Save Cows Quotes

Hera: Ohh, Thalia Grace, when I get out of here, you'll be sorry you were ever born. Thalia: Save it! You've been nothing but a curse to every child of Zeus for ages. You sent a bunch of intestinally challenged cows after my friend Annabeth Hera: She was disrespectful! Thalia: You dropped a statue on my legs. Hera: It was an accident! Thalia: AND you took my brother

You think you’re a very clever fellow, don’t you?” Saldur challenged. “No, Your Grace,” Merrick replied. “Clever is the man who makes a fortune selling dried-up cows, explaining how it saves the farmers the trouble of getting up every morning to milk them. I’m not clever—I’m a genius.

Shank’s got more guts than I’ve fried up from every pig and cow in the last year.” He paused, as if expecting a laugh, but none came. “How stupid is this—he saves Alby’s life, kills a couple of Grievers, and we’re sitting here yappin’ about what to do with him. As Chuck would say, this is a pile of klunk.

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, if cows were a country, they would rank third in greenhouse gas emissions, after China and the United States.

Pennsylvania one year paid out $90,000 in bounties for the killing of 130,000 owls and hawks to save the state’s farmers a slightly less than whopping $1,875 in estimated livestock losses. (It is not very often, after all, that an owl carries off a cow.)

biodiversity actually begins in the soil.

Over time I learned that objects and animals are true friends. In the forest I was surrounded by trees, bushes, birds, and small animals. I was not afraid of them. I was sure that they would do nothing harmful to me. I became familiar with cows and with horses, and they provided me with a warmth that has remained with me to this very day. Sometimes it seemed to me that what saved me were the animals I encountered along the way, not the human beings.

If Republicans care about the Constitution, they have to find the courage to say no or lose their constituencies and ultimately their cause. They have to say no to the anticonstitutional views of Supreme Court nominees such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor and to un-Constitutional executive orders by presidents like Barack Obama, and that means they have to be prepared to obstruct them by any constitutional means necessary. Nor should they be cowed by a corrupt anti-Republican press. No candidate was ever vilified more by the media than Donald Trump, and he won.

How can the meek of the earth save themselves against the damnable evil which feeds on them?

Arrange these threats in ascending order of deadliness: wolves, vending machines, cows, domestic dogs and toothpicks. I will save you the trouble: they have been ordered already. The number of deaths known to have been caused by wolves in North America in the twenty-first century is one: if averaged out, that would be 0.08 per year. The average number of people killed in the US by vending machines is 2.2 (people sometimes rock them to try to extract their drinks, with predictable results). Cows kill some twenty people in the US, dogs thirty-one. Over the past century, swallowing toothpicks caused the deaths of around 170 Americans a year. Though there are sixty thousand wolves in North America, the risk of being killed by one is almost nonexistent.

What is wrong with you?” Glory’s voice snapped. The RainWing materialized from the sandy background, turning her scales a darker shade of brown so they could see her. She glared at Tsunami. “Why did you do that?” “Oh, you’re welcome,” Tsunami said. “Just saving your life, as usual.” “By attacking random dragons?” Glory cried. “In another moment they would have been gone! And what are you doing?” She jabbed Clay in the side with one of her wings. “Uh,” Clay mumbled. “Fixing him.” He kept thumping the SkyWing’s chest. “What?” Glory yelped. “You can’t let him live!” She tried to grab one of Clay’s forearms, but Tsunami shoved her away. “We don’t have to kill him,” Tsunami said. “We’ll tie him up and leave him here.” “Great,” Glory said. “How about a trail of cow parts, too? And a map of where we’re going? Or perhaps we could set this part of the forest on fire, just to make sure everyone knows how to find us. Would you like me to spell out ‘DRAGONETS WUZ HERE’ in giant rocks?” “Fine!

A ship with two of every animal in the world, my friend? That would have to be a very large ship indeed. Is that how you would save a world? A bull and a cow, a sheep and a ram, and so on? The people who wrote your Torah, my friend, must have had poor livestock if they raised their herds from only one dam and one sire, breeding sisters with their brothers, any herdsman knows that this does not produce a healthy flock. No, my friend to save the world you save the knowledge of that world, the knowledge that there were bulls and cows in it, that there were sheep and rams in it, that there were men and women who lived and died. If your world is to be destroyed, all you can save my friend, is the knowledge of it, to restore what you once had, to mourn what can never be restored.

They say farmers need a safety net. I think the soil should be our safety net. If you add up the dollar figure for improved health, carbon sequestration, lower fossil fuel bills, and resistance to weather extremes, it’s a lot.

Hugh was abandoned by everyone in his life.” Her words rang out. “His parents, his teacher, his surrogate father. They all threw him away. He trusted us. He sacrificed himself to save us. This is his home. I’m his wife. I will not abandon him. Bring the cows.

proverb from the Sanskrit Vedic Scriptures of around 1500 bce: “Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel and our shelter and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it.

Water for the Recovery of the Climate: A New Water Paradigm,

ultimately, quality of health depends on the quality of food, and food can only be as good as the soil on which it is grown.

People need to manage land with water circulation in mind,

tucked into the 2012 Farm Bill was a clause indemnifying Monsanto if the use of their products happens to mess up someone’s land.

Humans can’t eat grass, but cattle, thanks to their microscopic partners, are performing the service of turning inedible grasses into protein that we can eat.

One farmer I met, Gene Goven of Turtle Lake, North Dakota, put it more succinctly: “You build soil where the roots go—down!

Security is about how you configure power, and who has access to what. That is political,” Song said.

The most urgent challenge of present civilization is to understand that the drying out of landscapes has a much more serious impact on climatic change than an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.

