We like our fish served on a plate, beautifully filleted with decorative garnishes – a presentation where there is no hint of the necessary reality behind the process of getting an animal to the dinner table. No matter how humane the process is, most people would find a visit to the best of slaughterhouses, poultry farms, and perhaps some of the markets in Chinatown to be unsettling.

One of my first postings on this website was a live poultry house on the Lower East Side – cages of birds stacked floor to ceiling with slaughtering done on site. I was just fascinated that such a place existed. No big deal for some people, but to a city dweller like me, this was a real eye opener.

With overcrowding of residents, a concentration of immigrants, restaurants, and limited space, Chinatown is teeming with sights, smells, and customs alien to most outsiders, such as the sale of live frogs, birds, turtles, and fish. Walking down Mott Street with a friend, we watched a fish flop its final throws as a worker was tossing live fish onto ice. No mollycoddling innocent eyes here.

There is a problem with all the the garbage from all these fish markets, which includes the various remains from the myriad the fish sold. This is not the place to spend a steamy August day. Community efforts are being made to improve the situation, but it is a tough situation.

In a bizarre and surprising twist, one person has found a way to reuse animal parts. A recent story in the New York Times tells of artist Nate Hill, who conducts “Chinatown garbage taxidermy tours.” He and a group forage through garbage in Chinatown for fish parts. His A.D.A.M. Project (A Dead Animal Man) is a sculpture of a human built entirely from animal parts. Thirteen species are included in the finished human being: chicken, conch, cow, crab, deer, dog, duck, eel, fish, frog, lobster, rabbit, and shark. If you see the exhibit, let me know about it. I’ll be keeping it at arm’s length…

Yesterday we had a triad of Super events in the city: Super Tuesday with voting in the Democratic primary, a ticker tape parade for the winning of the Super Bowl by the New York Giants, and “Fat Tuesday” (the day before Lent).
I think that regardless of party affiliation, one has to admit that there is a pall hanging over the current Bush administration. The Iraq War has been highly contentious, with members of the Republican Party itself coming out against it.

But this is not a political forum, and I am not a pundit by any means. My point is that there is much dissatisfaction, the country has become isolated globally, and people are looking for a breath of fresh air. There is a stable of good candidates. I like what appears to be a lesser focus on partisanship and more on issues; this lack of partisanship has actually alienated McCain from some of his party.

Many see the populace as highly galvanized in this election year. We have the first serious woman and African American candidates and a Republican who looks more like an independent.

I was curious about the term galvanized used in this way. I have always associated the term with galvanized metal, the process of electrodeposition which is the coating of steel with zinc to provide a protective barrier. But this is the more modern meaning.
The term galvanize originally comes from the Italian Luigi Galvani and his discovery in 1783 that a frog’s leg could be made to move by applying an electric current, hence the term galvanism. This theme was picked up by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, with the monster being animated using electricity.

I’m glad we didn’t have to rely on Luigi Galvani, Volta, Tesla, or Mary Shelley to galvanize the public this year – I’m not sure we have the technology (yet) to resurrect them 🙂