Serenity in the Storm

Thoughts on the Violence of Shootings

I heard a few hours ago about the shooting in Connecticut. This, after hearing about a shooting in a mall in Portland OR earlier this week. This, after a couple was shot dead by Cleveland police who fired 137 shots a couple of weeks ago. And after a four year old toddler shot and killed his two year old brother in Minneapolis earlier this month and a four year old accidentally shot himself in the face in Houston. Senseless acts of violence surround us and it is often impossible to comprehend these acts of violence.

We try to make sense of these kinds of events in some way—we try to understand motive and conditions under which someone would do such a thing, we try to make sense of how to enact justice, we try to assign blame, we try to understand what we could do differently to prevent these kinds of things from ever happening again. We erupt in debates over gun control and exposure to violence in entertainment.

These kinds of events can shake our faith in humanity, in a God or higher power, in each other and ourselves. These kinds of events can make us cling to our faith as an explanation and cling to our families and friends and be grateful for them. Violence of this nature can send us into thinking in navel-gazing abstractions about whether humanity is inherently evil or inherently compassionate.

Thinking about such a horrific act of violence—shooting up an elementary school—makes me reflect on the structures that enable these kinds of events to happen. Certainly, guns enable this kind of violence to happen quickly and efficiently—they are, after all, extremely efficient tools of violence (and more specifically, death). But the structures that cause guns to be used, that designed guns in the first place, and that allow us to kill other people are a systemic problem of ‘othering’ that sets our own interests above an ‘other’s’ interests in a profound and fundamental way. These kinds of acts of violence seem shocking in part because we are so skilled at concealing, ignoring and forgetting the kinds of violence we are complicit in everyday—the kinds of violence we accept as normal, natural, neccesary or simply an unfortunate reality of the times in which we live.

For instance, we are implicated (whether we vocalize opposition or not) in the violent killing of countless ‘casualties’ of war in the name of ‘American freedom.’ We are implicated through our consumption habits that leave millions around the globe in conditions of poverty that kill indiscriminately. We are implicated in the mass killing of other animals in the name of food, science, military, entertainment and fashion. Though we may try to live more lightly on the planet, we are all implicated in the grotesque violence of environmental destruction. The violent systems we adapt to and live within are at the root of a problem like shooting up an elementary school full of children.

I am deeply saddened by the shooting in Connecticut. I cannot imagine what the families of those who have lost are going through. I can hardly imagine the difficult process of healing that is ahead for those who have lost children, partners, teachers, students, etc. and for the community as a whole to move toward healing.

Through all of this, I have to ask myself—what can I, as one individual person, do in response to this? For now, the best answer I can come with is to actively and constantly resist violence in all its forms. To recognize, for instance, that veganism is a powerful method of resisting violence against animals, but that simultaneously I must resist violent systems of consumption that enslave and exploit children and vulnerable populations around the globe. I must actively and consistently resist war in all its forms, I must resist repressive and exploitative domestic and international government policies, I must resist supporting racist systems of mass incarceration that disproportionately affect communities of color in this country. I must resist even the most covert enactments of racism, sexism, homophobia, speciesism, etc. I must resist violent relations with others in our shared emotional lives. For me, this is the most difficult to embody—resisting the urge let anger take over me. Certainly there is a lot to be angry about (this shooting being one acute example) and anger can certainly be a productive motivator of change, but I think only so long as it passes through us quickly—only so long as we let those negative emotions arise, abide and cease.

And so, I’ll sign off for the weekend and send some loving kindness and healing out into the world and move through today and tomorrow and the next day trying to be mindful of practicing nonviolence with each step.

Holiday Gift Giving: The Thrift Shop Edition

Following up on yesterday’s post about holiday gift giving and some great organizations to donate to at the holidays, I wanted to also recommend another excellent, low-impact holiday shopping option…THRIFT SHOPS. I am a big thrift shop person. Really, my personal favorite is the giant Seattle Goodwill on Dearborn, but any thrift shop will do—Red Light, Value Village, Salvation Army, Buffalo Exchange, Crossroads, etc. Seattle is home to some great thrift stores and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis do a wonderful job of celebrating some of the Seattle thrift store haunts and thrift shops in general in this video:

I wear your grandad’s clothes….I look incredible…I’m in this big ass coat…from that thrift store down the road…Eric came home one day from work and played this song for me and now, for the past 6 months or so, this video has become a go-to cheerer upper for me. I just can’t help but smile and sing along when this song comes on. And I can’t help but feel like he is reading my mind about my love for thrift shops and sharing with the world the joy of a great Goodwill find. Do you love thrift stores? Happy Friday!

