Alice Walker: "The Chicken Chronicles"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-05-02/alice-walker-chicken-chronicles
Alice Walker
Vaschelle André
Alice Walker is an acclaimed author, poet, and Pulitzer Prize laureate. For the past several years she has cared for a flock of backyard chickens on her farm north of San Francisco. Over time this has become a source of inspiration, strength and spiritual discover for her and connected her with her southern rural roots. Walker discusses the personal discovery and the joys of relating to these animals.
Guests
Alice Walker
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, poet and activist.
Author Extra: Alice Walker Answers Questions
Ms. Walker stayed after the show to answer a few more questions.
Q: Just six miles from Washington D.C. is the small city of Alexandria, Virginia. A movement of grassroots activists who support sustainable food are striving to convince the city council to change its code to allow backyard chickens. (Currently the city requires 150 feet from coops to property lines and very few homes have this kind of footage). What arguments for chickens would you cite as most compelling for a campaign like this? The city and particularly animal control is dragging its feet, and activists are losing hope.
- From Jill via email in Alexandria, VA
A: I live in Berkeley California much of the time. We have chickens on both sides of us and it’s wonderful to hear the hens cackle their joy every time they lay an egg! Our neighborhood had been so quiet and boring before. I wouldn’t mind hearing roosters but many people can’t go that far.
Think of having chickens in the community as a re-learning of how to coexist with nature; a way to teach our children that other beings inhabit their communities and have presence!
Send out copies of THE CHICKEN CHRONICLES! Often folks just don’t know what it is they fear.
Q: Which authors/books are you reading right now? Which authors do you particularly respect?
A: I love Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese. This is novel writing at its best. I learned wonderful things about medicine from this book written by a compassionate man and an excellent surgeon.
I also recommend The Blood of Flowers by an Iranian American whose name escapes me. It is set in 7th century Persia (now Iran) and is about a young woman carpet maker.
Also excellent is The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. Everything we all need to know about immigrants from countries like India who try to make it in places like New York City.
Q: You have been a lifelong feminist, or "womanist," a term you coined. What kinds of activities or endeavors are you currently involved in to this end?
A: I just returned from a remarkable three day gathering of Womanist scholars who were studying Buddhist texts to see how Buddhism and Womanism complement each other. This is the new direction for this philosophy of self-love and love of Earth and “other.”
Read an Excerpt
Copyright © 2011 by Alice Walker. This excerpt originally appeared in The Chicken Chronicles: Sitting with the Angels Who Have Returned with My Memories: Glorious, Rufus, Gertrude Stein, Splendor, Hortensia,Agnes of God, the Gladyses, & Babe: A Memoir. Published by The New Press. Reprinted here with permission.
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Drinking Wine Together
It has been by me a long, long ride,
upon many paths back to the village.
The carrot in front of the mule it is nearly gone.
How many times we have come this way,
around the mountain she moves us steadily along.
There is little noise of the carriage as the mule.
Hope as for the bird of the air, comes light as day.
Night is growing, as she the sky is moon looking full.
The view of the beautiful mountain, continues to grow.
From the south blows gently the breeze.
Passing it, is one who comes and I stop as he asks.
Kind sir to you the gentleman,
and to whom is it possible to see into oneself,
Look there, as the central part of she, next to you underneath?
The one axle may in need, be of trouble.
Many distant places I've seen.
To the quick open bloom of the cherry tree.
Have you kept all the limbs apart and your children look fair.
As for this question, as for my request,
It possesses to you, no clear meaning, such is speech.
And of low disregard, when the road is not spoken clear?
Drinking wine together is where it the road, soon we part.
Create Date : Monday, May 02, 2011
Is It Poetry
in response to the chicken sound in different part of the world
Thailand
hen= bok bok bok
Rooster= ake eee ake akkkke
chick= jeab jeab
Wonderful interview. I am a long time (30 years) vegetarian and I so love so much of what I am hearing about simply being aware -- of animals, of food, of relationships. Also, on the collard smoothie, I am excited and frankly surprised I never thought of it or heard of it. I have a BlendTec blender -- a good alternative to Vitamix in my opinion (available at Costco about once/month), and it will turn anything smooth (even makes uncooked rice into rice flour, for example). I am going to buy some organic collards today (and I would try carrots in that recipe, too).
I am enjoying this show so much! Two comments: Bob Sheasley, a Philadelphia Inquirer editor, has written a delightful book, Home to Roost ; Chickens Through the Ages, that will please any chicken keeper or lover of farming history. It is an insightful, often hilarious, and even scholarly, look at the history of the relationship between chickens and humans, including how they sound to other cultures. When Mr. Sheasley suggested that his flock said "brook" to him when he visited them on their roost of an evening, I felt inspired to don my robe and slippers and rush out to hear for myself! Get your own flock and tell us what you hear. Thanks in great pasrt to Martha Stewart, who adores chickens, keeping them has become a national hobby with a passionate following-- celebrated in cities and suburbs from coast to coast.
Two: My family has had a flock of chickens in our backyard for 3 years now, and we love them. Our friends and co-workers line up for our eggs, which put store-bought ones to shame. Egg-eating is a bad habit that can develop in any flock, usually after an eggs is broken and a hen discovers how delicious they are! They will learn it from each other very quickly and it is a very difficult behavior to discourage once established. I do not, however, believe, as Ms Walker suggested, that this is a deliberate response to humans taking their eggs. I am not saying chickens are stupid -- far from it! But hens eating their own eggs would be evidence of very sophisticated planning -- not to mention a rather mean-spirited and self-defeating response from them!
