It’s an interesting issue that I’ve been thinking about for a long time and I’m not sure yet if my life is matching up with my values. I’m still working it out. And like Alicia Silverstone says, it’s not all or nothing.

Here’s a list of what I think of animal rights and what I do:

Eating

I think that it is ok to eat animals and animal products, but not ok to be cruel to them. I don’t think raising or eating factory raised animals is ok.

What I do: I only buy fish or birds to eat. I try and buy “organic” “free range” birds and wild caught fish, but it’s really hard to tell how the animals were actually treated. It might be easier just to be vegetarian. I eat eggs but only “cage free” eggs. I buy eggs from birds raised on small farms when I come across them, even if they cost more.

The book In Defense of Food has reasonable and balanced guidelines for eating in a way that is healthy for us and the earth. He doesn’t advocate vegetarianism, but does advocate eating heavy on the vegis and light on the animals. This is more of an ecological way of looking at animal rights rather than caring about individual animals as much, but he is against eating factory raised animals.

Animals I wouldn’t eat even if I were starving. They are part of my tribe.

Hunting

Watching animals die at factories on Peta is like watching animals die on the discovery channel. It’s a harsh world in some ways, but should we contribute to that? With our human ingenuity we have really pushed cruelty over the top when it comes to killing other animals, simply due to efficiency. To bring our behavior more in balance with the rest of nature, I think we should at least be as ineffective as other predators and hunt for food we eat. (We, like wolves, are predators- see our forward facing eyes and motions.)

What I do: My behavior isn’t in line with this belief because I don’t hunt. I did go hunting with my dad and older brothers when I was a kid. They taught me how to shoot a gun. I loved hunting until they actually shot a deer. Then I cried and cried and cried.

Food I didn’t have to hunt for.

Clothing

I’m allergic to wool. I have very few shoes. A couple pairs are leather. I keep my shoes for so long (decades) that I don’t feel bad about that. If everyone had my shoe habits, very few cows would need to be killed for leather. So, I guess moderation is my general principle here. I’d definitely be willing to buy shoes made out of other materials too.

I think it’s alright to buy any kind of animal made products at a thrift store because buying them at a thrift store doesn’t contribute to the industry that makes those products.

Pets and feral animals

I have a friend who is a vegan AND a biologist. She thinks that feral cats should be killed because they upset the native bird population. It’s an interesting way of looking at the issue. As a biologist, she is looking at the population as a whole, but as a vegan, there must be some concern for the individual animals. (I think it can be successfully argued that you can raise and eat meat on small farms and other ways that are in balance with the environment.) Interesting.

I think it is horrifying to kill feral cats. I think a good thing to do with them is to catch them and spay or neuter them. Growing up, we adopted stray cats that wondered into our yard and spayed or neutered them. Last year my mom caught feral cats in her neighborhood in traps, got them spayed or neutered, and then released them back into her neighborhood. So, when it comes to these cats, I think of them as individuals, but when it comes to hunting, I’m ok with hunting for food because I’m thinking of the effect on the population overall and how it balances out ecologically.

I’m not saying either of these ways of thinking are better. I’m just thinking through this and noticing these interesting inconsistencies.

Feral cat in my mom’s backyard, neutered but not killed, and still on the prowl.

Animal Testing

Cosmetics: Absolutely not ok with me. I try and make sure I only buy things that haven’t been tested on animals. To survive, I can understand eating other animals, but for the sake of looking cuter?? No way.

Medical testing

This one is tricky. There is A LOT of lab work being done on animals in research centers and universities. I would never do this work. Does this make me a hypocrite for using the medicine that comes out of this work? My Granddad is on three medications for Alzheimer’s right now. I’m glad this medicine exists. It seems likely that it was tested on animals. What do you think about using this medicine?

I went to a lecture at the university I was working at. What they found out was facinating and might help humans a lot, but when I heard how they figured it out using lab animals, I wanted to cry and retch. After seeing that presentation I thought, maybe it isn’t so tricky. Maybe the sum total of what we’ve gained by dissecting creatures physically and dissecting reality into it’s component bits in our Western intellectual tradition does not equal what we would have if we lived and thought more holistically.