Holiday Gift Giving

Since I moved to Seattle and in with Eric, Christmas (and the winter holidays generally) have become fairly non-event kind of events. For one, Eric was raised Jewish and so doesn’t have an attachment to Christmas (or Hannukah, really, for that matter). I grew up celebrating Christmas and we decorated a tree every year and it was all a very nice tradition. I’m not sure if I would feel differently if I had kids, but I just don’t feel any attachment to having a tree myself (I hate the idea of killing a tree, just so it can sit, dying in our house for a couple of weeks and then end up in a landfill and even getting a live tree that is planted later on seems to me to subject the tree to unnecessary trauma). Sometimes I think about putting up holiday lights in the house or on the front porch, but usually lose my motivation for that. For the past several years, my dad has come out to Seattle for the winter break and we usually have a very low-key Christmas. I’ll usually cook something nice and Eric and I open presents with my mom, sister and their significant others over Skype. Last year, I made this vegan cinnamon pull-apart bread, which was divine and a tribute to my mom’s cinnamon rolls she always made for Christmas morning.

I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily a Grinch at Christmas, but it’s just not that exciting a holiday for me anymore. I find the unbridled consumption at this time of year off-putting, especially all the shopping without a thought for those who have produced the goods that are being bought. I try to minimize shopping at this time of year as much as possible and usually try to make presents for everyone. The past two years, Tish and I spent months before the holiday season making things like soap, vanilla extract, lip balm, candles, salted kahlua truffles, chile cardamom truffles, cookie jar mixes, etc. We made tons of each thing and then had enough to make sweet little packages for the people in our lives. This year, I didn’t do much planning and Tish is no longer living in Seattle (nor have we spoken in months), so I’m not as well-prepared as I have been in the past couple of years for gift giving. This year, I’m making a few things on my own for my family back east, but overall I think it will be a low-key year.

If you’re crafty and have it in you to make gifts for the holidays this year (crafts, baked goods, vegan candies, etc), I think that’s a great option. But another very nice option for holiday giving, is to…

Donate on behalf of someone you love to one of these amazing non-profit organizations! The great thing about making a donation as a holiday gift is that there is no waste, fewer issues of ethical consumption, AND you get to share with your loved ones the act of helping a great organization continue to do the important work they do. I have had the pleasure of meeting each of the people who run these organizations and can personally vouch for the extraordinary work they do. If you’re thinking of donating to a non-profit this year, please consider one of these three:

Food Empowerment Project: The Food Empowerment project is an especially exciting organization because they are actually doing work that thinks carefully about humans, animals and the environment. Unlike other nonprofits, which tend to be dedicated to only animal rights or only environmental justice, etc., the Food Empowerment Project has campaigns that work to alleviate suffering and injustice at the intersections of human, animal and environmental oppression. Their campaign to end child slavery in cacao production, for instance, or their vegan Mexican food campaign are great examples of campaigns that are thoughtfully engaged in some very important work. I am so excited about this organization.
Beagle Freedom Project: If you’ve been moved by Saoirse’s story here, here and here, consider supporting the Beagle Freedom Project. Though I did not work with them to get Saoirse, I have worked with them in other capacities. Run out of L.A., this amazing group is a national (and international) network for rescuing beagles out of research. Beagles tend to be the most common breed for labratory research and the need for efficient, discrete, knowledgable and compassionate rescue groups is very high. The Beagle Freedom Project is fantastic and they have helped to get so many animals out of research and into patient, loving homes.
Pigs Peace Sanctuary: If you follow my blog at all, you already know of my love and respect for Pigs Peace and the amazing work they do to rescue, rehabilitate and give nearly 200 pigs and other animals a home full of loving kindness. Pigs Peace is an extraordinary sanctuary and is always in need of support to keep things running.

