The Metropolitan Review A JOURNAL OF STUDENT EXPRESSION fall 2012 Metropolitan Center 325 Hudson St., 5th Floor New York, NY 10013-1005 8/2012 Printed by SUNY Empire State College Print Shop August 2012 SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW 2012 i The Metropolitan Review A JOURNAL OF STUDENT EXPRESSION fall 2012 Special thanks to everyone who made this year’s issue possible: our talented students, supportive faculty and professional staff, Dean Cynthia L. Ward, and my excellent assistant editor, Lisa Nicoll. Happy reading! Karyn Pilgrim, editor Lisa Nicoll, assistant editor Metropolitan Center SUNY Empire State College COVER: SAFE GROUND © MARIA TORRO 8/2012 ii SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW 2012 Table of Contents Nonfiction Bon Freakin’ Appetit. Donna Simons. ..............................................1 That Time I Went to That Protest. Breukellen Riesgo ..................................12 Essays On Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Nancy Vega ......................................17 Your Brother’s Keeper. Miguelina Rivas-Cruz ........................................22 The New Blackface in the 21st Century. La-Rita Gaskins ..............................26 Art Liberty Always Prevails. Raúl Manzano ............................................35 Images. Maria Toro ............................................................39 Sculpture Headpieces. Sheryl Robin David ..........................................42 Creative Nonfiction Soul Food. Anita Diggs ........................................................43 People are Animals. Melissa Bynum ...............................................44 Near the Water. Maria Cortez ....................................................50 Fiction Three Fables. Lisa Nicoll ........................................................52 The Innocent. Lydia Landesberg ..................................................56 Art Drawings. Aniko Nemeth .......................................................59 Spring Flower. Marvenia Knight ..................................................61 Poetry From Teacher, Father Figure and a Friend. Annie Leavitt ..............................63 SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW 2012 1 by Donna Simons Donna Simons is a graphic o you ever stop to think about the origin of your artist, illustrator and writer food? Do you believe that the information on food who came to Empire State packagingD is truthful and complete? If you were about College in 2010 to add to purchase a piece of meat, poultry or fish from the humanities and liberal grocery and saw a list of deadly bacteria, viruses, parasites studies to her multifaceted and toxins on the nutrient label, would you still buy it visual arts education. After attending residencies and to feed to your loved ones? Commercially farmed meat lectures about food, farming seems like a bargain compared to its locally raised grass- and the environment, she felt fed, organic counterparts, but what is the true cost of compelled to focus her thesis the meat we are buying and consuming? on those topics. Combining extensive research, writing factory farms (aka CAFOs) and creation of numerous original images, Simons rior to the 1920s, livestock grazed in grass pastures. seeks to drive social With the newly discovered vitamins A and D to change through her art. Her replaceP sunshine and exercise, they were moved indoors, portfolio of editorial images which enabled farmers to streamline operations, increase and narratives address efficiency, productivity and profit. These concentrated some of the most troubling animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, seemed like a issues of our day, including smart idea at first; however, the dense confinement of so contaminated food and many animals in close quarters enabled diseases to spread water, drug-resistant super- quickly from one animal to the next. germs, and global warming. By the 1940s, antibiotics were developed that effectively reduced the diseases that threatened the herds. It was observed that the cattle treated with the antibiotics grew 2 SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW 2012 fatter than those that were not. Fatter what’s on the menu at the cows meant more meat, which meant more CAFO~CAFÉ? profit; thus, over the next two decades, uminants such as cattle, sheep and with the blessings of the Food and Drug goats evolved to eat and digest grass. Administration, the practice of administering TheR first of the four stomach compartments “subtherapeutic” antibiotics to healthy is called the rumen and is where a critical animals began. Today, 70 to 80 percent of part of the digestive process begins. In the our antibiotics are used on livestock. Most rumen, the low-nutrient fibrous plant matter of these drugs are administered to healthy is broken down, processed and fermented animals for the sole purpose of fattening them using the naturally present “good” bacteria. up to increase profit. Corn is cheaper than grass to produce and nutrition labels that tell the truth: beef SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW 2012 3 farm to table fattens the animals up quickly, resulting in weakened animals stand and sleep in their larger yields of more flavorful meat. This contaminated feces, allowing diseases to fester is fantastic for the agricultural and food and spread through the herd. This perpetual industries, but detrimental to the cattle that use and abuse of antibiotics in farming has are unable to properly process this low-fiber become a direct threat to public human food source. A corn diet stops the natural health by enabling microorganisms to mutate, rumination process, causes excessive gas that become stronger, and develop a resistance to inflates the rumen, and sometimes causes the drugs that could have combated them. the cow to suffocate. Corn also changes the These “super-germs” like MRSA (methicillin- natural pH of the digestive system, causing it resistant Staphylococcus aureus), Salmonella to be too acidic. The excess acid burns holes and E. coli (Escherichia coli) remain present in in the rumen, enabling bacteria to enter the the meat after the animal is butchered and bloodstream and cause liver abscesses. Thus, brought to market. Consumers ingest the in addition to low doses of antibiotics already contaminated food and can become very being fed to fatten the livestock, even more sick. The Center for Disease Control and medicine is administered to combat illnesses Prevention estimates that each year as many caused by a corn diet. as 48 million Americans get sick, 128,000 While high doses of antibiotics kill the are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne detrimental bacteria in the intestines, they illnesses of which contaminated meat is a also kill the beneficial “flora” essential for major contributor. digestion, resulting in diarrhea. The already- 4 SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW 2012 their lives in order to produce large quantities of milk. To further increase production, airy cows must give birth in order to they are injected with rBGH (recombinant begin producing milk. While lactation D Bovine Growth Hormone). This hormone will continue as long as a cow is milked, the forces cows to produce unnatural quantities yield will not be sufficient to satisfy the high of milk, making them prone to mastitis, an demand of large-scale dairy farms. Thus, cows intensely painful utter infection that causes must be continually impregnated throughout somatic cells (cells containing bacteria, blood nutrition labels that tell the truth: milk and dairy SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • THE METROPOLITAN REVIEW 2012 5 and pus) to be present in milk or anything dairy air: toxins and made from milk, such as yogurt, cheese, the environment and ice cream. According to cottage cheese n order to grow enough corn to meet the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance, published by the CAFOs’ demands, land is often over- the FDA, cow’s milk may contain a somatic farmedI and depleted of nutrients. If new cell count of up to 750,000 per milliliter land is needed, it must first be deforested, from a single producer and still be sold on which means the loss of the unique ecology, the market as “Grade A.” The mastitis can be the reduction of indigenous animal habitat, so severe that the milk may be discolored, and the destruction of natural vegetation translucent, contain epithelial flakes, streaks otherwise beneficial to cleanse the air of blood and clots. Nonetheless, the tainted of carbon dioxide. The great majority of milk is mixed in large tankers with the rest rainforest destruction is to support livestock of the milk from the dairy. A sample of the production, either by creating pastures for blended milk is tested and if the overall SCC grazing or farmland for growing soy and is below the maximum threshold it goes corn to support CAFOs. Every part of the onward to be processed. Should a higher farming process requires heavy machinery. SCC be measured the sick animals must be The machines (used to clear, level, plow, identified, which is challenging due to the plant, fertilize, water, harvest, store and large concentration and overcrowding of transport the crops) require large amounts cows on dairy CAFOs. Once the source of of fuel to operate and their emissions pollute the tainted milk is discovered the animals the air. are given even more antibiotics, thereby amplifying the possibility of “super-germs” Corn is particularly vulnerable to infestation developing in these vulnerable populations. and crop-dusters must spray