This will post on a weekday, but it is Sunday as I begin writing. Vegetable parings from the past week are in my cast iron pot on the stove. I am filtering water to pour over onion skins and parsley stems—the trimmings of a week of cooking. It became a habit when I was working full time and both our sons were gone to make “Sunday soup” that would feed us for several days. I was too busy till Thursday to cook much of anything, and I needed lunches since like every teacher I know, I have a half hour for lunch.

We know that eating quickly is unhealthy, but the way. We’ve known this for a long time, and if you google “eating too fast impacts health” you will find well over two million hits. “Benefits of eating fast” will yield even more, except most of those articles tell you why you shouldn’t do it. “The benefits of slow eating include better digestion, better hydration, easier weight loss or maintenance, and greater satisfaction with our meals. Meanwhile, eating quickly leads to poor digestion, increased weight gain, and lower satisfaction.” I won’t go into fast food. We do not do fast food in my home.

So. On Sundays I make stock and then I make soup. Today I have some Parmesan rinds that will flavor my stock as if simmers for an hour. The stock will then be added to beans and maybe rice or pasta, fresh vegetables, and parsley at the end. Dinner. Half of the leftovers will likely be frozen and we will finish the rest in a day or so. In the mean time, I have curry frozen from last week, or pesto or chili makings. Food is important.

A seal is dying a few hundred yards north of our home. He was not there when we walked north yesterday, then he was working his way out of the water as we walked south. We called him in and the Seaside Aquarium sent someone to stake him out. Tourists sometimes want to “help.” There is no help.

I attended a writer’s retreat, my first time at The Flight of the Mind in 1996. During an open read, a woman told her story about visiting the Olympic Peninsula and finding a baby seal “abandoned” on the shore. She rescued the took it back to Seattle and eventually placed it with a business. She was lightly proud of herself for her selfless action.

The Marine Mammals Act of 1972 criminalized such act. It is against federal law to feed, interfere ,or cause to be interfered with any marine mammal, such as by allowing a dog to harass or chase or come too close to marine mammals. “The U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) protects all marine mammals, including cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), sirenians (manatees and dugongs), sea otters, and polar bears within the waters of the United States.”

My father worked for the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (then in the Department of the Interior), and he warned his children that mother seals often leave their infants onshore. The baby seal was not abandoned. It was resting. The woman stole an infant from its mother, and even in hindsight failed to appreciate that aside from violating the law, had deprived a mother of her child.

We cut our walk short this morning when we recognized the seal is still alive. Another local who is often out this time of day, snapped a leash on his day and took her off the beach. None of us are not hopeful it will live much longer, but we won’t add to its suffering.

The woman’s essay that had been published in The Seattle Times revealed she meant well. She was proud of her actions all those years ago. What she did was not kind, it was illegal. What she did was subject to civil penalties of up to $11,000 and up to a year in prison plus criminal fines. What she did destroyed a family and, worse, no one else recognized the heartlessness of her actions in time to stop her, regardless of her intentions. Too late for the seals. Too late.

ABOVE: A family of sea lions float on swells just off shore, basking in the sun, flippers up in the air.