Do you have favorite organizations that you can vouch for and/or recommend? Any interesting outside-the-box holiday gift ideas?

Weekend at the Emergency Vet

This last weekend started out with so much promise. We headed out Saturday morning to Mercer Island dog park for a playdate with Anika, Kirby and Ms. Louise Bubbles. Lou and Maizy were having a great time, going back and forth between the shy dog area, where Saoirse hangs out, and the main dog park area where Maizy loves to swim. Saoirse was having a nice time exploring the little shy dog area and she met a funny, fluffy little dog and was actually playing and running around. Lou and Maizy came back over to the shy dog area and everyone was running around having a jolly old time. Lou and Saoirse were so funny playing together.

Suddenly, we all heard this piercing yelp and Maizy was down. Eric said after the fact that he had seen her running really fast and then skidding along the grass to stop and that’s when she yelped. All I knew at that moment was that Maizy was lying on her side holding her leg up, yelping and yelping this awful piercing cry. We ran across the small dog area—not a long distance, but it felt like it took 20 minutes to get to her. Eric tried to pick her up and carry her, while I got Saoirse on her leash. But Maizy didn’t want to be carried and struggled until Eric set her down. She gradually began to bear weight on her foot and we made it slowly back to the car.

Our vet was all booked and couldn’t see us, but luckily we were only 5 minutes from the Aerowood Animal Hospital in Bellevue that is also an all-hours emergency vet, so we went there. They saw us right away and the very nice vet took Maizy in the back to examine her. I could hear her yelping from the back—poor sweet Maizy. They confirmed that her dewclaw toe (the claw up on the side of her front paw) had broken inside her foot. Her claw must have gotten caught on something on the ground when she was sliding to a stop at the park and ripped the toe out. The vet said she would need surgery to amputate the whole dewclaw toe, but we were concerned that she had eaten too recently to put her under anesthesia, so we opted to wait till Monday for the surgery.

They sent us home with pain meds and told us to take it easy with Maizy for the rest of the weekend, so that’s what we did. It was a rough weekend and the worry about Maizy limping around and yelping any time she bumped her toe paired with the anxiety about the impending surgery was awful. Eric and I have both been total emotional wrecks. I had grotesque displays of public emotion—crying in front of the vet techs on Saturday when they told me that there were some additional risks with the anesthesia because of Maizy’s age. We opted for the pre-anesthesia blood work and the IV fluids during surgery to ensure that the anesthesia was as safe as possible. Then there was the bursting into tears in front of the vet/surgeon when I went in to drop Maizy off for surgery yesterday. Then my mother called to see how it was going shortly after that and I completely lost it on the phone sobbing and blubbering so much she couldn’t understand a thing I was saying. We were so worried that Maizy didn’t understand why we were leaving her at the vet and we didn’t want her to feel scared and like we had abandoned her. And we also had no idea what we do if something happened to her. The thought of something going wrong with the anesthesia was too devastating to bear. Eric was at work all day and had to completely suppress his emotions about the whole thing to get through the work day—poor guy.

My dear friend Karen kindly spent the whole day yesterday with me and was a great distraction while we waited for the vet’s call. We got some work done on our course proposal (we’re hoping to collaborate on a class on captivity next year) and we chatted and went out for some noodle soup at Loving Hut for lunch. After lunch, I couldn’t wait any longer and I called the vet to see if Maizy had made it through the surgery. She had and the vet said we could pick her up at 5:30. When we picked her up, they gave us her x-rays, which I’m always fascinated by. I mean, you can see the bones inside her paw:

I had no idea that’s what a dog’s foot looked like inside.

The pictures of the x-rays didn’t turn out that great. But maybe they’re interesting to see, nonetheless.

Maizy was so happy to see us when she came out and was all wasted on opiates and bonking the cone she was wearing against everything. Her poor sweet foot was all wrapped up in a bandage.

