Donkeys in good times and bad

Animal Portraits 01/#3

Grazing in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom / scrounging garbage in Baghdad

The top donkey lives the good life next to the Glover, VT Museum of Everyday Life, a “self-service museum” that invites visitors to turn on the lights when you come and off when you leave. In a small roadside barn, it gathers mundane objects with “gratitude and love for the minuscule and unglamorous experience of daily life in all its forms.” So while the donkey is not part of the display, it kind of embodies the homely utility the museum celebrates. Which is not to say that this curious ass isn’t lovely.

On the eve of the US invasion, a donkey, untethered from its cart, finds what it can in a garbage heap next to a Baghdad market. A week after this photo, the city was engulfed in “Shock and Awe” waves of attack. The US and its allies justified the invasion with a cascade of accusations: Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, was culpable in the 9/11 attack, and posed a threat to US national security. Some $3 trillion and 461,000 direct and related deaths later, much of Iraq’s land, economy, and culture were in ruins, as was the credibility of US rationalizations for its illegal aggression.

June 28,2023