Vegan Feminist Agitator

Another Disgruntled Vegan Alphabet, 2011 Edition

2011-12-21T08:01:00.000-08:00

You know that I am a proud, happy vegan. I am always the first one to put a positive spin on vegan living because I am so overflowing with enthusiasm for it. Swimming against the current does have its annoyances, though. Not usually anything major but just petty things that leave you feeling frazzled or irritated. Of course I wouldn’t change who I am for anything in the world because I would rather be misunderstood any day than live in conflict with my values. We all need a chance to vent sometimes, though. Specifically, I like to publicly vent about once a year and then I am over it and can go back to being the happy tra-la-la vegan I am again. And with that, I present Another Disgruntled Vegan Alphabet.

A is for Anonymous. Oh, Anonymous, how you give me pause with your pithy comments like “You need to just eat a stake!!” or “veganz kill plantz” to any article that addresses cruelty to animals. Thank you, Anonymous, for your endlessly well-reasoned, penetrating insights.

B is for Bacon. Bacon makes everything better. Bacon amuses. Bacon enthralls. Bacon makes your eyes glaze over with lust. Bacon-wrapped bacon with whipped bacon dip on the side served on a bed of bacon. Sentient creatures lived lives of misery and died horrific deaths to become edible punchlines. Ha. Bacon. Hilarious.

C is for Complicated, as in, “Hi, I’d like to order the Tofurky sandwich without the mayo. Unless you have Vegenaise. What? It’s soy mayonnaise. No? That’s okay. Also is your soy cheese vegan? Because sometimes it has casein in it. Casein. It’s a milk protein. I don’t know why they put casein in soy cheese. Yes, it’s stupid.”

D is for Dinner with the extended family. As in: “I looked at the menu at the crab house, and you can get the pasta without sauce or you can get the plain baked potato. They also have crackers. So you should be able to eat there perfectly fine.”

E is for arrive Early to the vegan potluck or all you’ll get to eat is hummus. Lots and lots of hummus.

F is for Flippant. You don’t mean to be but sometimes you just can’t help it.

G is for Ginnifer Goodwin and every other flaky celebrity who tries on the vegan lifestyle and then discards it like it’s last year’s fashion because it no longer holds their attention. Plus, laughing about enjoying delicious, delicious bacon a few months after making heartfelt videos on behalf of farmed animals is really showing some depth of conviction there.

H is for “Hello? I just picked up my order a few minutes ago and I asked for the pad Thai with tofu without eggs or chicken. It has no tofu but both eggs and chicken.”

I is for Intolerance. As in you bring a vegan dish to the office party, somebody says, “Oh, that looks good. Who brought it?” You say, all excited, “I did! It’s vegan manicotti.” The person says, “Oh,” turns pale, and quickly backs away from your dish like it suddenly spouted yellow eyeballs and a tail. Yes, vegan food is scary and dangerous.

J is for the “’Just joking!’ Defense,” which means that the people who say it can say whatever convoluted, illogical nonsense about veganism they want if they just follow it up with those two simple words. Instant immunity! It also means that they can imply that you have no sense of humor when you are simply expecting someone to make sense.

K is for the Knee-slappingly hilarious jab your uncle makes every year when he sees the pumpkin pie you brought for Thanksgiving. “What did you make it out of? Twigs and tree bark?” And grass. You made it out of twigs, tree bark, and grass.

L is for Late to the Thanksgiving dinner means you’ll be seated next to him again.

M is for the Meat-of-the-Month club catalogue from a previous tenant that still gets delivered to your apartment every month despite doing everything conceivable to get off the list.

N is for “No, Mom, I didn’t see PETA stripping on the news again. What does this have to do with me, anyway?!”

P is for the Paranormal activity that leaves your cupboard void of dark chocolate when you most need it.

Q is for the Quaint little scarf you found at the neighborhood boutique, but, damn it, it’s a wool blend.

R is for “Right: You think that plants feel pain the same as animals. Even without a central nervous system? Even though they evolved without an apparent ability to escape predation? You think that pulling corn out of the ground is similar to separating baby animals from their mothers, caging them and slaughtering them? And vegans are the unrealistic ones? Really?”

S is for Stunt-eaters in the “snout-to-tail” movement because objectifying animals to the point where they are just isolated organs, viscera and parts to consume is so bad-ass and progressive.

T is for Thank you, I’ll pass.

U is for Unless you can find a place to hide your favorite skillet, your roommate will continue to cook meat in it. Get used to storing it under your bed.

V is for the Very, very horrible boiled vegetable plate you got at your cousin’s wedding that looked so terrible that you got looks of sheer pity from complete strangers.

W is for Whey, as in does this product really need to exist outside of Little Miss Muffet’s poem and why must it muck up something that looks perfectly good otherwise?

X is for if you were Xena, Warrior Princess, maybe people would just listen to you.

Y is for “You guys want to eat ‘family style’ when I can only eat one dish and then you want to split the check? So I am supposed to not eat and also subsidize your animal products? Somehow this seems to be violating the basic tenants of fairness.”

Z is for Zero: the number of original arguments you have heard against veganism in the last five years despite the fact that the person saying it always thinks that it is clever and thoughtful.

I'm over it already. See you next year!

I Killed Kale: A Love Story...

2011-12-08T08:17:00.000-08:00

What if kale were as idealized by vegans as backyard chickens are by locavores?

What if the leafy greens conferred nobility, honor and a sense of purpose about us as much as the Michael Pollan's elite crowd derives from eating their "special" dairy, eggs, and meat?

This piece was inspired by those who pursue spiritual enlightenment through another being’s death, those who cherry pick ephemeral Native American sentiments when they are of benefit to them. After reading a disturbing article by a journalist who traumatizes her children regularly (while patting herself on the back for her good liberal values, of course) by having them watch animals get slaughtered for their table, and yet another website dedicated to the life-and-death cycle of a flock of backyard chickens, I wondered what it might sound like if someone growing kale employed the same hackneyed, self-aggrandizing and narcissistic language and mentality.

This is what I came up with in response.

It seems unbelievable that this life-force a few feet in front of me, past its prime but still standing proud and tall in my garden on this gray early December day, came to me as improbably tiny seeds delivered to my home. As dark brown miniature pebbles, smooth to the touch, these seeds would have been easily dwarfed by the average peppercorn. I held the seeds, little pipsqueaks rolling around in my palm, almost slipping between my fingers, when they arrived in the mail one happy day a few weeks after I’d outlined their picture in a catalogue with a heart, and I beamed with a mother’s pride. “They’re perfect,” I thought, clutching them close to my chest. The delicate seeds held within them the promise that they might eventually blossom into full-grown, hearty and vibrant kale plants that would stretch toward the sun, and after glimpsing their cousins in the catalogue, I immediately knew that I was meant to have them in my own yard.

Over the years, my husband has seen me dive into projects with great gusto only to abandon them within a week or two, so he was understandably skeptical of my plans to take this on and apprehensive about giving over a significant part of our yard, valuable feet to urban dwellers, to any new lark of mine. In my attempts to become more self-reliant, though, I began to reject the idea of buying kale from the grocery store: denatured, limp and lifeless, grown by strangers in unknown conditions (were they overcrowded? Sprayed with chemicals?), plucked from the earth too soon and shipped from far away. I preferred to buy it at the local farmers market, but even with that, I began thinking that I didn’t want to ask anyone to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself.

I started the tiny seeds indoors in early spring: poking my finger into the soil, I let a few tumble into each hole, then gently covered them back up, like tucking them into bed. I reviewed the instructions on the seed packet daily as though it was my lifeline to them; I watered them enough but not too much, turned them to face the sun equally, kept them warm overnight. I checked on them whenever I thought of it, which was often, scrutinizing the soil many times every day for any signs of life.

One bright Saturday morning, it happened. I woke up and saw that skinny green sprouts had sprung up overnight, right on target with when the packet said that they should. I did a little happy dance and went racing through the house, waking up my husband and son. The sprouts were tiny and fragile but they were the first indisputable evidence of my diligent care. I could do this! These sprouts would eventually grow up into big, bushy plants. At the moment, though, their future was the last thing on my mind. I was just so enamored of these tender little babies, especially proud as they began to mature into hardier seedlings. I showed off their pictures to the friends who indulged me. I sang to the seedlings, gently caressed the soft leaves between my fingers, and every day they seemed to get farther and farther from the little dependent sprouts they’d started out as just a short time ago. They were thriving – heck, they were born - because of me.

When it was time to put them in the garden, I was anxious. The seedlings had been so nurtured and protected in the sunroom of our home. Couldn’t springtime’s violent windstorms break their delicate stems? What about marauding squirrels, mean birds that might yank them out of the earth just for the sport of it? I fretted over them, so vulnerable out in the elements. I knew, though, that I had to let the seedlings out on their own in the sun, fresh air and soil as nature intended or else they would get strangled by their own roots. As much as I worried about them, my husband gently reminded me to stop being so attached, that these plants were eventually for eating. I tried to ignore him as I planted them outside to flourish.

Flourish they did. The plants seemed to grow taller and more mature, more into their own, by the hour. After just two weeks outdoors, they were clearly no longer wispy little seedlings: they were fully realized plants now, beginning to grow tall and luxuriate in their sheer kaleness. These plants, hand-raised from seeds, were now the essence of healthy kale. It made me choke up whenever I thought of their cousins, raised in unnatural pseudo-farms, stacked one on top of the next in boxes on the produce truck and transported to far-flung destinations. My thriving, beautiful plants were in direct defiance to that sickening approach to vegetable husbandry.

That spring through fall, we enjoyed the chlorophyll-packed leaves we clipped off the mother plant: shredded as salads, in our breakfast scrambles. The kale seemed to grow heartier and bushier with every clipping. Our son was proud of the plants, eager to show them off to friends and to collect leaves for our meals. We planted so many – too many, probably – and they took over more of our yard than we planned. Even my husband didn’t mind, though. Looking out into the garden, seeing their happy leaves swaying in the breeze, basking in the gentle early summer’s sunshine and gulping the cooling rains of autumn, we knew that we were doing the right thing. The natural thing.

It had become clear by mid-November, though, that the kale plants lived their full life cycle. The leaves, once so full and crisp, were spotted with holes and barely hanging on. There were so many bare spots now, the plants so vulnerable to autumn’s deepening winds, and they swayed so intensely with them I thought they might snap right in half. They held on, though it was becoming clear that I would need to assist them on their passage in order to ready the yard for the new life of next spring. This was the natural order, I told myself. They had lived good, complete lives, reveling in their essential kaleness.

It was time. In my heart, I knew that it would eventually come to this.

They had to die.

I steeled myself for the inevitable. They had given me and my family nourishment for months and now it was time for them to die a dignified death befitting such noble leafy greens. My son tried to dissuade me, tearfully asking if we couldn’t just bring them indoors for the winter. I repeated the mantra of what we had been talking about all summer: that living under the sky, their roots deep in the earth, was the natural life for kale. Living inside, they would have a shadow of their lives outdoors - austere, constrained, hermetic - far removed from their wild nature. We could keep them alive, but at what cost? His face wet with tears, my son reluctantly nodded, identifying with his child's mind how it feels to be a hemmed in rugged spirit, but he looked away, unable to look at me. I cried, too. Part of his innocence was lost.

Still, he wanted to be there when the kale inhaled its last bit of carbon dioxide. I wanted him there, too, to bear witness and so he could appreciate the life and death cycle that happened in our own back yard. My husband offered to sever the plants, to cut them from their lifeblood, the roots, but I insisted on seeing it through to the end. I was the one, after all, who had raised them from seed, who sang to them as seedlings, caressed them, admired them, watered them, plucked their mature leaves. Looking at them every day, I was filled with gratitude that I was able to give them this life and they in return gave us sustenance and me a sense of connection to the earth, a rootedness I had never felt before. No, I told my husband, I had to see this through from beginning to end for my own spiritual growth.

I took the knife that I knew would do the job the quickest and with a shaky hand, I held the plants once more, pulling them to me, and once again, they yielded to my touch, trusting. Why shouldn’t they? All they had ever known was gentleness and care. With a hand shaking so much I didn’t know if I could do the job, tears streaming down my face, I took a hiccuping deep breath. They trust you, a voice chided me from inside my head. How could you do this? I am doing it because I love them, I finally responded. With that, I pulled the knife across my first plant.

I can’t say that it was easier than I thought it would be. It was harder to cut through than I’d anticipated, gorier. They were once so alive and seconds later, they slumped to the ground, lifeless. No more vitality. My son gasped and sobbed into my husband’s chest. One after the next, the kale fell - flump - their roots exposed, their leaves, once so voluptuous, now dry and brittle with age. We stood over them for a few minutes, no one sure what to say, and then we silently began gathering them to take indoors. We would enjoy one last gift from our babies.

That night, we had kale salad, lovingly massaged with olive oil and seasoned just so, and we had a stew, full of their earthy, sweet nutrients. I set aside the stems to use in a stock that will keep nourishing us through the winter. The night of their death, we talked about our favorite memories, the first time they peeped out of the soil, the jaunty seedlings, the early leaves of spring, the powerful plants of autumn. We talked about how we covered them during the big hailstorm of June and we laughed as we remembered how I chased the squirrels away from them all summer.

After dinner, we looked at pictures of them in all their bright verdant glory of early fall. Seeing them like that, my son and I sniffled a bit again, but we knew that our bodies were full of their natural goodness, fed by the sun and the rain and the ebb-and-flow of the seasons. Their death gave us life.

As I tucked my son into bed, we gave thanks again for the kale. Right after turning off the lights, he called me back into his room.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Mom,” he asked, his voice in the darkness of his bedroom, “could we grow more kale again in the spring?”

“Of course, my love.”

Of course.

End-of-the-line Raw Kale Salad

1 bunch lacinto (dinosaur) kale, shredded and spines removed

½ tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

In a medium bowl, massage the kale and the olive oil between your fingers until the kale softens significantly, about three to four minutes long.

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

1 teaspoon tamari

1 - 2 teaspoons lemon juice or vinegar of preference

1/8 teaspoon cayenne (opt.)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Add the rest of the ingredients to the kale and toss to mix. Very good with toasted, chopped cashews.

Top Fifty Things Bacon Will Not Make Better

2011-12-01T08:26:00.000-08:00

Once in a while, inspiration comes from a most unlikely source. When it hits, though, it’s like finding gold. Or discovering the cell phone that is now out of charge so you cannot find it in the pocket of the coat you haven’t worn for five days. When lightning strikes, though, ding-ding-ding, you have to run with it. Today’s source of inspiration came to me from my Bacon-Loving Hipster’s Can Kiss My Vegan Ass page when a random troll who was wearing a shirt that said “meh” on it and referred to me as “bro” – yes, really - posted a picture that said “Bacon Makes Everything Better.” These bacon people, so unpredictable, they keep me on the edge of my seat with their originality. When one’s fundamental argument in favor of eating bacon is that a. it tastes good and/or b. it makes other things taste good, you can see why they cling to these shallow attempts at whimsy like people overboard would to an iceberg. Which is actually an apt metaphor because bacon consumption and our overall insistence on our so-called right to please our taste buds regardless of our affect on the planet or others could very well capsize after all.

I must address the core conceit, though. Bacon does not make everything better. In fact, bacon makes many things demonstrably worse. The following is my list of the top 50 things bacon does not make better in no particular order.

1. The lives of pigs

2. My mood

3. The ozone layer

4. Air and water quality

5. Static cling

6. The quality of network television programming

7. Your chances of getting off cholesterol-lowering medication

8. One’s credit rating

9. Rush hour traffic

10. The way you look in a bathing suit

11. One’s yoga and/or meditation practice

12. Your sexiness quotient as calculated by Cosmopolitan magazine

13. Your lawn

14. The fact that summer just flew by

15. Your cat’s litter box habits

16. The realization that you’ve forgotten your gloves on the train

17. The fact that the new paint you used for your dining room dried in a lot more garish a color than you thought it would

18. One’s ability to do math without crying

19. Chocolate. Or cupcakes. If you claim that bacon makes either better, you have bad taste. Pork products will not improve this, either.

20. My respect for my fellow humans

21. Your odds of not needing a stent in an artery or coronary bypass surgery

22. One’s penmanship

23. That maddening itch between your shoulder blades

24. Your quarterly review

25. NPR’s pledge drive week

26. Your breath

27. Your appreciation of the great works of Western literature

28. The fact that you’re not bilingual

29. That your dog just peed on the floor like that was totally acceptable

30. If your parents gave you a really unfortunate name

31. Keys? Where are your keys?! Bacon does not make you less likely to lose your keys or make finding them easier.

32. That alarming sound your car is making

33. Taxes

34. The fact that your new tights already have a rip in them

35. That sinking feeling when you see police lights directly behind you in your rearview mirror

36. The guy you’re sitting next to on the bus who is taking up way more of the seat than is reasonable

37. That weird rash

38. Realizing that you put your cell phone in the laundry

39. Your annual prostate exam

40. The likelihood that you’ll ever be able to do a perfect chin up

41. Another tap recital

42. Your chance of finding an apartment with its own washer and dryer

43. The likelihood of rain

44. Your slow but inevitable slide toward the grave

45. Reflecting upon the notion of eternity at 3:00 in the morning

46. Flossing your teeth

47. Gah! Your overdue books. Why do you keep forgetting them?

48. The amount of suffering in the world

49. The growing distance between you and your partner

50. The odds that Earth will have even a slim chance of survival if people don’t stop eating pigs like their flesh is just some stupid punch line to their asinine jokes and instead realize that the human addiction to meat is destroying the planet and its inhabitants.

This is just off the top of my head, but as you can see, there are many things that bacon just does not make better. Don’t believe the hype. Bacon makes a lot of things way, way worse. Given all this, I propose that we all just move on. I have not eaten bacon since I was a teenager and I promise you, eating it would not have made my life or anyone else’s life better. If you want savory, go caramelize some onions, for God’s sake. Seriously.

World Vegan Day Tip #22

2011-11-24T11:49:00.000-08:00

Committing to veganism is the single most meaningful and effective way you can help the animals of the world. Please consider exploring a compassionate vegan lifestyle and have a Thanksgiving full of true gratitude.

World Vegan Day Tip #21

2011-11-23T00:52:00.001-08:00

If you are looking for a worthy cause to donate to this holiday season, consider giving to your local animal shelter. Many do the best they can on very tight budgets and could use support. If your money is limited, contact your shelter and ask for a list of tangible items they need: you can often help out just by donating gently used towels and blankets or shampoo, brushes and nail clippers. Most important, consider giving the gift of your time. Becoming a volunteer is so rewarding: you can bathe dogs, walk them, groom and socialize dogs and cats. This time from you makes them more adoptable.

World Vegan Month Tip #20

2011-11-21T22:59:00.000-08:00

Veggie stir fry! A quick and nutritious meal that virtually anyone can make, veggie stir-fries can be made with any vegetables, grains and plant proteins you like for an easy meal. One such example: over medium-high heat, sauté garlic, ginger and scallions in sesame oil. Then add broccoli and diced carrots. Add tamari or soy sauce and brown rice vinegar. Cook until the broccoli is bright green. In a separate pan, sauté extra firm tofu, also seasoned like the veggies. Serve over rice or quinoa. DONE.