We live on a world where if you run straight away, without turning, you return to your point of origin. So much energy can be saved and time, by dealing with the point, at its origin, that would make us run.

Science has never succeeded by burying the manifestations of unintended consequences. It has succeeded when we recognize them and deal with those issues. That’s hard to do when you have a belief system that becomes a religion.

Me, either, pal. I’d rather reach in a cow’s rear end any day than have to deal with a horse’s behind.” “Harry Nelson is being transferred to Birmingham,” Father Tim said mildly, having saved this pièce de résistance for the right moment.

I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets. I tried the Scarsdale diet and the Stillman water diet (you remember that one, where you run weight off trying to get to the bathroom). I tried Optifast, Juicefast, and Waterfast. I even took those shots that I think were made from cow pee. I endured every form of torture anybody with a white coat and a clipboard could devise for a girl who really liked fried pork chops. One night while I was on some kind of liquid-protein diet made from bone marrow, or something equally appetizing, I was with a group of friends at a Howard Johnson’s and some of them were having fried clams. I’ll never forget sitting there with all of that glorious fried fat filling my nostrils and feeling completely left out. I went home and wrote one of my biggest hits, “Two Doors Down.” I also went off my diet and had some fried clams. There were times when I thought of chucking it all in. “Damn the movie,” I would say. “I’m just gonna eat everything and go ahead and weigh five hundred pounds and have to be buried in a piano case.” Luckily, a few doughnuts later, that thought would pass and I would be back to the goal at hand. I remember something in a book I read called Gentle Eating. The author said you should pretend the angels are eating with you and that you want to save some for them. I loved that idea, because I love angels. I have to admit, though, there were times I would slap those angels out of the way and have their part too. A true hog will do that.

A cowboy is someone who loves his work. Since the hours are long—ten to fifteen hours a day—and the pay is $30 he has to. What's required of him is an odd mixture of physical vigor and maternalism. His part of the beef-raising industry is to birth and nurture calves and take care of their mothers. For the most part his work is done on horseback and in a lifetime he sees and comes to know more animals than people. The iconic myth surrounding him is built on American notions of heroism: the index of a man's value as measured in physical courage. Such ideas have perverted manliness into a self-absorbed race for cheap thrills. In a rancher's world, courage has less to do with facing danger than with acting spontaneously—usually on behalf of an animal or another rider. If a cow is stuck in a bog hole he throws a loop around her neck, takes his dally (a half hitch around the saddle horn), and pulls her out with horsepower. If a calf is born sick, he may take her home, warm her in front of the kitchen fire, and massage her legs until dawn. One friend, whose favorite horse was trying to swim a lake with hobbles on, dove under water and cut her legs loose with a knife, then swam her to shore, his arm around her neck lifeguard-style, and saved her from drowning. Because these incidents are usually linked to someone or something outside himself, the westerner's courage is selfless, a form of compassion.

Which girl?’ Zeus asked lazily. He assumed that Hera was busying herself turning one of his favourite girls into a cow or a weasel or whatever, which meant it may well be too late to intervene and save her. Although there was always the possibility that the world had just gained an attractive new cow, so all was not lost.

Connectedness is the essence of everything...They sense that, of course, from time to time; have uneasy feelings that all they live by is nonsense. They have dim apprehensions that such propositions as 'God does not exist' are somewhat dubious at least in comparison with statements like 'All carnivorous cows eat meat.' That's where the Shaper saves them. Provides an illusion of reality—puts together all their facts with a gluey whine of connectedness. Mere tripe, believe me. Mere sleight-of-wits. He knows no more than they do about total reality—less, if anything: works with the same old clutter of atoms, the givens of his time and place and tongue. But he spins it all together with harp runs and hoots, and they think what they think is alive, think Heaven loves them. It keeps them going—for what that's worth.

Apocalypse_Cow: look, e. lemme give you some advice. emmersmacks: Yes emmersmacks: Advice from the guy who keeps calling his girlfriend a model Apocalypse_Cow: if you like him, you might as well say it to him. Apocalypse_Cow: if he doesn’t like you, you can stop worrying about it. Apocalypse_Cow: and if he does like you, you’re in business. Apocalypse_Cow: either way, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and pain.

They lie on their mats, all in a row, and they stare at the tree canopy that hides the sky. When the sun is gone and there are no stars above, they turn to their memory. They hear a hundred bronze drums, a hundred cow horns, a hundred wood gourds in the shape of frogs. They hear flutes chirp and bells echo. They hear the gurgling brook music any god would love. Together, they sing in perfect harmony: We are together and that is what matters.

Will you need assistance with the boilers, as well?” “I can manage those on my own, but we’ll need two wheelbarrow loads of wood to fuel the fireboxes. There’s a barrow out by the woodshed. If you would start loading it while I move the boilers down to the pond, that would save considerable time.” “Aye, aye, Captain.” Nicole clicked her heels together and snapped a salute. Her employer seemed a bit nonplussed by her actions until she winked at him and allowed the smile she’d been fighting to bloom across her face. He laughed then and gave her a playful push in the direction of the shed. “Hop to, sailor, before I make you walk the plank for insubordination.” Nicole scurried away, giving her best imitation of a cowed crew member, bowing and scraping as she trotted over the packed dirt of the yard. Darius’s deep chuckles followed her, the rich sound warming a place inside her that she hadn’t even realized had been cold.