The vet said they had to pull out the big guns pain meds for Maizy. The vet said, “She seems to be a little bit dramatic about things.” That’s Maizy! If she is standing behind me and I don’t see her in the kitchen and step back on her foot accidentally on a good day (when it’s not broken), she yelps and cries like the world is ending. I can’t even imagine how bad it must have been to have her toe broken and go through that pain. She’s just a bit sensitive and she needs a lot of pampering. This weekend, when we were taking it easy, she bumped her toe on something and yelped and immediately came over to me and pushed herself under my legs for some pats and scratches and just wanted me to tell her it was okay. After I did, she felt much better and went back to whatever it was she was doing.

Now, when we take Maizy out to go to the bathroom, she has to wear this plastic bag thing on her foot to protect the bandage and Maizy is so distracted by trying to shake the thing off her foot and hopping along, not wanting to walk on the bag, with her cone bouncing and knocking into things. She won’t go to the bathroom outside, no matter how long we’re out there and no matter what the conditions are. It’s terrible and I can’t wait until she can ditch the cone and the bandage and get her sutures removed. I just spent the morning cleaning up a lot of poop and pee in the house—between Saoirse’s occasional accident, and now Maizy’s refusal to go to the bathroom outside, it’s a lot of cleaning up. But I really don’t care because she’s safe at home and I’m just grateful that she’s here to make a mess to clean up!

Saoirse was a bit out of sorts when Maizy was gone all day yesterday and when Maizy got home, Saoirse was terrified of the cone at first. Now she’s just happy to have Maizy back and they’re napping on the couch. We are all so grateful that Maizy made it through the surgery and that she’s home with us. She is my love—my heart—and the thought of losing her is just too much to bear.

Elephants in Captivity and the Ethics of Zoos

elephant_1342802c — Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/4787398/Elephants-in-zoos-at-risk-of-abnormal-behaviour-because-of-small-groups.html

I’m not sure if you all have been following the explosion of news in the last week about elephants in zoos. The Seattle Times has published in the last week at least 3 articles on the ethics and politics of keeping elephants in zoos. Beginning with the article, “Elephants are Dying out in America’s Zoos” by Michael Berens, this series explores the dark side of zoos and, in particular, the way that elephants experience these spaces. Berens’ first article summarizes briefly the history of breeding elephants in zoos, starting in the 1960s. When the first elephants were born in zoos and the public exploded with excitement and support for the zoos with baby elephants, the industry saw an opportunity. Baby elephants (and baby animals in general) born at zoos make news headlines and attract hoards of visitors to the zoos. Couched in a discourse of conservation efforts to preserve the Asian and African elephants in captivity, zoos started breeding elephants willy nilly (or at least trying to). I remember when I was a kid, there was a baby elephant born at the Pittsburgh Zoo. We went numerous times to observe this beautiful, perfect creature without a thought for how that gorgeous baby elephant was made.

Elephants, like many animals, can become pregnant in one of two ways: either by a female and male engaging in intercourse or through artificial insemination. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo determined that they wanted to impregnate one of their female elephants—Chai. It was far too costly and inconvenient to transfer Chai to another zoo where she could mate with a virile male elephant, so zoo staff decided to artificially inseminate her. For two years, they practiced “mock inseminations” by short-chaining all four of her legs so she couldn’t move an inch. This was all in order to get her used to the procedure. For several years, zookeepers attempted artificial insemination 92 times without success. Finally, they shipped her to Missouri to mate with a bull. You can read all about the details in Berens’ article, but she returned pregnant and gave birth to Hansa in Seattle in 2000. Hansa died in 2007 of a fairly common and deadly elephant herpes virus. Chai has been artificially inseminated without success a total of 112 times.

Elephants die in zoos at a rate of two deaths for every birth, despite appalling efforts at breeding them through forced insemination. Zoos conceal this truth, argue that in fact elephants are thriving in zoos, and continue to promote the necessity of zoos as spaces of conservation, education, etc. But when it comes down to it, zoos are for-profit institutions. And the zoo industry is an industry—concerned with generating profit and running a successful business at the expense of the animals they hold captive. As the situation for elephants in zoos threatens to get worse and begins to reach the public eye, the industry or the Association for Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) works harder at discrediting critics.