Granddad who I love very much who is helped by medication probably tested on other animals.

What do you think about these issues? I would love to hear from you.

Thoughts? Insights that makes any of this more clear? Any of your own inconsistencies that you notice?

…consider that all those calculations of what is “in my interest” and what will benefit me and what I can “afford” grow tiresome. When we live rightly, decision by decision, the heart sings even when the rational mind disagrees and the ego protests. Besides, human wisdom is limited. Despite our machinations, we are ultimately unsuccessful at avoiding pain, loss and death. For animals, plants, and humans alike, there is more to life than not dying.

- Charles Eisenstein

This is the tail end of an article about the ethics of eating meat. He argues that it’s ethical because we are all going to die and the real question is how the animal was treated while it was alive. I admire vegetarians and feel like a hyporite when I meat, because I sure as hell don’t want someone to eat me! But, I still eat meat. I just haven’t managed to find a way to feel healthy and energetic without it. I eat meat less often than I used to and I’m down to birds and seafood. i think every little bit helps.

This article promted me to decide to take another step. I will work towards only eating farm raised or hunted creatures rather than factory raised creatures. I already only eat farm raised free range eggs and highly encourage you to do so as well. (More ethical and all you have to give up is a few more cents.) I do encourage you to buy your eggs from a local farmer if you have the chance as the label “free range” in the grocery store has a variety of meanings.

The article can be found here.

I dreamt that I had plans with someone, but right before he came over, I fell to the floor with exhaustion. This is only a slightly dramatized version of my real life. Last night my friend never came over, I called her, and fell to my bed with exhaustion at 7:30. I knew this would mean I would wake up way too early, but I just couldn’t hold out until 9. That’s why I called my mom at 5:30 this morning, an hour and a half after I woke up. And how I had time to read poetry before I called, which came in handy as my mom missed the first hour of church while talking to me. In acknowledgment of her lost hour of church, I decided to give her a mother’s day sermon. I got it from The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart which I was reading this morning.

I was worried because when I read it earlier in the morning, I started crying at the first sentence, having read it before and knowing what was coming. I tend to cry when I read things to my mom, even if it didn’t make me cry on my own. “Don’t worry,” I told my mom before I started reading it, “I cried earlier, but I’m fine now.”

What Happened During the Ice Storm

One winter there was a freezing rain. How beautiful! people said when things outside started to shine with ice. But the freezing rain kept coming. Tree branches glistened like glass. Then broke like glass. Ice thickened on the windows until everything outside blurred. Farmers moved their livestock into the barns, and most animals were safe. But not the pheasants. Their eyes froze shut.

Some farmers went ice-skating down the gravel roads with clubs to harvest the pheasants that sat helplessly in the roadside ditches. The boys went out into the freezing rain to find pheasants too. They saw dark spots along a fence. Pheasants, all right. Five or six of them. The boys slid their feet along slowly, trying not to break the ice that covered the snow. They slid up close to the pheasants. The pheasants pulled their heads down between their wings. They couldn’t tell how easy it was to see them huddled there.

The boys stood still in the icy rain. Their breath came out in slow puffs of steam. The pheasants’ breath came out in quick little white puffs. Some of them lifted their heads and turned them from side to side, but they were blind folded with ice and didn’t flush. The boys had not brought clubs, or sacks, or anything but themselves. They stood over the pheasants, turning their own heads, looking at each other, each expecting the other to do something. To pounce on a pheasant, or to yell Bang! Things around them were shining and dripping with icy rain. The barbed-wire fence. The fence posts. The broken stems of grass. Even the grass seeds. The grass seeds looked like little yolks inside gelatin whites. And the pheasants looked like unborn birds glazed in egg white. Ice was hardening on the boys’ caps and coats. Soon they would be covered with ice too.

Then one of the boys said, Shh. He was taking off his coat, the thin layer of ice splintering in flakes as he pulled his arms from the sleeves. But the inside of the coat was dry and warm. He covered two of the crouching pheasants with his coat, rounding the back of it over them like a shell. The other boys did the same. They covered all the helpless pheasants. The small gray hens and the larger brown cocks. Now the boys felt the rain soaking through their shirts and freezing. They ran across the slippery fields, unsure of their footing, the ice clinging to their skin as they made their way toward the blurry lights of the house.

