Animal, Mineral, Radical

by BK Loren

  “The Shifting Light of Shadows” first appeared in Listening to Cougar, Marc Bekoff and Cara Blessley Lowe (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2008).

  “Of Straw Dogs and Canines: A Meditation on Place” first appeared as “What It Is That Feeds Us” in Orion Magazine, July/August 2010, and was reprinted in Best Spiritual Writing of 2012, ed. Philip Zaleski (New York: Penguin Books, 2011).

  “Margie’s Discount” first appeared in Dutiful Daughters, ed. Jean Gould (Seattle: Seal Press, 1999).

  “Fighting Time” first appeared in The Way of the River, BK Loren (Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe-Pequot, 2001).

  “Snapshots of My Redneck Brother” first appeared in Orion Magazine, March/April 2007.

  “The Evolution of Hunger” was first published in Hawk and Handsaw: The Journal of Creative Sustainability, a publication of Unity College of Maine, Fall 2012.

  “Back Words” first appeared as “I Would Like To Be a Fool” in Parabola, the Magazine of Myth and Tradition, volume 26, number 3, Fall 2001.

  “Learning Fear” first appeared in The Way of the River, BK Loren (Guilford, Connecticut: Lyons Press, an imprint of Globe-Pequot, 2001).

  “Got Tape” first appeared in Orion Magazine, May/June 2003.

  “This Little Piggy Stayed Home” was originally published as “Odd Shaped Tomatoes” in Spirituality and Health, July/August 2008.

  “Plate Tectonics and Other Underground Theories of Loss” was originally published in Orion Magazine, Autumn 1999.

  “Word Hoard” was originally published in Parabola, the Magazine of Myth and Tradition, volume 8, number 3, August 2003; it was reprinted in Best American Spiritual Writing of 2004, ed. Philip Zaleski (New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 2003).

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1. “Please RT,” nplusonemag.com, June 14, 2012.

  2. John Fowles, The Tree (New York: Harper Collins; Ecco Reprint Edition, 2010), 47.

  3. John Fowles, The Tree, 42.

  TRENDS OF NATURE

  1. Horace Miner, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” in The Nacirema: Readings on American Culture, ed. James P. Spradley and Michael A. Rynkiewich (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), 10.

  2. Neil B. Thompson, “The Mysterious Fall of the Nacirema,” in The Nacirema: Readings on American Culture, ed. James P. Spradley and Michael A. Rynkiewich (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), 412.

  THE SHIFTING LIGHT OF SHADOWS

  1. Carl Gustav Jung, “The Philosophical Tree,” paragraph 335, in Alchemical Studies, Collected Works Volume 13, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967), 265.

  FIGHTING TIME

  1. Thomas H. Maugh II, “Chemicals Called Main Cause of Parkinson’s,” Los Angeles Times, January 27, 1999. See www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/SCIENCE/ENVIRON/t000008230.html Also see “Pesticides Impact on Human Health,” www.pmac.net/parkinson.html.

  2. Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream (New York: Random House, 1997), 60–61.

  3. David Ehrenfeld, “Pretending,” Orion Magazine, Autumn 2000.

  4. Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, Killing Our Own (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1982), 261.

  5. Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, Killing Our Own, 261.

  6. “Currently” in this paragraph refers to the year 1999, when I wrote this essay. It is now 2013, and the hiking trails have been completed. The area is called “Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.” A topo map of its trails includes a gray area with zero contour lines and labeled “Department of Energy Retained Area.” www.fws.gov/rockyflats/images/rfl_LandStatus_071911-1000.jpg.

  7. Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, Killing Our Own, throughout.

  THE EVOLUTION OF HUNGER

  1. Reay Tannahill, Food in History (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1988), 3.

  2. Reay Tannahill, Food in History, 3.

  3. Raey Tannahill, Food in History, 1.

  4. Jeff Hecht, “Chimps are Human, Gene Study Implies,” New Scientist, www.newscientist.com/article/dn3744-chimps-are-human-gene-study-implies.html, May 19, 2003.

  5. “Implications of natural selection in shaping 99.4% nonsynonymous DNA identity between humans and Chimpanzees: Enlarging genus Homo,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America, contributed by Morris Goodman, www.pnas.org/content/100/12/7181.abstract, April 14, 2003.

  6. Laura Schenone, A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003), 118.

  THIS LITTLE PIGGY STAYED HOME

  1. UMassAmherst, “CSA Information and Listings,” http://extension.umass.edu/vegetable/resources/csa-information-listings.