news and notes, Oct. 20 '08

for your information ...

- Thank you to everyone who responded to the "Clemency for Ratchet" petition ...  If you haven't heard already, the military heads that be reversed their decision, and after two thwarted trips Ratchet is finally being flown from Baghdad to the U.S. today!  Assuming Ratchet passes a vet physical, Sgt. Gwen Beberg will be reunited with him soon in Minnesota, thank God.  Over 65,000 people signed the petition by the way (CNN.com).

- I'm not sure where the two main candidates exactly stand on agricultural and animal issues (though you can find out a great deal at the Humane Society Legislative Fund), but I was grateful to come across some Ralph Nader's response to these issues at his campaign website.  He doesn't specifically take an animal advocacy stance, but he does pay a generous amount of attention to the inherent inequities and hazards of industrial and bioengineered farming on an evironmental and human level.

quotable ...

I've only been working on not one sparrow for a little over year, but even so I've been feeling the following for most of it ...

When you are committed to evangelism and justice, it will not be long before you see how much needs to be done, how urgent those needs are, and how few are really doing anything ...  So much that we do not take the time to strengthen our own inner lives in Christ. ...  But if we do not take the time to nourish our lives in time with Christ, our capacity for effectiveness will decline and our ability to long endure in our efforts will fade. (from The God of Intimacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism, and Justice by Tony Campolo and Marcy Albert, quoted in "Changeling and the Spirituality of Activism" by Becky Garrison in Sojourners' blog God's Politics)

news of the weird ...

A crab hitches a seemingly comfortable ride on a jellyfish ...

artwork ...

Thank you to Ali Beem for the following stunning piece (copyright), and I hope to feature more of her work soon ...

p.s.  If you're interested in whales, and their unfortunate plight in today's marine economy, Matthew Scully has an excellent and thorough chapter devoted to them in Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals and the Call to Mercy.

other ...

Many thanks to an old friend Richard McElroy for passing along a new song by Christian alt-rock band Brave Saint Saturn called "Starling," which you can hear here.  The song took me aback me with it's visceral and personal response to two events of animal suffering and cruelty, which I can't give the band enough credit for: "Where your hearts down on your sleeves for starlings, starlings ... the least of all of these are starlings, starlings ..."  If anyone else has heard any other music from Christian artists which relates to animal welfare, please let me know.