A page from Margaret Atwood’s latest, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (2011).

excerpt from the short story “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet”

3. In the third age, money became a god. It was all-powerful, and out of control. It began to talk. It began to create on its own. It created feasts and famines, songs of joy, lamentations. It created greed and hunger, which were its two faces. Towers of glass rose at its name, were destroyed and rose again. It began to eat things. It ate whole forests, croplands, and the lives of children. It ate armies, ships, and cities. No one could stop it. To have it was a sign of grace.

“Dinosauria, We (blue man)”: CC image via flickr user danielofredorota.
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Father Gomez

I.

He came out at sunset on a little headland beside a shallow bay. If they had tides in this sea, the tide was high, because there was only a narrow fringe of soft white sand above the water.

And floating in the calm bay were a dozen or more. Father Gomez had to stop and think carefully. A dozen or more enormous snow-white birds, each the size of a rowboat, with long, straight wings that trailed on the water behind them: very long wings, at least two yards in length. Were they birds? They had feathers, and heads and beaks not unlike swans’, but those wings were situated one in front of the other, surely…

Suddenly they saw him. Heads turned with a snap, and at once all those wings were raised high, exactly like the sails of a yacht, and they all leaned in with the breeze, making for the shore.

Father Gomez was impressed by the beauty of those wing-sails, by how they were flexed and trimmed so perfectly, and by the speed of the birds. Then he saw that they were paddling, too: they had legs under the water, placed not fore and aft like the wings but side by side, and with the wings and the legs together, they had an extraordinary speed and grace in the water.

As the first one reached the shore, it lumbered up through the dry sand, making directly for the priest. It was hissing with malice, stabbing its head forward as it waddled heavily up the shore, and the beak snapped and clacked. There were teeth in the beak, too, like a series of sharp incurved hooks.

Father Gomez was about a hundred yards from the edge of the water, on a low grassy promontory, and he had plenty of time to put down his rucksack, take out the rifle, load, aim, and fire.

The bird’s head exploded in a mist of red and white, and the creature blundered on clumsily for several steps before sinking onto its breast. It didn’t die for a minute or more; the legs kicked, the wings rose and fell, and the great bird beat itself around and around in a bloody circle, kicking up the rough grass, until a long, bubbling expiration from its lungs ended with a coughing spray of red, and it fell still.

The other birds had stopped as soon as the first one fell, and stood watching it, and watching the man, too. There was a quick, ferocious intelligence in their eyes. They looked from him to the dead bird, from that to the rifle, from the rifle to his face.

He raised the rifle to his shoulder again and saw them react, shifting backward clumsily, crowding together. They understood.

They were fine, strong creatures, large and broad-backed, like living boats, in fact. If they knew what death was, thought Father Gomez, and if they could see the connection between death and himself, then there was the basis of a fruitful understanding between them. Once they had truly learned to fear him, they would do exactly as he said. [...]

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This passage from Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass is one of my most favorite fictional food stories, like, ever. And given that a) I’m on a huge His Dark Materials kick right now (ginormous!); and today is both b) the end of Banned Books Week (a list on which HDM is often included) and c) the first day of veganmofo, it seems a rather opportune time to share, don’t you think? (The stars, they’ve aligned!) In this chapter, scientist Mary Malone plays the figurative serpent to Lyra and Will’s Eve and Adam by telling them stories: specifically, the story of how she lost her religion. Two words: marzipan and China! I’ll never look at that sweet paste the same way again.

Got a favorite marzipan recipe? Share it in the comments! I’ll show you mine later on in the month!

“When did you stop being a nun?” said Lyra.

“I remember it exactly,” Mary said, “even to the time of day. Because I was good at physics, they let me keep up my university career, you see, and I finished my doctorate and I was going to teach. It wasn’t one of those orders where they shut you away from the world. In fact, we didn’t even wear the habit; we just had to dress soberly and wear a crucifix. So I was going into university to teach and do research into particle physics.

“And there was a conference on my subject and they asked me to come and read a paper. The conference was in Lisbon, and I’d never been there before; in fact, I’d never been out of England. The whole business, the plane flight, the hotel, the bright sunlight, the foreign languages all around me, the well-known people who were going to speak, and the thought of my own paper and wondering whether anyone would turn up to listen and whether I’d be too nervous to get the words out… Oh, I was keyed up with excitement, I can’t tell you.