World Vegan Day Tip #20

2011-11-21T01:00:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for a new companion animal, please adopt one from a shelter. Over 9 1/2 million dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters each year, many fully adoptable, because they do not have enough cage space. Pet stores and breeders are irresponsibly adding to the overpopulation and many pet stores in particular get their "supply" from horrific puppy mills. Please show your compassion for animals by adopting one: there are many young, senior, mixed breed and specific breed dogs and cats in addition to other domestic animals like birds, rabbits, hamsters, etc. desperately in need of a home. We are blessed to share our home with two adopted animals and I couldn't be more grateful!

World Vegan Day Tip #19

2011-11-20T02:20:00.000-08:00

Animals held captive in zoos and aquariums need our support: please do not support the institutions that imprison them. The animals are denied their most natural instincts and behaviors, they are kept in conditions that do not come close to meeting the needs of the animals, and it is teaching a terrible message to the children there: animals are here for our entertainment. Show respect to others by withdrawing your support from these exploitative institutions.

World Vegan Month Tip #18

2011-11-19T01:14:00.000-08:00

One of the ways people can enjoy life more as they explore or maintain veganism is to subscribe to magazines that support that decision. Magazines like VegNews, ActionLine from Friends of Animals, Vegetarian Journal and online only options like Chickpea and Canada's T.O.F.U. Magazine are great to support and provide recipes, articles and a sense of belonging.

World Vegan Day Tip #17

2011-11-17T19:23:00.001-08:00

You are beautiful from in the inside out, but if you ever want to take things up a notch, please consider buying cruelty-free cosmetics. Not only are they usually made with more natural ingredients, cruelty-free cosmetics are made without (horrific and unnecessary) animal testing and ingredients. Check out compassionate cosmetics at Leaping Bunny.

World Vegan Month Tip #16

2011-11-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

Just because your traveling, it doesn't mean you have to compromise your vegan diet or aspirations. Not only are there amazing vegan options the world over, but you can plan meals out through apps like the iPhone app, VegOut, as well as websites like Happy Cow, Veg Dining, and a variety compiled by Mercy For Animals to name a few. Just simple online searches with a town's name and the words "vegetarian" or "vegan" can uncover lots of options.

World Vegan Month Tip #15

2011-11-16T01:25:00.000-08:00

Circuses are pretty much pure evil. The sensitive animals forced to "entertain" are abused in training, denied their natural habitats and instincts and moved from town to town by railcar. Please do not support this cruel industry and the message that animals being forced to perform unnatural stunts is entertaining.

All beings tremble...

2011-11-15T08:24:00.000-08:00

“All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?” Buddha

Sometimes it just feels like being there can knock my legs out from under me.

Whenever I go to an animal sanctuary, I become acutely aware of my personal failings. It seems like an incongruous thing, feeling so peaceful with the rescued animals and pastoral setting but not being able to ignore the particular flaws that have come into high relief. This awareness doesn’t prevent me from enjoying myself, just sort of buzzes underneath the surface, a mosquito of little consequence but still an irritant.

I don’t usually think of myself as an especially resentful person, but the animals and their willingness to trust people after all we have done to them are a reminder that I still have a lot of work to do. Whenever I go to an animal sanctuary, I am reminded that forgiveness is a deeply challenging practice for me, as though if I have resentment against those who have hurt me in the past, it will transcend the time-space continuum and stick to them like a barnacle. The animals don’t hold on to anything and they have seen and survived far worse than I. I remember this also from when I worked at an animal shelter: dogs who had been starved to near-skeletal conditions, cats who had been used as bait in pitbull fights, beings that had known little to no human kindness, still ran up to the cage door, eager to greet us. I will never forget the cat I met at the shelter, very disfigured from having been set on fire, rubbing his raw skin against the cage bars, purring at the sight of me, a stranger. A human. We can be terrible co-inhabitants on this home we share but they don’t seem to resent us.

Last June, as I do every summer, I spent the day with my family and friends at SASHA Farm, a Michigan refuge for animals primarily from the agriculture industry, where the residents rush to the fences to greet us. Yes, we had strawberries and apples and carrots, but even when we had run out, they stretched out toward us, seeking a hand, a friendly face. They looked at us without guile. The cows, with their wet, innocent eyes, always impress me with their gentleness. The goats, lively and rambunctious, climb over one another to grab carrots, they bleat with confidence and conviction. The tom turkeys strut with their feathers spread out like intricate fans, almost begging to be admired; the chickens look at us with unabashed, courageous curiosity, especially counter to their public reputation. It’s as if the animals know that they are safe now, these beings who almost all suffered horrific abuse, who were forcibly removed from their mothers and siblings as newborns. It’s more than that, though: it’s as if the horrors they lived through never happened.

You can still see it on them, though, like marker transparencies lain over their three-dimensional forms. Hens with bumpy, pink patches of skin where feathers should be, that’s one indication. A goat with a circle cut through his ear like he’d been through a hole-puncher. He had. The cow with little white nubs where her horns were once, lasting evidence of the systematic, everyday brutality she endured. Pigs inflated to such an enormous size to satisfy the demand for their flesh that they could barely move.

The routine deformities we can see in the survivors of animal agriculture is often the most obvious display of the cruelty they endure in the process of being turned from a living animal into a product to be consumed and forgotten. In the ultimate objectification, the animals are turned into mere vehicles for their own consumable flesh and what their bodies produce, the things we say we “can’t live without.” Engineered for their flesh, so-called broiler hens are conceived with a natural expiration date: our tour guide at SASHA explained that these birds don’t live past the age of one. They die of congestive heart failure before that, victims of our preference for their plump breasts, our meat. On this day, though, and on all the days since they found sanctuary at SASHA, the chickens scratched at the dirt, felt the sun on their wings, they lived as natural, fully realized beings. The expiration date ticks but they enjoy life. We ravaged their bodies but their spirits, if given half a chance, are unsinkable.

There is so much that we take for granted and the power we humans wield – not necessarily in strength but in the privileges we aim to protect - overwhelms me when I think about it. We can ruin someone else’s perfectly nice day simply because we feel like it, or we can ruin another’s life because we don’t want to question the liberties we'd prefer to keep enjoying. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make me angry: A spilled glass of water, a misplaced set of keys, a train that I missed by five seconds. The anger I can feel over these trivial hardships frightens me. Once in a while, too, I lose my temper with my son. Imagine how that lopsided power structure feels to someone half your size to experience: a raised voice, a mean look, even a clenched hand from someone who could inflict real damage. My potential to harm my child, the one I most want to protect in the world, the soul who most fills me with joy, is a terrifying thing to own and I live my life with the knowledge of it. I have never hit my son and I never expect to intentionally harm him. We exist with an inherent power imbalance that dramatically skews in our favor, though, as adult humans. We cannot do whatever we want to simply because we have the privileges, preferences and opportunities: we should have learned as young children that this is not a moral way to operate.

All beings want to live without imprisonment and cruelty: if we are honest, we will admit that humans are not unique in this regard. We will also admit that all beings want the same for their babies. As consuming others as products is both unnecessary and necessitates violence, then it is an indulgence and there is a moral imperative to withdraw our support from it.

All beings tremble before violence.

Of course we do.

All fear death.

This only makes sense.

All love life.

All beings crave the things that make us feel good: warm sun, affection, the pure, visceral joy that shoots through us on that first beautiful spring day. To deny this is arrogance.

See yourself in others.

If you do, it will be hard to maintain your privileges.

Then whom can you hurt?

What harm can you do?

World Vegan Month Tip #14

2011-11-14T20:07:00.000-08:00

Looking for work that doesn't compromise your values but also is something you can be passionate about? Try Vegan Jobs, the VegNews work classified section, Vegan Mainstream and the Facebook Vegan Jobs page for ideas!

World Vegan Month Tip #13

2011-11-13T22:47:00.000-08:00

Looking for shoes without animal hides? It used to be much harder to find stylish shoes that were leather-free. Today, you can find them anywhere from vegan boutiques (both online and in shops) like Moo Shoes and Alternative Outfitters to giant shoe emporiums, like Zappos.

World Vegan Month Tip #12

2011-11-12T19:33:00.000-08:00

Even as a new vegan, you can find almost any recipe you're looking for online. Using simple terms like "vegan stroganoff recipe" can give you quite a few results. Eventually, you'll starts to find websites and blogs that are to your liking. Bookmarking these will help you to hone your cooking skills.

World Vegan Month Tip #11

2011-11-11T18:52:00.000-08:00

Take things easy on yourself while setting goals. If you goal is to reduce consumption of animal products, setting specific goals week after week is a good way to move forward. For example, if you consume eggs or dairy daily, try to get that to once a day for a week. From there, keep decreasing animal products and increasing plant foods you enjoy instead. Setting realistic, specific goals rather than aspiring to something vague will get you close to achieving what you want to see.

World Vegan Month Tip #10

2011-11-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

Keep a well-stocked pantry. It's the little things that can make a big difference when it comes to the ease with which one can transition into or maintain a vegan lifestyle. Make things easier on yourself by keeping some staple items on hand so you can create simple but delicious meals without too much effort. Some things I always like to have on hand are beans (chickpeas, black beans, etc.), grains (rice and quinoa, for example), tomato sauce, onions, garlic, potatoes (white and sweet), tomato sauce, coconut milk, tamari, olive oil, peanut or almond butter, pasta, marinara, frozen corn and frozen peas. With a few staples on hand, you will never be at a loss for what to cook.

World Vegan Month Tip #9

2011-11-09T08:36:00.000-08:00

Slow Cooker! What is a better feeling than coming home after a long day to the delicious aroma of a home-cooked meal that's already prepared? Slow cookers - and their high-energy cousins, pressure cookers - make nutritious meals a breeze with very little effort. Just some chopping in the morning, a quick sauté, combine things in the cooker and you are set.

World Vegan Month Tip #8

2011-11-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

Often vegans are vulnerable to scare tactics from people who don't really understand nutrition, including the opinions of those in the medical profession, many of whom lack in-depth, up-to-date dietary expertise. If you are concerned about a vegan diet meeting your nutritional needs, why not consult with a professional who is an expert in the field? The Vegetarian Nutrition group of the American Dietetic Association is a great place to start.

World Vegan Month Tip #7

2011-11-07T09:19:00.000-08:00

Many people are overwhelmed with cooking for the week as it is and feel utterly lost trying to figure out what to eat as vegans. Here is what I suggest to everyone: write a weekly menu. Go through your cookbooks, look online, or just plain brainstorm ideas. While you're writing the menu, you can also make your grocery list. It's efficient, it can save money (especially if you don't allow yourself any impulse purchases off your list) and it can be a healthier way to live when you plan what to eat. Simplify: make a weekly menu!

World Vegan Month Tip #6

2011-11-06T19:33:00.000-08:00

Soups! Especially this time of year, soups are a nourishing way to fill ourselves up with a delicious and enriching meal. For creamy soups, try coconut milk, pureed potatoes or cashew cream; for vegetable soups, make or use a vegetable stock and fill it with all kinds of goodies. Soups are also great to improvise: add pasta, frozen peas or corn, rice or barley, sauteed vegetables, beans, fresh herbs, tempeh "croutons" and more. Sometimes a good bowl of soup is the very best thing in the world!

World Vegan Month Tip #5

2011-11-05T05:52:00.000-07:00

Supporting local vegetarian and vegan festivals gives you the opportunity to sample food, support businesses and learn about non-profits you might be interested in along with many other benefits. Maybe you should go to one today. :)

World Vegan Month Tip #4

2011-11-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

Volunteering at a local animal shelter is a great way help these places that often desperately need our time. Socializing dogs and cats, scooping boxes, helping to fold towels, walking dogs, grooming and even fostering them are some of the ways you can help support homeless animals and shelters. Raising funds for them through vegan bake sales and donating blankets and towels is another very worthwhile contribution.

World Vegan Month Tip #3

2011-11-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

Finding community is a huge factor in enjoying your life as a vegan or finding the support you need to explore it further. Although online groups are great for daily maintenance, finding a group that meets in person can be an essential factor in feeling a deeper commitment and enjoying life. We are social animals! Please check out groups on websites like Meetup.com for local groups of like-minded people. Don't see one? Consider starting your own.

World Vegan Day Tip #2

2011-11-02T08:58:00.000-07:00

One of the best ways to learn more about vegan living is to read books on it and one of your very best resources is the public library. From cookbooks to informative books, you can "test drive" a book without any money down by checking it out from your local library. (And then buy the ones you like because we must support the good work of our hardworking vegan authors!)

World Vegan Month Tip #1

2011-11-01T07:32:00.000-07:00

Conventional cleaning products are not only often laden with nasty chemicals that harm us and the environment but also are tested on laboratory animals in the most cruel, crude ways possible. Please consider making your own cleaning products with common household products like vinegar and baking soda: not only are you reducing plastic consumption, these homemade cleaners cost pennies to make, they are effective, and you are not supporting companies that torture animals. You will breath and sleep easier as a result!

Ay yi yi! Chicago VeganMania!

2011-10-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

So it has been too long and I have a million good reasons but they can all be found at Chicago VeganMania, which is happening November 5 at the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse, 1419 W. Blackhawk Speakers! Performers! Cooking demos! Culture Café! Family Activity Area! Dozens of cruelty-free vendors! And all-vegan food court! Seriously, its going to be bad-ass in the best possible way. I've even heard tell of a Vegan Rock Star photo booth. I hope to see you there and as soon as that is off my plate, oh, there will be so much more to talk about. Hope to see you Saturday and for those who don't live near Chicago, long-distance air kisses. Mwaaah!

How a vegan is born...

2011-10-06T09:12:00.000-07:00

Most future vegans come into the world via one common approach or another nine or so months after conception. Most of us are not raised vegan, though. The path we take to get here is as unique to us as a snowflake that has fallen on the sidewalk and melts under the shoe of a 22-year-old anthropology graduate student walking in the door of Angelica Kitchen with his girlfriend.

Here is how it happened for me, though. If you want it to happen for you, you may want to pursue a path similar to mine.

Be born into an omnivorous family in the latter half of the 20th century and, in keeping with the trends of the day, have a bottle of infant formula placed in your newly born mouth shortly after your arrival. You are not even a few hours old and you are drinking the milk intended for another baby. Pureed meat will follow before you know it. Well, you really don’t know it but you’re officially an omnivore. Congratulations.

Point at the birds, toddle after squirrels, gasp at butterflies. Be afraid of spiders but that’s about it. Family folklore maintains that the first time you are observed laughing, it is because a troupe of poodles is doing the cha-cha on a variety show.

Decide that you really, really want a dog. Express this with your limited but ever-expanding vocabulary at every opportunity. Use your considerable persuasive skills and charms to your advantage. Spring out of bed every morning with the goal of wearing your parents down as your sole mission. You should excel at this.

You have a puppy! You are in love! You love his puppy breath, the piggy grunting sounds he makes when you pick him up, the way he looks when he sleeps, how he rolls in the grass, the sweet little pink spots on his belly and nose and paws, the cute wrinkles between his eyes that make him look a little wise and worried. You love the all of him. The puppy, however, has arrived with teeth like needles and nails like little razors and he has this thing about relieving himself on your mother’s new carpet. She is not so enamored. He will live in your home for only two weeks until he is sent packing with his squeaky toys to another, more patient home and you will remember this sad day for the rest of your life. The legacy of your experience will be that you are now aware of the disposability of animals and the power humans wield over their lives.

Somehow you survive the loss of your puppy. You have lost a little innocence, though.

You go to kindergarten. There is a play kitchen there with a refrigerator and stove, wooden eggs, pretend milk cartons and cereal boxes, plastic steaks that look like they something Wilma Flintstone would cook for Fred. This is your favorite part of the classroom. Pretend to crack eggs on the edge of the table; sizzle the classroom’s single prized pork chop on the stovetop.

Your will totally adore your grandparents. Your mother doesn’t like to cook or bake, so when whenever you’re in your grandmother’s apartment in the city, working in the little yellow kitchen is what you do together. You learn to crack the eggs without getting any shell in the bowl, whisk liquids until frothy, grate potatoes, roll sugar cookies. Your grandmother often tells you that you are so much help in the kitchen and you believe her. You are rewarded with meltingly tender rugelach, brisket and roasted potatoes, evocative Yiddish expressions to add to your collection, and, most cherished, your grandmother’s company.

If you could go back in time and interview yourself as an eight-year-old, you would say that favorite movie is “The Wizard of Oz,” your favorite singer is Donny Osmond, your favorite friend is Suzanne Lane, your favorite toy is your Easy-Bake Oven, your favorite activity is reading or drawing, your favorite drink is Orange Crush, your favorite candy bar is Twix and without hesitation, you would say that favorite food is spaghetti and meatballs.

When you are in fourth grade, your school takes a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry. You see a little chick in a giant, crowded incubator being pecked to death by the other chicks. Some boys point and laugh. You try to knock on the glass to try to get them to stop and the museum guard reprimands at you. You imagine reaching in and running away with that chick. The memory and vision of that little bird, so bloodied and helpless and vulnerable, will be burnished in your brain for the rest of your life.

You go to junior high. Your life is one trauma-inflicting event that’s stuck on a lather-rinse-repeat cycle for three interminable years. Plus pimples.

In high school, you begin freshman year wearing kilt skirts and monogrammed sweaters with turtlenecks and abide by the rules set forth in the Preppy Handbook until you discover The Smiths and gradually phase your closet into an all-black wardrobe along with matching nail polish. When Morrissey sings that “Meat is Murder,” it makes an impression and goes through your head on a constant loop sometimes. You never thought about that before.

Then, in sophomore year biology, there is a fetal pig. It (he? she?) is bobbing in formaldehyde, and you are supposed to learn about the organs. Just the smell of the room makes you so nauseated that you can instantly recall it many years later. You pick up the sharp instrument and try to cut the grayish-pinkish flesh as your teacher instructs. You retch instead. Your lab partner rolls his eyes. You can’t. You’ll read the materials and do the homework instead. Thankfully you can do this from the computer room during your class’s unit on dissection.

Around this same time, you are going away on a school trip for a weekend and you need to fill out a form that asks if you require special meals. The fetal pig pops in your mind, you write yes and check the box that says vegetarian. You don’t know any other vegetarians except for some kooky neighbors who have a peanut grinder in their home and eat carob. You think that you will try it for the weekend and see if you survive.

You survive! But being a vegetarian means that you will never eat your grandmother’s brisket again, or her corned beef and cabbage, or her matzo ball soup, or that one chicken Kiev that your mother makes that you like, or her spaghetti and meatballs, or a hot dog from Irving’s. This overwhelms you to think about so you choose not to think about it. One meal at a time, one day at a time, it begins to sink in and there is no denying that you are a vegetarian.

You will never regret it.

In retrospect, you will look back at that quotidian form that you filled out your sophomore year of high school as a kind of divine intervention. Everyone tells you that you will last only a week, that you’re probably secretly eating hamburgers in the middle of the night, and your family claims - even though you’re uncharacteristically quiet about your new way of living – that you just want attention. Your mother tells you that she can’t stop you from being a vegetarian but that she will not cook you any special meals. Okay then. You learn to cook for yourself. You enjoy your cooking. That form and your checking of that little box has set the wheels in motion for changing the trajectory of your life and your entire worldview.

You leave home for college and:

1. Meet amazing people from all over the world.

2. Have long, heartfelt chocolate-covered espresso bean-fueled conversations with your new friends until the café workers starts putting up chairs and sweeping.

3. Enjoy heretofore unavailable to you novelties such as:

A). Eating cereal for dinner and ice cream for breakfast.

B). Staying up all night just because you can.

