Ending the year...

with a few graphics and photos. These images spoke strongly to me and maybe they will to you too.

Voicing (and living) support for veganism not only offers the opportunity to awaken others, but it also serves to signal to those who live vegan that they do so as members of a community. Because...sometimes it seems to be a lonely and isolated way of being.

 I think it is important to be aware that stepping beyond the boundaries of "how it's supposed to be"...in any direction...is going to result in distance from those who've not moved. And that can be uncomfortable...and cause all kinds of turmoil and upset.

If you're living as an ethical vegan, remember...you're living a kind life. And if you're not living as an ethical vegan...you are not living a kind life. The two are mutually exclusive. And for those who are strongly concerned with spirituality...well this next graphic depicts a deep deep truth.

Remember, hearts exist in all shapes and sizes of beings. Living vegan is an expression of recognition of this truth, living vegan means recognizing and respecting many, many, many more hearts than ever possible any other way.

 All living beings are just trying to live their lives...in that respect we are all the same. My thanks to each and everyone who is living a life of respect toward others. I hope your new year is a happy and excellent one for you and for all. If you're living vegan...you have my gratitude and respect...if you aren't...well....what are you waiting for?

Finally...just a reminder...

and in truth, given the track record of humans in respect to what they've done to the beings and the environment over which we do have some degree of power and control...not being able to control everything is probably a very very good thing.

Live vegan and you'll be living well and kindly and controlling (as best you can) the harm you might do to others....please enjoy your New Year,

(P.S. My thanks to everyone who's taken the time to visit and read these posts and my special thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read and to comment. Your responses are greatly appreciated and enjoyed. PPS. All graphics were found on the internet and my gratitude goes to their creators)

This season is eternal.

Vegan's greetings and good wishes to you all! (Living vegan is the only way to live good wishes to all.)

P.S.: Bea, you're the bestest...thank you.

"A Revolutionary Worldview...."

This time of year is a good time to reflect a little on what veganism is all about. Lee Hall as written an excellent piece that does just that.

To be a vegan is to adopt a revolutionary worldview. We have found that that egg, flesh, and dairy production and consumption can be hazardous to the planet and our bodies; and that animal husbandry, whether pasture-based or assembly-line, involves exploitive treatment of other conscious beings. We don’t want to play a role in that; nor do we wish to be at war with free-living animals.  As vegans, we strive to live harmoniously with the planet and all its inhabitants.

The above paragraph is from her writing and it is well worth reading in toto. She also makes reference to something near and dear to me, she writes:  "It’s really important that we figure out how to disagree without hurting, and to agree without competing."

That sort of reminded me of a previous post here about saying things well enough. Probably being able to say things well enough is going to require being able to disagree without hurting and to agree without competing.

Living vegan is the only way we can live with a minimal amount of hurting, and that's a good thing.

Give Thanks!

I am thankful for each and every Vegan. Enjoy your holiday please.

Time to advocate.

It isn't long until the holiday that revolves around killing and calling it a celebration.  I really like the variation given by changing the first g to an l and calling it Thanksliving! Because celebrations are about life...not killing innocent beings.

Someone shared this captioned photo on facebook and I thought it was exactly on the mark.

So...I'm posting to urge you to write your local paper advocating for a non-harmful Thanksliving celebration. I did...and it was published. I'll copy it below and if you want...feel free to use it...you can save yourself the effort of coming up with your own letter (mine isn't great but it gets the message across). You could likely do much better...but if you don't want to...feel free to copy and modify this one to fit your area.

Please speak up for these feathered folks. I believe it is important to get awareness about this wrong out in front of people...and the local newspaper is one way to do it.

Wouldn't it be great if every newspaper in the country, every year, had at least one letter objecting to the harming of the innocents around this holiday?

Thanks ahead of time. And Happy Thanksliving to you and yours. And go vegan if you haven't already...and if you have...hooray for you!

Letter:

Editor, The Transcript:

 Make it Thanksliving.

The upcoming annual national holiday usually includes eating the flesh of a sensitive, intelligent and playful animal. Those birds are killed after only a few brief months of miserable living, so having a turkey dinner means eating the body of a baby that led a short and suffering filled life. Yuck, that doesn’t sound like much of a time of thanks for them or for anyone with a modest degree of compassion.