You’re either remarkable or invisible,” says Seth Godin in his 2002 bestseller, Purple Cow.1 As he elaborated in a Fast Company manifesto he published on the subject: “The world is full of boring stuff—brown cows—which is why so few people pay attention…. A purple cow… now that would stand out. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing.”2 When Giles read Godin’s book, he had an epiphany: For his mission to build a sustainable career, it had to produce purple cows, the type of remarkable projects that compel people to spread the word. But this left him with a second question: In the world of computer programming, where does one launch remarkable projects? He found his second answer in a 2005 career guide with a quirky title: My Job Went to India: 52 Ways to Save Your Job.3 The book was written by Chad Fowler, a well-known Ruby programmer who also dabbles in career advice for software developers.

You have to stop letting me do this,” he bit off, half-angrily. “If you’ll stop leaning on me so that I can get my hands on a blunt object, I’ll be happy to…!” He kissed the words into oblivion. “It isn’t a joke,” he murmured into her mouth. His hips moved in a gentle, sensuous sweep against her hips. He felt her shiver. “That’s…new,” she said with a strained attempt at humor. “It isn’t,” he corrected. “I’ve just never let you feel it before.” He kissed her slowly, savoring the submission of her soft, warm lips. His hands swept under the blouse and up under her breasts in their lacy covering. He was going over the edge. If he did, he was going to take her with him, and it would damage both of them. He had to stop it, now, while he could. “Is this what Colby gets when he comes to see you?” he whispered with deliberate sarcasm. It worked. She stepped on his foot as hard as she could with her bare instep. It surprised him more than it hurt him, but while he recoiled, she pushed him and tore out of his arms. Her eyes were lividly green through her glasses, her hair in disarray. She glared at him like a female panther. “What Colby gets is none of your business! You get out of my apartment!” she raged at him. She was magnificent, he thought, watching her with helpless delight. There wasn’t a man alive who could cow her, or bend her to his will. Even her drunken, brutal stepfather hadn’t been able to force her to do something she didn’t want to do. “Oh, I hate that damned smug grin,” she threw at him, swallowing her fury. “Man, the conqueror!” “That isn’t what I was thinking at all.” He sobered little by little. “My mother was a meek little thing when she was younger,” he recalled. “But she was forever throwing herself in front of me to keep my father from killing me. It was a long time until I grew big enough to protect her.” She stared at him curiously, still shaken. “I don’t understand.” “You have a fierce spirit,” he said quietly. “I admire it, even when it exasperates me. But it wouldn’t be enough to save you from a man bent on hurting you.” He sighed heavily. “You’ve been…my responsibility…for a long time,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No matter how old you grow, I’ll still feel protective about you. It’s the way I’m made.” He meant to comfort, but the words hurt. She smiled anyway. “I can take care of myself.” “Can you?” he said softly. He searched her eyes. “In a weak moment…” “I don’t have too many of those. Mostly, you’re responsible for them,” she said with black humor. “Will you go away? I’m supposed to try to seduce you, not the reverse. You’re breaking the rules.” His eyebrow lifted. Her sense of humor seemed to mend what was wrong between them. “You stopped trying to seduce me.” “You kept turning me down,” she pointed out. “A woman’s ego can only take so much rejection.

The trail was designed to have no end, a wild place on which to be comfortably lost for as long as one desired. In those early days nobody fathomed walking the thing from beginning to end in one go. Section hikes, yes. Day hikes, too. But losing yourself for five months, measuring your body against the earth, fingering the edge of mental and physical endurance, wasn’t the point. The trail was to be considered in sections, like a cow is divided into cuts of beef. Even if you sample every slice, to eat the entire beast in a single sitting was not the point. Before 1948, it wasn’t even considered possible.

Are you superstitious?’ This time I must have said it aloud, because he answers. ‘Black cats and rabbits’ feet?’ ‘That sort of thing,’ I say, and he leans in further to listen. ‘White cows and butterflies, field mice and hares. I saw a hare once in the library at Lyntons.’ Victor tenses, hopeful for a net that he can use to save me. A child’s net on a stick that he can thrust into the rushing water where I spin and turn in the eddies. He would scoop me out if he could. But there’s nothing now that will stop me flowing downstream with the current. Soon I’ll reach the falls and be swept over the brink, and that will be the end of me.

But the Egyptians believed that only prayers to the living-god pharaoh and to his heavenly patron Sobek could save the Nile Valley from devastating floods and droughts. They were right. Pharaoh and Sobek were imaginary entities who did nothing to raise or lower the Nile water level, but when millions of people believed in pharaoh and Sobek and therefore cooperated in building dams and digging canals, floods and droughts became rare. Compared to the Sumerian gods, not to mention the Stone Age spirits, the gods of ancient Egypt were truly powerful entities that founded cities, raised armies and controlled the lives of millions of humans, cows and crocodiles.

It didn't matter whether your farm was large or small. It didn't matter if you had a farm at all. Cause everyone was affected when water didn't run. The snow and frost continued without the warming sun. One day in June it got real hot and leaves began to show. But after that it snowed again and wind and cold did blow. The cows and horses had no grass, no grain to feed the chicks. No hay to put aside that time, just dry and shriveled sticks. The sheep were cold and hungry and many starved to death, Still waiting for the warming sun to save their labored breath. The kids were disappointed, no swimming, such a shame. It was in 1816 that summer never came.

This never would have happened in India. In India they understood that life unfolded the way it unfolded, whether you liked it or not: the cow in the road, the swerve that saves or kills you. One life ended, a new one began, maybe it was better than the last one, maybe it wasn't. The Indians (and the Thais, and the Sri Lankans) accepted this the way they accepted monsoons or the heat, with a resignation that was like simple good sense. Damned Americans. Americans, unschooled in the burning dung heaps and the sudden swerves, Americans couldn't help but cling tightly to the life they were living like clutching a spindly branch that was sure to break … and when things didn't go quite as expected, Americans lost their shit. Himself included.