C). Sleeping in a mock shantytown constructed on campus to raise awareness about apartheid.

D). Falling in and out of love a million times.

4. Learn about the U.S. involvement in Central America, get on a two-day bus to march in Washington, D.C., march, eat Chinese food while sitting on the dirty floor behind the counter with your friends because there are no more seats, take the bus back home and dream for the next week that you are still riding on a Greyhound.

5. Read books well into the night, go wild painting in your studio, date people who are not great for you, get a laughably fake I.D., learn where all the drink specials are for every night of the week, fight with your roommate, move off campus and get your own apartment.

6. Become such a feminist it’s almost ridiculous.

7. Hear the word vegan at the co-op for the first time. Decide that the person who said that was probably a confused bumpkin who just didn’t know the right word.

8. Graduate. Sob. Time to leave wonderland.

Leave the wheat fields and move to the city near where you grew up. Work in an animal shelter. Almost no one who works is a vegetarian and this is confusing to you.

Meet a boy! He’s a vegetarian, too. Fall in love, this time for keeps.

Make new friends. Start getting active with an animal rights group. Meet an activist from New York who thinks it’s ridiculous that all the local animal rights people are vegetarian rather than vegan. You hate him. He’s so smug and self-righteous and arrogant.

He’s also right.

Spend about a year going back and forth until you see a movie with dairy cows in confinement bellowing for their babies and layer hens with their featherless flesh rubbed raw and that does it. Something shifts in you permanently. There’s no more denying reality. You are vegan on the spot.

That is how a vegan is born.

Of Babies and Bath Water: Insistence on Another's Purity is a Losing Battle

2011-09-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

I’ll admit it.

A most fervent wish of mine is that one bright morning, everyone will wake up refreshed, take a nice stretch, and right before breakfast, have a sort of mass epiphany. We could be in the shower, we could be walking the dog, we could be reading our morning affirmation, but in that singular, crystallized moment of our epiphany, people will recognize the fundamental injustice of deciding that we will use others as we wish because we can. We will understand that there’s really not any difference between a human and a fish when it comes to a desire to live free from harm. We will finally know deep in our marrow that because we legally can do something we desire, it does not confer a moral license to do it. Immediately after this epiphany, humanity will shake off our privileges of entitlement as if it were all just a bad dream and with a resolute clap of the hands a la Mary Poppins - “Chop chop!” - we would all move on. From that point on, we would all be vegan.

In this fantasy of mine, the human race would evolve in one giant, collective leap toward a consciousness of expansiveness and connection that would cut out all that unnecessary suffering that occurs before everyone’s fully on board. We could all go to the deli at the grocery store and not have to ask what’s in anything and we could buy birthday presents for each other without ever having to check for wool, leather or silk. We wouldn’t have to look for the rabbit symbol on shampoo or be ill at ease when we don’t know if the glycerine is of animal or plant origin. Everything would be easy, so free of stress. Our children wouldn’t have to avoid the McDonald’s Playland and they could keep all of their Halloween candy. There would be no need to stand outside shivering in the cold as we protest the circus in November. There would be no more time wasted giving dirty looks to people in fur coats. Life would be so easy.

God, just imagine what Thanksgiving would be like.

As much as I want people to adopt a new way of living because it is deeply wrong to ruin or take another’s life to indulge our fleeting, random pleasures, I have been vegan for long enough to realize that this wish is a luxury that is quite outside of my control. It is also rather, well, dictatorial for me to insist that unless others are motivated by my very same values, their reasons are unworthy. It is not enough that the rest of the world go vegan: they must do it for reasons that I approve of, damn it, or else it doesn’t count.

I have noticed a grumbling resentment and condescension towards those who “just” follow a vegan diet, even though that influences the most animals’ lives by far. Speaking hypothetically, what if a very influential person, say a former president of the United States, publicly credits a vegan diet with saving his life? Should we yell and scream and stomp our feet because he’s not vegan enough? Should we stare at his shoes, the same way people check out our shoes when they first hear that we’re vegan? Should we insist upon inspecting his medicine cabinet before we are willing to sign off on it? Or should we be damn grateful and elated for the fact that someone so prominent is normalizing a subject that many feel is inaccessible and beyond their reach? While we need that outer edge to be pushing society toward a new consciousness, we also need these people, human breadcrumbs in a sense, who draw others in and show them a path. Shouting on street corners or demanding personal purity as we sit on our self-built mountaintops of piety may feel good but if we are honest with ourselves, we will see that it’s not going to help the animals. If people think that giving up all animal products and familiar foods sounds radically unsettling – and it does to the vast majority - should we keep judging and nitpicking until they have given up on the notion altogether?

This has been a gradual evolution toward a middle path for me. For years I towed the party line that unless people adopted a vegan diet due to deep ethical convictions, that it was superficial, that it would never stick. I have also seen the contradiction of this idealistic notion many times. (To be fair, I have also seen it reinforced many times.) I have seen people come to veganism through the doorway of environmentalism and I have seen the lifestyle stick. I have seen others motivated primarily by their health, something ethical vegans look especially down upon probably because it smacks of flaky narcissism, but I have seen these same people become the most ardent, most persuasive and unequivocal advocates for vegan living over time.

I have also seen people become vegan for “the right reasons” – people I have felt a deep kinship with, people I have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with at protests - decide over time that they really miss cheese. Like really miss it a lot even though they know about dairy cows and veal calves and the whole bleak picture. They know it. They have read the books, they have watched the movies, and most important, they have felt it in their hearts. One day or over time, though, something just changes. They think, Is a little organic cheese so awful? Oh, and since they’re eating a little cheese anyway, would it be so terrible if they ate some free-range eggs, too? And if they’re already doing that, is it the worst thing in the world to eat a little wild-caught salmon? With the slippery slope fully rolled out before them, they then realize that consuming one is not much more or less justifiable than the rest and these once-ethical vegans become fully omnivorous. I have heard and read the assertion many times that former vegans who start eating animal foods were probably never really committed to begin with and that is true sometimes but not always. Somewhere along the line, they switch off or detour. I have seen it with my own eyes. It threatens us to think that someone who has had a consciousness shift could renounce that and go more or less back to where they were before but it does happen.

While we need to unapologetically reinforce the very core ethical conviction of compassionate living that is at the root of veganism, I think we need to make space at the party for those who came in through a side door. We don’t have the luxury of veganism being an exclusive, members only club, not if we really want there to be less suffering in the world. We can create our little islands of vegan purity where only those with what we deem to possess the right attitudes can dwell, but we are deluding ourselves if we think that this kind of moral turf patrolling is really going to result in less suffering in the world. If someone is getting a foot in the door through the gateway of health, should we push them back out because we have taken out our moral checklists and they do not meet our standards? No, not unless we want to be isolated islands of angry but righteous vegan separatists. Instead, we should encourage people who are trying to get a foot in the door. We should support them. We should share our knowledge.

Ethics provide the strongest foundation of veganism, I have no doubt about that. While we are continually hacking away at the webs of disconnection humanity weaves, the stories people repeat to justify their privileges, we must keep the door open. The apple cart we are upsetting is a massive one culturally and historically but it is also a very personal inner-shift, one after the next, that is going to create the sea change. It is going to take time and it is going to take patience but we are well on our way: progress is happening every day in deep-seated and lasting ways. Until people are fully on board then, let’s throw out some lifelines.

I am going to hold on to my fantasy for now. It comforts me, makes me smile. It is just a fantasy, though. The real change will come from challenging our comfort zones, digging our hands into the mucky mess of it, being creative and giving up the notion that we can make others think the way we want them to think. The core convictions behind veganism are powerful beyond description. Let’s keep chipping away at the lies humanity tells and, most important, let’s keep the door open while we’re doing it.

Soy will kill you DEAD.

2011-09-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

I am buried under work this week so I'm offering this guest post until I can dive back into vegan feminist agitating. In an effort to prove that I am as fair and balanced as they come, I'm offering this article submitted by someone who wished to remain anonymous from the Weston A. Price Foundation’s Office of Soybean Literacy. I hope you enjoy it and find it enlightening.

Dear Vegans,

If you don’t value your own life, please at least care about the future of others. There is a looming green menace, a bean determined to wreak havoc any place where its roots can burrow into the ground like hungry, greedy tentacles. It is dire but it’s not too late: we must do our part now to uproot this vicious plant until it becomes fully indestructible and sends our planet on a collision course with obliteration. It is truly the Bad Bean. (The following footnoted article was peer-reviewed by the board of directors of the Weston A. Price Foundation.)

To put it bluntly, soy will kill you DEAD. ¹

Women, soy will turn your ovaries inside out before they shrink into themselves, drain down your legs and settle into your feet. This will eventually cripple you. This is a small matter because your muscles would have atrophied long before this due to Toxic Estrogenic-Legume Syndrome and your brain will have become porous with Tofu Spongiform Edamamepathy. Then you will die. ²

Men, exposure to soy will make you grow giant breasts sloshing with soymilk. It will make your genitalia shrink into petunia-shaped little nubs ³ as the steady drip-drip-drip of phytoestrogens into your bloodstream transforms you into a grotesque quasi-female freak-form come to life. Your breasts will keep growing until they eventually smother you and endanger your community. Then you will die. ⁴

Children, the soy your parents give you today will make bright pink hair sprout on your concave chests (females) and on your enormous breasts (males). At around age thirteen, boys will metamorphose into girls and girls will metamorphose into boys in a horrific live mutation. As the erstwhile girls morph into aggressive, pimply males and the former males transmute into screeching, hormone-mad girls, all ages from puberty onward are fraught with peril as you lurch into marauding delinquency. Then you will die. ⁵

It is now known that soy shot Abraham Lincoln and the Archduke Ferdinand. 6 Soy insurgents caused the Spanish-American War and the Nicaraguan Civil war. ⁷

Further, it is well established that soy caused the Great Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Dust Bowl and the Irish Potato Famine. ⁸

Soy returns movies late. Soy parks like an idiot. Soy plays horrible music too loud. Soy drunk dials. Soy leaves the faucet running. Soy never offers to pay. Soy is a sloppy drunk. Soy does not vacate its seat for the elderly or disabled on buses. Soy laughs at inappropriate times. Soy sends texts during movies. Soy eats loudly and with its mouth open. Soy relieves itself on your front yard. ⁹

Soy will know just what to say. Soy will make you think that you’re the only one. Soy will charm your pants off and then soy will never call again. You will run into soy on the street or at a party some time later and it will smirk at you in a way that makes you feel like dirt. ¹⁰

It gets worse.

Soy peers into your windows at night. Soy makes you feel uncomfortable on public transit. Soy stands too close to you in the checkout lane. Soy loiters on playgrounds. Soy makes your normally confident dog whimper then run and hide in the closet. Whenever soy appears, a foreboding storm rolls in out of nowhere. Soy drives by slowly, staring at you with a menacing look that sends chills down your spine. ¹¹

Soy is watching you. Soy is not pleased. ¹²

Soy was engineered in an underground secret government laboratory with DNA from Darth Vader, Voldemort and Freddy Krueger and then one terrible night, soy overpowered the researchers and the evening watchman and got loose, running into the pitch-black night. ¹³

So please, if not for your own sake, if not for the sake of others, if not for the sake of everything decent and natural and good, please join us in this ultimate battle against the legume of death if only for the future of the planet. Once eradicated, we can celebrate over pureed organ meats, bone broth and unpasteurized milk. ¹⁴ Until that day, we must not rest! We must fight the green menace with all of our force.

Footnotes

1.     McKibble, Susan. “Soy, the Legume of Certain Painful Death” The Journal of Soya Conspiracies (August 2005)
2.     Keith, Frances. “Emerging Speculative Soy-Borne Diseases of the Dystopian Future,” The Daily Sun and Mail, 1 May 2008, sec. 2, p. 17.
3.     Kellis, Mark. Penises Into Petunias: the Tofuification of Masculinity. Self-published, 1999.
4.     O’Connor, Mary. “Population Under Threat,” The Journal of Soya Conspiracies (June 2003)
5.     Keith, Frances. “Children: Soy’s Most Innocent Casualty,” The Daily Sun and Mail, 17 June 2004, sec. 2, p. 9.
6.     Kellis, Mark. The Secret History of the World’s Most Violent Legume. Self-published, 2001.
7.     Ferdin, Josephine. “The Soybean Wars: Violence, Famine, Plagues, Disasters and the Plant that Caused Them All, Part One.” The Journal of Fringe Theories (September 2007)
8.     Ferdin, Josephine. “The Soybean Wars: Violence, Famine, Plagues, Disasters and the Plant that Caused Them All, Part Two.” The Journal of Fringe Theories (September 2008)
9.     Keith, Frances. “Soy, the World’s Worst Neighbor,” The Daily Sun and Mail, 15 October 2010, sec. 2, p. 11.
10. Fawkes, Lisa. “The Misogyny of Soy: From Swaggering Tofu to Sadistic Tempeh,” The Nourishing Traditions Feminist Journal (April 2009).
11. Rich, Carol. “The Coming Apocalypse: Soybeans as Lucifer.” The Weston A. Price Foundation Journal of Non-Secular Thought. (October 2010)
12. Ferdin, Josephine. “The Soybean Wars: Violence, Famine, Plagues, Disasters and the Plant that Caused Them All, Part Three.” The Journal of Fringe Theories (September 2009)
13. Polonis, Toby. “The True Story of Soy: From Experiment to Modern Day Horror Story.” The Journal of Fringe Theories (November 2003)
14. O’Fairon, Fiona. Long Live Liver! The Weston A. Price Foundation’s Party Food for Nourishing Traditions. The Weston A. Price Foundation Press, 2005.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2011-08-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

I wish I could say that I traveled more. I didn’t. I wish I could say that I used the time to become fluent in French or German, but that would be a lie. I didn't learn how to play chess, either.

I spent the summer trying to get a working computer. My old one gave one final, dyspeptic “pfft” the week before my son got out of school and the day before my son returned to school, I finally had a working one. I am guessing that this was serendipity in disguise, designed to keep me present, enjoying time with my boy. Aside from occasionally having a breakdown in the middle of the night due to my limited technology and waking my husband up with my anxiety-fueled, three-in-the-morning fear-fulminations, I did enjoy my son. And my summer.

Also, I saw friends.

I pickled and fermented. In June, I read a book on sauerkraut for the fun of it. Right now I’m reading Plimpton’s oral history of Truman Capote, which seems like the perfect coda.

I ate at Native Foods.

I facilitated play-dates. I also pondered whether the term “play-date” is goofy for a nine-year-old and concluded that, yes, it is.

My son had a birthday and we stormed the Field Museum with our giant cake that was supposed to be a shaped and acting as a sarcophagus but I ultimately had to concede that I lacked the essential pastry skills-patience combination to tackle. It was just a layer cake with candy “jewels” inside. You know, like a sarcophagus’s treasures. Whatever. It was still cake.

We adopted a dog, the sweetest dog ever. Ever! His name is Romeo and he is a Precious Moments poodle mix come to life with a kaboom of sassy curls on top of his head. The dog-shaped hole in my heart has been filled. When I think of him, little cartoon hearts rise and pop like bubbles around me. [I'm thinking about him now. Little cartoon hearts...]

I wrote articles on my husband’s laptop while my son was breathing down my neck to fight aliens or whatever it is he does on Lego.com and I sent those articles off. In a few months, I project that I will be pleasantly surprised when the articles arrive in my mailbox.

Of course my brain buzzed and swarmed with vegan revolutions, feminist uprisings, agitating notions. Now that I have a working computer, I am eager to return to my regular programming.

Oh, and I have big plans. Really big ones that also kind of make my stomach queasy in the best possible way.

I’m glad to be back.

Unplanned vacation...

2011-06-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

Hey, friends -

I will be taking a little hiatus from vegan feminist agitatin' until we can get a new (used) computer after our old one died a slow, torturous death by a thousand cuts. I can write on my man's shmancy MacBook Pro but that's only in the evenings and when I can keep my son's mitts off it. In any case, I'm hopeful that the situation will be remedied soon, and then I'll be back with a vengeance!

xo -

Marla

An Open Letter to Summer

2011-05-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

Hi, Everyone!

How are you? Summer’s practically here, isn’t it? I love this time of year. I love the berries and days at the beach and camp outs and fireflies and general kumbaya-like vibe of the whole thing. In Chicago, summer means that you really survived something – especially this year when I was wearing my winter coat until the last week of May – so we savor the heck out of it. Summer makes me remember that last day of school, that last bell of the season, and a whole expanse of lovely days ahead of me.

We’re all in this summer thing together. That being said, here are a few things that might make the warm months ahead go a little more enjoyable for all parties.

To my son:

    1. When it’s hot out, please don’t lean on me. I love you more than I could ever express, but your silky (and SEARING) flesh against mine feels like a red-hot poker being pressed against me. Please don’t take offense if you touch my arm and I jump away like you just branded me with an iron. Let’s all just keep to our personal space bubbles, though, ‘kay?
    2. Stepping on a Lego is a plague for all seasons but hopping on one foot in pain when I’m already overheated is just not a lot of fun.
    3. “In or out? Am I paying to cool off the rest of the block?!” All those clichés that I swore I’d never say, well, I’m saying them. Shut. The. Door.

To whoever used the last ice cubes or drank the last iced tea:

    1. You wouldn’t think of leaving that empty, now, would you?

To my community:

    1. Must you drive with the bass turned up to eleven? It makes my head feel like it’s going to explode. If that happens, I’m totally aiming for your car.
    2. I get that most of you are not vegetarians. I totally understand that you enjoy barbecuing various animal parts. I just so don’t want to smell it, though, or walk through a ground-level ash cloud of it. While I’m at it, I also do not want to see discarded chicken leg bones on the ground as I make my way through life. It’s totally sad and gross. Could you kind of keep that stuff to yourself more?
    3. Ice cream trucks, don’t you think “Turkey in the Straw” (a.k.a. the “Do your ears hang low” song) is a little overdone? Plus when I was in camp, we changed the lyrics of that particular song from “ears” to “boobs” and so that’s always what is going through my head when I hear you. I’d rather not think of sweaty boobs right now, okay? Do you take requests? How about Für Elise? That’s pretty and it doesn’t make me think of sweaty boobs.
    4. To those who cannot leave their homes without a big puffy cloud of perfume all around your person, please know that this seriously makes my temples throb. In the summer, it’s like you’re surrounded by an ozone of magazine perfume samples. Can’t we just do a little spritz and call it a day?
    5. To the homeowners who aim your sprinklers so that they spray the sidewalk with water: all things told, is this the most considerate thing you could do? Should people have to walk on the street to avoid getting wet so that your grass can be Technicolor green? Somehow I think you are the same people who don’t shovel your sidewalks in the winter or do a half-assed job of it. This summer, I am going to take note of where you live and test this idea.
        a. If I find out it’s true, I’m totally going to give you a dirty look should we ever cross paths.
    6. To people who comment on my pale skin and tell me to get some sun: and muck up my meticulously maintained ghostly pallor? Millions of goth kids would kill for my Morticia-like epidermis, Besides, my skin will thank me for all my studious years of sun avoidance as I get older. Will yours?

To movie theater managers:

    1. Please mellow out with the air conditioning. It feels good for about 10 seconds on a really hot day but after that my teeth are chattering, I’ve got goose bumps and I’m shivering uncontrollably. Seriously, I beg of you. I am dying over here. I should not have to put “pack a blanket along” on my mental checklist every time I see a movie in the summer.

