"Despite the recent rise of fundamentalism, the crisis of belief continues. Many people, including me, have overcome it to a greater or a lesser degree by locating God in nature. Most of the glimpses of immortality, design, and benevolence that I see come from the natural world- from the seasons, from the beauty, from the intermeshed fabric of decay and life, and so on. Other signs exists as well, such as instances of great and selfless love between people, but these, perhaps, are less reliable. They hint at epiphany, not at the eternity that nature proclaimed. If this seems a banal notion, that is exactly my point. The earliest gods we know about were animals- tigers, birds, fish. Their forms and faces peer out from ancient ruins, and from the totems and wall paintings of our first religions..."- Mckibben

"Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer."

Wendell Berry, from “Sabbaths 2001”

People involved in industry, design, environmentalism, and related fields often refer to a product's "life cycle". Of course, very few products are actually living, but in a sense we project our vitality-- and our mortality-- onto them. They are something like family members to us. We want them to live with us, to belong to us. In Western society, people have graves, and so do products. We enjoy the idea of ourselves as powerful, unique individuals; and we like to buy things that are brand-new, made of materials that are "virgin". Opening a new product is a kind of metaphorical defloration: "This virgin product is mine, for the very first time. When I am finished with it (special, unique person that I am), everyone is. It is history." Industries design and plan according to this mind-set.
We recognize and understand the value of feeling special, even unique. But with materials, it makes sense to celebrates the sameness and commonality that permit us to enjoy them-- in special, even unique, products-- more than once. What would have happened, we sometimes wonder, if the Industrial Revolution had taken place in societies that emphasize the community over the individual, and where people believed not in a cradle-to-grave life cycle but in reincarnation?

Every man is followed by a shadow which is his death- dark, featureless, and mute. And for every man there is a place where his shadow is clarified and is made his reflection, where his face is mirrored in the ground...He becomes the follower of what pursued him. What hounded his track becomes his companion.
That is the myth of my search and my return.

- Wendell Berry

Eating Animals, Foer

       There is something about eating animals that tends to polarize: never eat them or never sincerely question eating them; become an activist or disdain activists. These opposing positions -- and the closely related unwillingness to take a position -- converge in suggesting that eating animals matters. If and how we eat animals cuts something deep. Meat is bound up with the story of who we are and who we want to be, from the book of Genesis to the latest farm bill. It raises significant philosophical questions and is a $140 billion-plus a year industry that occupies nearly a third of the land on the planet, shapes ocean ecosystems, and may well determine the future of earth's climate. And yet we seem able to think only about the edges of the arguments -- the logical extremes rather than the practical realities. My grandmother said she wouldn't eat pork to save her life, and though the context of her story is as extreme as it gets, many people seem to fall back on this all-or-nothing framework when discussing their everyday food choices. It's a way of thinking that we would never apply to other ethical realms. (Imagine always or never lying.) I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.) 

       We need a better way to talk about eating animals. We need a way that brings meat to the center of public discussion in the same way it is often in the center of our plates. This doesn't require that we pretend we're all going to have a collective agreement. However strong our intuitions are about what's right for us personally and even about what's right for others, we all know in advance our positions will clash with those of our neighbors. What do we do with that most inevitable reality? Drop the conversation, or find a way to reframe it? 
 _______________________________________________________________

Stewed Dog, Wedding Style - A Classic Filipino Recipe

 First, kill a medium-sized dog, then burn off the fur over a hot fire. Carefully remove the skin while still warm and set aside for later (may be used in other recipes). Cut meat into 1" cubes. Marinate meat in mixture of vinegar, peppercorn, salt, and garlic for 2 hours. Fry meat in oil using a large wok over an open fire, then add onions and chopped pineapple and saute until tender. Pour in tomato sauce and boiling water, add green pepper, bay leaf, and Tabasco. Cover and simmer over warm coals until meat is tender. Blend in puree of dog's liver and cook additional 5-7 minutes.

       A simple trick from the backyard astronomer: if you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing.

      Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.
_________________________________________________________________

The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses.
The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows.
The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.

Jack Gilbert, RIP

"....Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe

barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds."

- Excerpt from The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
 

 Link: A Guide to Seed Saving, Seed Stewardship and Seed Sovereignity