Bonnie’s Great AdventureBonnie, a Hereford calf growing up beside her mother on a farm in upstate New York, was sold alongside other family members when their soi-disant owner died last August. As the bovine family was being loaded onto trucks, Bonnie escaped into the nearby woods, where, in time, she was taken in by a family of deer. With the help of a human named Becky Bartels who brought her hay and water through the winter, Bonnie was eventually brought to Farm Sanctuary, and adopted by a new family, this time of rescued cows.Thus in the midst of a situation leading to the all-too-usual death-horrors, one can see compassion and Friendship--what the Peaceable Kingdom is all about--prevailing. See BonnieEditor’s Corner Guest Essay:The Hen is Symbol of Motherhood--By Karen DavisJuliet nestles under her foster mother Daffodil's wing. Photo by Karen Davis“Her love of her children definitely resembles my love of mine.”– Alice Walker“The emphasis has been on smaller, more efficient but lighter-weight egg machines.”– American Poultry HistoryIn our day, the hen has been degraded to an “egg machine.” In previous eras, she embodied the essence of motherhood. In the first century AD, the Roman historian Plutarch praised the many ways in which mother hens cherish and protect their chicks, “drooping their wings for some to creep under, and receiving with joyous and affectionate clucks others that mount upon their backs or run up to them from every direction; and though they flee from dogs and snakes if they are frightened only for themselves, if their fright is for their children, they stand their ground and fight it out beyond their strength.”The Renaissance writer Ulisse Aldrovandi described how, at the first sign of a predator, mother hens will immediately gather their chicks “under the shadow of their wings, and with this covering they put up such a very fierce defense--striking fear into their opponent in the midst of a frightful clamor, using both wings and beak--they would rather die for their chicks than seek safety in flight.” Similarly, in collecting food, the mother hen allows her chicks to eat their fill before satisfying her own hunger. Thus, he said, mother hens present, in every way, “a noble example of love for their offspring.”I saw this love in action, when a hen named Eva jumped our sanctuary fence on a spring day and disappeared, only to return three weeks later in June with eight fluffy chicks. Watching Eva with her tiny brood close behind her was like watching a family of wild birds whose dark and golden feathers blended perfectly with the woods and foliage they melted in and out of during the day. Periodically, Eva would squat down with her feathers puffed out, and her peeping chicks would all run under her wings for comfort and warmth. A few minutes later the family was on the move again.A young mother hen with her chicks in the Florida Everglades. Photo by Davida G. BreierOne day, a large dog wandered in front of the magnolia tree where Eva and her chicks were foraging. With her wings outspread and curved menacingly toward the dog, she rushed at him over and over, cackling loudly, all the while continuing to push her chicks behind herself with her wings. The dog stood stock still before the excited mother hen and soon ambled away, but Eva maintained her aggressive posture, her sharp, repetitive cackles and attentive lookout for several minutes after he was gone.Sitting on her nest, a mother hen carefully turns each of her eggs as often as thirty times a day, using her body, her feet, and her beak to move each egg precisely in order to maintain the proper temperature, moisture, ventilation, humidity, and position of the egg during the 3-week incubation period. Embryonic chicks respond to soothing sounds from the mother hen and to warning cries from the rooster. Two or three days before the chicks are ready to hatch, they start peeping to notify their mother and siblings that they are ready to emerge from their shells, and to draw her attention to any distress they’re experiencing such as cold or abnormal positioning. A communication network is established among the baby birds and between them and their mother, who must stay calm while all the peeping, sawing, and breaking of eggs goes on underneath her as she meanwhile picks off tiny pieces of shell that may be sticking to her chicks and slays any ants that may dart in to scavenge. During all this time, as Page Smith and Charles Daniel describe in The Chicken Book, “The chorus of peeps goes on virtually uninterrupted, the unborn chicks peeping away, the newborn ones singing their less muffled song.”During the first four to eight weeks or so, the chicks stay close to their mother, gathering beneath her wings every night at dusk. Eventually, she flies up to her perch or a tree branch, indicating her sense that they, and she, are ready for independence.Whenever I tell people stories about chickens enjoying themselves, many become very sad. The pictures I’m showing them are so different from the ones they’re used to seeing of chickens in a state of absolute misery. The New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes wrote of a beautiful black hen who entered his life unexpectedly one day, an apparent escapee from a poultry market in Queens. “I looked at the Chicken endlessly, and I wondered. What lay behind the veil of animal secrecy? Did she have a personality, for one thing?” His curiosity is satisfied by close acquaintance with and observation of the endearing bird. By the end of his