Luckily, the number and variety of plant-based food items available that allow a family to prepare a tasty, festive and abundant meal are readily available at the Earth grocery and other Norman area food merchants. In addition, readers can visit the website of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to find plant based Thanksgiving meal tips or they can browse tryveg.org for a wide range of food suggestions and recipes. Our own Oklahoma Vegetarian group also has an excellent resource page for accessing recipes that are tasty, healthy and cruelty-free.

After all, if you can live a happy and healthy life without harming anyone else, why wouldn’t you? Please consider making this holiday occasion one that doesn’t involve the death of innocent beings. Happy Thanksliving wishes to all.

Several things to consider.

First I want to bring attention to the carnage we inflict on our fellow beings with those metal monstrosities we use to get around with...automobiles. I found a couple of resources that provide some tips on reducing the chances of harming others when you're driving. You can read them here and here. Slow down, stay focused on your driving...please.

Next...we are in the month of culturally celebrated carnage...that "holiday" that centers around the murder of turkeys. For me this time has rapidly morphed into a dreaded experience because of all the killing and the juxtapositioning of happiness and togetherness and celebration with the horror of the killing. However...this year there's something a little different being injected into the cultural cacophony. While I have not seen it myself, there is a new children's animated movie out called Free Birds. One description of the story:  "The movie tells the story of two turkeys, Reggie and Jake, who travel back in time to take turkey off the first Thanksgiving menu — and save billions of lives going forward."

I'm really impressed that this movie has popped up on the scene...if it indeed does present a clear objection to killing. I hope it is as is advertised and if so it offers a glimmer of hope during a rather grim season. Apparently the Farm Sanctuary thought enough of it to partner with the movie folks for the Farm Sanctuary Adopt A Turkey campaign.  Cool beans!

And finally just a little piece of writing I ran across that presented some studies about differences in visual perception between human females and human males. Apparently "...guys required a slightly longer wavelength of a color to experience the same shade as women and the men were less able to tell the difference between hues." It made me feel a little better about being fashion and decorating challenged.

If you get a chance, please write a letter to your local newspaper urging a Thanksliving holiday...killing is no reason for a celebration. And...if you're living vegan...thank you....and if you aren't....well....there's no better time to start than now.

Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.

You will recognize (maybe) that line from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is part of a work he wrote that was called: "Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing."

I found myself thinking about Emerson while I was reading an essay by Chris Hedges titled "Let's get this class war started". I strongly urge you to read his essay and while you do or at least on a second reading pretend that you are not reading about oligarchical domination within humankind but rather that you are reading about humankind's domination of all other living beings. I would be greatly interested in your thoughts on it.

Back to the title of this piece. There are two words in that little line that represent oppression, that epitomize precisely what both Emerson and Hedges are rejecting. Saddle and ride. Saddles are instruments used to assist in the subjugation of living beings...mainly for the purpose of "riding" them and "riding" is the stealing of efforts of one being to benefit the "thing in the saddle".

And yet...as eloquent and as perceptive and as good intentioned and Mr. Emerson and Mr. Hedges seemed or seem to be. With all their gifts and their talent neither, as far as I know, have (or did in the past insofar as Mr. Emerson is concerned) arrived at a life-path of living vegan. For instance, this thought was written in a deconstruction of his Ode: "Tactics that rely on force can never, in Emerson's view, add anything to the sum of human virtue; they may control behavior superficially, but the sickness remains and will find other outlets when denied this one." Mr. Emerson apparently strove and strove hard to live virtuously...but he was profoundly marked by "the sickness" if he didn't live vegan.

I find it almost impossible to wrap my mind around the persistent and pervasive ability we...including me...have to believe we are trying to be good and kind and wonderful creatures while behaving as if we were monsters. It's a very frightening thing. It scares me about other humans and it scares me about myself...and it makes me fearful for mother Earth and her children. For instance, as much as I find to admire about Mr Hedges and some of his ideas and writings...as far as I can see he's only making a call in this essay to resume the old old dance. Maybe it hasn't been said well enough...I don't know. I have hope that veganism offers the opportunity and path to opt out of this old dance of destruction that plagues us...and that we plague our fellow beings with. If nothing else, veganism offers a way of reducing the number of innocent casualties...and that's a good thing.

