Of Eating... Ethically

This--ethical eating--being the big (and I think it is, justly) new issue being discussed and wrestled with by UU congregations, I wanted to start a conversation here.

But first, a grace.

I did not grow up in a family that said grace. I found the practice... curious... well into my 20s. Most of the time, it seemed rote and hasty, and I was baffled. This poem, when I encountered it, hit me like a pile of bricks, and it became--for me--the essential core of what I pause and htink on before I eat. Not said aloud, but considered.

Song of the Taste
(Gary Snyder, from REGARDING WAVE (New Directions, 1970))

Eating the living germs of grasses
Eating the ova of large birds

aa the fleshy sweetness packed
aa around the sperm of swaying trees

The muscles of the flanks and thighs of
aa aa aa soft-voiced cows
aa the bounce in the lamb’s leap
aa the swish in the ox’s tail

Eating roots grown swoll
aa inside the soil

Drawing on life of living
aa clustered points of light spun
aa aa aa out of space
hidden in the grape.

Eating each other’s seed
aa aa aa aa eating
aa ah, each other.

Kissing the lover in the mouth of bread:
aa aa aa aa lip to lip.

I've poked around at this enough to realize that it's a vast array of entangle issues.

Is it ethical to kill and eat (at all, or animals, or certain animals)?
Is it ethical to treat animals (that will be used for food) inhumanely? Is that only an issue for their slaughter, or their lives?
What are our ethical obligations to the members of a species and to the species?
What about organic/non-organic food?
Local or non-local?
Effect on the local ecology?
Effect on the ecosphere (impacts on climate change, etc)?
The working conditions and treatment of those working on raising, processing, and transporting food?
The payment of a decent (living) wage to those performing those tasks?
Inequality in access to adequate food?
Cost of food?
Sustainability of the practices of raising and transporting food?


What else? Have I missed other areas or subtopics?

Incivil Disobedience

This looks like an interesting and effective scheme.

R.I.P.

Equal Marriage, California

June 17, 2008 - Nov 4, 2008

In hopes of the resurrection

Time for the War on Christmas

It's that time of year again. The Kulturkrieg's Stoßtruppen are at it, warning us of the devious and pervasive forces that are out to suppress Christmas and to ruthlessly extract any reference to Christ--and to ensure that no one observes and celebrates the day in any manner whatsoever.

It's a damned serious problem and should not be mocked.

My small effort on behalf of the struggle to fight this insidious scheme is the fruits of my research to understand where it came from originally. I'm not suggesting that I've found its source, but I've managed to move that goalpost back in time, and want to share it.

"For preventing disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others: it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county."


Massachusetts Bay Colony
Law Banning Christmas Celebration
May 11, 1659

Damned Puritans.

Who would have guessed that the War on Christmas was a Christian cause?

Offered without comment...

because I'm so offended that visions of the Jacquerie arise...

(Context: This is the corporation that we, the taxpayers, bailed out by buying a just under 80% share of...)

As reported by ABC:

After Bailout, AIG Execs Head to California Resort
Rescued by Taxpayers, $440,000 for Retreat Including "Pedicures, Manicures"

By BRIAN ROSS and TOM SHINE

October 7, 2008—

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

"Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night," Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman's investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.

Stream of consciousness--BBC-triggered

Filed under "Sad, even pitiable, but somehow amusing":

Pope laments decline of scripture

...

The Pope lamented what he called the harmful and destructive influence of some forms of modern culture.

This, he said, had decided that God was dead, and man was the sole architect of his destiny and master of creation.

...

Um, no. Architect? Now, perhaps unlicensed general contractor... that looks likely.

Filed under "Headlines one never wants to see" (bad echo!):

Germany seeks to reassure savers

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has moved to reassure savers in German financial institutions that their deposits are safe.

I'm afraid to even look at the editorial cartoons that might conjure up. Perhaps fortuitously, the cartoonist I know who'd have gone straight for that cheap, creepy image is having surgery.

