Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Welcoming Kansas

Oklahoma Home. Oil on stretched canvas, 6x12, $75

Honestly, I was glad to leave Texas. The part of the state I traveled through was lovely, at first - but once I got past Dalhart, I encountered feed lots and rendering plants and oil refineries that loosed odors that made me wonder how people manage to live there and eat food, too. Of course, Peter and I lived and worked in Maine, where paper company smells make strangers wonder the same thing.

Parts of Oklahoma were as bad as that edge of Texas, if not worse. I know that cows supposedly don't care much, but seeing them in those pens, those feedlot pens, made me weep. And right next door to some of those horrible, concentration-camp feedlots, other cows wandered free and easy, eating grass, going where they wanted, able to seek shade if they so desired.

Kansas seemed an Eden, when I reached it.

1 comment:

Sandy Sandy Art said...

"If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."
~ Paul McCartney

Looking forward to you visiting me soon, Carrie. I've been thinking of places we can go paint! :-D