From age-old scourges like smallpox and tuberculosis to emerging threats like AIDS and SARS, our interactions with animals have played a pivotal role as the source of human disease.

Before there was swine flu (H1N1), there was bird flu (H5N1). In spite of the visibility of H1N1, leading public health authorities still predict as inevitable a pandemic of influenza, triggered by bird flu and expected to lead to millions of deaths around the globe. The influenza virus has existed for millions of years as an innocuous intestinal virus of wild ducks. What turned a harmless waterborne duck virus into a killer? In Bird Flu, Dr. Michael Greger traces the human role in the evolution of this virus, whose humble beginnings belie its transformation into a killer mutant strain with the potential to become as ferocious as Ebola and as contagious as the common cold. In the face of the coming pandemic, Dr. Greger reveals what we can do to protect our families and what human society to can do to reduce the likelihood of such catastrophes in the future.

Amid the growing panic surrounding this issue, Dr. Greger takes a sobering look at a deadly cycle and offers a solution to ending it.

You may have read about my efforts at running the New York City marathon (here, here, and here), and how humbling it was to be overtaken by people considerably older than yours truly. Well, I just found out that Ginette Bedard, aged 76, completed the 2009 New York City marathon in 4:09:57, which is just over 9:33 minutes a mile. Not surprisingly, she placed first in her age group for her sex.

All this would be remarkable enough, but there's more. Running nerds have developed a program that analyzes your age, sex, and performance against all other runners' age, sex, and performance, so you can gauge just how "good" you are against other runners in other age groups. If you are in the 50 to 60 percent range, you're pretty average. In the 60 to 70 percent range, you're locally competitive (this is where I am at the moment). If you're in the 70 to 80 percent range, you're regionally competitive; the 80 to 90 percent range makes you nationally competitive; and above 90 means that you're internationally competitive.

Ginette Bedard's age-graded performance placed her at 101 percent, which means that—given her time and age—she effectively broke a world record, and did so with time to spare. That's just a remarkable testament to senior fitness.

After a twenty-year period as abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, Thomas Keating moved to St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, called by the late Fr. Theophane Boyd, the "Magic Monastery" because of the beauty of its surroundings, the peace inside its walls, and the extraordinary transformations that take place there.

Sundays at the Magic Monastery collects the inspiring and witty homilies of four members of St. Benedict's: Fr. Thomas, Abbot Joseph Boyle, the late Fr. Theophane Boyd, and Fr. William Meninger. Together, they explore the scriptures through the important feast days of the Christian calendar and provide great insight into the contemplative life.

During his time at Snowmass, Fr. Thomas was deeply involved in interreligious dialogue (see www.monasticdialog.com). Over a twenty-year period, a series of interreligious dialogues took place at Snowmass, the proceedings of which were kept private so that the participants could explore freely the wealth of their own traditions and dialogue from the heart about the differences and similarities between their paths of wisdom. These dialogues have now been captured in The Common Heart. Participants include Fr. Thomas, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Swami Atmarupananda, Dr. Ibrahim Gamard, Imam Bilal Hyde, Pema Chödrön, Rabbi Henoch Dov Hoffman, and others.

Declaring e-books to be the future of publishing may be a bit premature.

What are the energy requirements of a paper book? They probably aren't that much. Medieval monks and Gutenberg churned them out, at a much slower rate, long before the industrial revolution.

The energy requirements of an e-book are likely analogous to the energy requirements of computer equipment. Computers are extremely energy-intensive. The electricity to run the computer is fairly minor; about 81% of all the energy used by computers is expended in the process of manufacturing the computer. The typical household computer actually consumes 1.3 times more energy than a refrigerator.

We've just tallied up our 2009 sales for Lantern's books converted to Amazon's Kindle reader. We're pleased to report that our sales have increased each month, with December 09's sales being a thousand percent (yes, ten times) those of January 09.

Partly, this is down to the fact that last year Amazon converted many more of our books to the Kindle format, so customers had more choice. But it's also partly a sign of the shift that's taking place as more and more readers get their books electronically. Lantern is having (almost) all its books converted not only to Amazon's Kindle, but to Barnes & Noble's Nook, and the other e-readers. We're keeping an eye on the new iPad from Apple, to see what it's going to offer.

Interestingly, Lantern's top four Kindle e-sellers were all titles by, or featuring, Fr. Thomas Keating, our octogenarian Trappist monk: Divine Therapy and Addiction, Spirituality, Contemplation, and Transformation, Manifesting God, Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit. Given that the monks were instrumental in keeping the wisdom of the ancients alive during the Dark Ages, and devoted themselves to producing exquisite illuminated manuscripts, it's only fitting that it should be a monastic who carries Lantern into the electronic world.

Nan Merrill, who passed away peacefully last night after a long illness, was a true friend of silence. Quiet, unassuming, and thoughtful, she was generous with others and focused and present. I knew her when I was the promotion manager at Continuum, and we published her Psalms for Praying, a re-imagination of the psalms to emphasize their irenic, compassionate features. When one of her editors, Evander Lomke, moved to the Lantern offices, it felt that it would only be a matter of time before she would be published by us. And so it was.

Sadly, Walking with Wisdom was published only a few months before her passing. Nonetheless, it contains the essence of Nan: generosity, thoughtfulness, and a dedication to saying only the necessary and considered rather than the glib and specious. We're glad she lived to see its publication. Her organization Friends of Silence will, we believe, continue to send out its reflections on the contemplative life, and carry on Nan's wonderful work.

What can we say about the Holocaust, and can we in any way talk of it in the same breath as the routine slaughter of billions of animals on today's factory farms?