Living vegan and thinking vegan and seeing vegan is a dismal choice as a way of being...in some ways. Dismal because of the awareness of the killing, the hurting, the slavery, the imprisonment of most of mother Earth's beings that goes on each day. All by humans. And mostly by humans who believe they are good and kind and wonderful beings who are doing their best to live good lives.

Dismal though it may be...living vegan is the best way of avoiding "the sickness" that I know of. You too can step a little further along the path of "virtue" (for want of a better term) by going vegan...if you haven't already.  

Make history.

We must give to others, that which we ask for ourselves. It isn't possible to live a worthy life without following this path.

I cannot overly express the appreciation and respect I have for each individual who has had the courage and caring to begin living vegan. Thank you and thank you again. For those who continue to support harming others...please consider what you are doing and who you are harming. You, whether you want to or not, are aligning yourself with monsters and destroying innocent lives. Please go vegan.

Animal Rights Documentaries.

Here's a link to a compilation of nearly 100 animal rights documentaries all located in one handy place for you to explore. There are some excellent works out there and here's an easy way to access many of them.

And here's a link to a short video of a baby elephant sleeping on mom's lunch. I couldn't get the embed code to work so you'll have to use the link to watch. But it is worth it...give a smile to your day by watching this baby being busy sleeping. Babies of all sorts and shapes and sizes give their all to whatever they do...including sleeping. Enjoy.

And if you haven't decided to join those who wish to live without harming others...please do so by going vegan. You'll feel better about yourself and I promise those you stop harming will feel better.

Dreadful and important.

I recently finished reading a book titled "My Father's Keeper" by Stephan and Norbert Lebert. It is an unusual book. One author is the father who did a series of interviews with some of the children of prominent Nazis in the 1950s, these interviews were then updated by his son in the 1990s.

I really can't recommend reading it unless you are prepared to be rather dismayed and disturbed...at least that's the principle reaction I had to the book. It is depressing and sad to read about the children who are appalled and/or horrified at their parents behavior and it is even more depressing and sad to read about the children who are not appalled and/or horrified or who deny any such behavior.

What was very saddening to me was that it seems that all the denial and/or unconcern with the murderous behaviors does not result in discernible psychological and/or emotional problems.

In the 1960s the Heiderlberg psychologists Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich made the following statement about the psychological health of the Germans:
   
“Astonishingly our experience in no way points to the kind of increase in the number of patients in a state of denial that might have encouraged us to identify a tangibly clinical illness. From the records of more than 4,000 patients it emerges that extremely few criteria could be found for a correlation between their present-day symptoms and their experiences in the Nazi era. Self-confessed Nazis virtually never appeared.”

The Freiburg psychoanalyst Tilmann Moser offered a similar conclusion at the end of the 1990s.

“It seems that we must resign ourselves to the fact that the perpetrators and their followers have uncovered no path to shame or guilt within themselves, and for this reason we remain faced with” cleavage, defiance, cognitive dysfunction, collective denial and anthropological limits to the establishment of identity and the continuity of conscience.”

After countless studies, his Munich counterpart Wolfgang Schmidbauer has come to accept the 'intensely unjust' state of affairs that for the camp murderer who has killed over and over again, or the camp employer who has profited by the deaths of thousands of helpless slave laborers, it is far easier to deny guilt, to shrug off scruples, to live a normal family life and be a respected father to his children, than it is for the victims, who are mostly visited by the severest feelings of guilt because they are the ones who survived. You have to look at it this way, Schmidbauer concludes: the perpetrators had to deal only with their fear of being caught and condemned. From a psychological viewpoint, it comes down to understanding that the perpetrator realised him or herself through his or her act, whereas the victim was hindered by the same act in everything that he wanted, and wants still, to realise. Or put it more cynically: torturing body and spirit has measurably fewer side effects than being tortured. Pp186-7

I don't want to draw some maybe obvious conclusions from these observations...I'm aware of many but am not inclined to fully ascribe to them...mainly because I suspicion they would prompt a really unpleasant state of depression.