Most of the liberal defenses of pornography are equally muddled. Writers and university professors feel quite heroic in taking the witness stand to avow that some outrageously immoral book is somehow supremely moral. These men usually display two contradictory motives. First, they oppose the censorship of any book on any grounds as a matter of principle. Anything and everything should be freely published. Some would impose restraints on things that are Nazi, racist, or similarly tabooed, but many are earnest champions of unlimited freedom of publication. Unlimited freedom is for them a supreme good. Second, since unlimited freedom is seen as a supreme good, it follows that the results of such an unlimited freedom must somehow be good. They therefore feel it necessary to defend the moral integrity of such books as are attacked for their use of this license. As a result, these scholars and writers place themselves in a most amusing position: they are ready to defend anything attacked on moral grounds, as though freedom makes all its adherents good. No doubt if some avant-garde writer issued a book empty of everything save a cake of cow dung between its covers, scholars would not be lacking to interpret for a court what a profound and redeeming social commentary was at stake.

You are very quiet,” Archer remarked as they walked together to the refreshment table. They’d just finished a game of whist and when Rose begged off from a second round, Grey’s brother did the same. “My apologies,” she replied. “I do not mean to be rude.” “My brother doesn’t deserve to take up so much room in that lovely head of yours.” She might have been insulted by his disparaging Grey, or his familiarity with her, had she not been so surprised by the remark itself. “You are impertinent, sir.” He grinned-a grin so much more roguish than Grey’s. “One of my more charming traits. I did not mean offense, dear lady. Only that thinking about him will do you no good. The man is bent on punishing himself for the rest of his life.” Rose accepted the plate he offered her. “Thank you. Why would he wish to punish himself?” “Because he’s an ar…idiot. Sandwich?” He held up a cucumber sandwich caught in silver tongs. “Please. I’m not certain I wish to discuss your brother with you, Lord Archer.” “Not even if I can help you win him?” Rose’s heart froze-no, it simply stopped. Her entire body went numb. She would have dropped her plate had Archer not swept it from her hand into his own. “What makes you think I wish to win him?” He flashed her a coy glance. “Please, lady Rose. I’ve not made a career out of studying your sex to fall for your false innocence now.” Oh dear God. Had Grey told him? “I’ve seen the way you look at him, and I’ve had to put with hearing about you for the last four years-no offense.” Rose arched a brow as he piled food upon her plate. “None taken. I wasn’t aware that I looked at your brother in a manner different from how I might look upon anyone else.” “Mm.” He popped a small cake into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “That’s just it. You try too hard to treat him like everyone else. It’s obvious you care for him, and not just as the man who saved your life.” “Saved my life? How very dramatic.” He gave her a very serious look as he handed her the laden plate. “Where do you suppose you’d be right now if Grey hadn’t taken you in? Certainly not here, with such good food and charming company.” Point taken. And now she felt simply awful for the way she had spoken to Grey earlier. She was such a cow. “You shame me, sir.” And worse, he’d made tears come to her eyes. Staring at her food-such a wonderful array he’d picked for her-she blinked them away. He steered her toward a window seat where they sat in plain view of the room, but at least with a modicum of privacy. “My apologies, my lady. I did not mean to offend you with my plain and thoughtless words.” “Plain, perhaps. Thoughtless, I highly doubt it.” She managed a small smile. “I don’t think you do anything without thinking first.” Archer laughed, looking so much like Grey it hurt to look at him. “Were that but true.

We can sacrifice ourselves in order to save lives, to spread messages of freedom, hope, and dignity. That is our Buddha Nature, our Christ Nature – people who have embodied the principles of love and compassion and have taken extraordinary measures to change the world for the better. We call them heroes and heroines - for example, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Malala Yousafzai, along with the nameless aid workers, neonatal surgeons, and ordinary parents who make extraordinary choices in life-threatening circumstances. And we admire them. Those are the people who we want to occupy our Jewel Tree, letting their nectar rain down upon us in a shower of blessing and inspiration. They are the people who have discovered interdependence, wisdom, and compassion, have seen through the illusion of separation and come out the other side with the hero‘s elixir for the welfare of others. If we don‘t believe we can do it, if we don‘t have the confidence, that‘s the last hurdle. We believe there is something special about the hero and something deficient about us, but the only difference is that the Bodhisattva has training, has walked the Lam Rim, has reached the various milestones that each contemplation is designed to evoke, and collectively those experiences have brought confidence. Our natures are the same. It‘s in your DNA to become a hero. As heretical as it may sound to some, there is no inherent specialness to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is not inherently different from you. If you had his modeling, training, support, and devotional refuge, you too could be a paragon of hope and goodwill. Now, hopefully you will recognize cow critical it is for you to embrace your training (the Bodhisattva Path), so that we can shape-shift civilization through the neural circuitry of living beings. (pp. 139 - 140)