“And I was so innocent, you have to remember that. I’d been such a good little girl, I’d gone to Mass regularly, I’d thought I had a vocation for the spiritual life. I wanted to serve God with all my heart. I wanted to take my whole life and offer it up like this,” she said, holding up her hands together, “and place it in front of Jesus to do as he liked with. And I suppose I was pleased with myself. Too much. I was holy and I was clever. Ha! That lasted until, oh, half past nine on the evening of August the tenth, seven years ago.”

Lyra sat up and hugged her knees, listening closely.

“It was the evening after I’d given my paper,” Mary went on, “and it had gone well, and there’d been some well-known people listening, and I’d dealt with the questions without making a mess of it, and altogether I was full of relief and pleasure… And pride, too, no doubt.

“Anyway, some of my colleagues were going to a restaurant a little way down the coast, and they asked if I’d like to go. Normally I’d have made some excuse, but this time I thought, Well, I’m a grown woman, I’ve presented a paper on an important subject and it was well received and I’m among good friends… And it was so warm, and the talk was about all the things I was most interested in, and we were all in high spirits, so I thought I’d loosen up a bit. I was discovering another side of myself, you know, one that liked the taste of wine and grilled sardines and the feeling of warm air on my skin and the beat of music in the background. I relished it.

“So we sat down to eat in the garden. I was at the end of a long table under a lemon tree, and there was a sort of bower next to me with passionflowers, and my neighbor was talking to the person on the other side, and… Well, sitting opposite was a man I’d seen once or twice around the conference. I didn’t know him to speak to; he was Italian, and he’d done some work that people were talking about, and I thought it would be interesting to hear about it.

“Anyway. He was only a little older than me, and he had soft black hair and beautiful olive-colored skin and dark, dark eyes. His hair kept falling across his forehead and he kept pushing it back like that, slowly…”

She showed them. Will thought she looked as if she remembered it very well.

“He wasn’t handsome,” she went on. “He wasn’t a ladies’ man or a charmer. If he had been, I’d have been shy, I wouldn’t have known how to talk to him. But he was nice and clever and funny and it was the easiest thing in the world to sit there in the lantern light under the lemon tree with the scent of the flowers and the grilled food and the wine, and talk and laugh and feel myself hoping that he thought I was pretty. Sister Mary Malone, flirting! What about my vows? What about dedicating my life to Jesus and all that?

“Well, I don’t know if it was the wine or my own silliness or the warm air or the lemon tree, or whatever…But it gradually seemed to me that I’d made myself believe something that wasn’t true. I’d made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I’d spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn’t matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.

“And then someone passed me a bit of some sweet stuff and I suddenly realized I had been to China. So to speak. And I’d forgotten it. It was the taste of the sweet stuff that brought it back, I think it was marzipan. Sweet almond paste,” she explained to Lyra, who was looking confused.

Lyra said, “Ah! Marchpane!” and settled back comfortably to hear what happened next.

“Anyway,” Mary went on. “I remembered the taste, and all at once I was back tasting it for the first time as a young girl.

“I was twelve years old. I was at a party at the house of one of my friends, a birthday party, and there was a disco, that’s where they play music on a kind of recording machine and people dance,” she explained, seeing Lyra’s puzzlement. “Usually girls dance together because the boys are too shy to ask them. But this boy, I didn’t know him, he asked me to dance, and so we had the first dance and then the next, and by that time we were talking… And you know what it is when you like someone, you know it at once; well, I liked him such a lot. And we kept on talking and then there was a birthday cake. And he took a bit of marzipan and he just gently put it in my mouth, I remember trying to smile, and blushing, and feeling so foolish, and I fell in love with him just for that, for the gentle way he touched my lips with the marzipan.”

As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She found a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster, or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recognized the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn’t known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, deep in the darkness of the building she felt other doors opening too, and lights coming on.* She sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe, as Mary went on:

“And I think it was at that party, or it might have been at another one, that we kissed each other for the first time. It was in a garden, and there was the sound of music from inside, and the quiet and the cool among the trees, and I was aching, all my body was aching for him, and I could tell he felt the same, and we were both almost too shy to move. Almost. But one of us did and then without any interval between, it was like a quantum leap, suddenly, we were kissing each other, and oh, it was more than China, it was paradise.

“We saw each other about half a dozen times, no more. And then his parents moved away and I never saw him again. It was such a sweet time, so short… But there it was. I’d known it. I had been to China.”

