English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horsefull carriage or a strapfull gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
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let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air.
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In the fall, when you see geese heading south for the winter fly along in v formation, one might consider what science has discovered as to why geese fly this way. Each bird flaps its wings creating uplift for the bird immediately following. A flock has a greater flying range in formation than a single bird would have on its own. When a goose falls out of formation, it feels the drag and resistance of trying to fly alone and quickly rejoins the formation. The goose takes advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front. The geese in formation honk from behind to encourage those flying up front to keep their speed. When a goose gets sick or wounded and falls out of formation, two other geese will fall out of formation with that goose to follow it down to lend help and protection. They stay with that fallen goose until it is able to fly or it dies. Only then do they launch out on their own or with another formation to catch up with their flock. People, who share a common direction and sense of community, can reach a goal more quickly and easily because they are traveling on the thrust of one another. It is harder to do something alone than together. It is beneficial to take turns doing demanding work. By sharing leadership and depending upon others in a group, there is a chance to lead and an opportunity to rest.
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As far as whether we are allowed to kill and to eat animals, there is a remarkable ordering of matters in Holy Scripture. We can read how, at first, only plants are mentioned as providing food for man. Only after the flood, that is to say, after a new breach has been opened between God and man, are we told that man eats flesh...Nonetheless...we should not proceed from this to a kind of sectarian cult of animals. For this, too, is permitted to man. He should always maintain his respect for these creatures, but he knows at the same time that he is not forbidden to take food from them. Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.
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Animals live by ethics! (1) A flock of wild geese had settled to rest on a pond. One of the flock is captured by a gardener who had clipped its wings. When the geese started to resume their flight, this one tried frantically, but vainly, to lift itself into the air. The others, observing its struggles, flew about in obvious efforts to encourage it, but no use. The entire flock then settled back on the pond and waited, even though the urge to go on was strong, for several days, until the damaged feathers grew sufficiently to permit the goose to fly. (2) A friend who owned a small cafe and used to throw crumbs for the sparrows, noticed that one was injured and had difficulty getting about. But he was interested to discover that the other sparrows would leave the crumbs which lay nearest their crippled comrade so that he could get his share, undisturbed.'
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O death, come close mine eyes; More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.
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I consider the 3 most cruelly produced foods to be from lobsters, dropped alive into boiling water, veal from calves separated from their mothers and kept in crates, and pate de foie gras. (Pate de foie gras is covered in the film Mondo Kane which shows the force feeding of geese. Food is stuffed down their throats with a pole.. when they want to regurgitate.. a brass ring is tied around the throat.. the excess food creates a stuffed liver pleasing to gourmets.) (Caviar comes from the ripping out of the ovaries of the mother sturgeon fish.)
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Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important that television.
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When a fox preaches, take care of your geese.
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One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
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If you feel the urge, don't be afraid to go on a wild goose chase. What do you think wild geese are for anyway?
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[W]e cannot just do whatever we want with them. ... Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible
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When the fox preaches, look to the geese.
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