Tag: Peter Schreiner

Veganism 101

On Saturday Lisa and I met Peter Schreiner and his lovely family for an incomparable vegan celebration at their home. Anyone fortunate enough to know Peter’s steady mindful support for animal rights and the wisdom of veganism knows that this would become a singular moment. Of course it was much more than a wonderful experience, it was immensely fruitful and vegetable-full.
Here is a reblog from October 2016 that speaks to the power of Mr. Schreiner’s voice. Written a bit over a year ago, the sentiments still reverberate.
Dedicated here to all sentient creatures gifted with this planet.

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Peter Schreiner is the voice of Crows Head Soup. His post Animal Welfare is stirring enthusiasm for the pillars of Veganism and the bedrock supporting those pillars.

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Veganism happens one human at a time, one awesome realization at a time. As Peter suggests, the information is out there. And so is well funded disinformation.

Caveat emptor

I have found that adopting a vegan lifestyle is not privation. It’s not like “giving up something” at all, unless you view toxins as dietary supplements. Detoxing is uncomfortable and wearying. Eating a portion of animal or animal byproduct provides short term relief. It’s like waking up in the morning with a coughing fit that goes away when you light up the first cigarette of the day.

Nicotine is also a cough suppressant. But it takes a while for nicotine to excrete completely. Withdrawal is agony. I am an ex-smoker as well…

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Veganarchism and Crows Head Soup

 

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Source

Peter Schreiner leads Crows Head Soup, a vegan touchstone. Peter brings strong vegan stew to the table  —  you’ll find poetry that skewers the skewering, photographs of hanging carcasses, the blood slurried into storage tanks for unspecified ends. Here is the post that inspired me to write this post: Lamentations of a Veganarchist.

That’s not very nice, Bill. Where are your manners? We don’t talk about hanging cows in polite company.

Sorry. I’ll get my mind right now.

Take the scenic route on your family vacation and remark on those grass-munching cows. Talk about the time a cow escaped from a truck and ended up on the highway. Remind all that it was adopted by a nice local family. Did you know that two turkeys are presidentially pardoned every year — that it adds up to a whole lot of birds over the years. Stop at a Dairy Queen to nod approvingly on its storied history.

Thank you for opting a little common decency, Bill.

Think death camps the size of Mordor behind the hills of rural America.

 

 

Each In-N-Out Burger consumed (or tossed) triggers a supply-chain decision. Breed another cow. How now.

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inventory = inventory minus one. When inventory reaches a certain level a replenishment order is issued.

Folly, arrogance and confusion gone long wrong.

Mr. Bill, do you have any idea how many blessed jobs depend on all those animal molecules you talk so long about? So long.

Do you know how many jobs are lost through extermination events of the planetary kind?

 

Family tours are never offered at “meat=processing facilities” but jobs are offered to the über marginalized in this economy.

The machinery grinds “resources” into hoppers for added value down the line. Marketplaces require workers’ willingness to press each shoulder to each wheel. From hopper to shopper — a lifestyle that assigns each party a horror, the insatiable appetite for more “resources”, more uses for each mighty molecule. 

What is the nature of evolution? Species developed over several billion years result in predators and prey surviving in a delicate balance, absent the actions of a single specie hellbent on tipping the scale. If you are not a human, or not a specie domesticated by humans, you thrive and perish at the razor edge. 

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Direct Subsidies for Animal Products and Feed

Enter the indifferent world of commerce — the scale-tippers. Tippers so cunningly successful that their own numbers increase by the billion and wild species are driven to extinction. Domesticated species are bred for extermination camps — the demands of the most insatiable homo sapiens require that the slaughter houses produce enough turnover in daily carcass units to make them economically viable processing centers in a modern society.

Thanks for reading.

 

Leitmotif of a Commonplace Book

A commonplace book is a collection of loosely organized snippets of stuff. It’s a way of thinking that I first encountered by way of detour (my favorite hobby) at the Cincinnati Library — a book caught my eye and subsumed my identity — A Certain World by W.H. Auden. ’twas many a decade ago (4) in what now seems a distant galaxy.

Galaxy (not the magazine) reminds me now of that breathtaking work by Douglas Adams — by golly, esme recently alluded to HHGTTG. Please consult esme for more, much and many. You’ll enjoy the visit. You will, yes you will. Say, I also offer a thread from H2G2 too.

