Letters, Ninja Turtles and The Black Antifascist Tradition
I’m probably going to send out a letter this week making the animal-welfare case for increased public funding for cultivated-meat research. If you would like to submit your own writing, take a look my newspaper email lists: https://slaughterfreeamerica.substack.com/p/how-to-write-letters-to-newspapers-6eb
Anyway, let’s do (Cell) Culture Talk. Here’s what I’ve been reading lately.
Book — The Last Ronin by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. It’s a good, but particularly grim iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, led by the comic’s original creators. Michelangelo is the final surviving member of the titular foursome. He sets out to avenge his slain relatives in a future, dystopian New York City.
Book — Prayers for Animals by Carol J. Adams. I should read more prayer books. I find them to be really soothing. That said, I need to get better at reading them slowly. My habit is to read books as fast as I can, but that’s very much not the point of texts like these. I might add a prayer or two from this collection to my mediation routine.
Book — The Black Antifascist Tradition by Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen. The insightful text traces some of the ways in which fascism has been understood more expansively by black leftists to include not just European-style authoritarianism, but also American Jim Crow, mass incarceration and other forms of racist oppression.
Book — Christ Among the Cattle by Frederic Rowland Marvin. It’s a 1906 sermon which I gather was influential in humane circles. The brief text makes a religious case for animal welfare, using the strict definition of the term. The minister argues Jesus of Nazareth’s supposed birth in a manger signals divine solidarity with nonhumans.
Meditation passage — Let Nothing Upset You by Saint Teresa of Avila. With the current political situation, I’ve been ricocheting between feelings of anxiety, sadness and anger. I’m no use to anybody if I burn out, so I want to get back on track with my spiritual practice, which I’ve neglected a bit. I’m reincorporating this old favorite.