bittersweet book My Fine Feathered Friend, he and his wife Nancy “had grown to love the Chicken.”We have to start looking at chickens differently, so that we may see them as Alice Walker described her encounter with a hen she watched crossing the road one day with three little chicks in Bali. In her essay, “Why Did the Balinese Chicken Cross the Road?” in Living By the Word, Walker writes:It is one of those moments that will be engraved on my brain forever. For I really saw her. She was small and gray, flecked with black; so were her chicks. She had a healthy red comb and quick, light-brown eyes. She was that proud, chunky chicken shape that makes one feel always that chickens, and hens especially, have personality and will. Her steps were neat and quick and authoritative; and though she never touched her chicks, it was obvious she was shepherding them along. She clucked impatiently when, our feet falling ever nearer, one of them, especially self-absorbed and perhaps hard-headed, ceased to respond.Let us with equal justice perceive chickens with envisioned eyes that pierce the veil of these birds’ “mechanization” and apprehend the truth of who they are. In The Chicken Book, Page Smith and Charles Daniel remind us, most poignantly: “As each chick emerges from its shell in the dark cave of feathers underneath its mother, it lies for a time like any newborn creature, exhausted, naked, and extremely vulnerable. And as the mother hen may be taken as the epitome of motherhood, so the newborn chick may be taken as an archetypal representative of babies of all species, human and animal alike, just brought into the world.”This is What Wings Are For.KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. She is the author of books Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs; More Than a Meal: The Turkey . . . ; The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale; and other groundbreaking publications.For an essay by Carol J. Adams on the biblical image of God as a mother hen, see “Under Her Wings: The Pollomorphic God,” PT77 .Unset Gem. . . . Do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking their eggs,For injustice is the worst of crimes.--Al Maarri, 973 - 1057NewsNotesVegan Movement in Mexican CuisineFrom the NPR website comes a story about a “new” meatless movement that has roots among working-class cooking. In fact, it’s much like pre-Spanish invasion cuisine. See VeganBlind Cow Reunited with BuddyCows named Hope and Love spent their first eight months together, deeply bonded. Then after an eight-month separation, blind Hope was joyfully reunited with her still-beloved seeing-eye friend. (Do their names make them a parable for us humans too?) See Reunion--Contributed by Angie CordeiroTans and Coral ReefsSome sunscreens contain ingredients harmful to the world’s fragile coral reefs. You can get information from the Environmental Working Group on which brands are earth-friendly and which are not. See EWG--Contributed by Nancy CampeauDid You Miss This One? Vegetarian Christian SaintsHolly Roberts, Vegetarian Christian Saints. Sequim, WA: Anjeli Press, 2004. $12.00 softcover. Order through Amazon.You knew, of course, that there have been and are Christian saints who were vegetarian and practiced compassion toward all beings. But perhaps you did not know there were so many. We tend to associate this way of life with the Eastern religions, and certainly their exemplars of the harmless way are to be greatly honored. Yet Christians of the same path are in good company too, as Holly Roberts here demonstrates.The author states that she felt drawn to learn of them while working on a master's in theology at a Catholic university. "So I began combing the literature," she reports, "and what I found was amazing to me." Her book lists no fewer than 150 saints, divided into several categories: Eastern Monastic and Hermit Saints, Western Monastic and Hermit Saints, Mystic Saints, Founders of Monastic Orders, Doctors of the Church, Ascetic Saints, Saints Known for Animal Mercy, Martyr Saints, and even a Vegetarian Pope (the highly ascetic St. Peter Celestine, 1210-1296, the only pontiff to abdicate prior to Pope Benedict XVI in 2013).It should be pointed out that this volume lists only saints recognized by the Roman Catholic church, thus only ancient and Eastern Orthodox figures prior to the split between Rome and Constantinople, and otherwise only officially canonized saints. Exemplary souls like the 18th-19th century Seraphim of Sarov, the unforgettable Russian Orthodox saint ( PT 30 ), or John Wesley, co-founder of Methodism ( PT 17 ), will not be found here. But what there is, is enough. If only as a list of names, this work is a wonderful resource.A couple of other caveats. I could not help feeling that for some early and medieval individuals, particularly those of whom little is known but legend, whether he or she was always and consistently vegetarian may be speculative -- though on the other hand, legend can be taken seriously as indicating the impression a person made, and may suggest that even in a brutal society, as theirs often was, a harmless, compassionate way of life could be valued as a saintly ideal. Yet a slightly more orderly and critical approach to the material might have made this book more useful to some readers.At the same time, many of those early and medieval saints were vegetarian chiefly out of asceticism, wanting to deny themselves for the sake of the dominance of the spirit over the flesh, and showed little if any known compassion