For decades now, an activist group in Seattle—the Friends of the Elephants at Woodland Park Zoo—has protested and petitioned the zoo to release their remaining elephants to the The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. The sanctuary is 2700 acres in Tennessee and is home to a number of Asian and African elephants rescued from various zoos and other spaces within the entertainment industry. There, elephants have the ability to roam and live in a way that is closer to the way elephants like to live. But sanctuaries receive backlash from the zoo industry. In his second article, “Elephant Havens Face Zoo-Industry Backlash,” Michael Berens outlines the ways in which sanctuaries offer an alternative to zoos for captive elephants—an alternative that the zoo industry would like to deny exists. Quoting Berens:

“By their very nature, sanctuaries focus attention on a question the zoo industry doesn’t eagerly discuss. How much space do these social, most humanlike of mammals require to lead a healthy life? Industry guidelines are fuzzy on the issue.”

The zoo industry does not want to acknowledge that elephants and other animals may be happier elsewhere (in sanctuaries specifically designed to meet their needs).

But the zoo industry also lashes back in another way—at critics and animal rights groups dedicated to the release of the animals to sanctuaries. Danny Westneat writes in the Seattle Times this week, “Elephant ‘extremists’ in Seattle now feeling vindicated”. His article looks at Alyne Fortgang and Nancy Pennington, the women behind the Friends of Woodland Park Elephants. I have had the pleasure of meeting Alyne and Nancy and their passion for giving the elephants at Seattle’s zoo a better life is tremendous. As part of a greater trend to discredit animal rights activists and critics of animal use at large as ‘extremists’ or ‘terrorists,’ these women and other critics have been labelled ‘extremists’ by the zoo industry. I’m always so interested in the use of the term ‘extremist’ because it is usually set in stark contrast with the ‘reasonable,’ ‘rational’ status quo. But the only reason the status quo of keeping elephants in cramped conditions where they are artificially inseminated 112 times is not deemed ‘extreme’ is precisely because it is the status quo. I would consider their current conditions extreme, not those who question those conditions.

Those three articles are certainly worth a read and shed light on some of the realities of the lives of elephants in zoos. Hopefully, this will inspire change in the hearts and minds of the public when deciding whether to give these institutions of captivity our support and patronage.

Peanut Butter Cups and Pigs!

Serenity in the Storm has gotten quite a few new readers in the last few weeks. Welcome to all of those who are new and thanks for reading! To all of you who have been reading all along, thank you for your commitment and interest in the blog and the stories & recipes shared here. I appreciate each and every one of you so much.

Since I haven’t given an update on the Pigs Peace Sanctuary fundraising drive, I thought I’d better provide an update. We’ve gotten some new donations for Pigs Peace Sanctuary this week. Thanks to all of you! Since the beginning of Peppermint Patties for Pigs Peace, we’ve raised $2311 together! Thank you all–that is so AWESOME! New donations this week… you know what that means! Time to make massive batches of peanut butter cups for all those generous donors. This weekend, I will be turning into Willy Wonka’s Peanut Butter Cup Factory. So if you’re interested in donating and getting peanut butter cups for doing so, get in on this batch of treats and click on over to the Peanut Butter Cups for Pigs Peace donation page and I’ll get right on shipping you chocolate peanut butter goodness, adorable pictures of pigs and a cute handmade thank you card. Every donation helps Pigs Peace continue to do the amazing work they are doing for pigs! Even if you can’t give a monetary donation at this time, you can help by spreading the word about this fundraiser. Please share on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Thank you!!

Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

I hope you didn’t miss the post about Saoirse and Maizy playing together yesterday–that was a fun post to write!

Okay, so I’m not only eating cranberry things these days. Really! It just seems to be what foods are making it on the blog lately. Some savory recipes as soon as the teaching quarter is over, I promise. This is a pumpkin/cranberry loaf. The sweet pumpkin spice bread with the tart bursts of cranberries is a nice fall/winter treat.

