Sonnet: To the Dark Matter

Author's note: I wrote this poem back in 1999. I am still fascinated by dark matter, and a recent story on a new theory of dark matter sparked my memory of this old sonnet (I was fascinated by the sonnet form for a while, too...).
 
Sonnet: To the Dark Matter

Something there is that yet still may not be:
Theories, conjectures, like folktales, abound;
Black mortar holding the bright tiles, for me:
Though ’tis concealed, amongst darkness be found.
In that abyss of the void in-between
Glistening gods man has too long revered
Lieth that crutch on which stars and spheres lean
(Key to a Nothing from which life appeared).
Look then, ye stargazers, upon that light
Wearied by lovers (like roses and dew!),
Thinking the luminous is the aright,
Certain that “Nothing there is!” is not true.
     Nothing: it is that which I gaze upon,
     Hiding itself ’neath the breaking of dawn.

Image credit: CosmoO, public domain image, via Wikimedia Commons.

Review of On Their Own Terms by Lee Hall

It has been nearly 70 years since Donald Watson and others launched the Vegan Society, proclaiming to the world a radical idea: that humans had no right to use animals in any way, for any reason. Since then, many seminal thinkers and works have argued the case for animal rights. Peter Singer published Animal Liberation nearly 40 years ago, and we have for decades had available the works of theorists such as Tom Regan and Gary Francione. Through their work, and the work of countless “grassroots” activists of many forms, “animal rights” has become a term of general knowledge—though its connotations can vary drastically depending on the speaker and audience!

In recent years, and especially within recent months, people in the animal rights movement have begun to reflect publicly on the movement itself, assessing principles, practices, and future efforts. Of particular import in this reflection is the question of what kind of use of animals is acceptable…or is any use not acceptable at all?

This question has rippled through animal advocacy in all its forms, leading many to wonder if there are not two animal-focused movements (often being referred to as “abolitionist” and “welfarist,” depending on how the question is answered).

Winter Garden

Winter Garden

Skeletons stand up from a field
Of snow, stretching to a white horizon,
And shiver in this crackling cold
As Boreas blows implacably.

It is impossible to remake this landscape
Even with a painter’s vision
Or make those skeletons live again—
Though a prophet, perhaps, could do it.

Our memories of picking ripe fruits
Are still fresh, but with frozen edges,
And we wonder how those skeletons
Ever bore flesh, bore fruit, and thrived.

The season of our discontent has come
And frozen the flesh on our bones,
While we gaze through the windows
And remember, foreseeing, the green.

That green fire is buried now,
Hidden deep beneath the snow,
But still it flickers and flashes out
At times—if you happen to catch it.

For this boundless blanket of snow
Is a mask, not the true face of Death,
And the seeds of summer and fall
Are sleeping and dreaming of spring.

Image credit: Paul Gauguin, La neige Rue Carcel (I), from Wikimedia Commons, public domain image.

Nightmares

Nightmares

Undone we are by the night of Time,

The realm of Saturn and his awful sons,

Forever fleeing from thunderbolts

And an unforgiving razor scythe

Wherever we may run and hide,

Unable, unwilling to blink or breathe;

And every breeze is the burning breath

Of a better predator bringing death.

The night is not ours to control,

Those hours of unwilling return

To primordial eons of living

Not as predators but as prey,

The slithering fear still lurking

At the base of our swollen brains

And in all those chilling whispers

That are far too fast to outrun.

In the darkest moments of terror,

Under a boundless starless sky

And a demoniac grinning moon,

The Abyss is singing lullabies

That steal every inkling of sleep,

And evil creatures are skulking

Towards Earth on broken paths

Of fractured, faltering light.

When daylight dies, the memories

Too deep for evolution to touch

Awake and bare their fangs, alive

Again in the shadow of death;

And then, in a neural flash, is gone

The gauzy illusion of supremacy

That we have created just to survive

In the face of unconquerable death.

But not long ago, in the night of Time,

We were the hunkering prey,

And we were the passing indigestion

Of some smarter, faster beast,

And we were the victims of Nature’s disinterest,

And we were the scavenging vermin…

Now haunting our dreams and memories

In this night we can never escape.