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I like to use the word eponymous whenever possible. By gosh, this entire writing adventure is eponymously named billziegler1947. Tell your friends about this ever so clever self-referential weblog, or not.

But WTF is a leitmotif? Doesn’t sound light to us. Har Har.

A leitmotif is a recurring theme in a musical or literary work.  

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All so very well Bill, but isn’t it time for an unnecessary ‘detour’, one you cloyingly call a hobby?

A blog is a jarringly clumsy word created in the internet wild-west world: a two character left-string truncation of ‘weblog’ — it removes the ‘we’, or is it the’us’?

Captain’s weblog 2016.366. We is back. Welcome. Just us chicken defenders.

And so, this has all been a rather detour-ridden post. However, it’s a holiday of sorts — the null point , nodding here to Hariod, between 2016 and 2017. Or are we to be taken, in far less than an instant, to arrive in 1957. There to encounter a Back to the Future replay of the fell sort, Biff and all perhaps.

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Holy heavens, you have completely abandoned every modicum that informs an insistent adherence to proper writing-style. Will you ever stay on task?

No.

Veganism is the best ‘ism’ ever. If you don’t believe that then you haven’t visited Crows Head Soup by Peter Schreiner, have you? Right. Go there now.

As you gather about that soup cauldron, allow me to pass the microphone to a most impassioned advocate, one who brings voice to each and every animal crushed to the marrow for the sake of appetites unending and insatiable — outsidersinsides. Expect no bon appetit if meat be on the table. Thank you! And to all gatherers — grab that mike. My ear enjoys your insights. Always.

Let’s say that you recognize the longest occupation in modern history, one that continues into 2017 and you are also interested in animal rights. Right. Palestinian Animal League.

Let us remind you, Bill, that you are no Laurence Sterne and we fervently pray that you not dash off first lines from Tristram Shandy to cover your untidiness. We merely ask.

First lines

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Copy. (and paste). But I do recall that page of solid black ink from high school, don’t I?

Yes, I do.

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And so, with gratitude for every and each reader, and with appreciation for everyone I follow, a hearty fist in the air on behalf of all the exploited sentient beings who are our fellow travellers.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Post-Truth is the Opposite of Veganism

A new post on Peter Schreiner‘s FB page highlighted an intriguing inarguable disclosure by Sir David Attenborough, British naturalist extraordinaire:

“Humans Are A Plague On Earth”

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How to respond to Attenborough’s sound observation?

Sir David drops this verdict into our laps, six words that indict the inhumane human species. No other species since the last extinction event can make that statement. I wonder how the other five extinctions bade the Earth farewell?

Let me guess the most common response to Attenborough’s pronouncement:

An English and French student converse.Truth be damned. Out, damn’d truth! out, I say!

Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, a time when world population was half its current size. A breakthrough a day keeps the crisis at bay. Pundits against birth control suggest that artificial contraception will lead to population dearth.

Speaking of population un-dearth, did you know that there are twice as many chickens on Earth as humans? Extend that number by the ratio of human-lifespan to chicken-lifespan to arrive at a daunting number. Hint: the number is not 42.

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Dearth Vader

I leave it to my reader to research the ratios for chicken, cow and pig population. And as I write this, tomorrow is T-Day, where T≠ Thanksgiving. Another hint: the answer is fowl.

Enter the OED new word of the year for 2016: Post Truth. What better words than these for 2016?

truth-lies-detector

Ehrlich wrote his bestseller less than a decade before Exxon would discover and cover-up the findings their own scientists reported: global warming was a reality. The petrochemicals that took them to number 1 on the Fortune 500 in sales was causing it. They made this discovery in 1977.

Exxon to Planet: Drop Dead.

The logo of Exxon Mobil Corporation is shown on a monitor above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York

World population has tripled in my lifetime. A cursory glance of traffic patterns on this eve of Thanksgiving tells me that freneticism is a lousier answer than veganism. Thanksgiving is a celebration of decadence: a pilgrim/savages history lesson.

I declare that veganism is an antonym for post-truth. It faces truth full-on and deliberately. For the same reason that Thoreau brought so many to think critically. Always live your life deliberately — the matrix is already fully populated.

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