for animals. Not all: Francis of Assisi and his followers, though not listed here because as mendicants they took what they were given and were not consistently veg, loved all companies of beasts and choirs of birds; their sense of kinship with animals is well known, and indeed virtually archetypal. So were others, such as Marianus ( PT 129 ). Yet the asceticism that was the primary (perhaps only) motivation of many of them makes them less useful to those of us also concerned about animal well-being, and striving spiritually to find the love for all life behind it.Finally, a word might be said about the author of this remarkable book, Holly H. Roberts (pictured). Although a one-time graduate student in theology, she is a medical doctor (D.O.) certified in obstetrics and gynecology, practicing in New York. Appropriately, another of her books is Your Vegetarian Pregnancy, for all those young veg mothers who love that way of eating but may have to cope with outside pressure and inner anxieties about it in relation to the maternal role.Moreover, despite the Roman Catholic perspective of Vegetarian Christian Saints, Holly Roberts' religious interests are clearly not limited to that tradition. Other books, some of which I hope to review in future issues of The Peaceable Table, include versions of the Tao Te Ching and the Analects of Confucius, Vegetarian Philosophies of India, Gandhi the Vegetarian, Compassionate Vegetarians: An Illustrated Journey, and Synagogues of Manhattan. (All are available from Anjeli Press through Amazon, and very reasonably priced as books go these days.)Vegetarian Christian Saints is highly recommended. It belongs on the reference shelf of any reader of The Peaceable Table and serious student of vegetarianism.--Robert EllwoodPioneer: David Hartley 1705 - 1757David Hartley was born into into a clerical family in Armley, Yorkshire, now a district of the city of Leeds in north Britain. In those days of ignorance of the importance of hygiene and short lifespans, his life, like that of many others, was surrounded by death; his mother died three months after his birth, and his father, a clergyman of the Church of England, when he was fifteen. David Hartley’s first wife, Alice Rowley, died at the birth of their son David Jr. the year after their marriage in 1730. (David Jr. was later to write and publish a summary account of his father’s life.) However, Hartley’s second wife, Elizabeth Packer, survived the births of two further children, Mary and Winchcombe. The couple deserved their happiness; theirs was a love-match that had been opposed by Elizabeth’s wealthy family.David Sr. had attended Jesus College, Cambridge, originally intending to become a clergyman like his father (or his father intended it for him), but he could not bring himself to sign the Church’s Thirty-Nine Articles as required; in particular, he objected to the belief of eternal punishment for temporal sin. Instead, he went into a career in medicine, which he considered to be closely linked to psychology, ethics, apologetics, and theology.Besides a number of medical treatises, his major work, which dealt with all five fields, is entitled Man: his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations. Harley’s lasting contributions to these fields were his convictions that body and mind, rather than being essentially separate entities, worked in close and complex interdependence, and that all mental processes, which begin with sense perceptions on an empty-slate consciousness, develop primarily by association of ideas and feelings.Hartley’s pioneering work in diet is outlined in this book. Like other eighteenth-century thinkers, he held an essentially benign view of human nature, the essential goodness of which stems from its origin in the divine mind. Human violence and cruelty, both to other humans and to animals, are not part of the core of our nature, but do violence to the essential goodness of the perpetrators as well as to the victims.With respect to animal diet, let it be considered, that taking away the lives of animals in order to convert them into food does great violence to the principles of benevolence and compassion. This appears from the frequent hard-heartedness and cruelty found amongst those persons whose occupations engage them in destroying animal life, as well as from the uneasiness which others feel in beholding the butchery of animals.It is most evident in respect to the larger animals and those with whom we have a familiar intercourse--such as Oxen, Sheep, and domestic Fowls, etc.--so as to distinguish, love, and [show compassion to] individuals. They resemble us greatly in the make of the body in general, and in that of the particular organs of circulation, respiration, digestion, etc; also in the formation of their intellects, memories, and passions, and in the signs of distress, fear, pain, and death. They often, likewise, win our affections by the marks of peculiar sagacity, by their instincts, helplessness, innocence, nascent benevolence, etc etc, and if there be any glimmering of hope of an hereafter for them--if they should prove to be our brethren and sisters in this higher sense, in immortality as well as mortality--in the permanent principle of our minds as well as in the frail dust of our bodies--this ought to be still further reason for tenderness for them.This, therefore, seems to be nothing else than an argument to stop us in our career, to make us sparing and tender in this article of diet, and put us upon consulting experience more