File this one under "Pot calls kettle black":

Palin makes Obama terrorist claim

(For anyone unfamiliar with Gov. Palin, her husband was a member of an Alaskan secessionist party--whose founder died in an illegal attempt to buy explosives gone bad--until she began running for major public office, and she's been on friendly terms with that party even after her election. Obama knows a '60s era radical--whose acts of violence occured when Obama was 8 years old--and has become a minor Chicago area philanthropist since.)

Filed under "More of the same":

Afghan victory hopes played down

The UK's commander in Helmand has said Britain should not expect a "decisive military victory" in Afghanistan.
...
But he stated: "We're not going to win this war.

Sort of like in Iraq, or just like in Iraq? Britain's played this game in Afghanistan before...

William Butler Yeats, Crisis Economics Poet

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Just swap "Washington" for "Bethlehem."

Bring on the Swedish Plan. Among other things, it worked pretty well for Sweden's crisis. Of course, it's Swedish and therefore suspect on the right--anything borne in on the shoulders of tall blond(e) Scandinavian socialists must be riddled with libertine values... like insisting on value for tax payer funds.

Or something that's vaguely responsible, please.

What it sounds like Congress is doing is pouring more oil into the engine that's belching white smoke as the old Buick careens down the road. More than oil's necessary. Oh, oil is too--but only as a stop gap, so that there's enough lubrication to get the heap into the mechanic's without having the engine seize up.

Fun and... educational

h/t to Chalicechick

Absurdism to Live For

Maoists appoint "living goddess."

What is there to say to that? What can one add?

First they came for...

In 1971 Martin Niemöller said he was not sure exactly when he said these words--and over the years, it appears that he (and others) cited his words differently--but this is the version he preferred, if people wanted to cite his words;

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

I was pretty disturbed when Adkission barged into TVUUC in Knoxville and started shooting Unitarian Universalists--because "they" were liberal folk who were supporting liberal, egalitarian politicians. But this isn't about that.

It's about the fact that nothing is being done about the forces that appear to have driven Adkission in the direction of such an act.

I was horrified when Bill Gwatney was sought out and murdered in what appears to be a political assassination, because he was the chairman of the Democratic Party in Arkansas. (Wikipedia says "No motive was discovered, except Johnson quitting his Target job earlier that day." But Johnson went to the Democratic Party HQ, asked for Gwatney because (he said) he wanted to volunteer--and then murdered the chairman. It's mind bogglingly hard to draw a connection between losing one's job at Target....) But this isn't about that.

It's about the fact that nothing is being done about the forces that appear to have driven Johnson in the direction of such an act.

Now, I'm appalled. There was a terrorist attack in America--in Dayton--on a place of worship, affecting hundreds of people, adults and children--and it's barely been reported. (So much for America not having had any terrorist attacks since 9/11--that's two, at least, the anthrax letters and this one... and both of those appear to have been commited by home-grown terrorists...)

The good news is that no one was killed. But people were terrorized and harmed, and that's absolutely terrorism. Worship was disrupted; people were driven out of their service by tearing up, coughing and shortness of breath. Firefighters were washing peoples' faces and eyes at the scene, and some people were taken to a hospital.

... a child reported seeing two men with a white can spraying something into a window...

Perhaps it was someting like pepper spray--or tear gas. Or it could have been any of a number of other noxious things. But what's disturbing is that it was done... and that the national media hasn't covered it, and that there's no public expression of concern.

You see, it was a mosque that was attacked...

... in a community where the hate "documentary" Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West had been distributed widely (inserted into the local paper or mailed, as it has throughout the country). It's been distributed by the Clarion Fund, and carries the endorsement of the chair of the counter-terrorism department of the U.S. Naval War College, citing his name and using the implicit authority of an official U.S. military institution to lend it credibility.

In each case there's an attack on people who are the object of the hate messages of the political right.

And there's nothing done about the root causes.

But maybe you're not a liberal, a Unitarian Universalist, a Democrat or a Muslim, so you can just shake your head and move along. But you should remember Niemöller's words, and as you move along, as yourself one question;

Will there be anyone there when they come for you?