He served Adaira the first slice and grinned when she cast a wary look his way. “You made this?” “Aye,” he said, standing close to her, waiting. Adaira took her spoon and poked at the pie. “What’s in it, Jack?” “Oh, what all did we dump in there, Frae? Blackberries, strawberries, pimpleberries—” “Pimpleberries?” Frae gasped in alarm. “What’s a pim—” “Honey and butter and a dash of good luck,” he finished, his gaze remaining on Adaira. “All of your favorite things, as I recall, heiress.” Adaira stared at him, her face composed save for her pursed lips. She was trying not to laugh, he realized. He was suddenly flustered. “Heiress, I did not put pimpleberries in there,” Frae frantically said. “Oh, sweet lass, I know you didn’t,” Adaira said, turning a smile upon the girl. “Your brother is teasing me. You see, when we were your age, there was a great dinner in the hall one night. And Jack brought me a piece of pie, to say sorry for something he had done earlier that day. He looked so contrite that I foolishly believed him and took a bite, only to realize something was very strange about it.” “What was it?” Frae asked, as if she could not imagine Jack doing something so awful. “He called it a ‘pimpleberry’, but it was actually a small skin of ink,” Adaira replied. “And it stained my teeth for a week and made me very ill.” “Is this true, Jack?” Mirin cried, setting her teacup down with a clatter. “‘Tis truth,” he confessed, and before any of the women could say another word, he took the plate and the spoon from Adaira and ate a piece of the pie. It was delicious, but only because he and Frae had found and harvested the berries and rolled out the dough and talked about swords and books and baby cows while they made it. He swallowed the sweetness and said, “I believe this one is exceptional, thanks to Frae.” Mirin bustled into the kitchen to cut a new slice for Adaira and find her a clean utensil, muttering about how the mainland must have robbed Jack of all manners. But Adaira didn’t seem to hear. She took the plate from his hands, as well as the spoon, and ate after him.

Sancho asked the landlord what he had to give them for supper. To this the landlord replied that his mouth should be the measure; he had only to ask what he would; for that inn was provided with the birds of the air and the fowls of the earth and the fish of the sea. "There's no need of all that," said Sancho; "if they'll roast us a couple of chickens we'll be satisfied, for my master is delicate and eats little, and I'm not over and above gluttonous." The landlord replied he had no chickens, for the kites had stolen them. "Well then," said Sancho, "let senor landlord tell them to roast a pullet, so that it is a tender one." "Pullet! My father!" said the landlord; "indeed and in truth it's only yesterday I sent over fifty to the city to sell; but saving pullets ask what you will." "In that case," said Sancho, "you will not be without veal or kid." "Just now," said the landlord, "there's none in the house, for it's all finished; but next week there will be enough and to spare." "Much good that does us," said Sancho; "I'll lay a bet that all these short-comings are going to wind up in plenty of bacon and eggs." "By God," said the landlord, "my guest's wits must be precious dull; I tell him I have neither pullets nor hens, and he wants me to have eggs! Talk of other dainties, if you please, and don't ask for hens again." "Body o' me!" said Sancho, "let's settle the matter; say at once what you have got, and let us have no more words about it." "In truth and earnest, senor guest," said the landlord, "all I have is a couple of cow-heels like calves' feet, or a couple of calves' feet like cowheels; they are boiled with chick-peas, onions, and bacon, and at this moment they are crying 'Come eat me, come eat me." "I mark them for mine on the spot," said Sancho; "let nobody touch them; I'll pay better for them than anyone else, for I could not wish for anything more to my taste; and I don't care a pin whether they are feet or heels." "Nobody shall touch them," said the landlord; "for the other guests I have, being persons of high quality, bring their own cook and caterer and larder with them.

She started to head out, but she passed her room. It was the same as she'd left it: a pile of cushions by her bed for Little Brother to sleep on, a stack of poetry and famous literature on her desk that she was supposed to study to become a "model bride," and the lavender shawl and silk robes she'd worn the day before she left home. The jade comb Mulan had left in exchange for the conscription notice caught her eye; it now rested in front of her mirror. Mulan's gaze lingered on the comb, on its green teeth and the pearl-colored flower nestled on its shoulder. She wanted to hold it, to put it in her hair and show her family- to show everyone- she was worthy. After all, her surname, Fa, meant flower. She needed to show them that she had bloomed to be worthy of her family name. But no one was here, and she didn't want to face her reflection. Who knew what it would show, especially in Diyu? She isn't a boy, her mother had told her father once. She shouldn't be riding horses and letting her hair loose. The neighbors will talk. She won't find a good husband- Let her, Fa Zhou had consoled his wife. When she leaves this household as a bride, she'll no longer be able to do these things. Mulan hadn't understood what he meant then. She hadn't understood the significance of what it meant for her to be the only girl in the village who skipped learning ribbon dances to ride Khan through the village rice fields, who chased after chickens and helped herd the cows instead of learning the zither or practicing her painting, who was allowed to have opinions- at all. She'd taken the freedom of her childhood for granted. When she turned fourteen, everything changed. I know this will be a hard change to make, Fa Li had told her, but it's for your own good. Men want a girl who is quiet and demure, polite and poised- not someone who speaks out of turn and runs wild about the garden. A girl who can't make a good match won't bring honor to the family. And worse yet, she'll have nothing: not respect, or money of her own, or a home. She'd touched Mulan's cheek with a resigned sigh. I don't want that fate for you, Mulan. Every morning for a year, her mother tied a rod of bamboo to Mulan's spine to remind her to stand straight, stuffed her mouth with persimmon seeds to remind her to speak softly, and helped Mulan practice wearing heeled shoes by tying ribbons to her feet and guiding her along the garden. Oh, how she'd wanted to please her mother, and especially her father. She hadn't wanted to let them down. But maybe she hadn't tried enough. For despite Fa Li's careful preparation, she had failed the Matchmaker's exam. The look of hopefulness on her father's face that day- the thought that she'd disappointed him still haunted her. Then fate had taken its turn, and Mulan had thrown everything away to become a soldier. To learn how to punch and kick and hold a sword and shield, to shoot arrows and run and yell. To save her country, and bring honor home to her family. How much she had wanted them to be proud of her.