It is all perhaps best summarized by this passage from the book.

The Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal says that it is a grave and dramatic mistake to proceed on the basis that only evil beings are capable of evil acts. One of the essential characteristics of many leading National Socialists, says Wiesenthal, was that at home they were utterly charming people. They were the same people who lovingly kissed their children goodby in the morning and then a few hours later were gassing or shooting Jews. This realisation , Wiesenthal thinks, is dreadful and at the same time hugely important, because on the person who has grasped it knows that evil lives dormant in most people and can break out at any time. Let no man say that such a ghastly dictatorship is no longer possible today. That is the true lesson from the horror of National Socialism: we must fight against it constantly, against evil, so that it does not emerge again. pp 182

Most of us who live vegan did not do so at some time. We lived ordinary lives doing extraordinary evil with no discomfort at all. Wiesenthal seems to be oblivious to the evil that is inherent in eating our fellow Earthlings...I find no references to his being vegan. We must not only fight constantly against evil, we must fight constantly to be able to even recognize evil. Living vegan is the only way I know of to mostly avoid participating in a huge huge evilness.

I've written before about history and human behaviors (here, here and here). I'll likely write more too. Having spent my professional life trying to understand and sometimes modify human behavior and personality makes me know how little I understand. I will say though, from what I can see, veganism as explained by Donald Watson and friends seems to be the best of the best of all ways to live while doing minimal harm to others.

Introducing Ice (and Hope).

Recently a kind neighbor woman (a Heartland Rabbit Rescue neighbor) decided to share her home with a baby miniature goat. We had been hearing his little voice sometimes in the morning and could occasionally see him way off in the distance. Finally the director of Heartland called and arranged a meeting at a half-way point in the fields that separate Heartland and the neighbor.

Ice

His name is Ice (his mom's name was Snow) and he's a beauty.

He apparently won't grow much larger. It was a fine thing to meet him. He's very friendly and as you can see...very handsome too. We're hoping that soon he'll get to come over to Heartland and meet the ducks and bunnies and Molly, Midnite and Judy too.

In other Heartland news, about 3 weeks ago a call came about a little bunny who had been found loose and injured in a cemetery in a small town east of OKC. When the Heartland director finally got her it was discovered that she had been attacked by a predator and had a back leg broken in 2 places as well as some gaping wounds that were infested by maggots. She was emaciated and frightened. The director, along with a long-time and experienced volunteer worked for a number of hours cleaning her wounds and stabilizing her.  She was then taken to the vet the next day.

There it was found that she would likely have to have the leg amputated but she was too debilitated for the surgery so some rest and recovery and weight gaining would have to happen first.

Hope, after much recovery.

She is very young and weighed under 3 lbs when she first arrived. She was running a high fever and her behavior suggested she was stunned and shocked. Slowly, with lots of TLC by the director, Hope started coming around. She was always willing to eat...which...with a bunny...is pivotal. If they'll eat...there's hope.

She has been miraculous in her resilience. Once the fever was managed and her wounds began to heal, then her personality began to emerge. She's bouncy, spicy and a tad sassy. She's very people oriented and loves being petted. Now, there is a possibility she won't have to lose the leg...but she needs to not put too much strain on it and that's a difficulty because as she feels better and better...she wants to run and jump and binky. She's a baby and she wants to play. You can read more about her on Heartland's facebook page.

Hay snack.

Here you can see her having a bit of a hay snack as she rests a little.

Below you can see her pensively eying the photographer...no doubt thinking about what she wants to do next.

What next?

It is beyond being able to put into words...watching these little fur people who are abandoned and neglected and abused by the human species and then seeing so many of them be able forgive and forgive absolutely all that's been done to them. And to share their delightful selves freely and openly with any human willing to be kind to them.

It doesn't make us look very good.

Caring for Hope and others like her takes lots of time and effort and money...food, shelter and medical care is expensive. Help your local animal rescue/sanctuary...or help out Heartland if you want. The number of bunnies in need is always greater than the resources to help them.

Help all life and planet Earth and yourself by living vegan. Please. And care for those who depend on you...and be kind to everyone else. Ice and Hope both think these are all good ways of living.

