TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:Einstein quote:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.  Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Source: Mathematical Circles

NEW DASS IMAGERY focused on sending light and love, PRECEDED BY RELAXATION AND MINDFULNESS GUIDED IMAGERY

4-12 Fowler 2; must bring book or -10: Best and Worst FIRST half of alphabet;quiz, discussion of blogs.

MEANING OF TITLE

We Were All Completely Beside Ourselves

OED: 5 a. Out of a mental state or condition, as beside one's patience, beside one's gravity,beside one's wits; now only in beside oneself: out of one's wits, out of one's senses; cf. French hors de soi, German ausser sich. 1490   Caxton tr. Eneydos xxvii. 98   Mad and beside herself. 1611   Bible (A.V.) Acts xxvi. 24   Festus saide with a lowd voyce, Paul, thou art beside [Tindale besides] thy selfe, much learning doeth make thee mad. 1827   T. Hood Hero & Leander cvii, in Plea Midsummer Fairies & Other Poems 104   Like an enchanted maid beside her wits. 1884   Queen Victoria More Leaves 399,   I felt quite beside myself for joy and gratitude.

RED FOX

"I wrap my arms around his legs, jump up and down on the toes of his boots. Fern hurls herself at Caroline, knocking her into the snow. When Fern stands up, she is powdered head to toe like a doughnut. Both of us are demanding in our own ways to be picked up and swung. We are so excited that, in the strangely illuminating phrase my mother favors, we're completely beside ourselves," (98).

This segment particularly illustrated for me just how similar an animal child and human child are, and the capacity of learned intelligence that both possess. Fern mirrors Rosemary's behavior in this scene, both of them "demanding in [their] own ways" for the same action. However, it is mentioned numerous times that Rosemary liked to follow Fern's lead as a child. Rosemary genuinely saw Fern as her equal in every way, going as far as to call her her twin and mirror image. She highlights the likeness between them in the last sentence in the above quotation, referencing, in their excitement, the phrase "we're completely beside ourselves." Besides using that saying in its traditional meaning, the chosen words are symbolic of the resemblance between the two children, the sameness of their emotions and the parallels of their actions. Rosemary and Fern are so alike, so comparable, so united, that they are literally "completely besides ourselves." Rosemary is saying that she and Fern are beside each other, but they are so close to being one and the same that essentially, in that moment, standing beside each other is equivalent to standing beside their own selves. 

SNAKE: "They'd gotten to be themselves first, so they had a self to go back to. For me, Fern was the beginning." (107)... For Rosemary's parents, their sense of self had already been established before Fern was introduced into their lives. Thus, the process of losing Fern was not so difficult for Rosemary's parents. I think that this caused a lot of psychological stress on Rosemary apart from growing up so differently from everyone else.

CONNECTION TO SCHWEITZER STATEMENT: ELF OWL:

If some humans can equate them as part of their family members, then we can eventually widen this circle to encompass other living creatures that are struggling to thrive on this planet.

CONNECTION TO DASS GUIDED IMAGERY:

SNAKE:  "About Washoe, Roger Fouts has said, she taught him that in the phrase human being, the word being is much more important." (157) .... It is one thing to identify yourself as a human being, but it is another thing to identify yourself as something bigger and more profound, which is a being. It is because everything alive on this planet is a being or can be considered a being......... at the end of the day, we are all beings miraculously inhabiting and sharing this planet. 

PANTHER: OUR SOCIAL NATURE: " Christopher McCandless, famous from the John Krakauer's novel Into the Wild once wrote, "Happiness- only real when shared." That's the thing about life, even the most marvelous adventures eventually fade from our memories. Whether it's between a child and her older brother, her imaginary friend, or even her chimpanzee sister, the best stories are solidified through friendship, love, and compassion."

DEER: All mammals (and potentially other animals as well) require deep, meaningful social connections not only to be happy but to survive at all. As humans are mammals, our brain structures closely parallel all other mammals on an evolutionary and biological level. This makes us able to have strong inter-species relationships that can be of huge benefit to all creatures involved.

