Eleni returns with visa in hand. So Christmas Day will be a frenzy of preparation, packing saris we’ve borrowed along with western clothes. God willing we’ll all find ourselves in Jodhpur on New Year’s Eve. And I hope to photograph and write about what happens throughout our Indian adventure.... unless there’s another storm or electrical outage and we never get out of Logan airport.

THE CHILDREN OF CHIAPAS -- A CHRISTMAS STORY

Last May, when daughter Eleni and I went on our annual culinary tour with Susana Trilling in Mexico,(she’s at seasonsofmyheart.com), Susana took us to Chiapas and Tabasco to see how chocolate is grown, processed and also celebrated (in the Fiesta of San Isidro). She asked us beforehand to bring some clothing and toys for the children of the Cacao Cooperative we would see, deep in the jungle over unpaved roads in one of the poorest areas of Mexico.

I had packed some bright inflatable beach balls that cost a dollar each, as well as some Matchbox cars, Nerf balls , baby clothes and other toys. When our van approached the village, I saw some children playing catch with an old sandal. I realized then that they really were poor, compared to even the poorest U.S. children, who could usually find a ball to play catch.

That afternoon, the Mayor of the small cacao cooperative welcomed us, the families showed us the small plots on which each grew a few cacao trees and they served us a meal in the central building. And we learned that their children were not poor in family and love. Their smiles were like sunshine, and when we started unpacking and blowing up and distributing the beach balls, they were thrilled. There seemed to be enough matchbook cars and Nerf balls and small toys to give everyone something. They waited shyly without pushing or grabbing.

I had packed one Barbie Doll, boxed in her plastic cocoon, as well as a gown for her, and I gave that to the oldest of the girls, in a black tee-shirt with a red heart. She immediately ran to show it to her mother. As the mayor made a speech, describing the little cooperative that had created solar-powered machinery to refine the cacao, the mothers sitting in the back, some of them breast-feeding babies, passed along the Barbie from one woman to another, looking at it in awe and stroking the package almost reverently.

Finally we got one of our group to explain to the girl with the heart that she should take the doll out of the package to play with it. But by the time we left, with all the children waving after our van, Barbie was still unwrapped inside her plastic bubble, an object of admiration for the whole village.

Passing out those toys last May was the high point of our culinary tour, we all agreed. As soon as I got home, I started collecting the cheapest toys I could find: boxes of crayons, Spider Man notebooks, matchbook cars, new baby clothes and dresses bought at a yard sale, counting games, plastic dinosaurs, stickers Rubic’s cubes, colorful socks. When I packed up the large cardboard box, on top I put three more Barbie dolls of various themes and skin tones..

Laura Saldivar, the lovely young woman who had served as our guide and translator at the Cacao Cooperative, agreed to distribute the toys if I would send them to her address in San Cristobal. She has e-mailed me that the box has arrived at her post office and that she’ll soon be taking it to the children of the Cacao Cooperative Voces de Jatate.

This year, as every year, I also bought, packed and delivered toys and clothing for a family in Worcester; a mother and three children who are clients of Pernet Family Services. For the Worcester children I bought much more expensive and elaborate toys and clothing, because I want their Christmas loot to compare with their friends’ gifts. Each boy, for example, is getting a large Hot Wheels fantasy set as well as extra cars and a stunt car as well as a three-piece set of pants, shirt and sweater.

But somehow, although I love shopping for the local underprivileged children — and there are far too many who will find little Christmas joy in this year of economic woes -- I’m having more fun imagining the opening of the box of dollar toys in Chiapas, and especially the reaction to the three new Barbie dolls.

"HOLY DEATH', THE VIRGIN OF JUQUILA AND MY PAINTING

My friend, photographer and teacher Mari Seder, first introduced me to Mexico, its incredible colors and fascinating folk and religious art when I visited her in Oaxaca many years ago.

Several years ago I traveled with her to the isolated Church of the Virgin of Juquila on the mountainous road from Oaxaca to Puerto Escandido. Pilgrims come here by foot from all over Mexico to ask for a miracle from this tiny, dark-skinned figure of the Virgin who is housed in a massive church.