It was the strangest thing: Lyra knew exactly what she meant, and half an hour earlier she would have had no idea at all. And inside her, that rich house with all its doors open and all its rooms lit stood waiting, quiet, expectant.

“And at half past nine in the evening at that restaurant table in Portugal,” Mary continued, “someone gave me a piece of marzipan and it all came back. And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It’s full of treasures and strangeness and mystery and joy. I thought, Will anyone be better off if I go straight back to the hotel and say my prayers and confess to the priest and promise never to fall into temptation again? Will anyone be the better for making me miserable?

“And the answer came back, no. No one will. There’s no one to fret, no one to condemn, no one to bless me for being a good girl, no one to punish me for being wicked. Heaven was empty. I didn’t know whether God had died, or whether there never had been a God at all. Either way I felt free and lonely and I didn’t know whether I was happy or unhappy, but something very strange had happened. And all that huge change came about as I had the marzipan in my mouth, before I’d even swallowed it. A taste, a memory, a landslide…

“When I did swallow it and looked at the man across the table, I could tell he knew something had happened. I couldn’t tell him there and then; it was still too strange and private almost for me. But later on we went for a walk along the beach in the dark, and the warm night breeze kept stirring my hair about, and the Atlantic was being very well-behaved, little quiet waves around our feet…

“And I took the crucifix from around my neck and I threw it in the sea. That was it. All over. Gone.

“So that was how I stopped being a nun,” she said.

- Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials (The Amber Spyglass)

* Not-so-fun fact: the sexier bits of this paragraph were cut out of the US edition. Quick, to the fainting couch!

When the love you feel is against the laws of those in control, then love is a political act.

- Mary Borsellino, “Your Heart is a Weapon the Size of Your Fist”

This essay appears in the Smart Pop anthology The Girl Who Was On Fire: Your favorite authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy (2011), and is titled after this piece of graffiti, which is stenciled on a wall in Palestine.

“Coretta Scott King welcomes her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he leaves the courtroom in Montgomery, Alabama, March 22, 1956. Dr. King was found guilty of conspiracy for leading a boycott of the city’s segregated bus system. He ultimately spent two weeks in jail on the charge, attracting national attention to the boycott and the Civil Rights Movement.” (AP Photo/Gene Herrick)
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In celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the internets are abuzz with inspirational MLK quotes. Some of my favorites come from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” portions of which I’ve excerpted below (though I definitely urge you to read the letter in its entirety, if you haven’t already. And if you have, read it again. Seriously.)

Also please take a moment this evening to remember the late Coretta Scott King, a champion for the oppressed – human and nonhuman alike – in her own right.

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea.

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: “Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. [...] My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

- Excerpted from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963

I can’t see the point in women being equal to men if men are not equal to each other. *

Yes!

And also:

I can’t see the point in nonhuman animals being equal to humans if humans are not equal to each other.

Think about it.

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Do the people who admire this kind of thing ever wonder why there’s no Men’s Auxiliary Assless Chaps For Peace March?

No, of course not.

(Commenter Occasional lurker, in reference to last month’s “Boobquake.” CC image via frankfarm on Flickr.)

Of course, this criticism is equally applicable to other pseudo-progressive causes, including roughly 84.9% of PETA’s campaigns.

See, e.g., I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur; I’d Rather Show My Buns Than Wear Fur; I’d Rather Go Topless Than Wear Fur (!); Be Comfortable In Your Own Skin; Ink, Not Mink; and Turn Over a New Leaf.

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Now I can look at you in peace.
I don’t eat you any more.
- Franz Kafka, to a fish

 
Tomorrow marks the 28th annual International Day of Peace. The UN describes the holiday as

an annual observance of global non-violence and ceasefire. Every year, people in all parts of the world honour peace in various ways on 21 September.

Naturally – given that the observance was established by an anthropocentric organization – nonhuman animals are almost always excluded from celebrants’ circles of compassion. For example, the day’s “ceasefire” most certainly does not include the millions of cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, horses, dogs, rats, seals, foxes and other domestic and wild-living nonhuman animals who will be slaughtered for food, clothing, vivisection, entertainment and the like. Quite the contrary: humans’ exploitation of nonhumans will continue, unabated, throughout the day and across the globe.

Even so, that shouldn’t discourage animal advocates from observing the day with an emphasis on our nonhuman brothers and sisters. Indeed, it’s all the more reason to stress a truly inclusive and nonviolent day of peace. If not us, who?