To the mosquitoes:

    1. I am non-violent but you thirsty little bloodsuckers are totally pushing it.

To businesses:
    1. I get so depressed when I see back-to-school specials next to the Fourth of July displays. Come on! Talk about a buzz-kill. It would be nifty if you could all have a pact to wait until August to roll out the spiral notebooks. That’s all I’m saying.
    2. Please see what I requested of movie theater managers two points up.

To my sunglasses:

    1. Why must you be in my way on rainy days and get lost as soon as it’s sunny? What is it about you?

To my family:

    1. Please remind me when I am ready to really, really lose my temper about something silly and minor to just drink a little ice water. Better yet, get it for me. A little slice of lemon or lime will let me know that you really care. I’m just saying.

Okay, I’m ready for summer. Let’s do it, people!

Love,

Marla

Urban Woman: From Dirt Bike Wheels to Vegan Heels

2011-05-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

To get this post, you'll have to be familiar with Ree Drummond, a.k.a., The Pioneer Woman. Oh, man - I mean, boy howdy! - is she ripe for satire. I cannot bring myself to link to her. Her website gets like 80 million visitors in the time it takes me to put on my shoes. My shoes are slip ons, too.

Basically, her Pioneer Woman empire is based on pure wish/fantasy fulfillment. Her story is so predictable as to be banal, something one would expect to find in the middle of the shush pile over at Harlequin Romance headquarters, yet somehow it is devoured by the masses. The story goes like this: The Pioneer Woman was a girl who grew up on a golf course fairway in an affluent suburb of Tulsa. She couldn't wait to leave this boring town so as soon as she could so she headed for LA to go to the university there and then to work. She loved the restaurants, the nightlife, the shops, the cafes, and, sweet Jesus, the sushi. How she loved the sushi!

The sushi is a symbol of her upwardly mobile, inwardly crumbling lifestyle. She had a laidback, drippy surfer for a boyfriend and they ate sushi together until she just couldn't take it anymore. She headed back for her parent's home in Oklahoma to sort out her feelings and plan for the future. She planned to go to law school in Chicago.

Little did Ree know, though, that an impossibly (and I mean impossibly) handsome, strong but sensitive, Adonis-meets-Gary Cooper-esque freaking cowboy would sweep her high heels out from under her, make her knees go continually wobbly and make her swoon like no one has swooned since at least 1953. The love of a simple cowboy coaxed the sushi-eating Ree into becoming the Pioneer Woman she is today, a rancher's wife who loves red meat and therefore real men with big, all American penises. (She refers to herself as a former vegetarian, though she refers to eating fish during her supposed vegetarian phase. Whatever.) She calls her husband, apparently without irony, Marlboro Man. Marlboro Man has since married Ree, taken her to his cattle ranch, impregnated her no fewer than four times and so forth. The Pioneer Woman spends her days homeschooling their children and taking a lot of photos of Marlboro Man's behind. There are layers and layers of loamy subtext here, dressed up in chaps and resting on a hammock in a mythical landscape. Naturally, my thoughts turned to satire.

Meet Urban Woman, the Pioneer Woman's counterpart. This is the first installment.

I was raised next door to a city. When I was growing up with a giant metropolis and all that came with it (crowds, sooty snow and honking cars) within easy access, I used to spend much of my time locked away in my room, daydreaming about living in the boondocks. I was a misfit, a suburban girl who couldn’t wait to ditch my black skirts and high heels for jeans or even overalls and sensible shoes. Instead of listening to bands with guys with spiky hair and eyeliner, I rebelled, turning to Hank Williams and Merle Haggard instead. My parents shook their heads at me in dismay, sighed every time I consulted the Farmer’s Almanac instead of just checking the weather forecast like a normal girl. Their efforts to raise an urban, edgy and sophisticated daughter seemed to be in vain: I was determined to leave the sky rises, shops and museums behind and head off to the uninterrupted, serene landscape I was certain was just beyond it. My above-it-all attitude was obvious to everyone.

At eighteen, I graduated from high school and my parents could no longer contain me. They warned me that there’d be no culture in the country, that I’d become adrift. They felt betrayed that I rejected their values. My mother wrung her hands over where she’d gone wrong; my father paced at night, worrying of what would become of me in the country. My urban friends patronized me and said that it was a phase, that I’d come running back when I found there were generally no great Thai restaurants along rural routes. Nothing anyone said had any effect. I packed my bags, kissed my parents goodbye and never expected to come back to the city except for holidays.

I was off chasing my dream: I had my plans together. I couldn’t wait to leave all the trappings of my urbanity behind: the mini-skirts, the dark nail polish, the progressive politics, the diversity. I would head for the tractors and cornfields. I was determined that there was a mobile home community somewhere for me where I could sip Mike’s Hard Lemonade, watch the butterflies flit around and make idle chitchat with the neighbors. I would find a simple job - maybe as a cashier at a local grocery store with no more than three aisles or putting together arrangements at the flower shop. I’d meet a townie every bit as sheltered and boring as the man of my dreams and we’d spend a couple of years together aimlessly floating on inner-tubes in the local river, shaking flags at Independence Day parades on folding chairs, holding hands outside our starter mobile home as the grasshoppers chirped. Then we’d get married in an adorable church and have a few adorable blond children. That would be my life. No one could stand in my way.

Four years later, I was well on my way with my plan. I found my idyllic small town with just the right Mayberry-esque qualities, including a bumbling deputy sheriff named Bo. I set my sites on him right away and he returned my interest. When he wasn’t accidentally locking himself out of his police vehicle or unintentionally discharging his gun at inopportune times (is there ever an opportune time?), he was a catch. A little dangerous at times, but still a catch. Bo was cute but in retrospect, something nagged at me that he wasn’t right for me. I ignored that inner-voice, though, because he was by far the hottest commodity in our town of 650. I was determined to live the dream and he was part of the dream. My parents hated him, of course. They met him twice and my mother just cried.

I loved my life there, though. Aside for the frequent drunken arguments at the trailer court and Def Leppard being blasted at three in the morning, things were peaceful. Once in a while the local water sanitation system would be faulty or the town’s supply of firecrackers would get stolen and ignited by pack of teen ne’er-do-wells, but generally my little town helped to keep me in a state of perpetual boredom.

Meanwhile, I worked as a cashier at the Rexall two towns over and continued reaching my goals with my plan of downward mobility. I slept no fewer than ten hours a night, my career trajectory was stagnant at best. I harbored no illusions of grandeur, no desire to leave my mark on the world. My life was developing exactly as I’d planned it out as a young girl. I was on pace to being married to the guy I thought would bring me years of predictability – he’d proposed to me one night but I don’t remember much about it – and we were looking at houses together. My life was rote and exhilaratingly stable. I was on the path I’d laid out for myself years before.

Then I got the call that changed my life.

My mother had to have surgery on her knee: it was nothing serious but she would be out-of-commission for a few weeks. Could I come back home and help around the split-level? As much as I hated the idea of going back near the city – and the fact that this would mean missing probably at least two fish boils – I felt I needed to go. I also looked forward to getting out of town to plot out my ten-year plan with Bo, the optimal spacing of our future children, the eventual cessation of my job. I was nervous to come back and interact with the people who felt I was a snob when I’d abandoned their values: how would they accept me and my new downward lifestyle, my preference for one stoplight towns over bustling cities? I was wary but I also knew that going back to the big city was what I needed to do, at least for a few weeks.

I have to admit, in retrospect, I got a pleasant little rush and butterflies in my stomach as I drove through the city and looked at the high rises and skyscrapers all lit up against the skyline. I tried to deny the excitement I felt as if that would make it disappear. “I’m a country girl now,” I reminded myself. “I am on the slow track.” I got goose bumps seeing the outdoor cafés, though, the posters for foreign films, the multiculturalism, the fashion that considered both form and function. I buried myself in helping out at my parent’s house. I understand now that I felt if I could just distract myself with caring for my mom, I could ignore the pangs that kept burbling up and return to the life I insisted that I wanted, the one I’d created for myself with Bo in the country, the one I had more-or-less ambled toward my whole life.

We talked, predictable like clock work, at 6:45 every evening before Bo’s programs came on and hung up by 6:58. Bo was insecure about me being near the city. “Don’t find yourself getting swept away by some city slicker in black,” he told me, half-jokingly. “I need you and your child-bearing hips back here where they belong.” I reassured him that I would be back as soon as things were in order. He would talk to me more about his day and I would use the time to take a little catnap. He told me about the traffic violations ha almost issued tickets for that day, the cars he pushed out of ditches. I tried to sound interested but I was distracted. I told myself that it was just the fast pace of urban living that was wearing me out, that once I was back home, everything would return to normal. The truth was, though, that the thought of returning made me feel a little ball of dread in the pit of my belly. I labeled this as nerves and I kept myself busy.

A week before I was to return, though, I got a call from a childhood friend of mine, Suzanne. I’d been putting her off all week but she was insistent that I go to a bar with her and some friends Friday night. “You need to get out,” she told me. “You deserve to have a little fun.” Finally, Suzanne wore down my resolve. As stubborn as I was, I could still see that she was right, that I could use a little lift. I agreed. I would go out.

Friday night rolled around and I tried to get out of it. I called Suzanne and told her that I was tired, that I didn’t feel well. It was as though I sensed that my life was about to change and I was making a last ditch effort to circumvent that. Suzanne wouldn’t hear of it, though. She threatened that she would come and pick me up herself if I tried to get out of it. “Okay, okay,” I laughed. I picked out my one remaining black mini-skirt, my black heels for special occasions (none had really come up since I’d moved), a cute little top and fire engine red lipstick. It was as though after all these years, it all intuitively came back to me. My parents could scarcely hide their delight, standing in the foyer as I went out for the night.

“I’ll be home early,” I said. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

Little did I know that two hours later, I would be head-over-heels in love with a vegan graphic artist-stud with long, flaxen hair, ripped up jeans and a bike-toned backside who lived in a Wicker Park loft. All my aspirations of a peaceful country life on the slow-track would be shattered in one fateful night.

Stay tuned for my next installment 0f Urban Woman.

This Artisan Life

2011-05-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

The other day, I saw a sign on North Avenue promoting the “hand-pattied” hamburgers a restaurant offered and something clicked in the back of my mind. Later that day, it really sunk in when I saw an ad referring to an ice cream shop with hand-scooped cones. As it could be both tricky and unhygienic to scoop ice cream with one’s feet or elbows, this is an important detail to bring to a potential customer’s attention. I also realized that restaurants and artisan food merchants alike are quick to point out all the handmade, personal touches they bring to their work. Why don’t I? I don’t give myself nearly enough credit for all the things I do in this life of mine. I create countless artisan, handcrafted moments every single day.

The above paragraph, for example, was self-punctuated as are all the sentences that follow. Every word I select will always be crafted with my own synapses and typed by my own hands in-house: they have not turned over to an impersonal third party in any part of their journey to the screen. As I write, I am also sipping hand-poured local water prepared with house-made ice cubes that were produced in small batches in a glass that I choose myself among many others for how its form fits my unique hand. On that topic, machine generated, commercial ice cubes lack that certain flair, don’t you think, one looking exactly like the next? I would just as soon put toxic sludge in my glass than I would outsource my ice cubes. My ice cubes are as individualized as snowflakes. I honor them and I grieve when they are selected to chill my beverages. I do not take these things lightly. As a side note, if you are to drink chilled beverages, I suggest that you have the courage to hand-prepare and select your own ice cubes. If you cannot do this, I suggest that you please ask your ice merchants the process that went into making the cubed frozen water they sell. It could be an eye-opening experience.

Making my own ice cubes is one small commitment I make in order to create a detail-driven, handmade life. Let’s look at a typical but utterly organic day in my life…

After arising, I make my own bed, and, as I do every day, I hand-smooth the sheets and I self-fold the top of the comforter back just so. When I get dressed, my clothes - previously folded and sorted by hand - are chosen based on the temperature and my activities of the day and only then are they placed on my body. By hand, of course. When I exercise, I self-lift all my own weights and am responsible for generating my own motion. The sweat, of course, issues from my own pores that have been exfoliated by hand. My dental care, face cleaning, shower and house-prepared blended drink, of course, are done with myself and replete with this same spirit of autonomy and exquisitely rigorous attention to detail.

It is exhausting to think about, I know, and I haven’t even tied my own shoelaces with my singular bow (secured in the middle with two loops and the ends hanging loose) and walked my naturally conceived, self-gestated, and then umbilically-, mammory-, hand- and then finally self-nourished son to school. While my partially-free-range son is at school - in the district of the house that we selected after personally touring many others by foot, of course – more thoughtfully handcrafted work needs to be undertaken.

My day continues with more self-constructed sentences and the occasional personally guided Internet expedition for research and entertainment purposes. Micro- and house-brewed homemade iced tea produced with local water is also replenished throughout the day and lunch is foraged from my own kitchen and self-tended garden, comprised usually of personally selected, hand-washed, -peeled and –prepared local organic produce. Then it is back to writing again, except when I need to personally compose messages to send to my correspondences. It is not easy but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When my son returns from school, I continue his education by reviewing his homework and home-schooling him until it is complete. Snacks are prepared and plated by hand, of course, and based on whatever items are available that day. Juice is locally purchased, home- and hand-poured.

Dinner. So much handcraftedness, all prepared in small batches, too exhausting to detail…

After dinner, the table is cleared off by hand and the dishes are hand-rinsed and -loaded into the dishwasher. The floor is then swept by hand and items that have been carried elsewhere are placed back into their designated areas. The cat’s litter box is hand-scooped. As we are a family that prioritizes the DIY philosophy, we do our own dental care, maintain our own skin and so forth in house. At bedtime, we turn back our own sheets, read to ourselves and/or to each other, and then cease sensory activity for the day and pursue a state of reduced consciousness. We do this all on our own. Although it is not easy, we wouldn’t have it any other way. It is the way of the artisan, after all.

How have you handcrafted your life today, friends?

The Universal Mother…

2011-05-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

Some mothers I have known...

There was the young mother who ran into the dressing rooms screaming “Ada! Ada!” when her toddler was missing at the department store. Five frantic minutes later, she was found playing with a doll in the toy section and her mother was on her knees, holding her daughter in a desperately grateful embrace. They seemed to melt together, the little girl smoothing her mother’s hair like she was the child as her mother sobbed against her.

Just as vividly, I remember the mother walking toward me on the sidewalk at a street festival with her little boy, revelers all around us. In one horrible and totally ordinary moment, the mother’s sudden shriek cut through the air: the hard candy her son was sucking on became lodged in his throat and this completely lively boy was a minute or two from choking to death. The crowd froze around them – What’s happening? What’s the matter? - and the woman thumped her son’s back. The candy ball shot out and the boy started wheezing. She picked him up and deeply exhaled, her eyes squeezed shut as she held her son to her, another desperately grateful mother.

Just last summer, I was talking to a friend at a pool when she abruptly flung her cell phone onto the tile and, with a huge splash, dove in, fully dressed. I didn't realize it at the time but she’d jumped in after her five-year-old, who had gone under water. He didn’t know how to swim. My friend surfaced with him seconds later, both gasping for air, her glasses floating a few feet away. She told me that she didn’t let go of him for the rest of the day.

For me, there was that gasping moment when my normally cautious son got caught up in trick-or-treating mayhem and suddenly darted into the street before I had a chance to stop him. Racing after him, I screamed as loud as I could with my arms up in the air as a driver slammed on her breaks within a foot of him. With the next breath I took, this one with my son in my arms, I felt like every emotion that motherhood activated inside me was ringing and pulsing: the deep relief, the naked gratitude, the profound vulnerability. Also, the understanding that I was moments away from the worst kind of horror imaginable to a mother.

From a child’s perspective, I distinctly remember that fear-in-the-pit-of-my- stomach feeling when I was separated from my mother as a three-year-old at the Museum of Science and Industry. I remember the disorientation, being lost in a dangerous sea of unfamiliar, hurrying legs going every which way, and feeling such utter relief when my mother’s calves and shoes appeared, I thought my heart would explode. Although there are always exceptions, mothers and their children reach for each other, seek comfort in one another, do not feel safe if one is unexpectedly missing. This is natural.

One does not need to be human to feel the deep-seated instinct to protect her babies, to seek the warmth of one’s mother. When animal advocates point out the obvious – that mothers and their babies suffer profoundly when they are separated, that harming one’s baby causes emotional trauma to the mother – we are accused of anthropomorphizing. We are portrayed as having centers as squishy as marshmallows, as having naive, sentimental, childish minds. In fact, it is a cold biological imperative, not just an emotional one, that drives a mother to want to nurture and protect her young: entire species would be wiped out if not for a mother’s instinct to defend her babies. I think, though, that it’s highly arrogant and self-serving to presume that humans alone have an emotional stake in their babies’ livelihoods.

Dairy cows, with a gestation of around nine months, have their calves taken from them shortly after birth, destined to become forcibly impregnated milk producers and cheap meat like their mothers if they are female, veal flesh if they are male. The dairy cows bellow and moan, as any mother would, calling for their lost babies. The mother cheetah my son and I saw driving predators from her vulnerable cubs in the “African Cats” movie had the same fierce devotion to her babies that any other mother would, putting her own safety on the line to protect them. Hens show a physical response when they sense that their chicks are in distress: their heart rates elevate, they cry out to them. It is natural for the hens to do this. They are not machines. To claim that emotions are the sole province of the human species is committing the very crime that animal advocates are accused of time and time again: it is sentimentalizing.

One also doesn’t need to be a mother to be deeply driven to protect another. Long before I ever had a baby, I felt the same kind of adrenaline surge when someone intentionally whipped a hard rubber ball at my dog as I would have if he had done that same thing years later to my son. I chased that guy down the beach, screaming at him, and he ran away as if his life depended on it. Maybe it did. I’m a non-violent person, but you don’t mess with the ones I love.

For Mother’s Day, I propose that we honor this natural drive within all of us to protect the ones we love, the ones who depend on our consideration, by not consuming the products of exploitation and cruelty. This common thread of wanting our babies to thrive is natural and noble, a key part of our essential being. Whether we are men or women, children or adults, human or hen, that universal mother is in all of us. Let’s celebrate without exploiting another innocent mother who had not only the autonomy of her body but also her babies stolen from her for our appetites. Let’s connect to that profound mothering spirit that links us together. She wants her babies to be well and protected from harm. I think we can understand.

Happy Mother's Day to everyone.

When You Wish Upon a Star...

2011-04-28T07:20:00.000-07:00

From: Ali Valentine
Date: January 17, 2011
To: Danielle Simmons
Subject: Gift for Drew Porter

Hello Ms. Simmons,

I wanted to get in touch with you because I see that your agency represents the very beautiful and inspiring actress, Drew Porter.

She was recently quoted on UsMagazine.com as saying that she thought that "fur [is] gross..." The organization I work with, People Against Torturing Animals, was founded in 1983 with one of the same heartfelt convictions and we would like to thank Ms. Porter for her courage as she speaks to a generation and has the power to influence so many lives.

As a small token of our appreciation, we would love to send Ms. Porter a gorgeous, cruelty-free winter coat by the leading French fashion designer, Chloé D’Arbanville, for those chilly nights in Los Angeles. Could you direct me as to where to send it?

Thanks so much,

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: January 17
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Gift for Drew Porter

Hi, Ali,

Thanks for your message. I am glad that you appreciated Drew Porter's statement. One thing Drew’s fans respond to is that she’s not afraid to speak her mind.

You could send the coat to [redacted].