Why History Matters...

is the name of a book I'm reading and in it I ran across something that struck me. Here the author is writing about desiring social change that is in the service of equality and justice. 

“....social change implicitly demands an end to ideologies of hierarchy, such as racism and sexism. Without the abolition of sexism, none of the other hierarchical concepts and systems can be successfully ended. No matter how changed economic and social relations may became, as long as sexism constantly re-creates the inequality in the family and in the consciousness of men and women, hierarchy will be reborn......

…...the goals of feminism cannot be achieved without a vast cultural revolution, involving every institution of society, in particular, the family. The magnitude of the social change needed presupposes the diffusion of the forces of change into every aspect of society. No other oppressed group except women is so located as to be able to effect such changes.” 

pg 109 Why History Matters, Gerda Lerner.

She goes on to point out why women aren't in the same relationship to those who dominate them as are other groups. Women are too numerous and widely distributed to be wiped out or ghettoized and because of their intimate connections with the group members of those who dominate (fathers, brothers, sons, husbands) women can't use violence to reach their emancipation. She argues they must use tactics of social pressure and persuasion that result in a new consciousness in men and women....not an overthrowing but a transformation.

Reviewing what she argues makes it readily apparent that speciesism must be included in the idea of re-creating hierarchies. If we view other living beings as unequal then the idea of hierarchy will forever persist. In fact, if you think about it, devaluing other species and/or members of other species makes inequality among our own species almost guaranteed. Because that devaluing of beings who differ from ourselves teaches us that "difference" implies unequal which then can be used to identify human animals belonging to groups ripe for oppression because they are not our equals. 

Difference is easy to identify between species...there is a major training ground for viewing different as being not equal...not equal meaning it is ok to oppress or harm because of their "differentness". Speciesism then is part and parcel of the "original sin" that leads to the notion that some living beings can be conceived of hierarchically and that such conceptualization is acceptable.

Or so it seems to me. Obviously, the only way you or I can participate in bringing about the transformation needed is by living vegan. There's where it all starts.

Overshoot day.

This year August 20th marks the "approximate calendar date on which humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year." (source) This date keeps moving in the wrong direction...this date shouldn't exist but since it does it should be much closer to the end of the year...like December 31st or something. For instance, in 1993 it was October 21st...now it is in August.

In other words there are either too many human animals on the planet or the human animals here are using up too much of the Earth to support their lives. In fact, there are too many of us and we "consume" way too much.

For instance, the current estimate is that it would take 1.5 Earths to support us...on a renewable basis if we averaged using the Earth the way we do now. That's for all of us, it gets really stinky if you look at in on a country by country basis. For instance, if everyone lived the way we do here in the United States, we would need 5 Earths to support us. You can explore the ecological footprint for most countries here.

Here's my thought. Advocate for our fellow Earthlings but don't forget that advocating for them also means that there needs to be fewer of us human animals. Consider incorporating the handing out of endangered species condoms in your advocacy efforts. Two things to remember, the fewer there are of us...the fewer there are to harm our fellow Earthlings...and the fewer there are of us the more of what Earth has to offer is potentially available for the other Earthlings.

Overshoot day. Scarey stuff, do your part to push back by living vegan and by avoiding adding to the number of humanoids. 

Hit and run survivors...

The post about the slaying (accidental?) of a mother of nine can be read here. I went out to Wildcare recently to check on how the surviving baby opposums are doing. You'll remember that there were originally nine babies, one was dead on the street and one was dead on arrival at Wildcare. Well now there are only four survivors. One died soon after arrival and then two more expired. They were very small and very vulnerable.

However, according to the staff there the four remaining seem to be doing well. I have only a few photos...and they aren't good. I took the babies there on July 12th, so they've been there around 3 weeks.

This baby was curious about the camera.

 You can see the towel hanging down behind the baby. It serves as a surrogate for the pouch they would have if their mom was alive. The other 3 were sleeping and this one was taking a stroll. They are self feeding now so the rather difficult process of hand feeding is finished. They are still very small and will not be able to be released for several more weeks. I hope to visit them again before they leave.

Moving away...always a good idea.