When I think of “peace,” the first thought to come to mind is the above quote from Franz Kafka, a Jewish writer and vegetarian whose three younger sisters (and only surviving siblings) all perished in the Holocaust. Now I can look at you in peace. I don’t eat you any more. So simple, so beautiful, so true.

Peace in actions brings peace of mind. And what more fundamental actions do humans engage in than eating, feasting, consuming? Peace begins (but does not end!) on your plate.

Through its Roots & Shoots program, the Jane Goodall Institute has been celebrating its own Day of Peace since 2004. The idea began when the UN appointed Jane Goodall a Messenger of Peace in 2002:

Another action of the U.N. was to designate Messengers of Peace. People who are selected as Messengers of Peace are widely recognized for their achievements in music, literature, sports and the arts. Dr. Jane was appointed a Messenger of Peace on April 16, 2002 by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. To commemorate Dr. Jane’s appointment, Roots & Shoots members at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point first conceived of and created the Giant Peace Dove puppets through Puppet Farm Arts. Since then, Roots & Shoots members and friends have flown doves in more than 40 countries around the world.

Dr. Jane created Roots & Shoots Day of Peace in 2004 in honor of U.N. International Day of Peace; each year, Roots & Shoots Day of Peace is observed in late September. Roots & Shoots groups around the world fly Giant Peace Dove Puppets to celebrate Roots & Shoots Day of Peace for its symbolic meaning. They also plan and implement peace project initiatives to help make the world a better place for animals, the environment and the human community.

This year, the Roots & Shoots Day of Peace falls on September 20th; next year, it will be celebrated on September 18th. Though it’s too late to plan or attend an event, you can see what others are doing on the campaign’s events page. 2007′s activities are captured in a colorful ebook, available for download here. (‘twould be awesome if the JGI encouraged more specific and practical anti-speciesist actions, such as a vegan or even vegetarian diet, but I suppose merely mentioning nonhuman animal in the day’s festivities is a good start. Certainly, it’s a step beyond what the UN has done for our nonhuman kin.)

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and every dog needs a guardian like Mickey Rourke.

Check it – here’s Mickey Rourke’s acceptance speech from The Independent Spirit Awards. As with his Golden Globes acceptance speech, Rourke gives a shout-out to his dogs – and chokes at the mention of Loki, his recently departed friend and companion of eighteen years. Loki passed on February 16th, reportedly in Rourke’s arms.
 

 
In case y’all can’t view the video, here’s the part of the speech where Rourke mentions Loki:

You know, I’ve just gotten thousands of letters and shit from my – people, strangers, people that know me – about my dog that died six days ago. Loki, Loki – [pause] – this is for you, baby. [laughs]

Apropos my previous post, Rourke’s Wiki entry also notes,

He is well-known as a pet fancier, particularly fond of small-breed dogs. A spay/neuter advocate, Rourke participated in a protest outside of a pet shop in 2007 and has done a public service announcement for PETA.

His first little dog was reportedly a gift from his second wife. Though Rourke’s dogs are generally referred to as “chihuahuas,” some are not pure-bred. Loki, his most-publicized dog whom he described as “the love of my life,” was a chihuahua-terrier mix.

If any of Rourke’s dogs were bred, it appears to have been either unintentional or not something he’d do again.

Which means I can blub without ambivalence. Which I did, when the husband told me of Loki’s death. At least she had a good life; so many other dogs don’t.

If you’d like you send Rourke your condolences, try the guest book on his official site, www.uniquelyrourke.com. There, you’ll also find an announcement about Loki’s passing, as well as some photos of Loki with her human.

For snail mail, check out Rourke’s listing on fanmail.biz.

(h/t, ecorazzi)

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Or, a sab is a cat is a dog is a wife.

“Sabbing” really came into its own in the mid-1970s after enjoying some favorable publicity in the British media. “Sabs” [...] disrupted the hunt by laying false scents, wiring up gates to slow down the hunt’s progress, and setting off fireworks in woods to scare the foxes away. Some sabs developed an amazing expertise with a hunting horn and even succeeded in gaining control of the pack from the hunt master.

Hunters, of course, retaliated by attacking sabs. In 1976 the Joint Master of the Essex Union Foxhunt was widely quoted as saying, “Horsewhipping a hunt saboteur is rather like beating a wife – they’re both private matters.”

Excerpted from Kim Stallwood’s “A Personal Overview of Direct Action in the United Kingdom and the United States.”

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