While I wouldn't say the weather was cool here today, it was much cooler, and so I took the opportunity to use vegetables from the garden to make a vegan chili for dinner. To the peppers, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes I grew I added onion, garlic, corn, beans, and barley. It was, for the most part, a New World dish made complete by a few Old World staples.
Years ago I went to an exhibition at the Smithsonian called Seeds of Change. It was marking, but not celebrating, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's exploration of the west, and as such it focused on the exchanges that inevitably occurred between Europe and the Americas. Even though at the time I was nearly 30 years old and pretty well-educated, the premise of the exhibition was completely new to me. I had never considered an Italy without tomatoes or an Ireland without potatoes. Of course, the atrocities committed to ensure a steady supply of sugar and tobacco were no less horrendous once put in historical context, but it did shed some light on the economic power of addiction.
Just as fascinating was the story of the horse. They became extinct in North America around the time that the wooly mammoth did, around 10,000 years ago. European, mostly Spanish, explorers brought horses with them. Escaped or abandoned animals thrived so well in the land that was once their home that soon there were vast herds of them roaming the American plains. But here's an interesting distinction: all of those horses were feral, not wild, because they were descended from domesticated animals.
There is no such thing as a wild horse.
Years ago I went to an exhibition at the Smithsonian called Seeds of Change. It was marking, but not celebrating, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's exploration of the west, and as such it focused on the exchanges that inevitably occurred between Europe and the Americas. Even though at the time I was nearly 30 years old and pretty well-educated, the premise of the exhibition was completely new to me. I had never considered an Italy without tomatoes or an Ireland without potatoes. Of course, the atrocities committed to ensure a steady supply of sugar and tobacco were no less horrendous once put in historical context, but it did shed some light on the economic power of addiction.
Just as fascinating was the story of the horse. They became extinct in North America around the time that the wooly mammoth did, around 10,000 years ago. European, mostly Spanish, explorers brought horses with them. Escaped or abandoned animals thrived so well in the land that was once their home that soon there were vast herds of them roaming the American plains. But here's an interesting distinction: all of those horses were feral, not wild, because they were descended from domesticated animals.
There is no such thing as a wild horse.
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