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: January 17
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Re: Gift for Drew Porter

Hi Kate,

Thanks so much for the information on where to send the D’Arbanville Luxury coat. We hope Ms. Porter enjoys it! She will look beautiful in it. We will send a size zero: please don’t hesitate to let me know if a different size might be better.

If you think that this would be all right, I would love to send a video and informational materials along with the coat that explore the fur industry with some depth. I think that Ms. Porter will find it eye-opening and deepening of her convictions. As someone with so much influence, we would love the opportunity to help her become even more of a voice for abused and exploited animals.

Thank you,

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: January 17
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Gift for Drew Porter

Amy,

Does the coat happen to come in negative sizes? That may work better. Drew is quite petite. :)

Feel free to add the materials you mentioned.

Take care,

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: January 18
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: House Party?

Hi Kate,

Thanks for getting back to me. A representative from the D’Arbanville design house will contact your agency shortly for Ms. Porter’s exact measurements so a custom-made, cruelty-free coat that will fit her perfectly can be made. She’ll love it!

I just had a thought: there is a house party happening in Beverly Hills on January 27 organized by Ramona Oliver, wife of producer Michael Oliver, at their beautiful estate. Ramona is doing this on behalf of PATA; she is one of our most passionate supporters. Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will be served courtesy of LA hot-spot Quattro. This is a ticketed fundraiser for PATA but we would love to invite Ms. Porter there as our guest. We’ll also have other celebrity PATA supporters there as well – I can get you a list if you’re interested – and our President, Astrid Newhouse, will also be on hand to talk about some of our bold new initiatives.

Please let me know if Ms. Porter is available and I’ll add her name to the guest list! I know it’s short notice and I’m sure she has a very busy calendar, but I thought I’d try.

Thank you,

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: January 19
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: House Party?

Hi, Ali,

I spoke with Drew’s scheduler and unfortunately she’s not available for that date. Great news, though: we just got the word that Drew has been chosen as Maxim magazine’s Hottest Woman Alive for this year! Celebrating in the office…

Best,

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: January 19
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Re: House Party?

Hi Kate,

While I’m disappointed that Drew can’t make it to our fundraiser, I am really thrilled that she was chosen as Hottest Woman Alive by Maxim! I’m not surprised, though. People with compassionate hearts are always the hottest, don’t you think? PATA had seven sexy celebrity spokeswomen and supporters in last year’s Hot 100 list (eight if you count the model used in that provocative embrace with tennis star Svetlana Petroski) and if the rumors are correct, we are expecting at least that many this year!

This is awesome for the animals!

I would also love to talk to you when you get the chance of mutually beneficial ways Drew can lend her voice and celebrity even more than she already does to helping build a more compassionate world. We have lots of creative ideas.

Enjoy the sunshine!

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Ali Valentine
Date: February 20
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Hello again!

Hi Kate,

I just wanted to tell you how amazing it was to see Drew Porter’s interview in this month’s Maxim. She’s so articulate in addition to being beautiful! I also did not know that she loves surfing and dogs. That’s so great! I feel like we would be friends if we met.

The reason I am getting in touch – other than to say hello – is to see if we could work with Drew on a PATA campaign to educate people about the fur industry. Our famous anti-fur campaign, running since 1990, is called I’m Sexy in My Own Skin (for short, it’s referred to as Sexy Skin), meaning we don’t need to wear someone else’s skin, fur in this case, in order to be sexy.

I sense that this is a subject Drew is or could be passionate about given her quote on UsMagazine.com.

PATA is fortunate enough to get some of the world’s most highly acclaimed fashion and art photographers who donate their time and talents to the cause. The portrait would be professional, sensual but tasteful. In keeping with the art direction that that PATA has become famous for, the photograph would hint at nudity but no actual “controversial” naked parts would be exposed. With her youthful, independent, funky vibe, Drew would be a perfect candidate and the latest in a proud tradition of PATA models. With the campaign, we will create a provocative and memorable buzz around an important issue that will then help people make connections between nudity and cruelty to animals. Drew would be amazing!!

Could I send you an attachment with some of our prior Sexy Skin ads?

Thank you, Kate!

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: February 20
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Hello again!

Aly,

I ran your idea by Drew and she’s interested. Time is of the essence, though, because she leaves to start filming on location in Stockholm very soon and she’s doing a two-day Bikram Yoga intensive starting Saturday, so really the only time we have is Friday morning and we’d have to shoot in LA. Call me at [redacted].

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: February 22
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Tomorrow and Riders

Hi, Kate –

Everything is set up at Magenta Studios for tomorrow morning at 9:30. Thank you for sending Drew’s rider: I wasn’t aware that her make-up and stylist teams would also have riders. Thanks for sending those as well.

As you know, we are a non-profit and we have to make every dollar stretch. Looking over the lists, are there any places we could make some little cuts? For example, is it necessary that we have a glass neti pot, organic tea tree oil, clothing steamer (especially as this is a photograph taken without clothing), on-site astrologer and numerologist, a personal trainer, licensed-and-insured dog walker, a dog chiropractor(?) and orchids on the set? The rest of the list should be fine though we’re having some trouble finding Peruvian mangoes in LA.

Please understand that as we are very grateful and excited to be working with Drew and her team on this important campaign but we are on a tight budget and just weeks away from our big annual pre-gala kick-off in NYC.

Thanks!

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: February 22
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Tomorrow and Riders

Ali –

I’m rushing off to a meeting, but Drew’s assistant said you could send a regular ceramic neti pot in a pinch and probably do away with the garment steamer. Drew works with an astrologer who also does numerology so that’s just one person instead of two (and her intern but she's free) who has graciously offered to reduce her rate to $75 an hour for the cause. Everything else, I’m afraid, is non-negotiable, especially since this is requiring the very limited free time of Drew and her team.

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: February 22
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Re: Tomorrow and Riders

Hi Kate,

Thanks for getting back to me. I know you’re busy but I just noticed on the rider that you also need a “Champion or other centrifugal force juicer” along with everything else. The photo shoot is going to only take a few hours, hair and make-up included. Couldn’t we have an assistant go and do a juice run? I’m trying to make tomorrow comfortable and enjoyable for everyone but certain items on the list are quite difficult to procure and/or costly.

I don’t mean to be a pain! Everyone is super-excited for tomorrow.

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: February 22
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Tomorrow and Riders

Yes, it’s necessary to have our own juicer or it wouldn't have been on the list: Drew and her team are very specific about what they put into their bodies. Sigh. I really can’t spend any more time on this, Ali. These are the conditions and if you have any experience working with VIPs at all, these courtesies are not excessive.

Have a good afternoon.

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: February 26
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Shoot!

Hi Kate,

It sounds like everything went really well at the shoot and Valentino will have comps ready to show us tomorrow. I hope Drew is happy with how things went.

I did get word that there was some confusion with some of the people who showed up yesterday but weren’t needed. Unfortunately, we still need to pay them for their time. Any insight on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: February 26
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Shoot!

Hi, Ali,

Thanks for your message. My understanding is that Drew had a good experience with the photo shoot, too. She is excited to see the comps, so please send them this way when you’re able.

About the confusion, Drew decided to send her dog Layla to her playgroup rather than pack her along for the shoot, so we ended up not needing the dog walker or chiropractor. Sorry but it was a last minute decision.

By the way, I think you’ll be happy to know that the experience working with PATA, along with the materials you sent, inspired Drew to go vegan! Do you have any healthy recipes you could send her personal chef?

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: February 26
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Wow!

Hi Kate!

Oh my God, that’s amazing news! Everyone in the office is jumping up and down! Squueeeee! Drew is such an inspiration to her generation: this could really have a great impact on so many lives!

I just got off the phone with Ramona Oliver and she has generously offered to send her personal vegan chef to Drew’s home to give her chef some tips and ideas. We’re also putting together a care package of cookbooks, PATA Gear and videos to overnight to her. Should we send it to the same address as the coat?

Also, could we get two quotes from Drew for the news release we’d like to send out ASAP? Ideally, one would address her participation in the Sexy Skin campaign and it would be great if the other one discussed her decision to go vegan.

Wheeeeee!

Ali Valentine
Senior ViP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: February 26
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Wow!

Hi, Alli,

Drew would love to borrow Ramona’s chef for in-home training session. Have her set up an appointment at Drew’s chef at [redacted]. Just to let you know, Drew is big on low-fat, high raw, low-carb, high alkaline foods so she’s hoping that Ramona’s chef has some training in this.

Yes, please send the package to the earlier address.

Drew’s publicist, Marci, will send you quotes to use tonight for the news release. Please send me the press release before it goes out so I can get approval on it.

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: February 27
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Press release

Hi Kate!

I hope you are well. I sent the news release in the attachment. We’d like to send this out first thing tomorrow morning, so I’d appreciate it if you could get back to me as soon as you get the chance.

PATA Supporter Drew Porter is Sexy (and Now Vegan!) in Her Own Skin

For Immediate Release
February 28, 2011

Contact:
Francesca Alexander

Los Angeles – When PATA’s internationally recognized campaign, “I’m Sexy in My Own Skin,” is unveiled tomorrow, admirers will enjoy a new face (and other lovely assorted parts) courtesy of the stunning Drew Porter, animal lover and the actress of her generation. Shot by edgy Italian fashion photographer Valentino Buonarroti in LA’s cutting edge Magenta Studios, Ms. Porter proves to the world that sex appeal is more than skin deep and that there’s nothing seductive about the fur trade.

“I am proud to be a part of PATA’s ‘I’m Sexy in My Own Skin’ campaign and I hope that I can use my celebrity to build awareness of the cruelty of the fur industry,” says darling Drew.

Animals used in the fur industry suffer enormously. On so-called “fur ranches,” they are kept in filthy, small wire cages, one stacked on top of the next, where excrement and urine falls on the tortured animals below. To preserve their pelts, the foxes, rabbits, mink and other fur-bearing animals suffer excruciating pain as they are killed by whatever crude method is easiest: most often, their necks broken, they are poisoned or anally electrocuted.

Like Drew, many of the world’s most sexy and stylish trendsetters are tossing fur coats into the reject pile.

“They are a relic of the past,” says trailblazing French fashion designer, Chloé D’Arbanville. “Fur is beautiful when it’s on the animals but hideous when turned into ‘fashion.’ Fur coats are the direct product of torture and no compassionista would be caught dead in one.”

Working on the campaign caused Drew to open her heart to the plight of all animals and as a result, she tells PATA in an exclusive interview that she is now a dedicated vegan!

“After learning about the fur industry, I have decided to go vegan to try to bring more compassion into the world,“ says the gorgeous movie star. “Every time I eat a vegan meal, I am saving lives, which is amazing! I feel great and I’ve never looked better.”

For more information, please visit SexySkin.org.

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: February 27
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Press Release

Hi, Ally,

Looks good.

We’d like you to use another adjective for “darling” in her first quote because she is skewing lately toward a slightly older fan-base than this suggests and sounds too cutesy. Maybe “daring” instead to go with her increasingly edgy career choices?

Also, we'd like you to add the words “Academy Award-nominated” after “gorgeous,” in the last quote. Thanks.

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: March 1
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Entertainment Tonight!

Hi, Ally,

You’ve probably heard by now that Drew is going to be interviewed on ET for her part in the Sexy Skin campaign. It’s set to air tomorrow night, so set your DVR!

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: March 1
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Re: Entertainment Tonight!

Hi Kate,

I just heard! Astrid was wondering if there was any way she could wear the hot pink PATA tank we overnighted her on the eighth? I know I read that’s her favorite color, she’ll look amazing in it and it’ll help raise awareness of our work.

Also, we would love to offer some “talking points” assistance for the interview to help Drew stay on message. Our VIP Coach, Amanda, is amazing and available in a heartbeat!

Thank you!

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: March 1
To: Ali Valentine
Subject: Re: Entertainment Tonight!

Sorry, Ally, Drew’s stylist already has a wardrobe picked out.

Drew is quite skilled with interviews. No need for coaching. She will be sure to put in the good word for PATA’s work.

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: March 3
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Damage control…

Hi Kate,

We just had an emergency meeting based on Drew’s ET interview last night and the conclusion is that we’re going to need to initiate an immediate plan of action with your team in terms of damage control.

First of all, it was disappointing to see that Drew and her team thought it was appropriate to wear a suede fringe jacket at an interview about her work on behalf of protecting animals’ lives. It’s understandable that the reporter was confused by that clothing choice given the subject, and Drew probably didn’t help too much by saying, “At least it’s not fur. Remember, I said that fur is gross, not suede.” I’m not sure that was too helpful. I wish we could go back in time and have her re-shoot the interview in her PATA tank that we sent you last week, which would have been perfect.

More damaging, though, was her repeatedly claiming that vegans can still eat fish and “occasionally a little chicken.” We’ve been flooded with angry and confused calls and messages ever since the interview aired, especially since we just sent out our newsletter with her on the cover as one of our Big-Hearted Beauty Brigade. Does Drew not realize that fish and “a little chicken” are not vegetarian foods, let alone vegan foods? I mean no disrespect, but how does that even make sense? Did she not see the videos I sent? Was she not given talking points by her team ahead of time? This was why we wanted to have our VIP Coach work with Drew. We are very disappointed because this could have been easily avoided.

Now we have a couple of contradictory messages to the public and this takes away from PATA’s important work of saving the animals. We are known for doing edgy, controversial, in-your-face messaging, but this wasn’t the sort of thing we were hoping for when we approached Drew with the goal of working together.

We discussed the possibility of Drew doing a follow-up interview with ET clarifying her new understanding of and commitment to vegetarianism. Could you pursue that from your end? We would also like Drew to do a follow-up “oops, I goofed!” campaign for us that we have on hand for our celebrity friends doing damage control called, “It’s Time for the Naked Truth.” It’s a kind of mea culpa and it will help restore Drew’s credibility as a person of depth. Given the fickle nature of the news cycle, it would need to be a very quick response.

Please call me at [redacted] so we can coordinate a plan of action. Every time I call you, I go into voicemail and we do need to move forward.

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

From: Kate Flaherty
Date: March 3
To: Ali Valentine
Cc: Danielle Simmons
Subject: Re: Damage control…

Hi, Ali,

We’re sorry that you PATA are disappointed. Drew was just being herself, as she always is. Despite your disappointment, we have heard that Drew has gotten tons of words of support and encouragement on her fan sites, Twitter and Facebook page.

In terms of the suede jacket, Drew signed on to do an anti-fur campaign, nothing against suede or leather. She would never have signed on if she thought that all animal fabrics would be considered “inappropriate” for her to wear because she does not want to limit herself or her creative self-expression. She is known for her fashion-forward, eclectic, boho style. For example, you probably did not have noticed but while her jacket was suede and vintage-influenced, her shoes were modern bamboo. Her feet, therefore, were green and cruelty-free but the vegans are not giving her credit for this.

We admit that she might have been rash with declaring her veganism without studying it more, but Drew is known for her passion and spontaneity. These are qualities that help her to resonate with her fans. She is real. She may not have considered all the complexities of the vegan or vegetarian diet, but her heart was in the right place.

Regardless, she sent out this Tweet last night on her own accord. Maybe you saw it? “Sorry, fish and chicken are not vegetables. D’oh! #ETscrewup.”

We feel that this is a sufficient acknowledgement and apology.

Given everything, while she appreciated the chance to lend her voice to PATA’s anti-fur campaign, Drew has decided she is not going to continue working with your organization. This, of course, means that she is not going to do a “Naked Truth” campaign, either, especially given all the time she has already dedicated to PATA. Even if she were so inclined, she is doing a cleanse this week before leaving for Stockholm and that requires many hours connected to a colonic irrigation machine.

There are many ways to make a difference and to live compassionately. Drew considers animal fabrics (except for fur), fish and the occasional chicken to be outside her personal sphere of concern. I think we can agree that at this point, Drew and PATA are going in different directions.

We wish you the best in your future endeavors.

Kate Flaherty
Assistant to Danielle Simmons
The Simmons Management Group

From: Ali Valentine
Date: March 19
To: Kate Flaherty
Subject: Hi, again!

Hi Kate,

How are you? I hope you are well! I’ve gotten in touch because noticed that your agency represents the gorgeous starlet Lacy Rousseau. I loved her in “A Cat’s Claws.” That was my all-time favorite movie last year.

I noticed that she was shown on TMZ yesterday leaving an animal shelter with her newly adopted puppy. At PATA, we are so grateful that she’s helping to spread the message of adopting from shelters rather than buying animals from pet stores or breeders and we would love to send her (and her new furry baby) a care package as a small token of our appreciation.

Companion animal overpopulation kills millions of innocent dogs and cat every year and encouraging people to adopt rather than buy was one of PATA’s founding principles. Someone as influential and charismatic as Ms. Rousseau could certainly make a positive difference in so many lives.

Could you please direct me as to where to send our thank you gifts?

All the best,

Ali Valentine
Senior VIP Liaison
PATA

The VegNews Scandal

2011-04-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a tough time to be an herbivore. If it's not celebrities renouncing their veganism due to predictably vague, pregnancy-induced ailments (such not having baked goods immediately available at their beck and call and, please, like she doesn't) and all the typical irritations we face while swimming against the omnivorous current, we now have this Big, Ugly Scandal that has ripped a flimsy bandage off a significant wound that had obviously been festering for some time. Of course I am referring to the fleshy, cheesy stock photos passed off as vegan recipe examples in our once-pristine publication, VegNews. For the sake of cutting to the chase, I will refer people to the original QuarryGirl exposé.

Italicized here is my Facebook note regarding the scandal, touched up a little because I can never leave anything alone.

As many of you know, I write on a freelance basis for VegNews. I have known Joe Connelly and Colleen Holland since they first published VegNews as a newspaper. Yes, it started out as a smudgy little newspaper. I will state from the beginning that I am not neutral: I like Joe and Colleen, I support their mission, and I have had nothing but great experiences writing for them. Not everyone loves the celebrity focus of the magazine, not everyone loves the editorial direction, but how can one publication be all things to all people?

I was shocked when I read that their photos came from stock photography of meat and animal products. I was disappointed. But I got over it. I wholeheartedly support honest debate and criticism. Given the circumstances of my background, I am not much for keeping up the appearance of unity at the expense of honesty. I have been an outspoken critic of PeTA's misogynist, mean-spirited tactics and I will continue to speak out. I am not encouraging people to just shut up and smile and I never would. It goes against my personal ethic and how I try to live my life. I strive for honesty.

It's the level of vitriol, the degree of viciousness, the total breakdown of civility and just plain goodwill I have observed in the aftermath of QuarryGirl's exposé that has been shocking to me. Given the rancor, one would think VegNews staff were shooting eagles, poisoning cows, kicking puppies and force-feeding Big Macs to bunnies while cackling with evil delight. Oh! And they're raking in the big bucks while deluding us (in between little kick-the-puppy breaks). People are up in arms, they're canceling subscriptions, they're furious.

How I see it is really quite simple. They screwed up. They need to take ownership of that. They need to apologize and correct their mistakes. We need to move on.

How does canceling subscriptions to a vegan publication when major, long established magazines are folding left and right make any sense? So we can get a subscription to the Vegetarian Journal and endlessly complain about the the bad photography, the boring articles? (I love the Vegetarian Journal, but you know that people would be complaining about it.) Or should we buy Vegetarian Times so we can be offended by the non-vegan recipes and insipidness? What good would causing financial harm to a vegan magazine do in the world, the world we claim we want to consume fewer animal products?