Image credit: Christine Matthews, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Burial

Burial

We buried her quietly in the front yard,

When the sun had set and the rain had ceased,

The dying light allowing us to dig

A shape just larger than the meager box

That held her body, several-hours cold,

Which we should never have a need to hold.

We had seen her, and her mate, as well

As many groups of children through the years,

The happy couple returning every year

To nest beside a creek, and waddle by

The same old busy streets, and stop to eat

Beneath some feeders in a neighbor’s yard.

And here they were, the family at this feast

So readily at hand, habituating them

To bear the presence of people all around,

When out of nowhere and without a care

One careless, reckless driver in a rush

Struck her, mother mallard, and just drove on…

“She’s dead,” I heard and looked upon

Her still and silent form cradled so tenderly,

Thus cradled while alive and as she died;

So light yet bearing all the weight of death,

She seemed as though asleep, but no—

She slept forever, dead by a single blow.

We sowed some sweet alyssum seeds upon her grave

And apologized in vain for our so-selfish race

While bearing all the weight of needless death,

Of all the suffering wrought by human hands

And the cold machines that we have built in vain

To keep their blood off of our blood-stained hands.

Image credit: Catherine Munro, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

On the Edge

On the Edge

The edges creep in from time to time,

And all the wild things

Sitting on these borders

Step over the line

Like wicked spirits

Slinking through a break

In a fragile magic circle.

Things get interesting

Out there on the edge

Where domestic and wild

Can mingle for a while,

Swap stories and reminisce

About the good ol’ days

When they were much closer.

Design meets spontaneity

In a fit of indecision,

A weighing of desires

And unforeseen consequences,

Until architecture and engineering

Become biological,

Entwined in a double helix

And fueled by the power

Of a circling sun.

That is all well and good

Out there on the horizon,

To be watched like a sunset

With space in between.

But the edges creep in,

Softly like a butterfly

Slipping on in through your skin,

Contracting like concentric circles

Sucked into a singularity,

Now a bottomless black hole

With the weight of a universe

Lodged firmly, intently,

Right between your eyes.

Here the edges lie for a time,

Lodged like a chrysalis

With some strange creature inside,

Soon to fly out to the edge of the world.

Image credit: Richard Webb, from Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons License.

Fight Climate Change: Go Vegan!

Fight Climate Change: Go Vegan!

(A speech given at the Sit with Us 2012 Earth Day event on April 22, 2012 in Harrisonburg, VA.)

This is a pretty Earth-friendly crowd, so you all are surely familiar with the biggest impacts that we humans have on our planet. We so often hear messages about fighting climate change, followed by recommendations for pretty obvious lifestyle changes: drive less, use CFL bulbs, recycle, turn down our thermostats, buy local foods, and so on. And these are all important, for sure, as are so many other changes we can, indeed have to, make in our lives. But these common recommendations often miss something crucial.

No matter what else you do, if you are still eating animal products, then you are having a big—and ultimately unnecessary—impact on the planet in a variety of ways. Put another way, if you want to fight climate change, then you need to go vegan. (In case you do not know what “vegan” means, it refers to someone who does not intentionally use animal products in any way—be it for food, clothing, or what have you. So this means no meat, no eggs, no milk, no cheese, no fish, no honey, no silk, no fur, no leather.)

Notice I said vegan, not vegetarian. Going vegetarian helps reduce your impact through food, but it is not enough. Not even close. Dairy cows and egg-laying hens create plenty of environmental problems, besides their equal (if not worse) ethical problems.

The reasons for the urgency of going vegan to fight climate change are numerous but fall into a few general categories.

We know that transportation and inefficient buildings contribute massive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. And, unless you watch too much Fox News, you also know that all those greenhouse gases are warming our planet and having many weird, worrisome, and ultimately destructive consequences. But animal agriculture is a huge player in the greenhouse-gas game as well.

A report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization from 2006 laid out some disturbing facts. The report, ominously titled Livestock’s Long Shadow, stated that livestock contributed 18% of total greenhouse gases, putting it above transportation as a net contributor. That 18% of total annual human-caused pollutants consisted of 9% of carbon dioxide, 37% of methane (which is about 20 times as potent as CO2), and 65% of nitrous oxide (which is 300 times as potent as CO2). So that 18% may look pretty benign…but when you break it down, it is kind of terrifying.