Here the goals of improving land and making a profit would not be mutually exclusive: Holistic Planned Grazing requires a lot of animals, and in turn bolsters the carrying capacity of the land, sometimes two to four times. The more animal impact, the better the land—higher soil carbon levels, greater biodiversity, better water infiltration—and the more animals it can feed. This means greater income and a boost to local economies. It’s “impact” investing on many levels.

Allan Savory’s belief that drought and floods are man-made and therefore not inevitable opens the way for a different response. With this principle in mind, Grasslands, LLC, seeks to apply Holistic Management to thousands of acres of land, creating islands of ecological resilience with regard to the water cycle. So that perhaps when, say, an inordinately heavy rain comes in the spring, the pasture can absorb the water and there’s little runoff.

using Holistic Management (with cattle, sheep, goats, horses) or other restorative models (agroforestry, pasture cropping, natural sequence farming), and those islands of resilience expand and connect and, in time, are no longer islands but rather large intact areas of revived ecology. Floods happen less frequently and droughts aren’t as severe.

bushels. I get fed up when I hear, ‘We’ve got to increase production to feed the world.’ What’s the good of increasing production if it’s not healthy? Let’s look at wealth in the context of the human health crisis. If it’s a healthier product we’re growing, we’re lowering costs.

offers numerous cautionary tales of kingdoms, cultures, and empires that squandered their soil and found themselves with nothing left to live on. From the earliest farmers in the Fertile Crescent to the Mayans, Romans, and Easter Islanders,

In Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, geomorphologist David Montgomery offers numerous cautionary tales of kingdoms, cultures, and empires that squandered their soil and found themselves with nothing left to live on.

the problem isn’t the amount of carbon per se—the quantity of carbon on earth is constant—but where that carbon is.

By planting annuals and plowing and clearing so that the soil is open to the elements for much of the year, we’re managing for oxidation instead of photosynthesis, regardless of whether we realize it or not.

more leaves mean more photosynthesis. Robust leaves also mean more roots, which means more carbon streaming into the soil. Which means, at once, greater fertility and more carbon sequestered.

Bare ground sets in motion a different set of circumstances: moisture loss, less food for microbes, and therefore less microbial activity, which results in fewer nutrients for crops, leading to less-than-vigorous leaves, less photosynthetic activity, and less carbon flowing through the roots and being cached in the soil.

the planet’s current vegetative cover captures around 3000 EJ of the sun’s energy. This photosynthetic capacity would appear to be sufficient to feed only 3.3 billion people. The other 3.7 billion people, then, are being supported by photosynthetic energy captured in past eras, embodied in fossil fuel.

Drylands account for 41.3 percent of the world’s land-mass, including 44 percent of land under cultivation. Each year upward of twelve million hectares (thirty million acres) of productive land are lost to desertification; this means an area the size of South Africa is slipping away each decade.

the continent with the highest proportion of its dryland areas classified as severe or moderately desertified is North America, at 74 percent.

understand that the greatest danger to wildlife was not poaching but habitat destruction—the same thing that ultimately threatened humans.

Healthy soil is contingent on the actions of the animals that live on the land; livestock could be made to act upon the soil as wild herds had done; and animal disturbance could benefit as well as harm a landscape.

grasslands, grazing mammals, and pack-hunting predators evolved together. So if domestic herbivores can be managed such that their behavior mimics that of their wild counterparts, the grasslands—the African savanna or the U.S. prairies and plains, terrain that represents about 45 percent of all land world-wide—will regain the state of wild land: healthy, diverse, and resilient.

Every field that’s turned into a parking lot or industrial park means more water siphoned off into gutters and culverts and less water in the ground. Land that’s dried out and lost its soil carbon to oxidation means that rain, unable to soak in, cascades across the surface and into the waste stream. Eventually all that water flows off to the sea. One consequence is that we’re wasting perfectly good water at a time when many places are experiencing water shortages.

By itself, stopping emissions is insufficient. That carbon has to go someplace. As the Soil Carbon Coalition argues, it might as well go into the soil, where it can do some good.

from the soil’s or soil dweller’s perspective, chemical additives are not such a great thing. With zai, the organic matter in the hollows attracts termites. The termites, in turn, burrow around and create tunnels, allowing water to penetrate the ground rather than evaporate. Though usually regarded as pests, termites in marginal lands play much the same role that earth-worms do in greener climes. In Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations

A 2002 study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that nearly half of all Americans have a chronic health condition. The Centers for Disease Control tells us that two-thirds of adults in this country are overweight or obese, and that obesity rates in children continue to rise. A significant number of infants, some as young as six months old, are now classified as overweight.

According to Christine Jones, soils hold more carbon than the atmosphere and all the world’s plant life combined—and can hold it longer, in a more stable form

It turns out that accelerated topsoil formation is doable, with the tools required as modest as livestock, hole digging, organic amendments, and simple cultivation techniques; no costly, high-tech, geo-engineered you-need-a-PhD-to-understand-it schemes.

Savory is concerned that since tree planting sounds like a good, noncontroversial idea, governments and NGOs might rally around that when the money could be better used to focus on the far more vast areas of grasslands with rainfall too low to provide full soil cover with trees.

Everybody talks about the need to plant trees, but trees can’t take in all that carbon, nor do they have the ‘pulsing’ root systems associated with grazing that effectively move carbon to soil life for centuries.

Across the board, levels of key mineral nutrients—zinc, calcium, manganese, iron, copper—in our food crops have declined by an average of 50 to more than 100 percent over the last century.

we probably know of less than 1 percent of soil biology. “A recent study found that there are more than 1.6 million species of soil biota and another study found over a million bacteria species which is at least two orders of magnitude greater than previous estimates,” she writes.

findings suggest that the use of glyphosate—currently applied to hundreds of millions of acres of the world’s crop-growing land—has multiple harmful effects related to plant nutrient uptake and soil microbial life.