Lastly, a wonderful (free!) resource for anyone interested in chickens is www.backyardchickens.com, where thousands of poultry-keepers from all over the world share their stories, pictures, wisdom, and resources. Thank you for this show, and all your shows featuring animals.
Jeannie Rodman, Smyrna, Delaware
I just love Ms. Walker and I do the collard greens an apple, pear, 2 bananas, 2 cups water for breakfast and lunch. I feel great since I began this routine 2 months ago. It's great for digestion. I do half for breakfast and the other half for lunch.
I listen to the show daily and I was so disappointed that business appts prevented my seeing Ms. Rehm when she was here.
Betty in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL
I am happy to hear Ms. Walker's comment that she would rather keep her chickens wild instead of training them after the host mentioned that chickens can be trained like dogs. We have dominated chickens for so long and it's inspiring that a some of the people who raise and care for chickens simply allow them to spend their lives doing the things that come naturally to them.
Since I first was introduced to the work of Alice Walker, I have always wanted to sit down and have a conversation with her. Thank you for giving me that experience vicariously. This is a soul filling conversation.
I even grew my hair out for over ten years after reading her essay about the hair being an antennae to the universe. I cut my hair to donate it for wigs for cancer patients and I feel like that was an extention of that universal connection.
Again, thank you for the conversation and thank you to Alice for being a force of peace and healing in the world.
A coalition of animal sanctuaries has published a document addressing concerns and recommendations for keeping chickens. It should be read and carefully considered by anyone interested in keeping chickens:
http://www.upc-online.org/chickens/backyard_poultry.pdf
Chickens are wonderfully interesting, perceptive, enjoyable companions from whom we can learn an astonishing amount. As with humans, all animals have an intense desire to live and enjoy life. There is plenty of healthful, delicious food readily available to us without resorting to killing them or any other animals. (As the saying goes: There's plenty to eat without choosing meat.") We need to respect the most basic right of all sentient beings to live. Being vegetarian is easier, better, and more important than ever before. See, for example: http://www.tryveg.com
I am deeply disappointed in Alice Walker whom I once honored and admired for her essay "Am I Blue" in Ms. Magazine in the 1980s. In it, she evokes the loneliness of a horse deprived of his mate, and expands her empathy with this horse, forced to live at the mercy of his owner's selfish whims. She expands her empathy to the plight of animals raised and slaughtered - so unnecessarily - for human appetites. She says she "spit out" their flesh because it was "misery." And she was right.
Walker has been credited with having said that animals are not ours, and that they have lives of their own to live and enjoy free of human oppression. She wrote movingly about her observation of a Balinese hen shepherding her chicks across a road, noting that the hen's love for her chicks was like that of her love for her own child. Yet here she is eating chickens and telling the world that chickens, goats and other animals can be slaughtered "humanely," etc. They are HERE FOR US after all. So much for her expanded feminism and empathy for her "sister" animals. With even the Alice Walkers of the world ganged up against chickens, they're the most oppressed creatures on earth. I pray for the day when chickens will be free of our species, our appetites, and our blah, blah, blah.
So long, Alice.
Karen Davis, PhD, President
United Poultry Concerns
www.upc-online.org
I am deeply disappointed in Alice Walker whom I once honored and admired for her essay "Am I Blue" in Ms. Magazine in the 1980s. In it, she evokes the loneliness of a horse deprived of his mate, and expands her empathy with this horse, forced to live at the mercy of his owner's selfish whims. She expands her empathy to the plight of animals raised and slaughtered - so unnecessarily - for human appetites. She says she "spit out" their flesh because it was "misery." And she was right.
Walker has been credited with having said that animals are not ours, and that they have lives of their own to live and enjoy free of human oppression. She wrote movingly about her observation of a Balinese hen shepherding her chicks across a road, noting that the hen's love for her chicks was like that of her love for her own child. Yet here she is eating chickens and telling the world that chickens, goats and other animals can be slaughtered "humanely," etc. They are HERE FOR US after all. So much for her expanded feminism and empathy for her "sister" animals. With even the Alice Walkers of the world ganged up against chickens, they're the most oppressed creatures on earth. I pray for the day when chickens will be free of our species, our appetites, and our blah, blah, blah.
So long, Alice.
Karen Davis, PhD, President
United Poultry Concerns
www.upc-online.org
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The rooster did.
Otherwise, this was a pretty stupid conversation
Thank you for your invitation to hold in reverence the plants & animals we eat, and the people who raise them. I am steward of rural Michigan land that was damaged by harsh farming. We are bringing it back to abundant fertility by grazing domestic farm animals, as well as maintaining conservation spaces. Plants and animals, wild and domestic--all play an essential role in life and death here. There is no dietary path that does not involve the death of other beings; it is only a matter of how intimately and honestly one is willing to experience that cycle. Though it may be hard for us to accept her ways, Nature embraces the cyclic eating of animals, and she will teach astonishing lessons about that if we open to the experience. It is not easy, but it is very real. Embracing our relationship to life AND death, bears an intimate relationship to gratitude and reverence.
Patty