So thanks to all the cow farts and cow pies, we are turning our planet into a pressure cooker. These air pollutants are a big problem on a smaller scale, too. In factory farms, which are modern industrial farms with lots of animals generally in confined spaces, animals frequently suffer from respiratory infections and other illnesses due to the poor air quality. Not to mention that the human workers suffer along with them, with approximately 70% of factory-farm workers contracting acute bronchitis.

Just as animal agriculture breeds hot, toxic air, so too does it harm water quality—and quantity. Farmed animals account for as much as half of water used in the U.S., and the Environmental Protection Agency has reported that waste from factory farms pollutes more water sources than any other industries combined. Just think about it—nearly 10 billion land animals are raised for food in this country alone, every year. They all have to poop and pee (and fart and burp), but farms do not have sewer systems like your house does. The resulting waste, more than 500 million tons of animal waste each year, is not all recycled as fertilizer. Instead, much of it sits in open-air lagoons, from which toxins frequently seep into groundwater or overflow during heavy rains. These toxins are in part responsible for the dead zone where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, just to name one example.

All those animals, and the nearly 19,000 factory farms in America that hold them, worsen the air, worsen and slurp up the water, and also “consume” vast amounts of land. The USDA says that farmed animals use up 80% of agricultural land in this country; worldwide, they take up 30% of the Earth’s surface and 33% of its farmable land. Equally alarming, millions of acres of rainforest are burned to open up pasture for livestock—seven football-fields worth of land every minute. So in order to raise more livestock, we cut down trees and strip away nutrient-dense soil, making the land virtually worthless in short order.

Those billions of animals also have to eat (which you probably guessed already after all my pooping and farting references). And eat they do…but in alarming ways. See, in our modern industrial version of husbandry, we feed 70% of the grains grown here (including corn, soy, wheat, and rice) to livestock. Listen to that number again: 70%. Of food that could be eaten by humans. But humans can eat farmed animals, so no need to worry, right? Think again. Animals are horribly inefficient protein sources. For every pound of meat, three to ten pounds of grain are fed to farmed animals. So we are practically throwing away tons and tons of perfectly nutritious food. We would do better just to eat the grains ourselves—and send the excess (which there would be lots of) to starving populations around the globe, who are also going to be the biggest losers in the climate-change game.

Sadly, animal agriculture impacts wildlife in troubling ways, often directly at the hands of government agents rather than from farmers or indirectly through environmental degradation. The USDA’s Wildlife Services regularly kills millions of wild animals to prevent predation of livestock, all with taxpayer dollars. Through various methods, both predators and innocent wild creatures are exterminated, whether they get caught in a leg trap and starve or die from poisoning. With songbirds, beneficial insects, amphibians, and so many other species in precipitous decline, this reckless murdering in the name of animal farming is deplorable, regardless of the consequences it has for biodiversity.

Fish and other seafood are not excepted from this nightmare scenario either, even though they are not lumbering around pooping and farting like our friends the cows. All forms of commercial fish production, be it aquaculture or trawling in the ocean, devastate the environment. Just to give a few examples: miles-long nets sweep through the seas, catching many animals besides fish (referred to as “by-catch”; think dolphins in tuna nets) and often damage coral reefs. Shrimp nets scrape the ocean floor and wreak havoc on coral reefs and other sea life, especially sea turtles. Nowadays, most of the fish species are in serious danger of extinction thanks to reckless overharvesting. Farmed fish are just as problematic, too, typically being plagued by parasites and diseases. These toxins, and the toxic fish who carry them, frequently escape into the surrounding environment. Aquaculture, like livestock production, is also wasteful: one researcher reported that it took almost three pounds of wild-caught fish, which are used for feed, to produce one pound of farmed salmon or shrimp.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “Sure, industrialized factory farming is bad. I get that. No problem. But I always buy grass-fed beef, and cage-free eggs, so all the animals who give me food are happy and healthy, not eco-terrors.” This sort of thinking is widespread today, especially with the rise of locavorism, the foodie movement, and our many animal-farming neighbors, like Joel Salatin to name the most famous.