Allan Savory has said that floods and droughts are man-made. At first glance this seems a bold, even brazen statement. But here’s what he means: When it comes to the water cycle functioning in a landscape, the condition of that land is as important as what descends—or not— from the sky.

This leads to drought and runoff, which then causes erosion and floods. However, this situation can be reversed by managing land in such a way that the soil’s ability to retain water is restored.

I’d read and heard so much about the model; it was my reporting on Holistic Management that drew my attention to soil as a hub for the ecological cycles whose disruption is leading to environmental crises—and whose restoration can bring aspects of our planet back into balance.

In 2010 Grasslands, LLC, was launched as a “triple bottom line” enterprise with the conjoint goals of creating a high-quality product (well-nourished beef cattle), generating equity and financial return to investors, revitalizing rural economies, sequestering carbon, and regenerating land on a large scale.

The stark fact that appears now, and which wrote itself across the Roman Empire, is that debt and taxation increase as the soil declines. —G. T. Wrench, from Reconstruction by Way of the Soil, 1936

Favoritism is but made by God; in all creatures, He built it in their blood, like a cow suckling only her own calves, the crowd cheering the team of their own club. Hence, if you'll be faced with a dilemma: "Save your child or the child of some fella," don't you defy what God dictates is right, lest you be haunted in your deepest night!

They had lived to see their simple patriotism derided, their morality despised, their savings devalued. They caused no trouble. Millions of pounds of public money wasn’t regularly siphoned into their neighbourhoods in the hope of bribing, cajoling or coercing them into civic virtue. If they protested that their cities had become alien, their children taught in overcrowded schools where 90 per cent of the children spoke no English, they were lectured about the cardinal sin of racism by those more expensively and comfortably circumstanced. Unprotected by accountants, they were the milch-cows of the rapacious Revenue. No lucrative industry of social concern and psychological analysis had grown up to analyse and condone their inadequacies on the grounds of deprivation or poverty.

Virtually all the insulin now taken by diabetics is produced by genetically altered bacteria in a lab.6 Before that it had to be extracted from the pancreases of cows and pigs—a process that was both expensive and lacking in quality control. As

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

In the Hebrew Bible a story is told of Joseph (of Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat fame), who saved Egypt from a savage, seven-year famine. The Pharaoh had a dream he could not interpret and asked his wisest advisers to explain it correctly to him. They couldn’t interpret it either, but someone remembered that Joseph, who was in prison at the time, had a reputation for explaining the meaning of dreams, and thus he was called for. In the dream Pharaoh was standing by a river when he saw seven “fat-fleshed” kine (or cows) come out of the water and feed in a meadow. Then seven others came out that were “lean-fleshed.” The second set of cows ate the first set. Joseph explained that the dream meant there would be seven years of plenty in Egypt and then seven years of famine. Therefore, Joseph suggested that the Pharaoh appoint someone “discreet and wise” to take a fifth of the harvest every year for seven years and store it as a buffer for the years of famine. The plan was approved and Joseph was given the position of vizier, or second in command, over Egypt. He executed the plan perfectly so that when the seven years of famine arrived everyone in Egypt and the surrounding areas, including Joseph’s extended family, was saved. In this simple story is one the most powerful practices Essentialists employ to ensure effortless execution.

Because when we have a system in which wealth depends on processes that destroy natural capital, we're only kidding ourselves.

Her voice came out cold. “Bring the cows.” A shocked silence fell. The Iron Dogs looked around, bewildered. “You can’t,” Savannah recoiled. “For him? You would manifest for him?” “Hugh was abandoned by everyone in his life.” Her words rang out. “His parents, his teacher, his surrogate father. They all threw him away. He trusted us. He sacrificed himself to save us. This is his home. I’m his wife. I will not abandon him. Bring the cows.

Let’s take a look at the five major asset classes: Alternative assets, which are usually physical assets like fine watches, real estate, collectible cars, art, and jewelry Stocks, which represent ownership of a piece of a publicly traded company Fixed-income investments such as government bonds and deposit certificates Cash, such as dollar bills, and cash equivalents such as savings accounts, retirement accounts, and 401(k)s Futures and other derivatives, which are contracts between two parties agreeing to buy and sell assets, usually commodities like gold, corn, wheat, or cows, at a future date