LOSS OF A FAMILY MEMBER, LOSS OF A CHILD

ELF OWL: "Fern was gone. Her disappearance represented many things - confusions, insecurities, betrayals, a Gordian knot of interpersonal complications. But it also was a thing itself. Fern had loved us. She'd filled the house with color and noise, warmth and energy. She deserved to be missed and we missed her terribly." (111)

ELF OWL: ACTIVIST'S CARPE DIEM"

Fowler seems to be saying that we should take action for the things we are truly passionate about, because if we don't we will be confronted with a life we really don't want to be living, unfulfilled and dull. .......

The only decision .... is the option of standing up for something and taking action or choosing to reside with the masses, letting animals be cruelly stripped from their freedom as we chomp on their brothers and sisters. 

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

RED PANDA: "For years, I imagined Fern's life as a Tarzan reversal. Raised among humans and returned now to her own kind, I liked to think of her bringing sign language to the other apes. I liked to think she was maybe solving crimes or something. I liked to think we'd given her superpowers" (161).

"Fern is not on a fucking farm," the note said" (180).

Rosemary's well-intentioned yet delusional perception of Fern's experience reflects the unrealistically optimistic perception the public tends to have towards animal testing and animal experimentation. Some who are not opposed to animal experimentation but are discomforted by animal suffering tell themselves that we humans are doing a service to them. Or, many do not realize the horrific extent of suffering endured by test animals, or believe that no pain is being inflicted at all. This mindset is similar to that implemented by parents who tell their children that the family pet has gone off to a happier life in a farm, when in reality the animal died. Rosemary's dad attempts to extend this delusion to the family, feeding them false hope about Fern's situation. It takes people like Lowell to open the public's eyes to the harsh, undesirable, and uncomfortable truth. Even I, one who is opposed to animal testing, was not aware of the degree of torment these innocent animals endure in the testing facilities. 

Much of Earthlings was very difficult for me to watch. But, surprisingly, it was not the slaughtering of animals that discomforted me the most - it was the experimentations conducted on sentient, conscious animals. As opposed to slaughtered animals, test subjects do not experience an end to their suffering. The pain they go through does not end in numbness, but cycles through numerous trials. They are typically awake during each experiment, their nerves aware of every touch. As I write this, the video footage of primates having their heads yanked back at unthinkable speeds plays in my mind. ...I feel sick to say the least, especially with the context of this novel. These creatures are just as sophisticated, compassionate, and sentient as Rosemary's Fern. Except, their anguish is not fiction.

Rosemary innocently imagined Fern thriving in her out-of-home environment, equipped with the abilities to function outside the Cooke's shelter. However, history has proven quite the opposite. An unfortunate proportion of human-raised chimps perished once released in the wild, due to the lack of skills necessary to survive and socialize in their natural environment. Interestingly, Rosemary's struggle to find footing in the human world after Fern's departure mimics the struggle experienced by foster-chimps released in the wild.

ALF ETC. BEAGLES:  RED PANDA:  "They campaigned for a year to close the breeder, which housed about eight hundred dogs - beagles sought for invasive experiments because of their small size, docile temperaments, and loving nature. The dogs would be sold to laboratories like Huntingdon. The organizers expected a few dozen activists, maybe a hundred. More than five hundred showed up" (20)  cf. old brown dog........

SEA TURTLE'S VIDEO The link above takes you to a youtube videos of beagle dogs getting to experience sunlight and grass for the first time in their lives and it is heart breaking! I wish that every animal in a testing situation gets to experience this, even if its the last experience they get to have.

 https://youtu.be/6qt42JMxBMw

SEA TURTLE: "Most of the rats that Lowell had released were recaptured, but not all. Despite our father's dire predictions, some survived that winter and the next one, too. They went on to live full lives--sex, travel, and adventure." (122)

 https://youtu.be/ExEjXLMd4VA

Laboratory chimps caged for 30 years are finally released to a sanctuary

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PREVIOUS QUIZ

8. "When the Kelloggs first raised a child alongside a chimpanzee, back in the 1930's......"  99