Unfortunately, it is wrong. Being a popular myth does not make it any less of a myth. Yes, animals raised on small-scale family farms and treated with some amount of respect have better lives than factory-farmed animals. But they are still objectified. They are prematurely slaughtered—killed when they are at prime weight and meat quality instead of dying in their old age. And they are genetically altered, regardless of the harmful effects on the animals themselves—such as broiler chickens who grow so quickly that their muscles cannot keep up, leaving them crippled and prone to heart attacks. Plus, laughable labeling requirements make terms like “free-range” and “cage-free” and “humane” virtually meaningless. How can opening the tiny door of a chicken warehouse for a few hours a day be called “free-range”? Ask the USDA.

These “humanely raised” animals also still harm the environment. Most significantly, those grass-fed cattle may be more “natural,” but they also produce around twice as much greenhouse gas as their grain-fed counterparts and require much more land. And just because an animal product is local does not make it better for the environment. Because the production of animal foods, not their transportation, consumes the most fossil fuels and creates the most greenhouse gases, you do better for the environment by going vegan than by eating a 100-mile (or less) diet.

Now, this is not to say that farmed animals do not have a place on farms or on the planet. They do. In fact, my wife and I are nearly delirious with dreams of having our own farm and animal sanctuary, with cows, chickens, sheep, pigs, goats, ducks, cats, dogs, rabbits, and more. The differences in having animals on the farm without using them for food are important, though.

When kept in reasonable numbers, animals can contribute to a farm’s (and the environment’s) overall well-being by contributing nutrients (the same poop and pee I fretted over earlier), pest control, and companionship to the compassionate farmer. Instead of being maximized for production, they are integral and integrated members of the farm community, respected and cared for but also managed in a way that keeps the farm sustainable and the ecosystem healthy.

Because modern animal farms are focused on production, they do not treat the animals as living beings with their own inherent value, and they do not keep them on a scale that makes them and their…outputs…sustainable. Cow poop is a fantastic fertilizer, and urine is an amazing source of beneficial nitrogen, but not when you have millions of tons of it piling up on your field or in your barn.

The saddest part of all is that this comes down to human choice. We are not, whatever Dr. Atkins tells you, required to eat meat or any other animal product. Not a one. Millions of years of evolution left us as omnivores, not obligate carnivores. We can live perfectly healthy, happy, active lives without ever consuming a single ounce of animal protein. People have been doing it for years. I have been vegan for over 13 years, and I am a newbie compared to some other prominent vegans, who did it before the movement became a trend and before you could find vegan-friendly foods in your local grocery store. You can choose what you eat. Yes, you can.

And if you really want to fight climate change, you must. You can bike, you can recycle, you can light up your life with CFLs, but unless you go vegan you are not doing enough.

You eco-minded Harrisonburgers surely recall the One Mile Challenge, a program to encourage biking last year. You may also have heard of the $10 Local Foods Challenge, which is encouraging people to choose local foods over globetrotting ones.

Well, today is the forty-second Earth Day, and I want to issue my own challenge: a Vegan Challenge.

I am challenging you to make the compassionate, eco-friendly choice to go vegan. Today. And to challenge your family, friends, classmates, and everyone else you know to go vegan, too. With a little bit of effort you can find lots of delicious, cruelty-free foods, be they prepared foods from the store or recipes that you make at home.

More importantly, you can feel fulfillment and peace in knowing that you have not intentionally caused the unnecessary suffering of others—animals, people, plants, and the planet. That you have saved the lives of around 100 animals simply by eating differently. That you are eating in a way that promotes greater personal health and reduces the risk of major modern “lifestyle” diseases, including heart attack, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

So I challenge you, in the name of the animals and the Earth and your very selves, to fight climate change and go vegan.

Suggested Reading

- Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM.

- Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals: http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Animals-Jonathan-Safran-Foer/dp/0316069884/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334625933&sr=8-1.

- Humane Society of the United States, Farm Animal Protection documents: http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/campaigns/factory_farming/.

- Farm Sanctuary, Factory Farming documents: http://farmsanctuary.org/issues/factoryfarming/.

- James E. McWilliams, “The Myth of Sustainable Meat”: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/the-myth-of-sustainable-meat.html?ref=opinion. (Also see his blog, http://eatingplantsdotorg.wordpress.com/.)