When I was about sixteen years old,

I stopped being able to drink milk.

Like a baby cow, 

When my childhood was over,

Milk no longer did me any good. 

I can’t breathe recycled air;

Like the air in a car. 

Or a plane. 

My lungs don’t want to process it. 

They know it’s bad. 

This letter is addressed, through the columns of the State Journal, to that unknown person who last week dug up the only remaining yellow lady-slipper in the Wingra Woods. 

While your name is unknown, your action sufficiently portrays the low estate of either your character or your education. On the chance that the latter rather than the former is at fault, I address to you this letter. I address it also to all whose gardens at the season suddenly blossom forth with new wildflowers lifted from other people’s woods. 

When John Muir came to the Madison region two generations ago, the woods and marshes were studded with millions of lady-slippers of a score of species. Today what with drainage, fire, cow, plow, and wildflower diggers - like yourself - a dozen of these species are extinct, and the remainder are so rare that the average citizen has never seen one. 

Now John Muir got something pleasant and valuable from his wild flowers. He became a great man, and it seems likely that his wildflowers had something to do with it. It is reasonable to suppose that the present generation might get something pleasant and valuable from them, too - if there were any. But no one, even yourself is going to get anything valuable from this lady-slipper languishing in your backyard.

The University of Wisconsin has got the notion, perhaps a foolish one, that the privilege of seeing a lady-slipper woods has got something to do with education. For this reason it is acquiring an arboretum. It wants to take its botany students out there and show them what Wisconsin looked like in its youth - in John Muir’s youth. It hopes that this will make them dissatisfied with what Wisconsin look like now. But now, thanks to you, the Wingra Woods is one step nearer looking like all the rest of the state. Perhaps, after all, our students would learn a lot if we took them out there and said: 

“Here is where we used to have lady-slipper”

Then, if you will consent to the invasion of your privacy, we would like to take them to your backyard and show them where you have planted it, and how it is thriving in its new home.

In respect of thriving, here are some things you may not know:

Only one man has ever succeeded in germinating the seeds of this species in artificial surroundings. It takes a high-powered chemist to reproduce the conditions necessary for its germination. Wild woods sometimes allow of reproduction, but backyards never. After the seedling has been born, it takes four years to reach the age of flowering. Do you think your lady-slipper will reproduce its kind in your backyard?

One of our ambitions for the arboretum is to apply the newly discovered chemistry for germinating the species, i.e., to start a “lady-slipper nursery” out of which the Wingra Woods, and all other Wisconsin woods not yet graved to death, may be abundantly restocked. To this end we have hired the only living man who knows how to do it, and he is ready to make the attempt. But now you have taken his source of seed. We can find other plants, to be sure, but it will not be long, what with the thousands of other wildflower diggers like yourself, before the goose with the golden eggs is dead. 

We had better hurry. 

I invite your attention to the fact that this lady-slipper is not the only public property which you might lift for the embellishment of your home. There are numerous paintings in the Memorial Union which you could cut out of their frames while nobody is looking. They are, I admit, less beautiful than your flower, but their loss could be more easily replaced. In the historical museum are any number of things as irreplaceable as your flower - why not add some of them to your collection? 

I anticipate your reply and tell you why not: because you, and also your friends and neighbors, would recognize your act as vandalism. You do not recognize your theft of the lady-slipper as vandalism. I will leave it to you to decide whether it is. 

Yours truly,

    Aldo Leopold 

    Research Director

    University of Wisconsin Arboretum 

A body starved of critical nutrients will 

KEEP

Eating in the hope of obtaining them.

The absence of these nutrients from the diet may

“Counteract the normal feeling of satiety

After sufficient calories are eaten”

And that such an unrelenting hunger

“May be a biological strategy for obtaining nutrients”

If this is right,

Then a food system organized around quantity

Rather than quality has a 

DESTRUCTIVE

Feedback loop built in to it,

Such that the more low-quality food one eats,

The more one wants to eat,

In a futile-

But highly profitable-

Quest for the absent nutrient. 

  - Excerpt (paraphrased) from In the Defense of Food

    By Michael Pollan

I’m going to quit my job.

Sell Herbalife products.

Make a million dollars.

Dye my hair whatever color I want.

Get another tattoo.

And bake a fricken cake. 

I often like to pretend that I am not a human.

That in reality,

I am actually a large, awkward, and flightless bird.

Why should I admit to being the alternative?

It’s MY turn to beautiful.

Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again. 

  - Divergent

  By Veronica Roth

1. I am addicted to becoming skinny.

2. I am selfish and conceited.

3. I like to pretend to be someone that I’m not.

4. I am much smarter than I let on.

5. Being smart means that I am manipulative.

6. I love to read, but I forget to do it.

7. I don’t believe in god.

8. I am cruel and judgemental.

9. I make a point to never lie.

10. I hate my weaknesses.

I long for the day that you can finally see my ribs.