The appeal from things is an appeal to abandon oneself to things, to give oneself to alterous relations, and therefore to make of oneself a gift, […] How to celebrate things in their alterity becomes the ethical question waiting for an answer.

The end of the ride was a long coast downhill.

The child walked nervously down the dark, foreboding street.

It is one of three whelping houses at the Puppy Haven Kennel, the 1,600-dog compound that Havens has built up over the last 30 years in the outlands north of Madison, Wis.