The Recipe

Makes 1 9″ x 5″ loaf

2 cups flour (one all-purpose unbleached, one whole wheat pastry)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/8 tsp ground clove

1 1/2 cups fresh cranberries

1/4 cup vegan shortening (I used Earth Balance)

1 cup vegan sugar

1/2 cup applesauce

1 cup pureed pumpkin

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease the loaf pan. Cream the shortening and sugar together. Add the applesauce and pumpkin and combine. In a separate bowl, mix the the dry ingredients and the whole cranberries. Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients and combine. Pour into loaf pan and bake for about 50 minutes. Test with toothpick for doneness. When removed from the oven, let sit for 10 minutes before you turn the loaf out onto a cooling rack.

Playtime with Saoirse

It’s been 5 weeks since we brought Saoirse home. In my last Saoirse update, I posted generally about how things were going and how she and the other animals in our family were adjusting to life together. Today, I’m pleased to say that every day she gets a little more comfortable in her new home. She loves mealtime (we’ve transitioned her over completely to Maizy’s whole-foods vegan diet). She loves bed time and burrows into the covers with her body snuggled up against me. She loves TV time, when we all sit on the couch and she gets to use Maizy as her own personal couch:

Apparently, she also loves blues. We were doing a little cleaning on Sunday morning this weekend while listening to some blues on the radio. Saoirse was quite happy to just lie there and listen to the music while we cleaned:

Above all, Saoirse loves to play. Maizy has always been a really playful dog and for nine years old, she still has so much energy for playing. She really just wants to have fun. And Saoirse shares this approach to life. They make quite a pair. Sometimes they race around the house and Saoirse jumps all over the place, leaping high over Maizy and sometimes running under Maizy. Maizy growls her playful growl. Maizy rolls on her side and nibbles on Saoirse and Saoirse grabs at Maizy with her tiny paws.

They are adorable and crazy and have so much fun together. They like it best if we sit on the floor and let them play on top of us. I honestly don’t think I’ve laughed this much in years. Watching them together is hilarious and it makes me giddy with joy to see Saoirse enjoying life.

In those moments when she is playing with Maizy, I know with some certainty that she is not thinking about her time in the lab.

Ode to the Cranberry

Cranberries are one of those foods that I see and I just want to grab a handful and start eating. Big mistake. On their own, these little buggers are bitter as hell and not very tasty. I used to spend a great deal of time looking for farm real estate (our dream is to move out to a more rural area and grow our own food and give a safe home to some animals who need it). It’s a fun procrastination tool looking at farm real estate and, a few years ago, I saw a cranberry farm for sale southwest of Seattle. My mind immediately started working… cranberries! I remember a children’s book we read about some kids who had to pick cranberries every day and it was hard work. Cranberries grow in bogs and at least in the storybook, the kids had to wade through the bogs to pick the cranberries. There was something about a special stove in this book, too…It might have been called The Nickle-Plated Beauty. Of course, that might also be a totally different book.

Anyway, while I’m not going to become a cranberry farmer any time soon, I do love to enjoy eating fresh cranberries. Every fall/winter, I get determined to make up new recipes with the cranberry as the star of the show. This year, I made this cranberry applesauce from Monday’s post.

Last year, I made up the raw cranberry orange relish just in time for Thanksgiving, though a great relish to have on hand.

Yesterday, I went to our class’s vegan potluck and brought cranberry orange bread from last year’s cranberry experiments and, you know, that is really a pretty good recipe, if I do say so myself. I didn’t have any whole wheat pastry flour, so I ended up using all unbleached white flour, which made it awfully light and fluffy. The slight sweetness of the bread and tartness of the cranberries. I love the stuff. If you missed the cranberry orange bread recipe last year, give it a whirl this fall and let me know how you like it.

What recipes do you know and love that use fresh cranberries? Any new ideas for how to use cranberries?

Tattoo Update

Months and months ago, I posted about vegan tattoos and tattoo care. I’ve had some requests from readers to see some photos of the progress on my tattoo. Six sessions later, I’m nearing the end of this giant tree/crow tattoo. Almost a year ago, I was going in for an art consult with the amazing Andrea Ottlewski at Slave to the Needle Tattoo. She showed me some sketches and then on January 1, we got going on the outline. When choosing an artist, I knew I wanted to work with a woman, so I looked at every female tattoo artist’s portfolio in Seattle and Andrea’s style and skill was by far my favorite. As I said in the earlier post about vegan tattoos, for me, finding the right artist was the most important thing. Then, I asked her to use vegan ink for the tattoo and I used vegan after-care products, a salve that my sister-in-law made that contained coconut oil, cocoa butter, some essential oils, and something else (I can’t remember). Andrea is wonderful and I love her art and her down-to-earthness.

