Something Worth Knowing More About

I know that terrific story seeds are right here, out in the open areas of daily life. And that for me the best ones -- in the premise of this blog -- are in the specifics, the fine details that resonate.

So I liked this passage from Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer's new nonfiction book about factory farming:

[Male layer chickens] serve no function.* Which is why all male layers -- half of all the layer chickens born in the United States, more than 250 million chicks a year -- are destroyed.

Destroyed? That seems like a word worth knowing more about.

I love when that happens! The world goes on ahead while a writer’s mind stays fixed on some detail. The skill is in noticing the fixation, and capturing it instead of running to catch up with the world.

* From Foer: “You probably thought that chickens were chickens. But
for the past half a century, there have actually been two kinds of chickens --
broilers and layers -- each with distinct genetics. [...] Layers make eggs. [...]
Broilers make flesh.” (Therefore: male layers serve no function.)