Ukraine, March 1929 Roman founded an organization called OWK. He and Ostap made leaflets with their own hands, with the help of thick pencils, and distributed them all over the city, nailing them to doors and walls. When one of Afros' OGPO men stopped him on the street and asked about his actions, Roman replied, "I serve the revolution, comrade. And what are you doing?" The brothers were brought before Afros and Zhuk in the house they had confiscated in the village square. Zhuk asked if Roman wanted to be taken to Murmansk. Roman said no. He explained that apparently there were no kulaks left in Ispes after the concentrated purge six weeks ago. Therefore, Roman And Ostap decided to form an organization that anyone can join, and they are holding the first assembly next week. The organization is called OWK, the acronym for 'Organization without Kulaks'. "I even used the abominable Russian word, out of national solidarity with you and your friends, Comrade Zhuk," Roman said. "It is an organization of non-wealthy farmers, a definition that applies to the entire population that remained in Ispas. It is difficult to continue to maintain in Ukraine the class war between the successful farmer and the less successful farmer, in part because the classification changes from harvest to harvest. Kulak Mouser is the bane of the current harvest. And because the harvest was so bad and despite your laudable efforts, of course, there don't seem to be any kulaks left in our village. So we don't know exactly how to conduct the class war about which you spoke so eloquently a few weeks ago." Her novel to Jouk has a friendly smile. "We are deeply committed to purging the last of the anti-communist elements. And therefore - OW-K. "If you're serious, you'll participate in collectivization," said Jock. "I understand your point about the inefficiency of the small-scale farm, comrade," Roman said. "I am attentive to her. But listen to me until the end. The land of the Lazar family is far from the other farms, and it is impossible to connect it to them easily and create the collectivization, savings and cooperation that you strive for. So this is my proposal: my family and I will agree to meet your quota without collectivization. Let's show you how we work - with your help, maybe lend us a steel plow that expresses our new understanding and partnership? I'm sure it will work much better than our old wooden plows, and we'll do the rest. We will plow our land now, we will plant your wheat in August. We will work tirelessly for the cause and bring you the grain you demand. We will not give and we will not bargain.” "And in return?" "Nothing," Roman said. "In return we will continue to fatten horses and cows in peace." "You intend to pay other people to work in your wheat fields, Comrade Lazar?" asked Zhuk in a smooth voice. "Of course not," said Roman. "I know that even if I only have three horses, and I only pay two people to work for me, it means that I am a fat and lazy kulak, lower than a human pig. Then, as a founding member of OWK, I will have to destroy myself. So the answer is no. I will not pay anyone to work for me. Every person who passes through the fields will work for free, and that is the duty of all Ukrainians, right? As you told us we have to do to be counted for true patriots.

I read it more carefully than anyone had ever read it. . . . Kahn’s book to me is like the Vedas,” he explains, citing the centuries-old Indian text. “There’s an expression I learned: ‘If a man loses his cow, he looks for it in the Vedas.

Soil may be considered as the conversion of rock by two processes. One is a process of aging, the other is a process of living. —P. A. Yeomans3

The diversity aboveground is a reflection of diversity in the soil.

our interviews suggest that many rural men migrate to the city precisely to prepare for marriage. Married men who do not already work in the city rarely migrate there (it is different for those who live in towns surrounding cities).     After the death of my parents and oldest brother, I took care of the siblings. In 1997, I came to Bujumbura to do different jobs and then I managed to buy my own bike and I started doing taxi-vélo. I have done this job since 2002 and it allows me to have everything I need. I managed to build a house and I married because of my work. I also managed to buy three goats and five parcels of land to cultivate. I think that with God’s help I will manage the development I wished for when I came to the city. (Twenty-six-year-old migrant, Musaga)     I am saving some money to buy a couple of cows. After that, I will seek a wife. I am busy building a house with a tile roof in my colline to prepare my marriage. (Twenty-year-old male migrant, Musaga)

When their father, the High King, learnt how that Eochaid had brought about his daughters’ dishonour and death, he rallied auxiliaries to his aid, and marched into Leinster, ravaging it as he went. The province and its king were saved only by Eochald’s humiliated submission, and his binding the province to pay to the High King at Tara, every alternate year for an Indefinite period, the tremendous tribute which came to be known as the Boru or cow-tribute — five thousand cows, five thousand hogs, five thousand cloaks, five thousand vessels of brass and bronze, and five thousand ounces of silver. This crushing tribute was henceforth laid upon Leinster, by the High King of Tara from the time of Tuathal forward till the reign of Fionnachta, a period of five hundred years — but in most cases having to be lifted with steel hands. It caused more bloody history than did almost any other festering sore with which Ireland was ever afflicted. During these five centuries hardly a High King sat upon the throne of Tara, who did not have to carry the bloody sword into Leinster again and again, forcibly to hack his pound of flesh from off that province’s palpitating body. And only sometimes was the fight fought between Meath and Leinster alone. Often, through alliances, mutual sympathies, antagonisms, hopes, or dangers, half of Ireland, and sometimes all of Ireland was embroiled. So, together with much that was good Tuathal left to his country a bloody legacy.[15]

are doing is “managing for” photosynthesis over oxidation in several ways: encouraging diversity, avoiding tillage, using cover crops, and generally improving the soil.

Kurt Vonnegut’s iconic comment: “We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.

PARADOX Paradoxes: best wakefulness in sleep, wealth in having nothing, a pearl necklace fastened around an iron collar. Fire contained in boiling water. Revenues growing from funds flowing out. Giving is gainful employment. It brings in money. Taking time for ritual prayer and meditation saves time. Sweet fruit hide in leaves. Dung becomes food for the ground and generative power in trees. Nonexistence contains existence. Love encloses beauty. Brown flint and gray steel have orange candlelight in them. Inside fear, safety. In the black pupil of the eye, many brilliancies. Inside the body-cow, a handsome prince.

The concept of the biotic pump, if correct, brings a new urgency to the need to conserve forests.

It’s become a truism that future wars will be fought not over oil, but over water. According to the journal Nature, four-fifths of the world’s population lives in areas where water security is threatened.

Nature is complex, functioning at a level beyond our perception. If basic degenerative diseases go down, the demands for pharmaceuticals are lower. If children have better nutrition, they have a greater capacity to learn. If people have greater intelligence, the better our political debates will be. If we’re not using nitrogen-heavy fertilizers, we won’t have dead zones in the oceans. We can solve a lot of systemic problems through agriculture.

the work of Sir Albert Howard (1873–1947) as well—an English botanist and organic pioneer who said that “the health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible.” He observed that “any weakness or defect in the health of any earlier link in the chain is carried on to the next and succeeding links, until it reaches the last, namely, man.

from a soil microorganism point of view, a crop monoculture is akin to junk food: “If there’s just wheat or any one thing, it’s like us eating doughnuts all day.