I’ve wanted a tree tattoo covering my back for the last 10 years and, after sitting with the idea that long, last year I finally decided I was ready to do it. I didn’t know what kind of tree precisely and then the spring before last spring I was inspired by the blooming cherry trees in our neighborhood. They explode with pink and white flowers in early spring and when I see them, I feel this giddy sense of joy. I was out walking with Maizy one day and the cherry trees were filled with crows. The black crows against the pink blossoms was a striking contrast. That was, in part, the inspiration.

When I was little—maybe 7 or 8—I remember our next door neighbors cut down a perfectly healthy towering pine tree in their front yard. It was taller than their three-storey house, it was beautiful, and it was home to countless birds and other critters. That tree contained an entire ecosystem and network of life. The arrogance of our neighbors in cutting down this tree that was much older than they were still astounds me. I remember standing in the window of our second floor, watching as they cut down the tree, branch by branch. It was excruciating to watch and I remember how bitter my tears were, but I also remember feeling like it was important that I did watch this happen—that there was a witness to this socially accepted, deeply violent act. (I guess not much has changed for me in that regard—still a witness of totally depressing shit twenty years later!)

There is a huge towering maple tree in the backyard of the house where I grew up and I spent most summers as a kid lying in a hammock, looking up into the branches, watching squirrels skitter from branch to branch, watching raccoon families perched in the limbs as dusk fell, watching the tree there as a constant for decades through every season.

Trees are at the heart of life, producing oxygen, making the landscape green, creating shade and habitats, standing together in forests. In life, trees are vast and deeply important parts of the ecosystem. But also in death, trees become a new part of the forest landscape—the decomposing trunks and branches and leaves become home for insects and other critters. Fungi and lichen grow on trees. The decomposing tree replenishes the soil and creates a rich, hearty loam. Trees are, of course, symbollic in many cultural narratives. The Celtic tree of life. The Jewish Kabbalah. The Bodhi Tree in Buddhism. Cherry trees specifically symbolize death and rebirth and awakening.

I’ve loved crows for as long as I can remember and when I’m outside and encounter a crow, I always feel a moment of awe and mutual respect and like I’m witnessing something special. Crows are highly intelligent animals. They have a complex language with which they communicate. They watch each other and learn from each other. They are crafty and resourceful and adaptable. They have amazing facial recognition abilities (much better than humans when it comes to remembering other species).

Crows have powerful symbolic meaning, too:

When we meditate on the crow and align with it, we are instilled with the wisdom to know ourselves beyond the limitations of one-dimensional thinking and laws. We are taught to appreciate the many dimensions of both reality and ourselves, and to learn to trust our intuition and personal integrity.

Crow can also teach us to be mindful about judging people automatically. Be mindful of your opinions and actions. You need to walk your talk, to speak your truth and to know your life’s mission. Again, trust your intuition and personal integrity, to create your own standards, whether or not they match those of the world around you. Be an individual, think for yourself, don’t necessarily follow the crowd!

Crow is an omen of change. Crows live in the void and have no sense of time, therefore being able to see past, present and future simultaneously. They unite both the light and the dark, both the inner and the outer. Crow is the totem of the Great Spirit and must be held with utmost respected. They are representations of creation and spiritual strength.

Crows are messengers, telling us about the creation and magic all around us, that is available to us just for the asking. Look for opportunities to bring into being the magic of life. The striking black colour of the crow represents the colour of creation. It is the womb out of which the new comes into existence. Black is the colour of the night, giving birth to the light of a new day. SOURCE

Together, the tree and the crows speak to me and teach me in material and symbolic ways. Materially, the tree and the crows represent the environment and the animals with whom we share the planet and with whom we so often have a relationship of exploitation and abuse. This tattoo is a reminder of that. It’s a reminder of darkness and hard truths. But it is also a reminder of the light, of the potential for change and growth and maybe even some hope.