So VegNews doesn't work for you. It's not alternative enough, it's too rah-rah-rah, the recipes are junky, it's not substantive enough. Okay, here is a solution: create your own magazine. You don't like to write? Do what you do really well. Have it become a success. Have it become solvent. Have it look beautiful. Have it be professional. Have it always reflect your highest goals. Have it be something your next door neighbor or your sixteen-year-old cousin would both love. Or create an amazingly unique and artistic expression of your deepest convictions that no one understands except for a few people but they think it's incredible.

Go out and do that.

Stick your neck out and create something to help make the world a better place. Be prepared for people to really dislike what you're doing, though, the very people you consider your community and for them to tell you about it. As you become more successful, be prepared for people to imply that you're greedy, you're inauthentic, you're not edgy enough, you've lost your heart, you're a hack. I dare you to create knowing that this will happen. I dare myself. I would love to see someone else create a publication with the distribution and readership they have and run it with an unapologetically vegan focus for eleven years. I am not even being sarcastic: the more publications we have to reflect the diversity of our community, the better. It is easy to point fingers, vilify and condemn: it is a hell of a lot harder to take the initiative and create something.

VegNews screwed up. They shouldn't have done what they did and they deserve to be called on it. They need to sincerely apologize and fix it. This slash-and-burn, take-no-prisoners, ad hominem attacking is totally repellent, though. It is also simplistic, unkind and unfair. Having a publication owned by hard-working vegans be dragged through the mud by the very community they helped to create makes me heartsick.

People make mistakes. People screw up. Could we stop the mob mentality and call off the pile-on? Could we encourage civil discourse instead? Could we work toward creative solutions?

Big picture, people. Big picture.

In the days between QuarryGirl's Big Reveal and as I am writing this right now, I have seen all manner of opinions on the VegNews scandal. I know that people are canceling subscriptions and calling companies that advertise in the magazine and asking them to stop, and I have also seen people come to their defense. I have seen a firestorm of rage that seems way out of proportion and I have seen a condescending attitude toward those who express genuine feelings of betrayal. As in keeping with both vegan culture and online communication, sharp lines have been drawn: you're either an ivory tower extremist or you are a wussy apologist. Nobody wants to be either - we want to be seen for who we are, with all of our honest self-expression and complexities - and it is an infuriating thing when we are reassigned a cardboard version of ourselves and told, "This is you." This is the nature, though, of the world of anonymous instant communication we live in: as soon as a thought enters your mind, you can type it out and hit the return key. No need for a cooling off period if what you really want is to blame and rage. Instant gratification.

It's no secret that we live in a world that is very inclined toward spewing inflammatory, take-no-prisoners accusations against one another. From sputtering politicians to cable news talking heads, screamed invective is meant to inflict damage as though that were the most natural thing for us, as though engaging in civil (but still passionate) discourse were a sign of our obvious weakness. We live in an era of broad stroke character assassinations with a "you're either with me or against me" mentality. It seems as if we have lost our ability to voice dissent without resorting to divisions and viciousness. This ability to speak, listen and debate without acting on the urge to cut one another apart is quickly becoming something like a vestigial limb: we once had it but it became useless to us and disappeared over time.

I understand and totally accept that people are upset about the situation. I am, too. Why the need to inflict more harm, though, instead of focusing on correcting the problems? Is this a transference thing? Have vegans been so hurt by society at large that we are acting out the emotional drama of abuse among ourselves, a form of horizontal aggression? What is behind the mob mentality, the scent of blood bringing out the single-minded shark in so many otherwise sensitive people? Why are we so damn angry with one another and what is it about the VegNews scandal that opened this Pandora's box of deep-seated hostility?

I can understand people feeling angry and betrayed by the publication, an oasis in a culture with values so removed from our own. Their use of stock photos made readers feel betrayed, and, frankly even more vulnerable to being treated like the punch line to every smug joke by society at large. People have worked hard to raise the profile of vegan cuisine and this could easily be used by those who already dismiss us as an admission that our food is, well, beige and icky. Of course we know it's not: the most vivid, diverse palette of colors, the most interesting shapes and textures are found in plant foods. The fear, though, is that those who have already written us off have now been given even ample ammunition by our own top publication. We are so exhausted from being mocked and derided, so on edge from feeling battered, so raw from having this way of living - something we adopted because of heartfelt convictions - treated like nothing more than a joke. We don't need this. We also don't like to be deceived by the businesses we support, that should go without saying. We don't want to look at what we think are seitan ribs only to be told, "Oops. Yeah, actually the bones have been airbrushed out." When we have worked as hard as we have to reach out to others with our food - the best outreach tool we often have - we don't need the implication that our food is lesser-than coming from our leading publication. This has almost certainly set us back, giving us more obvious and hidden barriers as we do our advocacy work.

I get that.

A second part of the hostility toward VegNews that the QuarryGirl exposé unleashed seems to be a rising tide of resentment against their editorial direction. Too many puff pieces, too much of a celebrity focus, too cheerleader-y! To those complaints, I am less sympathetic. VegNews has pulled off something really quite amazing if you think about it: they are a niche magazine that represents one percent of the population and they not only share shelf space in bookstores and grocery stores with Vogue, Bon Appetit and Rolling Stone, the magazine looks like it is perfectly at home there. This is an amazing accomplishment. I think sometimes we get an inflated sense of how many vegans there are because we have such a rich and dynamic (and outspoken) culture, but we are tiny. VegNews would never have a broad appeal for itself and our strange little subculture without more of a mainstream focus. Don't we want people to meet us half way? Don't we want to have a well-produced magazine that looks beautiful? VegNews has managed to make veganism accessible, attractive and SANE to those who might have thought otherwise. If we want veganism to remain an insular, exclusive club, that is one thing. If we want veganism to appeal to a broad base of people so they might consider the lifestyle to be within reach, that is something entirely different. That is what I want. I think that is what VegNews wants. I understand that direction is not appealing to everyone but what I don't understand is the intolerance, the unwillingness to see the vital role VegNews has played in expanding the vegan market and community, and this urge to throw the baby out with the bath water.

VegNews cannot be all things to all people: no one and no publication can be. We need our vegan-fueled literary magazines, our artisan "foodie" magazines, our culture magazines, our crafting magazines, and, yes, our cheerleader magazines. They are part of the landscape that we need as we build in-roads. VegNews is successful at what they set out to do, which is to make veganism appealing and demystified. It seems to me that our community is quite adept at shooting ourselves and one another in the feet. Why would are we so hell-bent on annihilation from within? Being dismayed about VegNews and their food photography standards is one thing and it needs to be corrected. The hatefulness, the deep-seated anger directed at VegNews for being what they have always been and have never pretended not to be, though, is something else. I think we need to be honest with ourselves as to whether we want veganism to move beyond a little exclusive club or we want it to be something that expands its reach. I have no doubt what I want.

We have a creative and talented population of self-starters within the vegan movement. If you don’t like what you see, if you haven’t seen anything that reflects your personal approach or appeals to your aesthetic, then go out and create what you want to see. Legitimate criticism and holding one another accountable is productive, valuable and important. Finger-pointing and self-righteous rage are not. Honestly, this is not about unity: I don't care what the neighbors might think. It's about our need to take responsibility for our role in creating the world we want to see and stop blaming others if they are not who we want them to be.

Vegan Bake Sale Bliss

2011-04-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, we had our vegan bake sale to raise money for relief efforts in Japan. We raised $1,526 in five concentrated hours of pushing pretty cupcakes and frosted cookies, muffins and assorted bars. It should come as no surprise that they pretty much sold themselves. When people entered our paradisiacal pop-up bakeshop, many needed a moment to take it all in, eyes jumping from trays and platters to baskets and cupcake trees piled high with colorful, cheerful treats. Many people looked as if they’d just entered a portal to a sort of magical carb-y wonderland. Understandably, a dazed, dreamy “Wow,” was all most could muster given everything.

There’s always something about the afterglow of a vegan bake sale that sustains me: I sometimes wonder how long I could live off the happy vibes of a vigorous bake sale. A couple of days, maybe even a week? The idea of people coming together, throwing their limited time and sincere efforts behind a grassroots, self-funded project to help others just feels so right and outright corrective when we’ve been so beaten down and destroyed about the state of the world. Of course vegan bake sales alone will not cure the world’s injustices or make suffering disappear. No one would claim that. It is something, though, and it’s more significant than it may seem on the surface. The all-or-nothing, binary brain tells us that what we do is a drop in the bucket and I wonder sometimes if we naturally default to this mentality because we’re already so disempowered by the state of things. The fact is that while we may not be superheroes or possess magic wands, we can still pick up our bowls, preheat our ovens, pour and whisk and roll for an hour or two and contribute toward a common goal: raising more money in the collective than we would be able to give as individuals. We can do this.

On a deeper level, efforts like a vegan bake sale are emboldening because they put us in the driver’s seat for creating something powerfully positive and humanitarian out of virtually nothing. It’s that great combination of self-reliance and a community coming together, of creativity, kinship, generosity and altruism all whirled up together that make the vegan bake sale spirit so infectious and addictive.

Mostly what I bask in, though, is just the uncomplicated affection I have for my community. This is the stuff that sustains me. On our way to the bake sale, the trunk packed (cookies, muffins, cupcakes, a cash box, bags, tongs, spatulas, and my big purse stuffed with lipstick, to-do lists, ingredient lists and my water bottle), I was so hyper to just be there already I had to concentrate on my deep breathing. Almost every weekday, I spend most of my time alone, really settling into a cushion of silence so I can concentrate on my writing projects. When the phone rings, it always gives me an unpleasant little jolt. When I have to actually answer it, I always roll my eyes in defiance first. During the monthly natural disaster test alarm with the eerie sirens, I tap my foot the whole minute, waiting for the disruption to end. I gulp down silence like water most days.

What this means is that over time, I can work myself up to a state of conversation near-deprivation. Yes, of course I have my family, but how many times can they listen to me rave about my latest obsessions and rant about my litany of complaints before I feel the need to work out my material before a fresh audience? Being a writer is a solitary, sometimes hermit-like life that I adore, but it does mean that the once or twice a month when I’m around my friends, they are in danger of having an avalanche of words and ideas bury them as well as witness a stream-of-consciousness-that-is-more-like-an-ocean pouring out of me. Being temperamentally right in the middle between introvert and extrovert, this occasional deluge is how I find a balance between my halves. This need to share is even more pronounced when I’m with my vegan friends.

For the most part, we get one another. There’s often a natural relaxing of our defenses when vegans are together: you hear this expressed whenever groups of us come together, with a sigh of relief, “I can just be myself.” We can talk about the new shoes we found, the shelter we volunteer at, vent about the upcoming meal out with the extended family (to be served “family style,” words that strike lightning bolts of fear and dread in the heart of any herbivore), the co-workers who make fun of us with the same predictable, stupid jokes every time. At the bake sale, for five hours we re-stocked the overflow of treats and talked about whatever flew into our heads: peanut and wheat allergies (they suck!), bullies (they also suck), whether tofu is kosher for a vegan Passover Seder (not if you’re Ashkenazi but it is if you’re Sephardic, so get with it), if gluten-free, vegan matzo balls were possible (perhaps, but we wouldn’t want to try them), raising vegan children (fabulous!). Being a minority of a minority in this culture of convenience and preference trumping ethics, those of us who have tuned into this lifestyle are treated like prissy pariahs who have crashed the bacchanal. It is so nice to be in an environment where we don’t need to explain ourselves, where our beliefs are not only appreciated and understood but shared. Everyone needs a place they are accepted. Among vegans, for the most part, I feel that I can let down my guard: I am among my people.

The thing that really gives me chills, though, is to remind myself that there are these dynamic, electric vegan communities virtually everywhere, in small towns and cities and everywhere you can imagine. I imagine them like satellites across the globe. We had just one little bake sale among many. Across the world, at vegan bake sales, trips to animal sanctuaries and fundraisers for advocacy non-profits, you will find cookbook authors, teachers, activists, artists, master gardeners, scientists, animal rehabilitators, lawyers, year-round bicyclists and social workers: people who are changing the world in large and small ways every day. We’re plugged into this amazing power source of renewable energy: the desire to bring more good into the world. I may be prejudiced, but I think that the sharing of this common denominator is what brings out the best of the best.

So, yes, on the surface it was just a bake sale. Like almost everything worthwhile, though, if you scratch the surface, you’ll find a whole lot more there.

Hounded by Kate Bush: A Tribute...

2011-03-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

I first learned about Kate Bush as a freshman in college. I learned about her in a way that is embarrassing to admit to but was characteristic of the time: a quiet boy in my dorm with pale blue eyes and an all-black wardrobe (also, in retrospect, a mullet) told me I looked like her. It was narcissism and a budding crush that inspired me to rush to the record store that same afternoon and pick up a cassette of hers, but I've been fully entranced by her mysterious, beguiling, smoky-eyed, utterly idiosyncratic charms for my own reasons ever since. That year, I even dressed up like Kate Bush and lip-synched to Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) for a celebrity look-alike charity fundraiser, unconcerned that no one in Kansas but the boy with the blue eyes and I seemed to know who she was. Everyone else was dressed up as Madonna, Cyndi Lauper or Simon LeBon, there was a veritable Claire's Boutique warehouse worth of leggings, rubber bracelets, eyeliner and mesh gloves in the room, and because no one knew who I was, I felt beyond cool, channeling Kate’s inimitably hot-and-chilly English persona as best I could.

The Kate Bush album I bought that afternoon was Hounds of Love. The image of her lying on a purple bed with a diaphanous mauve sheet across her chest, her dark hair splayed out around her, pouty lips and two sleek Weimeraners snuggling against her, one gazing up at her lovingly, was jarringly intimate and sensual. I stared at the woman lying there with her arms around the dogs in the photo - okay, yes, it seemed like she had a post-sex afterglow - and I thought, I could look like her to someone? I was eighteen, fresh from the suburbs, naive, prone to blurting out whatever I was thinking at inappropriate moments (still am), and apparently I also ran off to record stores the moment that I got attention from cute boys: I could look like this confident, sexy, fully-formed woman who stared back at the camera lens, daring the viewer to disapprove of her? As someone who had always sought approval, just the photo itself unraveled me a little. That I even reminded one person of the woman in the picture was enough to give me the boost I needed to think I was cut from a different cloth that those boring, cookie-cutter people who went to football games in at my dorm. As soon as I was exposed to Kate Bush, I stopped trying to fit in and I found my crowd: the artsy, weird, wonderful misfits came out of the woodwork to meet me and they have ever since.

I really believe that there were two identifiable, seismic inner-shifts I had as a young person that have determined my direction in life ever since: becoming a vegetarian at fifteen and discovering Kate Bush three years later. Vegetarianism gave me the tools to become the sort of person who was in harmony with her values: Kate Bush with her inspired, bold, thoroughly-engrossed-in-chasing-her-muse example was a different sort of catalyst, teaching me that women could be as seized by an artistic, aesthetic drive as any brilliant male artist.

And the music. The incredible, unearthly sounds that she made. That voice, screeching one moment and guttural the next, changing from a sweet little chirp to a grandiose, swooping vocal in one brief line, Kate's voice expressed a quality I’d not come into yet, which was a person who was fully at home with herself. In one moment, she could sound like she'd gulped helium, in the next, her voice was indescribably lush and gorgeous. Despite this, it didn't take long to integrate the two, these opposing voices that could exist in one person and be transformative together. Hearing her voice was a little like the first time I had kombucha. At the first sip, I recoiled at the weirdness of it, the distinctly vinegar flavor with the carbonation that made me feel lightheaded, and then I somehow couldn't resist taking another sip. By the third sip of kombucha, it was not only like it was always imprinted as part of my DNA code but I also was hooked. Kate Bush was kombucha to me.

The moment my Walkman's wheels spun the thin black tape and that translated into sound in my headphones, the dorm room around me dissolved and I was in her world. She has been quoted as saying that she wants her music to intrude, and this is an understatement. She was running up a hill, she was haunted by hounds, an angry man threatened her, made us sympathetic to her as a witch, she described with chillingly simple detail something - a person? - moving under ice, alive but desperate to get out, a ghost in her home, murderers. There was the complex instrumentation, too, the creepy rise and fall of the synthesizer in Mother Stands for Comfort (not to mention the disturbing lyrics belying the gentle, almost sleepy singing), the amazing fretless bass throughout that gave me goose bumps to the point where I needed to put on a sweater to listen. The first time I saw music as being sculptural, as something I could almost reach out, feel, and let wash over me was through Kate Bush's Hounds of Love album that freshman year in college, sitting on my industrial cot in my messy room. I’d loved albums and songs before but this was different. I was spellbound and I wore that cassette down within a few months. I hungrily reached for the rest of her albums, each one leaving me more punch drunk than the previous. Hounds of Love will always be my Kate Bush album, though, because it was my first.

I was a painting major with English major leanings. I had no idea as to how this would translate into the real world of paying bills and supporting myself, but her music assured me that anything was possible. Kate Bush had her first recording contract at sixteen and Hounds of Love, her fifth album, came out when she was 27. This was the first album she self-produced, making it in the studio she built so she could record it at the pace she wanted, exactly as she wanted. Kate Bush’s music resonated so powerfully with me also because of her story: that she was a fierce believer in her right to be heard, to intrude, and to not always sound pretty or ever be packaged as a plaything. Her childlike curiosity, the way that she played with sound like a four-year-old smashing around finger-paints, the way trusted a bold muse with enough confidence that she was willing to fall on her face, helped me to realize that the pursuit of a creative vision should also be damn fun sometimes (when it’s not infuriating), or your results will suffer. It will be anemic and stale: maybe you will have technical proficiency but you won’t inspire. Our culture can hold to firmly to the archetype of the artist as a dour, long-suffering, joyless scold, and Kate, with her feral, playful but also deeply disciplined aesthetic, gave lie to that outdated notion.

Kate Bush was passionate and sensitive, feminine and ferocious in one, petite, totally unshackled form. More than any of the visual artists I studied, she was my inspiration because she was the one who challenged me, as a woman, to intrude. By the time I graduated and left Kansas, I was optimistic and hungry for the future. I had an amazing group of friends who supported and challenged me, I believed in myself for the first time since early childhood. This might have happened without Kate but I don’t like to contemplate a life without her. Years later, at 26, I met my husband. The first night we went out, we bonded on our mutual love of Kate Bush and I knew I’d never have to explain myself to this man. I knew I’d found home.

Kate is not perfect, of course, because she’s real, flesh-and-blood, not a marketing creation. After the creative burst of her young adulthood, her output has tapered off considerably. She is a reclusive person, living with her husband and son, rarely giving interviews. (This is a sweet one, though, from 1980: yes, Kate is, or at least was, a vegetarian.) Some of her songs are overwrought and her music videos – oh, her music videos! - are cringe-worthy at best and stand as very good examples of bad performance art from the 1980s. You can’t say that she didn’t put it all out there, though. Ambition and gumption are to be admired in this fearful, self-conscious world. Who knows what kind of astounding music she’s creating, epic songs she’s writing, off alone with her family and her imagination?

The quiet boy in black with the pale blue eyes faded into the background and I don’t think I saw him past my freshman year. I probably fell in love fifty more times that year alone. He left a lasting legacy to inspire me, though: the knowledge of a daring, brilliant, beautiful woman living as an artist, one who refused to do anything but intrude.

The Case for Why Vegan Feminists Should Just Rule the World Already

2011-03-16T08:10:00.000-07:00

Do I really need to count the reasons why? Yes. Yes, I do.