faithfully and impartially in order to determine what is most suitable for the purposes of life and health, our compassion being made, by the foregoing considerations in some measure, a balance to our impetuous bodily appetites.In his expressed hope that the consciousness of animals may, like that of humans, survive death, Hartley joinshis younger contemporary, Methodist leader John Wesley, as he presents it in his 1772 sermon “The General Deliverance” (See Deliverance ). The idea of animal survival has been re-appearing among some animal activists today.Hartley, says historian of vegetarianism Howard Williams, “appears to have been singularly amiable and disinterested,” meaning that he was an appealing, kind-hearted, unselfish person. A vegetarian, he practiced what he preached. I have not yet seen Hartley’s book, so I can’t give the story of his going veg (if he indeed tells it), though it is clear that his motivation was essentially compassionate.He was linked in friendship with several prominent persons of his day, notably with the colorful, larger-than-life physician George Cheyne, a generation his senior (See Cheyne ).. It is possible that Cheyne influenced him in regard to compassion in diet, as Cheyne did other prominent persons, including John Wesley, novelist Samuel Richardson, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson. Hartley attended Cheyne in the latter’s final illness.Hartley died in the city of Bath, then a health resort, at age fifty-one.--EditorRecipe: Vegan Pasta Bake17 oz. pasta12 oz. mushrooms, sliced5 oz. spinach1 medium-size cauliflower, cut into florets1 ½ to 2 C veggie broth2-3 cloves garlic⅓ C canned coconut milk1-2 teas. onion powder1 teas. garlic powder2 teas. dried Italian mixed herbs¼ C crushed red pepper flakesSalt and pepper to tasteSmall amount of oil3 servings cheezy sauce (see below)Cook cauliflower florets in salted water 15 minutes; drain. Cook pasta in another pot. When cauliflower is tender, blend in blender with veggie broth, garlic, coconut milk, spices, and salt and pepper, until smooth.Fry sliced mushrooms for 5 minutes; add spinach; fry 1 minute more.Place cooked pasta in large bowl, add cauliflower sauce, mushrooms, and spinach; stir to combine. Pour into greased baking dish. Pour cheeze sauce over. Bake at 400 F. for about 20 minutes. Eat and enjoy!Vegan Cheeze Sauce¾ C canned coconut milk3 T nutritional yeast flakes2 T tapioca or arrowroot flour½ teas sea salt½ teas onion powder, optional¼ teas garlic powder, optionalPinch of smoked paprika, optionalPut all ingredients in saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly with a whisk. Simmer on low-to-medium heat about 1 minute, until sauce is stretchy.--ElaVegan See Ela’s CreationsEla went veg at age six, and later went all the way to become vegan.Poetry: Paul Gallico, 1897 - 1976The Ballad of Tough TomThat's right!Those are tufts of my fur you're looking at.What about it?You don't see the other cat, do you?What are a few hairsCompared to an ear?I didn't get the whole of his offBecause by then he was already heading South,Having had enough.But it was eminently satisfactory.My name is Tough Tom,And I am the King of the Car Park.When the sun shinesIt warms the hoods of the cars for us.We like that. We lie on them.Sometimes we get chased becauseWe leave footmarks on the cars,But most of the time nobody bothers,We have our own crowdThat comes here to sun.But I say who does and who doesn't.See?Because I'm the King of the Car Park.So one day this stranger walks up and says,'What's your name?'So I says, 'Tough TomAnd I'm the King of the Car Park. What's yours?'And he says, 'Tough Charlie, and I guessYou ain't King of the Car Park anymore.''Oh, I get it,' I says, 'You're looking for a little action.''How did you guess?' says Tough Charlie.I'm measuring him up in the meantimeAnd he's a lot of cat. Yellow and white.Yellow is a colour I ain't partial to.And although I wasn't looking for trouble that morning,Like now my being King of the Car Park,It was up to me to oblige. So I says,'Shall we dispense with the preliminaries?See now, like the growlingAnd the fluffingAnd the humping upAnd the exchange of insults?'Waste of timeWhen you know you're going to mix.’'Okay by me,' says Tough Charlie. 'Let's go!'And he's up and onto me, leading with his right.Oh boy, sucker punch.But I guess I'm a little dopey,Lying out in that hot sun,On that warm hoodAnd maybe he's got a half pound on me as well.So I'm on my back before I know it,And he just misses getting my eye out.Tough Charlie he was alright.I give my left on the end of his noseAnd try a roll-overBut he's too smart for thatAnd goes for my eye again, only this timeI'm waiting for it.He don't get the eye,But I get his ear.Brother!We're all over that car,Down on the ground,And underneath,And back up on top again,With the gang sitting around waiting to seeWho is the King of the Car Park.He gives me the raking kickWith the back legs.That's when I lost all that furYou see about.But I've still got that ear,And it's starting to come away.Tough Tom and Tough CharlieAnd the battle of the Car Park!They'll sing about that one on the tilesFor many a night.So I guess maybe Tough Charlie thinks it over,That with only one earHe ain't gonna do so good anymoreWith the broads, and he says,'Okay, so I was wrong. Leggo!You're still King of the Car Park.'So I had to laugh, and he's offWith what's left of his ear.That's the story.So now for a little clean-up.I'm still Tough Tom,King of the Car Park.--Contributed by Richard Ellwood