Goats and Trees

AJP Crown over at A Bad Guide has posted a remarkable picture of some Moroccan goats in a tree. The tree looks exactly like a Dr. Seuss tree. Wondering if Dr. Seuss had ever documented the goat and the tree together, I checked my copy of the authoritative Green Eggs and Ham, one of my all time favorites. It shows trees without goats and goats without trees, but not both together. In the first illustration we see the prototypical Seussian tree:

Then we meet the goat, and I must say Sam-I-Am’s friend doesn’t hit it off with the goat very well at first. “Would you, could you, with a goat?” “I would not, could not with a goat.”

Finally we see them all in the water together, the Green Eggs and Ham sitting on the end of the fork like Bill Burroughs’ proverbial naked lunch. The goat has proved a staunch friend and although the repast doesn’t look any too fresh, the ordeal will not be a solitary one.

The rest is history. From this moment in time stretching onward into eternity, mothers will use this book to persuade their offspring to taste a bewilderingly unappetizing array of strictly decorative rearrangements of dirt, water and sunlight from cauliflower to cooked cabbage to Brussels sprouts. Why do they never try to convince you to eat chocolate?

Happy Spring Break

Happy Spring Break.. and Happy Easter. There’s nothing like a Chocolate Holiday.

Essential Goat Herding Equipment: Panpipes

Panpipes. These are from Peru. Funny how mountain music tends to sound similar, whether it’s from the Andes or the Himalayas.

Goat Blogging

Finally, the definitive goat blog!

A Bad Guide is the goat blog the world has been waiting for. It was just launched yesterday, but already it has advice about every kind of goat exigency anyone could imagine. What if your goat needs a job? What kind of goat do you need for allergies? And is your goat namby-pamby?

For instance, what about goat politics? In the section on Head Butting, all is explained:

What’s the point of being head goat?  It is mostly about food.  You get first choice of everything while the others just stand back and wait until you are finished.  If there is a catch it is that the other goats are going to be expecting you to stand in front when they come face to face with a panting great dane.

The blogger is A.J.P. Crown, who lives in Norway with his goats and other family members.    Kron is funny, wise, sees details and connections that other people miss, and is usually–no, always–off-topic.  Until now.  Kron could probably hold forth on any number of subjects and make it fascinating.  The goats are lucky he has chosen them.

Welcome to the blogosphere, A.J.P.!

~~~~~~~~~

Photo credit: detail from A Bad Guide–the sign (in Norwegian) says “goats grazing, please lock the gate”; –and thanks LH!

Bedouins and goats

Here is a Jordanian goat.

The goat belongs to Fatma. Fatima is the one on the left. Yes, they have tatoos on their faces. I found out later that Jordanian women don’t usually allow themselves to be photographed.  I hope I don’t get into trouble with the Bene Sakr for this one.

Fatima is stirring up the goats with a stick to try to get them to be more photogenic for the picture.

Then Fatma took a picture of me with the goat. I don’t know if she ever used a camera before.

[photo edited]

I know a Jordanian guy who put a photo of his wife on the internet–she had a proper scarf on, hair completely covered  and everything.  He had to take it down after some guys at work started making nasty comments about her. There were pictures of his kids too, but that wasn’t a problem.  I wanted to take a picture of her–I had stayed with the family a few times–but by then she didn’t want anyone taking her picture because of the bad experience.

It’s too bad when women’s photos have to be removed–in any culture. You don’t see that happening with men.

Separating the Sheep from the Goats–the sheep get eaten, but not today

A friend of mine who likes to describe himself as a “born-again pagan” is fond of saying, “When they separate the sheep from the goats, the sheep get eaten.”

If you don’t recognize the biblical reference, I think it’s from Matthew. That was certainly a true culinary observation when I lived in the Middle East. I ate plenty of sheep, camel on rare occasions, and beef never, although I did see a few cows. I probably had a lot of cheese from goats, though, and once drank a warm lumpy milk from a goat–someone told me later the goat had probably just given birth and the first lumpy milk was considered a treat.

Today Pete’s Market, in six locations citywide, is offering “fresh assorted goat” for $1.89/a pound.

I wonder if this will precipitate some sort of crisis somewhere in New Testament Thought.