A real live vegan feminist is the best kind of person to know. This is not opinion: this is scientifically provable fact. She has the most interesting array of friends, knows the best restaurants, books, films and music, and she will make you laugh and laugh with her impressions of stupid, annoying people. The vegan feminist will bring more cultural savvy and belly laughs into your life. Trust this.

While the rest of the world is tittering over the latest antics of a celebrity who is having a public nervous breakdown or psychotic episode, vegan feminists are too busy actively cultivating a whole different reality to notice or care. That's how cool and above it all we are.

We organize vegan bake sales that raise thousands of dollars to make the world a better place in our spare time, and, no, there's not a lot of time to spare what with these misogynist wing-nuts running around everywhere ruining everything. Still, we manage.

We are equally nimble at discussing the intersectionalities of oppression or this really great recipe we found for dairy-free Eggplant Parmesan. Some of us have also been known to talk about the really awesome shoes we found online.

Now that peak oil has come and gone, vegan feminists on bikes will be the incandescent symbol of the new world order. It’s inevitable: we will be the next icons. What? It’s not going to be a violently apoplectic tea partier with a stupid haircut, I guarantee it. Best to befriend a vegan feminist now rather than seem like a johnny-come-lately.

Despite our reputation of being a bunch of sanctimonious scolds, we have a great sense of humor, because, really, how could you live in this world and not have one? We can even laugh at ourselves. For example, how many vegan feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: THAT'S NOT FUNNY.

With possible food shortages looming, vegan feminists are powerful allies. We cannot only make a great dinner out of just basmati rice, kalamata olives, vegetable scraps and a can of coconut milk, and we can organize a kick-ass potluck in our sleep.

We don't sleep, by the way. Too much to do. Like brainstorm meals and organize potlucks.

When life gives us lemons, we make organic, Fair Trade lemonade and we grate the rind for later use so as to not be wasteful, then we sell the lemonade to help support an awesome cause. Why? What do you do with lemons?

Some of us have children, some of us would rather adopt a pack of asocial, peri-menopausal jackals. Some of us wear make up, some consider lip balm an obvious doorway to selling out the sisterhood. Vegan feminists of today like to keep you guessing. In other words, we’re not all wearing hemp power suits and swaying to the dulcet harmonies of the Indigo Girls on our iPods. In other other words, watch what you say.

Looking for a book recommendation? Fiction [Science fiction? Dystopian? Fantasy? Young Adult? Post-modern?] ? Non-fiction? Biography? Memoir? We’ll send you our lists. Is it okay if they’re not alphabetized?

Who’s going to help you move? Who’s going to pick you up from the airport? Who’s willing to sniff the questionable Vegenaise? Well, it might not always be a vegan feminist, but if we say that we will do it, we’ll do it. Why? Because we are dedicated friends who keep our word and because we are fearless.

Vegan feminists will listen to you complain about your life with sensitivity and understanding but hold you to a high standard of changing the things you can. Because we believe in you, that’s why, and because we don’t coddle.

When a local newscaster smugly narrates forage of a woman stripping to save the polar bears or minks or whatever, do not blame the vegan feminists for the bad press. Nobody consulted us on this.

Who’s starting wars? Who’s undermining unions? Who’s hunting deer and whales? Who’s letting their dogs poop everywhere and not cleaning up after them? Who’s generally screwing things up miserably? Not vegan feminists.

At the end of the day, or even the beginning, we rock because we’re funny, critically engaged, whip-smart, fierce, compassionate and consistent. Vegan feminists are hard at work trying to make the world suck a little less: what other subculture could say the same thing and be able to actually, you know, point to proof of it?

If vegan feminists ruled the world, there would be beautiful gardens everywhere, Rush, Glenn, and Sarah would be the names of our poodle mixes, and chocolate would be a birthright (it’s all organic, Fair Trade and dark because we rule so we can just call it chocolate now). We’d have to dedicate no time to cleaning up messes caused by stupid, sexist, right-wing windbags and selfish corporate opportunists. What does this mean? More time for creative self-expression, bike rides and potlucks. This is why vegan feminists should just rule the day already.

Who’s with me?

Let's hear it for the weird kids!

2011-03-08T07:44:00.000-08:00

After innumerable teacher's conferences, field studies and unsolicited comments lo these past eight years, I’m not leaping to any conclusions here to deduce that my son is perceived as a little strange by society at large. An odd duck. Maybe even weird. Not alarmingly weird, like the kind of boy a mother instinctively shields her own child from weird. On the contrary, he's the sort of boy that mothers tend to want their children to play with, at least that’s what I hear. He's well-behaved, he's witty, he shares well, he's articulate. But he's just...weird.

My son creates elaborate stories involving him and his friends having adventures catching ghosts and aliens and he draws plans for cat hotels with deep, winding underground tunnels. He could name four-syllable dinosaurs from the Cretacious period when he was five but he couldn’t tell you any characters from SpongeBob SquarePants. (Still can’t.) At his preschool, an idyllic place run by a painter almost as an artist’s retreat for young children, my son decided that in the year-end production of The Adventures of Frog and Toad he wanted to depict a Vegan Velociraptor rather than any characters already created. He settled for this as his second choice because his teacher didn't know how to begin to spell the Triassic era’s coelophysis.

Even at this artsy preschool with the bold paintings everywhere and interesting projects always being undertaken, my son was considered odd, not in a negative way, more like he was a rare museum acquisition, a gem to behold. He was adored, he was encouraged, but he was a little…strange. The message that I’ve consistently gotten is that every child is unique, of course, but that my child is a little more unique. “He has a rich inner world,” is how educators typically characterize him.

When he was two, my son burst out crying that whole autumn with the leaves falling from the trees, the life-and-death of it all bringing him to tears. I would tell him that the leaves would come back in the spring and he would point to a pretty red maple one on the ground and sniff, “Not that one.” I had no answer for that. He was far too tender for the local Waldorf school: all their plaintive songs about the cycles of life sent him wailing and scrambling past the pastel scarves to the door. That sensitivity, combined with his singular way of interpreting the world, has worked together to create an unusual child.

When he was three, my son was so spellbound by the Pompeii exhibit at the Field Museum that he insisted that we go straight home and start painting volcanoes immediately. For a year, I drained our library system of every possible volcano-themed book and movie. Every story he told, every drawing he made, my son found a way to bring it back to volcanoes. They reigned supreme until he learned about tsunamis, underwater volcanoes, which led him to deep-sea creatures, dinosaurs and evolution. His first band, created at five with a few of his friends, was called Bronto-Scorpions Don’t Wear Socks, the name of their signature song, with the lyrics being that phrase repeated over and over again.

Now eight, left to his own devices, my son would still have every article of clothing on not only inside-out but backwards. He can describe the movement of the tectonic plates but he has trouble bouncing a ball. He could explain the phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis to you reasonably well but he can’t figure out the mechanics of tying a shoelace for the life of him. He doesn’t care, though, because who has time to tie a shoelace when there are alternate universes to create? Shoelaces are a waste of time. Thank goodness for Velcro.

There is a long literary and cinematic tradition of weird kids – also identified variously as nerds, underdogs, freaks, spazzes – being celebrated as under-appreciated, often long-suffering, ultimately victorious heroes. From Charlie Bucket to the Harry Potter trio, the theme of triumphing over bullies, bad circumstances and danger is something that resonates with the human spirit. We feel emboldened by their courage, buoyed by their independence and uncommon grace. The underdogs’ willingness to forge ahead despite their obvious liabilities is deeply uplifting and we are inspired by the courage with which they take a less-traveled path. We like to imagine that we would do the same in their Velcroed shoes. Well-liked, accomplished and athletic characters aren’t juicy, rich or compelling. Our hearts are with the scrappy, weird ones. We like their spirits, we identify with their struggles and we root for them because if a weird child triumphs, it means that there is some equity and goodness in the world.

Weird kids out in the field, though, face a different reality because their enjoyment of life is contingent on how they are perceived and treated by other children. While almost all children side with Harry Potter over his mean-spirited cousin Dudley, they aren’t always kind to actual flesh-and-blood classmates who don’t fit in. Weird kids often eat alone. They can struggle to make friends without active parental involvement. They are among the last picked as partners or for teams. While the other children are scheduling play dates and squeezing in birthday parties, odd kids often live in a much different social landscape. They don’t necessarily mind this – many are not joiners – but at a certain age, they become aware that their peers have very different social experiences.

The message from adults should be that what makes the so-called weird children of the world tick is also what makes them wonderfully unique individuals and gives them the qualities that will get them far in life. Instead the message is that while it’s great to be different, for their own good, they don’t want to be too different. It is a protective instinct, I think, but I don’t believe it’s what’s best for their evolving spirits. As long as the children are kind and respectful to others, I honestly think that they should be left alone to develop their weird selves.

I would bet that Albert Einstein, Marcel Proust and Gertrude Stein were total weirdoes growing up. So were Thomas Edison, Emily Dickenson and Galileo, I’m sure. That sort of obsessive, singular vision, the total immersion not in simply perfecting their craft but becoming pioneers does not happen for those who prioritize fitting in at all costs. Weird kids are often “weird” because they have a different calling altogether. Like the very high-pitched whistles that are imperceptible to most human ears, I think these children hear (and see and think and feel) stuff missed by many others but it is so plainly obvious to them, they can’t help but respond to it.

Many wonderfully strange children of today will grow up to be great innovators, inventors, artists, peacemakers, novelists and problem-solvers. They are often the ones who are driving the world toward progress and new, creative, compassionate ways of thinking and living.

To us, it is perfectly normal that our son has a school for his cat with a daily schedule (kitty nap time, cat math, kitty climbing) on the chalkboard. He plies Clover with catnip and she occasionally indulges him when she’s not hiding behind the radiator. Today my son has Kitty School but in fifteen years, he could be developing curricula for a whole new educational approach. Maybe it will be one that honors and encourages the exquisite weirdness of all pupils.

The future of the world depends on these odd children blazing their new, wonderful, weird paths. Thank goodness for them.

The Emotional Pipeline of Food

2011-02-25T08:34:00.000-08:00

Going down this very well traveled road of exploring food and emotions, I may as well start by saying that I was not a very happy child growing up. Or I could amend that to say that I was happy as a young child but went through a very dark time that lasted for years due to circumstances I couldn’t control. Tempers were unpredictable, confusing undercurrents influenced everything and most people couldn’t be trusted, so food became a source of consistency and reliability. When others failed, food was there for me. Coffee tables could easily be upturned in a fit of rage and my mother might have been pacing the house crying, but food was always a trusted companion. While life was uncertain, the top of a Hostess Cupcake would still always lift off in one piece, Wheat Thins would always taste exactly the same, one after the next. Food also helps to smooth over the edges, distract and numb us; it is an opportunity to feel better, or at least less bad, if only briefly.

Beyond the palliative effect food seems to have on most of us, the familiar tastes and scents of our childhood foods contain vivid memories and give us easy access to our emotional wiring. Jay’s potato chips will always make me think of my mother. Her favored snacks have always come from the salty-crunchy food group: sweets, she can take them or leave them, but popcorn, tortilla chips, corn chips and, most of all, potato chips make her feel instantly better. Potato chips bring to mind greasy paper plates and summertime, comfort and frustration fused together.

Catching a whiff of Hershey’s chocolate syrup instantly reminds me of my father, of drunkenly constructed sundaes at the kitchen table, of richness and bitterness swirled together. I remember the cans of Hershey’s syrup with triangles punctured into the lid, chocolate globs dried on top, always in our fridge. My father sought out sweet flavors like it was a genetic imperative: he had no interest in my mother’s bags of crunchy things, but if there was cake or brownies or ice cream in the house, he couldn’t help but devour the whole thing like a tornado. Whereas my mother has that enviable ability to eat ten potato chips and call it a day, my father was voracious in all matters and had no inner-mechanism for quitting once he started doing whatever it was that made him feel better. So when I smell Hershey’s syrup, I also think of desperation.

The influence of a Jewish grandmother who showered her family with love and home cooked meals probably cemented this merging of food and emotions together for me. Nothing will ever compare in quality to even her simplest grilled cheese sandwiches. I cannot think of my grandmother and not associate her with the smell of sizzling potatoes in vegetable oil, the intoxicating steam of matzo ball soup, perfectly crispy-and-chewy ruggelah, It is hard to think of her and not remember the comforting smells of her kitchen, of sitting at the kitchen table with my feet wrapped behind the chair legs, grating potatoes and onions, cracking eggs into flour and sugar. Her kitchen was a place to escape, a place where I was not simply accepted but adored. Even though her hands prepared it, her food was imbued somehow with my feelings toward her and my sweet grandfather: uncomplicated love and devotion, bites of gratitude and contentment that warmed me from a hollow place in my belly like a hot potato wrapped in foil. It’s no surprise that I have her photo up on my kitchen wall, along with her grater, rolling pin with the chipping red handles and ceramic set of containers. I’m not much of a collector of mementos, but one room in my house is different. Food is full of memories and emotions at times: my kitchen reflects that.

Not unexpectedly, when I became a vegetarian and later a vegan, I felt that schism from my past pretty profoundly. It was one thing to distance myself from unhappy times associated with food – I am glad to never eat a lamb chop again for many noble reasons, but self-centeredly, I’m glad because they remind me of Sundays, which remind me of when my father was home from work, which reminds me of tension, fights and tires peeling out of our driveway - but going vegetarian meant separating from comforting, warm memories as well. It meant saying goodbye to my grandmother’s Jell-O, always reliably ready for my brother and me. It was just Jell-O, a powder bought in a box, totally artificial but it was perfect because it was from my grandmother. The first thing we would do when we went to her condo was open her fridge and grab our cups of Jell-O: consistency, care and blessed predictability could be found in that wobbly gelatin. Giving up meat meant no more corned beef and meltingly tender potatoes that only my grandmother could make. Chicken noodle soup, kishke, raspberry jam dot cookies: gone, gone, gone.

I recognize missing my grandmother and the emotional connection with her is more significant than missing the specific foods she made us, though I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t miss that for a time, too. What she cooked for us felt sublime because it seemed to be infused with her spirit and the awareness that when I was eating it, I was happy: I was safe, away from my worries and I was with her.

I think we do a disservice to people struggling in their transition to veganism when we downplay or overlook how emotional food memories imprint themselves upon us and our psyches. I consider becoming a vegetarian at fifteen the best decision I ever made because it paved the way for so many other blessings in my life, but I have to acknowledge that there was a loss there, too. Just as giving birth to my son, the light of my life, was an incredible gift that I cannot overstate, there was a loss with it, too, of independence, of the freedoms I enjoyed before he come into my life. This is not to say that I ever for a moment regret having him but that things are not always so relentlessly upbeat.

Someone’s memory of fried chicken might be deeply intertwined with childhood and carefree summers at her grandparent’s farm. Another person might associate hamburgers and milkshakes with a particular restaurant, just him and his dad once a week, or, to someone else, chicken noodle soup with Ginger Ale was something her mother always gave her when she was home from school with a fever. Chicken salad sandwiches aren’t just chicken salad sandwiches: they are picnics with your cousins, a chance to see your parents smiling and turn your world upside-down by rolling down the hill. Corned beef sandwiches with mustard on rye are you and your papa sitting side by side at the lunch counter, him taking your cole slaw and giving you his potato chips, the way his breath always sounded, steady like an engine. Little Debbie snack cakes were you and your best friend, hiding out in your tree house every day that July: not as decadent as Hostess, but perfect for what they were because they were the food that transformed you into superheroes. When we eat these foods, we not only revisit familiar tastes that comfort us because we recognize them, we revisit familiar feelings that comfort us because of our memories.

A way out of the mental trap that our past is our destiny is to recreate the tastes and flavors you grew up loving. We are so fortunate to be living at a time that this is possible. There is a cookbook for every taste, from raw salads to comfort foods, as well as all manner of ethnic cookbooks within the vegan sphere. A trip to a well-stocked library is a great starting point. Asking an herbivore if he has any particular recipes will probably result in you getting a dozen variations – we vegans love to be helpful! – and I think that with an open mind, patience and a willingness to experiment, you could find a good staple of recipes that fulfill what you’ve been missing. Plus, there’s everything from egg-free mayonnaise to dairy-free melty cheese now to help you on your way, products not necessarily created for the vegan market but for people who have to cut down on animal products for health reasons. These are designed to taste as close as possible to what you grew up eating.

The first time I had matzo ball soup again after a twenty-year embargo, it was a revelation, like all those years melted away and I was with my grandmother again, sitting in her little yellow kitchen. The broth didn’t come from chickens and the matzo balls didn’t have eggs but that didn’t create any barrier to my grandmother. That place in my belly, no longer hollow but missing her sweet spirit, filled again, not with food so much as with her particular smile, voice, vibrant energy. I feel the same way when I use her rolling pin, creating things that nurture and nourish my family, make them smile. I hope that my son will grow up to continue the tradition, also feeding the people he loves delicious, nourishing, peaceful food.

Perhaps what is most important is that if we are craving the feeling of nurturance of long ago foods, we look inside and ask how we can create that sense in a more lasting, rooted way in ourselves beyond food. Veganism shouldn't be a barrier. When we think that we’re hungry for a specific thing – an omelet, a French dip sandwich, whatever - often we’re hungry for feelings and a time in our past. Can we cultivate an inner-source of nurturance, love and joyfulness that meets our deeper needs? If we can’t access that, nothing will fill ever us up.

Tough Love in the Confessional Booth

2011-02-16T07:02:00.000-08:00

(I understand that nuns do not run confessional booths but I'm a feminist so I'm going to run with it, okay?)

Let's be honest here. I know what's expected of me, I am just not going to cooperate.

I know that I'm supposed to pat your hand, sigh deeply and nod. The unspoken covenant between us is that in a sincere, supportive tone, I am supposed to tell you that I understand, it is far too difficult for you to do what I do. I am infused with something elusive to others, I have a preternatural self-discipline, despite all evidence to the contrary. I am monk-like, apparently, birds fearlessly alight on my robes as I gather roots and nuts in the garden for my Spartan meals. As a real-live vegan, I am often perceived as an eco-priest of some sort and since I'm friendly enough, I am supposed to relieve others of the burden of their guilt.

Let's get on with it, then, shall we?

You grew up in a meat-eating home.
Interesting. So did I. So did pretty much everyone I know.

You ate meat every day growing up.
Yes, that sounds familiar. Go on.

No, really, you ate lots of meat. Like, if you had the eight arms of Vishnu or the four-to-ten arms of Kali, each hand would be holding a plate piled high with meat. Your meat came stuffed with meat, with a side of meat and served on a bed of meat.
Whoa, that's a lot of meat but I get what you're saying.

And you really like the taste of meat.
You may find this hard to believe but I completely understand. For the first fifteen years of my life, my Grandmother's brisket was pretty much my favorite thing in the world to eat. I would race to her kitchen and grab a piece before dinner officially started, that's how much I loved my Grandmother's brisket.

But you don't like vegetables.
I grew up on the same sad iceberg lettuce salads as most people did in my generation with very little else but button mushrooms, Idaho potatoes and the occasional carrot thrown into the mix. I did not experience kale, parsnips, winter squashes, Japanese eggplant, and so on until I got The Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook at a New Age bookstore - it still smells like incense all these years later - and the uncharted territory of the produce aisle suddenly appeared in front of me like the magical kingdom of Oz. I learned to like most vegetables by working with them and experimenting, not through osmosis.