This mother’s day sermon was brought you you by Braidwood’s mom’s daughter Braidwood.Happy Mother’s Day!

Tonight she was just the person I needed to help me feel more spacious, seeing the bigger picture, feeling less alone. At first our conversation was just about the details of her next visit. I suggested she stay longer, subtext: “I’m lonely. I need you. Please come stay with me.” Of course, she responded to what I said with the practicalities of the visit, and as she said the reasons she had to leave when she did, and continued talking about the details, I felt myself going into the self-imposed state of aloneness I can sometimes go into. I decided not to do that to myself. “I’m lonely.” I told her.

Sometimes all you need is to reach out. Then we had one of those conversations that probably promted the phrase, “friendship is the sweetest balm,” when someone says just what you need to hear and brings you to another place. She told me with warmth in her voice how much bounteousness I’d added to her life, and then sympathized with the longing I feel for a special person, saying she remembered being my age and feeling that. Thanks, mom.

My mom has found love, and now whenever I picture her, it is like she is in a little cottage in a village in the woods, with animals freinds hanging out in the house, and soup cooking in the background, and a loving husband just getting home, or reading the paper, or playing with the dog and petting the cat. “Our house is a very very very fine house…“

This is Pi. I found this little kitten outside on my mom’s picnic table a couple days ago. It is part of the posse of feral cats in the neighborhood, and we think it got abandoned because it was sick. My mom told me to get it out of the house immediately, but it had taken me 20 minutes to catch this wild cat and I wasn’t going to just put it back out in the cold. (It was very cold.) I took slow motion hunter like steps towards it until I was close and enough to reach out and grab it. I think I only caught it because it was sick. I brought it inside, and it was flattened out to the floor and scared. As you can see, it warmed up to me pretty soon. Pi was falling asleep in this picture.

I think I was there for it’s first human induced purr. I pet it’s back a couple times and it was like it’s motor started for the first time. It looked surprised. It started purring this loud purr that didn’t quit the whole time we had it. Eventually, after I started crying, my mom came around and let me keep it in the house and helped me find some people to help it. (I am a stranger in a strange land on Christmas vacation.) I don’t think this kitten had ever eaten food besides nursing so it took it awhile to eat the cat food and cream of wheat we gave it.

It was very happy to be held, and very sad if I ever left the bathroom where we kept it, (so it wouldn’t pass along whatever sickness it had to our cats). Sandy, the cat healer and rescuer, took it and assured me she would heal it up and then find Pi a home. Most of the animals we’ve had have been rescued and were/are part of our family. I hope Pi has a nice life. Whoever gets this playful and loving kitten will be lucky. Oh yeah, and just because you cannot save all the stray cats in the world doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and save one.

I remember when I lived in a small town where some people were prejudiced against other races, religions, and environmentalists, (which they used as a dirty word.) I used to argue with my friends about EVERYTHING. I thought they were lucky I would be their friend. Then I realized that I was lucky they would be my friend! I was the odd duck out and they still befriended me. I decided to pick my battle and let beef eating, hunting, environmentalism etc.. go and only speak up strongly to any kind of hate speech. I thought of this as a compromise, as a nod to the part of me who yearns to be accepted socially. Maybe if I was stronger and was willing to be alone, I could fight all of the battles.

Well, I’m glad that I yearn to be one of the people, because I am one of the people! (As idiotic as I think some people are sometimes.) I now live and associate with people who are more like me, and that is less stressful, but I learned a lot from those friends who were different. A, they were a lot of fun! We had fun in the mountains of a small town. They enjoyed life. Amazingly, even though their words could sometimes be prejudiced, I learned a lot about tolerance from them. I mean, they were friends with me, even when I was arguing all the time. They accepted people as they were. You could be eccentric, very eccentric, and still belong. My philosophy was more tolerant, but it could sometimes be as a “sounding gong” in practice, as I constantly, and I’m sure annoyingly, set people straight. Thankfully, through my self-imposed diplomacy, I was able to get close enough to really get to know those neat people. I developed a new philosophy of tolerance that I could use in practice, and when I use it, it serves me well.