The pilgrims walk for days, sleeping in village squares, fed by pious Mexicans, until they reach Juquila. They often approach the saint on their knees. The tiny figure (who is considered Indian because of her dark skin) has a white train which stretches out of the church and far into the distance. Pilgrims leave on the train gifts and hand-made wooden crosses either specifying the favor they need or thanking her for favors received. My photo above shows two Indian women on their knees approaching the Virgin , one with a blond baby on her back.

Three years ago on March 21 my daughter and I were on a tour led by cooking guru Susanna Trilling (www.seasonsofmyheart.com). We were at El Tajin – a pre-Columbian archeological site in Veracruz, composed of multiple pyramids. It was the Spring Equinox and hundreds of Mexicans, all dressed in white, came there to be cleansed by the Sun God with the aid of cueranderos (healers).

On the way into the pyramids, among the many objects on display on the road outside, I noticed the skeletal lady dressed as a Spanish Senorita. I had never seen anything like her … she was like the many Guadalupe virgins seen everywhere, but she was Death So I took her photo, but no one could tell me exactly what she was for. They told me she was Santa Meurte and I could see she was available for some kind of religious ceremony (for a price) but I couldn’t get any other kind of information. Everyone seemed reluctant to talk about her.

Last year in February in Oaxaca I attended a class sponsored by the Worcester Art Museum called “Expanding Your Vision -- Painting and Photography in the Magical World of Oaxaca, Mexico”. It was taught by my friend Mari Seder and Oaxacan artist Humberto Batista. (They’re doing it again in Feb. 2009 --- www.worcesterart.org) Humberto strongly encouraged the students to think outside the box and to paint something unlike their usual style.

At his urging (although I am VERY literal – usually painting just what I see) I incorporated the figure of Santa Meurte from El Tajin into my painting of the interior of the Church of Juquila. The result is the painting above which is now on display at the Worcester Art Museum in a show of art done by students during their off-site classes.

I was surprised and excited when I recently picked up the New Yorker dated Nov. 10 and found an article by Alma Guillermoprieto called “Days of the Dead, The new narcocultura.” She wrote about the narcotics trafficking that is causing such bloodshed in Mexico and she investigated the role of “The Holy Death” – especially as she is celebrated in a mass every day in a troubled neighborhood of Mexico City called Tepito where the drug dealers and addicts collect.

The author suggested that there are two thousand shrines in Mexico to Santa Meurte and that she is the saint of drug traffickers (although the woman who established the large shrine in Tepito denies that it is only for drug traffickers.)

When I painted the watercolor above, showing a woman crawling toward the Virgin of Juquila , I imagined that she was going to ask the Virgin to heal her baby and was encountering Santa Muerte blocking her way to salvation. If it’s true that Holy Death is the saint of narcotics dealers, that adds another dimension to the painting. Perhaps the baby’s health and safety are threatened by some version of the narcocultura (maybe not now but when he grows up.)

The thought gave me a shudder, appropriately enough at this season which celebrates the Days of the Dead. And it adds a layer of unexpected meaning to the painting

Tell me what you think.

Street Artist Banksy and his Peculiar Pet Shop

On the same weekend in October that I visited the CFA – IAMs Cat Championship in Madison Square Garden and the Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, I also went with two fellow crones down to Greenwich Village to view an exhibit by anonymous British street artist Banksy.

No one knows who Banksy really is, including the young men and women who were keeping watch over his Greenwich Village exhibit. (I asked them. They said they’ve never met him) According to Wikipedia Banksy is "a well-known pseudo-anonymous British artist believed to have been born in 1974."

His street art usually combines graffiti and a stenciling technique — leaving political statements on walls -- but in New York he opened a realistic-looking "Pet Store and Charcoal Grill" at 89 Seventh Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street. (Love the irony in that title…It was only there from October 9 to Halloween and we crones felt privileged to see this street art in action before Banksy folded it up and took it away. It was the first time Banksy has used animation to create exhibits that moved.)

From the outside, the Pet Store featured what appeared to be a large leopard sitting in the window with a twitching tail. (“Do not tap on the glass", said a sign.) But when you went inside, the "leopard" turned out to be a strategically folded leopard coat. With a moving tail.