In a thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution to the study of animals and the Holocaust, The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale, Karen Davis makes the case that significant parallels can, and must, be drawn between the Holocaust and the institutionalized abuse of billions of animals in factory farms. Carefully setting forth the conditions that must be met when one instance of oppression is used metaphorically to illuminate another, Davis demonstrates the value of such comparisons in exploring the invisibility of the oppressed, historical and hidden suffering, the idea that some groups were "made" to serve others through suffering and sacrificial death, and other concepts that reveal powerful connections between animal and human experience, as well as human traditions and tendencies of which we all should be aware.

In Eternal Treblinka, scholar Charles Patterson shows the links between the Chicago meat-packing industry, the assembly lines of Henry Ford, and Hitler's embrace of mechanized slaughter and eugenics perfected on animals: a deadly combination that led to the killing of over six million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and communists. Thoughtfully showing the ideology of purity and dehumanization that led to the Holocaust, Patterson reveals how the fascist mentality exists even today in the destruction of life unworthy of life in the factory farms of today.

I've now read in manuscript our forthcoming book Sistah Vegan four times, and each time the book grows on me. What I find particularly gratifying is that, unlike many anthologies, the twenty-five or so voices contained between the pages are not only very diverse in terms of the educational, social, and economic backgrounds, but they have markedly different—and sometimes completely antithetical—perspectives. In other words, the book is like a large and rambunctious conversation between friends who have no trouble calling each other out, but remain respectful and supporting. I also love the honesty of the contributions. Sometimes it's painful, and sometimes you want to say "too much information!" But it's always truthful and direct and passionately argued, and enlightening. pattrice jones' beautifully composed afterword is a pleasure to read, and she ties the themes of the book together wonderfully.

Anyway, it's rare that I feel so compelled by a forthcoming book that I take to the blogs to wax lyrical about it, but I wanted to let Lantern readers know just how special this volume is.

Confusing laws and confusing situations do not encourage more bicycle riders. In Denver it is technically illegal to ride your bicycle on the sidewalk. You are supposed to ride your bicycle on a bike path or on the streets. Laws in different municipalities are quite different —Portland has a completely different situation. 

In general, staying off sidewalks is a very good idea. Pedestrians need to have some protection, and because of driveways, riding a bicycle on a sidewalk is often much more dangerous than riding in the street.  Some urge the idea of riding a bicycle on a sidewalk as quite logical, but there are actually some bicyclists who point out safety issues for cyclists in riding on sidewalks.  I avoid sidewalks about 99% of the time.

Hard to believe that I was standing along with two million other people in the freezing cold a year ago, celebrating the inauguration of the forty-fourth president of these United States of America. The health care bill he promised to pass languishes, and may now die, and the Supreme Court has now decided to allow corporations to flood the airwaves with advertising. For those who missed the video the first time around, here it is again. If only it didn't stimulate such nostalgia. . . .

A Practical Peacemaker Ponders . . .

I've been noticing the increase in noise level in our public space for some time--have you? I've mostly been grousing about it privately, but now we need to speak up, because it is leading to a greater incidence of hearing loss, particularly among children, teens, and young adults.

As a previous blog mentioned, our friend Yvonne Lumb, who works for the United Nations in Haiti, was caught up in the devastating earthquake that struck the island. Thankfully, she was OK. She has recently sent us another posting about conditions on the island:

The Earthquake in Haiti: Part 2

Sunday, 17 January 2010

Our UN Log Base has been totally transformed in the last four days. It suddenly had to greatly increase its capacity, simultaneously becoming the command centre of all operations, the “new” HQ, housing the senior management who previously used to control the Mission from the collapsed Christopher Hotel, and taking on board all the incoming UN agency personnel like OCHA, UNDP etc. Any less than vital units have been converted to other functions, for example, my office, the Contracts Management Unit, is now the Stress Counselling/Psychological Aid Office. We have been playing a game of musical chairs with the space and resources we have.

When the terrible earthquake struck Haiti a few days ago, my thoughts turned to a friend and animal advocate Yvonne, who works for the United Nations in that country. For a couple of days, we didn't know whether she was alive or dead, or wounded. Finally, however, we got through to the UN in New York and received the wonderful news that she was safe. Today, she's sent the following first-hand report of the quake and the aftermath. Of course, our hearts all go out to those who have lost loved ones, and we hope you will do what you can to help the people of Haiti, who have suffered so much. Yvonne's piece follows after the jump:

In 1996, a group of monastics from the Buddhist, Hindu, and Christian traditions met at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky to share their experiences of the monastic life. This meeting took place for two reasons. The first was Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, who resided at Gethsemani, and pioneered interreligious dialogue, when he met His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1968. It was perhaps partly out of that curiosity and faithfulness to the idea of dialogue that the Vatican started an organization eventually called Monastic Interreligious Dialogue in the mid-1970s to encourage continued dialogue between those faiths with monastic traditions (Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism), an effort that continues to this day.

Lantern has published a number of titles on interreligious dialogue, including Islam Is. . . and The Common Heart. However, it is even prouder to now be the publisher of all three books to emerge from the three Gethsemani Encounters that have taken place thus far: 1996, 2002, and The Spiritual Life the Dalai Lama—represent the fullness of a life dedicated to the principles of discipline, devotion, authenticity, practice, and compassion.

A Practical Peacemaker Ponders . . .

When I give public talks to encourage simple living, I include some remarks about the destructive aspects of excessive media consumption. These include exposure to lots of buy-stuff-you-don't-need advertising, being bombarded with violent images and stories, getting less exercise, and spending less time with family, friends, and on creative pursuits. Now a news story gives us the ultimate reason to turn off the TV: greater risk of death.