You can get some idea of their tininess in this photo of the baby moving away from me. I hope, for their sake, that once they are released they never see a human or anything made by a human again in their whole lives. It is almost axiomatic that nothing good for the opossum would come from that.

I gave a donation to Wildcare to help with their expenses. There's no amount of money though that can pay for the having of a place like Wildcare where our wild neighbors have a refuge from human destructiveness. Wildcare, Heartland, Mindy's Memory, Serenity Springs...these are all places where the free (wild) animals or the not-free (domestic) animals have a chance to be safe and protected and respected and cared for. These places are orphanages and hospitals and rehab-facilities and nursing homes and day-cares and families all rolled into one.

Give them every cent you can, give them as much time as you can...they truly are the best we can be...for Earthlings who aren't human.

These places, and places like them, represent one of the few positives about humans insofar as humans being desirable neighbors that I know of. Mostly, if you are an Earthling who happens to not be a human, the human Earthlings are bearers of suffering and misery and death. It is a sad commentary on ourselves that for all our fellow Earthlings we are, mostly, monsters. And not fun monsters...we're monsters of the genre of monsters like the one in the original Alien movie. Scary as hell and even more destructive.

If you want to resign from the ranks of the monsters...go vegan...that's the only way to do it. Otherwise you're the enemy...an ugly and vicious enemy...to our fellow Earthlings. Look at that baby in the picture. She (or he) has just as much right to enjoy this beautiful Earth as you or I do. We have no right to interfere in that enjoyment.

Going vegan and supporting your local sanctuaries and rescues...it's a start.

Bea and her babies.

Bea the bunny (named in honor of the incomparable Bea Elliott) came to us via the OKC animal shelter. While she was at the shelter she gave birth to 4 babies but only 3 survived. Her children's names are Sparkle, Sparky and Finn.

Bea's children.

 Sparkle, the little girl and Bea the mom got along very well and when time came to separate the kids (because conflict erupts otherwise...those with teenage human children are familiar with this...separating bunny babies from mom is similar to human children leaving home), Sparkle and Bea remained together.

Bea

Sadly though, Sparkle recently died. We're not sure of the cause. One of the horrendous things that have been inflicted on the bunnies is lots and lots of inbreeding and many of the buns, especially the white ones have physiologies that contain ticking genetic time-bombs just waiting for the right moment or circumstance to wreak havoc on their health. This may be what caused Sparkle's death...she was a very young and healthy appearing girl.

Finn is the smallest of the two remaining boys. Sparky is a bit bigger and a tad less sociable than Finn. Finn loves to get free run of the south warren and he zips all over the place, visiting the other bunnies. He recently had a bout of head tilt but luckily has seemed to manage to recover fairly well...thanks to Jeannie's efforts and with assistance and help from Christina. He's a lucky boy.

Finn playing outside.

Bea and her children are each a little shy but warm up very well once they get past their initial timidity.

Finn has one other characteristic that sets him apart from his siblings, he has fur that is very silky feeling...it is one of the first things your hands notice when you touch him. If it feels as good inside as it does on the outside...then he must feel terrific all the time.

Sparky resting after being outside.

Giving birth to children while in a homeless shelter is not a great situation. Luckily for Bea Heartland Rabbit Rescue was available as a resource for her and the kids and now they have a place to live for as long as need be. They also were lucky in that there are humans who support animal rescues and shelters by donating items for the animals and funds to help care for them. Bea the bunny, and Finn and Sparky have a special human who helps Heartland care for them by donating to the Heartland cause. That's where Bea got her name.

Bea Elliott is special also in that she supports all animals by writing blogs and engaging in activism supporting the vegan cause. You can read her work here and here. She also shares her home with a number of her fellow (formerly homeless) Earthlings in addition to being a supporting member of the Heartland Family. Thank you Bea!

Thanks also to each of you that support the work of the folks who provide shelter and care for our fellow Earthlings.

Please support your local animal rescues and sanctuaries...especially those that advocate for a vegan world. The only way we're going to begin to move to a planet where the need for animal rescues and sanctuaries is minimized is if humans adhere to a vegan approach to living. Bea the bunny does this everyday, as do all the bunnies at Heartland. Bea Elliott does this every day too....the least we all can do is to follow their examples.