The Raven's Wing
POSTS for May 2009
| Tuesday, May 26, 2009 8:23AM | | | | A Crow Story | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Crows, Stories, Animals | | | Do animals tell stories to one another? If so, are they tragic stories or funny stories? Are they short stories with lessons, a bit like the fables of Aesop? Are they stories that never end, like those of Arabian Nights Entertainments?
The other day, I saw a crow sitting quietly on a branch, when another few up to it, cawing frantically. The first crow remained mute and motionless, while the other, growing louder and more excited, circled his head a few times. The second crow then dive-bombed past the first, just barely missing her, but the first crow appeared completely unperturbed. This happened a second time, and then a third, when at last the two crows flew off together. | | | | | | | | | Monday, May 11, 2009 5:55PM | | | | Storytelling Video | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Jackie the Lucky Raven, Tower Ravens, Tower of London, James Bruchac | | | For a video of my recent presentation on the ravens in the Tower of London, particularly on Jackie the Lucky Raven, as well as a storytelling presentation by James Bruchac, go to:
http://webcast2.uis.edu/multimedia/Archive/2009/Ecce090407.html | | | | | | | | | Monday, May 26, 2008 10:29AM | | | | Becoming an Object | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Objectification, dominance, bureaucratization | | | | We generally don't like bureaucratization or objectification, and with a lot of good reasons. But one advantage of objectification is that it does set limits to dominance. I've done more than my share of menial work in my younger days. When I worked as a janitor at a university, I sort of hoped that people would think of me as an object, since I would feel humiliated if they didn't. I suppose that is also why people traditionally placed before a firing squad for execution have been offered a blindfold. By putting on the blindfold, one in effect makes oneself into an object, a status that some people prefer (and others don't) under such conditions. This is also why the Nazis, who were so bent on... | | | | | | | | | Sunday, May 11, 2008 3:09PM | | | | After the Rain (poem) | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Dragonflies, Love | | | AFTER THE RAIN
Suddenly, the flicker
Of iridescent wings --
Two dragonflies in an embrace,
Now a single creature,
Rising, circling, hovering,
Above a pond.
This is the culmination of their lives,
Which soon will end, but is the nuptial,
So synchronized and so precise,
Too perfect to be love?
| | | | | | | | | Sunday, May 11, 2008 11:39AM | | | | Cain and the Raven | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Raven, Cain, Koran, Death, Ray Kurzweil, Reincarnation | | | The Koran tells that after Cain had killed Abel, he did not know what to do with the body (Do not forget that before that no human being had ever died). The murderer carried his brother around on his shoulders until he came across a raven, which scratched the ground with its claw. Cain understood that this was a message from God, buried the body, and repented. There are also Jewish and Christian versions of this tale.
W. B. Yeats wrote that, "Man has created Death," and that is a profound truth but only a partial one. The story of Cain and the Raven illustrates how our ideas of death are socially constructed through observation of the natural world. Even today, although our contact... | | | | | | | | | Thursday, May 8, 2008 9:07AM | | | | Killing Well | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Killing Well, Donna Haraway, Philipsburg Manor, Chickens | | | The concept of "killing well" is one point on which I agree with Donna Haraway, even if I might have phrased it a bit differently. As she has pointed out, living involves killing, since we are continually using resources that could nourish other creatures. "Killing well" is almost the same thing as "living well."
At any rate, my own personal model for this is probably the reconstructed 1750 farm in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where my wife Linda works as an interpreter, dressing in period costume and demonstrating traditional crafts and tasks, and where I have occasionally volunteered. In the eighteenth century, just about all animals including livestock were only semi-domesticated by contemporary standards. They could forage for food, and their lives were all a good deal... | | | | | | | | | Wednesday, May 7, 2008 12:11PM | | | | What is Human? What is Animal II | Posted By: Boria Sax
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| Tags: Human, Animal Studies, Donna Haraway, Companion Species, Roberto Marchesini | | | | In her book When Species Meet (2008), Haraway is correct to point out that human identity is malleable, an insight that has previously been largely neglected in Animal Studies, though far less so in the study of cyberculture. I believe, in fact that our understanding of "humanity" is far more malleable than even Haraway fully realizes. Over the centuries the ways in which "humanity" has been understood has fluctuated enormously, just as it does today. At times "humanity" has included deities, household spirits, apes, and a huge variety of animals, while it has excluded nations and ethnic groups. Our working understanding of humanity has always included technologies as well, since those who lack them (so-called "savages") have often not been regarded as fully "human." Where I believe that Haraway, along with many... | | | | | | | |
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