My goal is to love people and be for people, instead of holding off and feeling like I have to fight against people. When I feel love for people, it’s like people just flock to me and I don’t have to do anything. But I still get afraid, especially if I think other people just don’t understand something and it is urgent that I tell them. I have seen a reappearance of my battle fighting self at school lately. In fact, just this morning I had a dream that I was at a long table and kept interrupting people to correct them. It was a compulsion. Everytime I did it, I knew it wasn’t the best way. I put my head down on my arm and sighed.

This is for anyone else who gets a savior complex every now and then. This is for me. So, here is what I have learned since having buddies who took me digging (driving a truck in deep mud,) called me over to watch their goslings hatch, played WWF (wrestling) on mattresses in the livingroom, argued with me about milk, and thoughtfully did not kill any animals when I was along for the ride:

1. Everyone has something valuable to give, even if it is not apparent at first. So, pre-emptively giving people respect will be the most accurate approach.
2. Assume that people have good intentions and are intelligent when you are trying to understand them and you will usually understand people who have very different opinions than yours much more accurately.
3. Tell yourself, “I don’t have to fix everything. I do not have to be the savior of the world or even of the people in my immediate vicinity. People will eventually get it,” (whatever “it” is to you.) “They will be ok.” (This is the part that takes faith, opposite of fear kind of faith.)
4. No matter how sensible and enlightened your values and opinions are, people will not want to be around you or listen to you if you are angry, miserable and treat them with contempt.
5. And a positive version of the statement above: People will listen to you and want to learn more about your ways if you live a joyful life and love them. That is an easy, joyful way to be influential.

AHH!! Run for your life, little dude! My mom sent me a bunch of pictures this morning and this one especially concerned me. Don’t send me a picture like this without telling me what happened to the guy! I thought maybe he got away by climbing the ladder really quickly, but when my madre told me that it looked like there were still two more men in the water, I got really concerned. And then… enter reason: it might not be real. Hmmm… I thought of Snopes. They could give me the lowdown. What do you think? Is it real or not?
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It’s FALSE! That’s right, I was worried due to a cheesy photoshop trick! Get the full story at Snopes.com. Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble, darn kids these days….

Owen, the baby hippo was lost and probably orphaned during the Tsunami. He met Mzee, a 100 yr old Tortoise, at a wildlife sanctuary and now he follows it around like it is his mom. Ahhh… It’s all over the internet and according to Snopes, it’s true.

Bereaved by the forces of nature and discovered by wildlife rangers near certain death in the Indian Ocean off Malindi, the one-year-old male hippo calf dubbed Owen was on 27 December 2004 placed in Haller Park, a wildlife sanctuary in the coastal city of Mombassa, Kenya.

As soon as he was placed in his enclosure, the orphaned youngster immediately ran to the tortoise also housed in that space. The 100 year-old tortoise named Mzee (Swahili for “old man”) was not immediately taken with the brash newcomer — he turned and hissed, forcing the hippo to back away. Yet within days, the pair had forged a friendship, and now eat and sleep together. Owen has even been seen to lick the tortoise, whom he regards as his new mother.

It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a ‘mother.’ The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother.

The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years.

Here’s my 20 or so things I really like to do.

What about you? (Tip: write as fast as you can without evaluating, and do yours before you read mine!)

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Did you write yours yet?

Ok, Here are mine:

• Dancing
• Playing with friends
• Cuddling
• Eating good food
• Playing with animals
• Singing and playing the guitar for other people
• Creating a finished piece of art that I really like
• Having an exciting intellectual discussion
• Talking with someone and feeling a close connection
• Making people laugh
• Laughing really hard
• Making my home and garden space look really nice
• Choreographing a dance show
• Expressing my ideas really well
• Having someone play with my hair and otherwise love me
• Swimming in warm water
• Kayaking
• River rafting
• Seeing somewhere new and beautiful
• Listening to good music
• Listening to sensible and uplifting ideas
• Learning something new that opens up possibilities for me
• Accomplishing a goal
• Knowing that I really helped someone and made a positive difference

I’d love to read your 20 things, if you want to share, leave a comment or a link to your 20 (or so)!