In another window was a white rabbit applying lipstick while looking in a mirror. There was also a hen with several "chicks" --- really animated large chicken nuggets -- drinking out of a dish of barbecue sauce. Inside the store were fish sticks swimming in an aquarium, sliced sausages and hot dogs eating out of dishes and a chimpanzee watching a TV video of chimpanzees having sex.

As you've probably figured out by now, Banksy is making an ironic comment about how we turn animals into processed food and torture rabbits, for instance, to test cosmetics. What I liked about the exhibit (which some bewildered folk mistook for an actual pet store) is that it's good-natured and humorous piece of art that gets the artist's point across more effectively than a diatribe, or throwing flour at Lindsey Lohan or paint at Sarah Jessica Parker when they wear furs.

There was a book inside the “Pet Store” where people were encouraged to write their reactions to the art. Someone who was there before me had written: "Banksy totally gets it! This is why I don't eat meat." But the children passing by outside with their parents were delighted with the moving exhibits in the "Pet Store and Charcoal Grill." Perhaps it would start them thinking, the next time they saw a chicken nugget or a sausage, perhaps not, but it was more engaging that an exhibit of calves being tortured in cages, and so was probably more effective in making people think about where their food comes from.

Another artist who is referred to as a “guerrilla artist” or street artist (because he paints his political statements on walls and then runs away before he can be arrested) is Sheperd Fairey, who is the hot young artist of the day ever since he designed the terrific red, white and blue poster of Obama for his campaign. Sheperd Fairey, Banksy and their ilk have had a huge influence on young artists.

It was fun to watch passers-by the Pet Store do a double take and then come up and study the exhibits. This is the best kind of interactive art. It reminded me of walking through a snowy Central Park on the last day of Christo's "Gates” in February 2005 and watching hundreds, maybe thousands of people--some who had flown in from Europe --touching, discussing and interacting with the 7,500 saffron-colored fabric panels which transformed Central Park on a cold winter day into an open air museum where everyone had something to say about the art.

(If you want to see more photos and a discussion of Banksy’s pet store and grill, follow this link:)

www.woostercollective.com/2008/10/the_village_pet_store_and_charchoal_gril.html

And if you want a copy of The Secret life of Greek Cats” for an animal lover on your holiday list:

www.GreekCats.com

Madison Square Garden Cat Show

“It was like herding cats” is an expression for something that’s extremely difficult (because, as everyone knows, cats don’t take kindly to being told what to do, especially in groups.)

Imagine 212 nervous cats representing 43 breeds and an equal number of nervous cat breeders herded into Madison Square Garden last Oct. 18 and 19 for the very elite CFA- IAMs Cat Championship, which included two days of judging cats in five different rings at the same time. It culminated in the choice of the best of the Best of the Best at 5:00 on Sunday.

I was there – partly to promote my photo book “The Secret Life of Greek Cats” (check it out at www.GreekCats.com) but mostly to see and photograph all those exotic breeds I’d read about but never seen in the flesh, er, fur, including the popular Sphynx Cat, hairless except for the fine down on its body.

Near the door where you come in there was even a Republi-cat and a Demo-cat named Barack Obama, in patriotically decorated cages.

Everyone was admiring the Ocicats—a breed which has markings like a leopard and would make a very chic (and expensive) accessory for ladies who like to wear animal prints (not me.) Cats and kittens were being bought and sold and $600 was the lowest price I heard mentioned.

I love the exotic long-hairs with their squashed-in grouchy faces although many people don’t. The Greek cats who tell their stories in my book are certainly not pure-breds. They’re, as the real Obama would put it, “Mutts like me”, but just as attractive as the cats who walked off with the ribbons at Madison Square Garden.

Everyone there was, of course, a cat lover, including the judges who held up each furry contestant and raved about the good points of the breed. The judges held wands with tassels on the end to get the cats interested and involved. Some, but not all, of the breeders looked like their cats. If you want to see photos of the judging, let me know.

The ultimate winner on Sunday was a Blue Russian, but I didn’t make it back in time to see it. I was down in Greenwich Village looking at a crazy art show created by the guerrilla artist Banksy which was a witty but effective statement about turning animals into food, but I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.