Memento Mori - Yun-Fei Tou’s Portraits of Shelter Dogs

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i'd really like to write something amusing, witty or fun, but there are plenty of people who do better - maybe that's why i take pictures, words are so definite.

anyway, i thought i'll provide some possibly stimulating reading material in spite of that - just in case.

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I am sometimes asked: ‘Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?’ I answer: ‘I am working at the roots.’

George T. Angell, Founder of the Mass SPCA. Taken from a speech on Feb 14, 1884.

What is the nature of this degeneration in our civilization and why has it come about? . . The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed . . . Now come the facts to summon us to reflect. They tell us in terribly harsh language that a civilization which develops only on its material side, and not in the sphere of the spirit . . . heads for disaster. [...]

As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care.

I used to suffer particularly because the poor animals must endure so much pain and want. The sight of an old, limping horse being dragged along by one man while another man struck him with a stick he was being driven to the Colmar slaughterhouse - haunted me for weeks.

While so much ill-treatment of animals goes on, while the moans of thirsty animals in railway trucks sound unheard, while so much brutality prevails in our slaughterhouses... we all bear guilt. Everything that lives has value as a living thing, as one of the manifestations of the mystery that is life.

I must interpret the life around me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine. And not only other human life, but all kinds of life: life above mine, if there be such life; life below mine, as I know it to exist. Ethics in our Western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relations of man to man. But that is a limited ethics. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also.

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Albert Schweitzer, various quotes

I'm Female and Woolgathering

Leipzig (every so often swarming around, too.)