Hawk's View

from this side of Frog Pond Holler




“ Positively understood, the project of plant liberation would allow plants to be what they are and to realize their potentialities, often in the context of cross-kingdoms co-evolution. Inasmuch as humans and animals share the vegetal soul with plants, the potentialities of the latter are also ours, though often it is virtually impossible to recognize them as such. Since the nutritive capacity is part and parcel of vegetal life, questions regarding dietary ethics are crucial to this project. We cannot subsist on inorganic matter alone, as plants do, but we can critically question our dietary choices without prescribing a perfectly violence-free and universally applicable eating pattern. A mindful dietary pattern would combine distinct parts of the Aristotelian soul: the nutritive capacity, which forms the vegetal heritage in us, and the reasoning capacity, which Aristotle deemed to be properly human. And, when it does, plant liberation will finally be on our moral menus. Is Plant Liberation on the Menu? - NYTimes.com


Learning While Black: A Message From a Mother to Her Son | | AlterNet

For three years of my K-8 schooling, from 7:40 a.m. until 3:05 p.m., I was black and invisible. I was bused across town to integrate a white school in Southeast Portland, Ore. We arrived at school promptly at 7:30 and had 10 full minutes before the white children arrived. We spent that time roaming the halls—happy, free, normal. Once the white children arrived, we became black and invisible. We were separated, so that no more than two of us were in a class at a time. I never saw black people in our textbooks unless they were in shackles or standing with Martin Luther King Jr. Most of us rarely interacted with a black adult outside of the aide who rode the bus with us. I liked school and I loved learning. But I never quite felt right or good. I felt very black and obvious because I knew that my experience was different from that of my peers. But I also felt invisible because this was never acknowledged in any meaningful way. I became visible again at 3:05 when I got back on the bus with the other brown faces to make our journey home.



Flowering Quince

Flowering Quince

“ If you focus on the utilitarian value of human beings, you may find yourself at some point nervously glancing in the mirror. Corseted Minds: Does Fear of Irrelevance Send Conservative Men Fleeing to the Victorian Age? | | AlterNet


Is there a wild cat in all of us?


Desk Experiment 2: Caught at the fade


“ We are facing an economic and spiritual crisis that threatens our survival and our deepest humanity. But it also an opportunity. It is an opportunity to create a more just way of living. In earlier, more dangerous times we created families, villages, places of worship and respect for one another. We have that creativity within us still. Let us all celebrate this holiday season through the eyes of a Beloved Community, turning away from wanting things to valuing people. We can turn to one another and ask what kind of community we can create together. Turning to Instead of Against Each Other | Common Dreams


Leaves


Fall in the holler


“ The biggest “theft” by the 1 percent has been of the primary source of wealth - knowledge - for its own benefit. How the 99 Percent Really Lost Out - in Far Greater Ways Than the Occupy Protesters Imagine | Truthout