The Joints of Life

Comparing information organization and retention to butchering an animal certainly is a stretch.  How many, if any, of you have ever actually butchered an animal?  My parents spent several years attempting organic self-sufficiency (like homesteading), not terribly successfully, but butchering was certainly part of the effort.  Knowing how to butcher came in extremely handy when we moved to India, although thankfully I had a staff member who was willing to do the dirty job, in exchange for some of the meat.  So I've had more than my share of butchering, and yes, I would have preferred going vegetarian, but that effort fell to the pressures of my family - carnivores to the last breath.

So.  It is much easier to take a carcass apart when you know it's structure - when you know where the joints are.  (Try it.  But not on a live animal, please.)  But knowledge?  Knowledge builds; knowledge has to be assimilated; knowledge has to be used in order to be useful.  Then it becomes wisdom.  Wisdom, based on my childhood experiences, dictated that raising and butchering my own meat was much safer for my family than buying the rotting, fly-covered meat from the local side-of-the-road butcher; or attempting to find the black market guy with the freezer full of questionable meat (I do believe that we once ate water buffalo instead of beef - never tasted beef like that before!).  In a country where the electric goes out 2-3 times a day, sometimes for hours or even days at a time, a freezer isn't reliable, and bacteria can breed like mad.  Nope, no meat from the freezer, thanks.

Knowledge gained from my readings about the specific region in which we lived in India - mostly Hindu, but with a sizable Muslim population - also dictated our selection of meat.  It was wise to avoid beef (certainly I would never have butchered a cow!); pork was scarce; goat, fish, and fowl were all much less offensive to the local population.  If I had to go to a butcher, then a Muslim butcher was the safest for our health - Islam has specific butchering practices which, to a certain extent, prevent the carcass from decomposing as quickly as it might.  

So, there's one of my "joints".  The strangest knowledge you glean from life can become very valuable.  

And here's our family motto:  "Tornado down; tsunami up."  A simple life lesson, like "don't run with scissors", that actually might save your life.  So remember it. :)