Your blood sugar plummets if you don't eat protein! You feel weak. You become a raving lunatic.
I would too, I'm pretty sure. That's why I eat protein.

You don't like to cook.
I will admit that I do like to cook. I had to learn how to cook like anyone else, though, this knowledge wasn't bestowed upon me by my personal vegan faerie who appeared to me in the steam over my stove-top the first time I attempted to boil pasta. I do not and have never had access to any supernatural abilities to the best of my knowledge, though I'm pretty good at finding a parking spot and a seat next to the craziest person on the train. That's about it, though. Pretty much everything else comes from effort and learning.

The culinary traditions of your heritage and family make it very hard to imagine a life without animal products.
No kidding! The culinary traditions of my heritage include the aforementioned brisket, chicken noodle soup, kreplach, chicken Kiev, corned beef sandwiches and of course there was all the regular stuff of my generation: Oscar Mayer hot dogs and bologna sandwiches, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, cans of Chef Boyardee with mushy meatballs and so on. I was not raised on a back-to-the-land kimchi production commune in the mountains of Santa Cruz. I grew up on the North Shore of Chicago.

It’s too hard to find vegan food.
Okay. Back in the olden days when screeching Jurassic-era winged reptiles terrorized the land-dwellers and you could buy a comic book for a quarter, we herbivores used to eat soy protein weenies in a can. Jarringly beige, roughly approximating a cylindrical shape and perhaps constructed of pulverized flip-flops, we didn’t complain about them, either, because we were altogether too sincere and just too grateful to have an opportunity to eat yellow mustard again. I know that all circumstances vary and some are much more advantageous than others, but nothing can compare today, because, seriously, those hideous weenies were revolutionary to us then. This is why I occasionally glaze over when people tell me that it’s too hard to be a vegan. I'm just flashing back to those canned weenies and remembering how happy I felt just to be able to eat something similar to a hot dog again at a Fourth of July barbecue even if my stomach hurt for the rest of the night. Unless you live in Antarctica or a Biosphere-like setting, you should have decent access to some lovely and natural options as a vegan.

Your family does not support you.
I do understand that this is not easy. When I became a vegetarian at fifteen, I was told that I was on my own in the kitchen: I could be a vegetarian but I'd have to cook for myself. Not exactly an enthusiastic show of support but it was what it was. For years after making the decision to be a vegetarian, I was treated as though my diet were indisputable proof of an eating disorder, my predisposition toward naivety, or blatantly mutinous behavior. I did not meet one other "out" vegetarian until I was a junior in college other than the Hari Krishna devotee with the shaved head who used to hand out copies of "A Higher Taste" while twirling around Grant Park. He seriously had little whirligigs spinning around in his pupils. Yep, that guy in the saffron robe WAS my community. This was before the Internet and meet-ups and message boards and a million other fantastic resources at most fingertips today.

See? I would be a failure as a priest in a confessional booth. Failure! It's a good thing I'm a non-religious female of Semitic descent or that might really disappoint me.

I do understand obstacles, though. We all face them and it is part of life. What is a worthwhile, passionate life without the occasional challenge? If everything were laid out in front of us in an effortless, predictable, pre-masticated sort of way, wouldn’t that get boring after a while? To be driven by something outside of our customs and comfort zone, we are forced to stretch and grow. This is not to say that being vegan is difficult because I don’t believe that it is, but that swimming against the current requires some determination when the waters become choppier than we'd like. Constructing our lives to minimize harm to other animals - beings humans were almost universally raised to believe exist solely for our purposes - is a dramatically different way to live and perceive our place in the world. It would make sense that living with this perception and commitment would require some adjustments, given how deeply entrenched this attitude of human entitlement is and how our society conforms to it. The obstacles we face and overcome are essential to our continuing evolution, part of the process of honing in on and articulating what is valuable to us.

Given what so-called food animals endure and succumb to, given their horror-filled, unfathomably sad existences just to become a quickly forgotten turkey sandwich in a plastic bag or part of a gallon of ice cream, is what we go through on our path to compassionate, integrated living really all that big of a hardship? Is it really too big of a sacrifice that we occasionally miss out on a croissant at a café when most others don't think twice? It is a privilege. Even considering occasional challenges, living as a vegan is not a cloistered, monastic existence or a sacrifice: it is a joyful, engaging, passionate and deeply delicious life if we decide that is how we want to live. We are so profoundly fortunate to be able to live in a way that is consistent with our values. I am often blown away by what a privilege this is.

There are a lot of things one faces in life that are incredibly grueling. Having the opportunity to live our lives as best we can is just not one of them. So, no, I won’t absolve anyone of any guilt because I believe that being vegan is easy. I am understanding of individual differences in circumstances and I sincerely want to help but I will hold people to the level of honesty I’d want to be held to as well. I will not be complicit in propagating the idea that it's just too hard.

Playing games and lying to ourselves is difficult. Being vegan? Easy.

The Zombievore's Dilemma

2011-02-09T07:41:00.000-08:00

Zombievore: An omnivore as the walking dead; an automaton.

From the outset, let me just say that I don’t think that all omnivores are pernicious zombies without measurable brain waves. Clearly, that would be unfair, the sort of absurd overstatement people love to point to as further evidence of mean-spirited, wrong-headed vegan, feminist sedition. Of course I am not claiming that all omnivores are zombies, just a sizable percentage that has not been calculated yet. By Zombievores, I am referring to individuals who are not using the complex reasoning skills they were presumably born with and are instead idling, aided by their built-in societal privileges and tendency to allow others to do their thinking for them. An omnivore who has abandoned his or her critical thinking faculties in favor of meaningless word repetition and habituated practices, who lurches through life without regard for those who do not share the same privileges, is maintaining a Zombievorous lifestyle. If this description doesn’t fit you, then please, no need to be offended.

There are various categories of Zombievores. There are the Fast Food Zombievores, of course. There are the Custom-Fixated Zombievores, too. These first two types are easy to identify and avoid, unless one should happen to live within your own home. There is a classification of Zombievore that is usually more subtle and cunning than the others, though. They are best known for their ability to penetrate and assimilate into otherwise progressive spheres of society with a message that captivates and seems to be imbued with the spirit of positive change but, upon closer inspection, simply reinforces the established order. These Zombievores are generally affluent, urban, well educated and Caucasian though there are certainly exceptions, and their undisputed leader is Michael Pollan. To understand him and the particular sway he has over his order of Zombievores, one must first get a recap of his recent visit to one of Oprah Winfrey’s famous chairs.

Have you ever gone to a party that you're a little apprehensive about but your friends have been building it up in your head all week so you think that you should stop being such a sour crab apple all the time and just go with the flow? It might be decent, it might even be worthwhile, you think to yourself, psyching yourself up like the pompom girl you never were. You arrive at the party, though, and you can see from the start that it's pretty much what you already expected and feared: vacuous chitchat that you fail at both initiating and maintaining. Joyless tittering back and forth.

"It will be okay," you tell yourself. You remind yourself to smile, to unclench your shoulders, to get a drink. It's still early. The party hasn't hit its stride yet. Then you notice an energy shift in the room and you see him.

He's surrounded by disciples who chuckle as if on cue at his bon mots. When he is speaking of something poignant, the devotees mirror his sincerity, leaning in, nodding, creasing their foreheads with concern. When he is articulating his opinion, it is with the mien of an authority, and if the others surrounding him could, they would start taking notes. Despite the adoration, he considers himself to be humble, earthy even, and despite the salary he draws and his impressive résumé, he is one of the little people, at least in his own mind.

At this point, any shadow of the doubt is instantly erased. You're almost relieved because you now have proof positive that, indeed, nothing good can come of this assembly. This is because Michael Pollan is in the room and he is a Very Special Guest. This was the experience of watching Oprah’s “Let’s try on a new lifestyle this week like a new pair of awesome, pretty shoes!” – I mean - her thoughtful exploration of the vegan lifestyle with that avowed consumer of serenely, lovingly butchered animals, Michael Pollan, curiously stuck to her side for the entire hour like a human barnacle in an expensive suit.

He is the Golden Prince of his particular classification of Zombievores, giving them sustenance and the drive to continue with his patently void nuggets of personal validation. Somehow his followers are able to extract enough from these little nuggets to sustain themselves but it is clear that they are not running on quality fuel. Too smart and ambitious to be a zombie himself, Michael Pollan has become wealthy writing books and telling affluent, greenish omnivores to keep doing what they're doing and telling aspiring affluent, greenish omnivores to do a better job (in other words, spend more money for ever-more exclusive animal products) at what they are doing. The stricken become Pollanated Zombievores. They repeat the catchphrases of their guru, dull-eyed and flat in tone, not an original thought firing their synapses: freeeee-raaaaaange, they lurch. Sus-taaaaaain-able, they growl. Graaaaaass-fed, they drone. Hu-maaaaaane, they bellow as they corner you in the room, humid, meaty breath in your face.

The Golden Prince of the Zombievores was planted by Oprah’s side the entire episode, her wingman, a designer security blanket, the yuppie habit apologist anointed to sanction meat-eating by waving his glittery green magic wand and making everyone feel better, even righteous, with his platitudes that do not stand up to reason.

Zombievores have been rendered insensible by the willful suspension of disbelief that the Pollanization process requires. The Pollanated have decided to stop thinking because it protects their privileges and they have elected to spout empty banalities instead that defy common sense.

“I want to help the small farmers,” they will assert. As though one can’t help small farmers who don’t kill or exploit animals.

“It’s my personal choice,” the Zombievores will rail. Their supposed right to take another’s life simply because they have the means and the privileges is the antithesis of a sound ethical argument. Next.

“It’s sustainable,” they will allege. For real? Given the amount of space these animals would naturally, normally claim in nature, it is a mathematical impossibility to provide the landmass these billions of beings would need thus we have concentrated feeding operations. Given human consumption habits and the lack of adequate landmass to support that, any allegedly sustainable animal product is a luxury item produced for a relatively elite, affluent few. The Pollanated plan is clearly an untenable model for meeting demand, thus it is willful ignorance. Given the sheer amount of animal products people consume, the only model for meeting demand is an industrial one, and that doesn’t sit right with Mr. Pollan and his adherents who vastly prefer an aesthetic of exclusivity. It doesn’t matter if his model is steeped in an illogical, idealized reality: the fairy tale is all that matters here. A drastic reduction in consumption is the only way that this model could realistically function.

“The animals do not suffer,” they will claim. Because getting a bolt in the skull, a knife slashed across the throat or a bullet in the brain always feels fabulous, especially when it is unnecessary. Being forcibly impregnated, getting their milk stolen from them, their babies taken from them and often killed, having their ears notched for identification purposes because we enjoy exercising our personal choice to enjoy their “product” is unkind. Pollanated Zombievores are loath to admit this and even more loath to admit that these are standard practices on many of the beloved, pastoral small farms they believe in with the blind trust of a child putting a tooth under her pillow in anticipation of a winged Tooth Fairy.

So Zombievores. They walk among us. You will find them at the farmers market, at the bookstore, at fundraisers and at the beach. They are everywhere.

To put it plainly, if you value your time, your best defense is to simply walk away. Engaging the afflicted tends to yield scant rewards though even the most seasoned of us occasionally will forget this cardinal rule and attempt to break through. Pollanated Zombievores have everything to lose with honestly evaluating their deliberately cultivated naïveté – their ethics, their creature comforts, their privileges, their integrity and character – and so they must maintain their position at all costs, even if it makes no sense.

If you feel that you have the time to spare, by all means, it is your prerogative to engage such a Zombievore. Remember that they are thwarted by logic and reason. Don’t be scared. The thing about the Pollanated variety of zombie is that they don’t want to eat your brains: they only want to eat heirloom quality, rare, specialty, sloooooow-fooooood-approved brains. You should be fine.

Concerned that you might actually be among the stricken? Ask yourself some questions: Have you referenced the “snout-to-tail” movement without irony or wanting to vomit? Do you fetishize the ovum of your backyard hens? Is your quest for obscure, artisan quality paté leaving you exhausted, stressed out and broke? Do you become anxious when you are fresh out of bone marrow for spreading on your morning baguette? Do you feel an ever-escalating pressure within the ranks of your friends to consume possibly life-threatening viscera in order to fit in? If so, you may very well be a Pollanated Zombievore.

I don't claim to be an expert in the field of Pollanated Zombievore recovery, but my recommendation is to stop immediately because, seriously, you are tedious. You must simply put yourself on a strict diet of avoiding the works and wisdom of Michael Pollan. Those first few weeks are the most critical and they will undoubtedly be the most rough. The old friends will try to lure you back with promises of nouveau butcher shops, charcuterie and out of the way barbecue joints. If you feel the old bloodlust rise up inside you again, grab a beet, drink some cranberry juice. Fill your home and body with fresh produce. Spend some time outdoors, breathe in the fresh air. Take notice of the birds, the dogs, the squirrels, how they live simply for their own reasons, not for our purposes. Think of how much free time you have to actually bring good into the world now that your brain waves have started to fire up again and original thoughts have begun trickling in. Imagine how liberated you will feel when you're no longer lurching from meat counter to meat counter, shoveling internal organs into your mouth.

You know that you are free when believing self-serving fairy tales has lost its appeal, when empty platitudes ring hollow and critical thinking has been restored. You are free when you recognize that your fleeting desires and tastes do not have primacy over another being's right to live. At this time, the process of Pollanization will have been reversed.

You're welcome.

The Sand Dollar...

2011-01-28T09:40:00.000-08:00

Last March, my mother moved in with us. It was a long, circuitous path from her living independently to moving into our brick bungalow but the trajectory to our home has also been obvious for years. My mother giving up her place was not something any of us wanted but, given the circumstances, it was working with the cards we were dealt in the best way that we could.

My mother was losing her wallet, her keys, forgetting to pick up her mail. This is a woman who had always prided herself on being so reliable and well organized (it skips a generation, apparently) that she has never paid a late fee in her life. Not for a late payment of a bill, not for an overdue library book because even if it was a ten-cent fine, that fine would be a black mark of judgment against her, a poor reflection upon her as a member of society.

When she started to decline more sharply, what was most telling to me was that she became blasé about the things most characteristic of her – orderliness, organization, being dependable – to the point where I was the one darting around her place, looking through drawers filled with dozens of unused spiral notebooks and under the bed for library books that were due. Also, as the easiest of easy targets, I had feverish visions of someone horrible following her home from her daily walk to her usual haunts – the pharmacy, the sandwich shop - and slipping into the building behind her. There were so many other concerns, too: She couldn’t be trusted to take her medication right, she couldn’t figure out how to use the phone, I was worried about her remembering to turn off her stove. When it came time to make the decision to move her in with us, it was an easy one. The decision was easy: the living together, that is the hard part.

People inevitably ask me why we didn’t try assisted-living. Simple: she is not able to care for herself enough to be accepted into one. Why not a nursing home, then? They have activities for residents, she would at least be around people closer to her age. My mother is fuzzy about a lot of things these days, but one thing she is very clear on is that she desperately does not want to go into a nursing home and I think her instincts are right on this one. I have seen her in those environments and she becomes very anxious, scared and uncomfortable. She is still lucid enough to know what a nursing home would mean for her. Although that is likely on the future horizon, we’d like to delay that as long as possible as it will be the end for her.

We’ve had to learn all about medications this year and how they interact, that all chairs need to be pulled out and pushed in, that when my mother gets even a simple cold everything falls apart, that becoming distracted in the grocery store could result in her filling her cart with bags of frozen shrimp that I will never cook in a million years, that “the red thing” means her purse and “the white paper” is usually a piece of mail (we still don’t know what “the yellow thing” is), that if we don’t take out her hearing aids for her, she will put them wherever (check the mantel first), that she cannot simply go to bed without a whole, elaborate ritual.

My husband is a thick-skinned, patient type of person, a typically stoic Minnesotan who manages to also be kind and nurturing. In other words, he’s a much better person than I. When it’s one’s own parent, though, our buttons are much more easily pushed. One effect of my mother’s condition means that even though I work very hard to care for her, I still get treated like a shady sixteen-year-old who is asking for the car keys again whenever I try to carve out time for myself. It’s like the old dynamic between us remains intact, frozen in time. Even when my husband is home with my mother, she expects me to keep to a curfew and despite how this activates every last rebellious synapse I have, I’ve learned to roll my eyes and abide by it or I will be pestered to the breaking point.

This year, I have learned all about pyrrhic victories, how to identify them and, when I have the self-discipline, how to walk away from them. Sometimes, though, it takes every last bit of resolve. In those moments, when my own nerves seem to have been lit on fire like the wick on dynamite, I try to imagine myself as Wonder Woman or Supergirl in a bright red cape and leotard, able to deflect anything life tosses my way with my handy wristlets. This helps somehow, even while I know that I’m still the one standing there, wristlet-free, squeezing my hands into tight, clenched balls.

It is not always bad. Most weekdays consist of her napping and watching games shows or judges squinting at defendants in TV courtrooms. I sit in the sunroom and I write, edit, read, research and generally try to lose myself in words. Mornings and evenings are our rough times, trying to get my son ready for school when my mother wants her medication, trying to get him calmed down for bed when my mother’s television blares in the other room. Our clash of lifestyles and the very different temperaments we were born with has not brought out the best in me in such close quarters. All it takes is for one seemingly minor, mundane irritant (my mother eating potato chips – gah! Another irritation! - out of the bag instead of a bowl, for example, leaving crumbs everywhere and why-oh-why of all those lifelong traits she abandoned did neatness have to among them?) to send me spiraling. It’s not the crumbs, of course, or the potato chips: it’s everything. It’s never having taken care of herself so she’d have a stronger foundation, it’s losing my personal space, it’s rearranging everything in our lives, it’s the lack of privacy, it’s the helplessness, it’s still being treated like a juvenile delinquent in my forties even when I was never one to begin with, which brings me back to all the old baggage. It’s funny how potato chips can do that to a person.

Caring for a chronically unwell parent whose best hope is to not get worse can bring out parts of yourself that you’d rather prefer remain dormant or at least hidden.

Over holiday break, when my mother was in Texas visiting my aunt for three weeks, we had the a chance to go away, to run for the hills or the valley or wherever the hell we could go that was far away from here, and we sprinted toward it with the panting enthusiasm of a pack of golden retrievers chasing after a ball at the beach. And to the beach we headed: Florida, land of orange groves and amusement parks and palm trees and miniature golf and fundamentalists and Jews and pelicans and the Atlantic Ocean. No medication that needed to be dispensed, at least not by our hands. No litter box that needed to be scooped and no sidewalks that needed to be shoveled by us either. The only chairs we needed to push out or in would be our own. We were going to Florida. Three trilling syllables rolling off the tongue, a happy song, a stone skipping on the water before it sinks to the ocean floor to hang out with the starfish: Flor-i-da.

The snow on the ground in southern Georgia was the first sign that it wasn’t exactly blisteringly hot in the Sunshine State but it was a lot warmer than Chicago. It did not matter. We were away. My husband and I immediately fell into our natural rhythm of traveling together – basically, research where the vegetarian restaurants are and then let the interesting points in between them become the little dash marks – and our son was more than amendable to it. We became that unit of three again that functions so well together.

On our second day in Florida, we were on the beach in St. Augustine, a place with a name that sounds as far away from Chicago as possible, the first time my son had seen the ocean since he was four. There were shells everywhere we looked and it was finally warm enough to cuff our parts and walk into where the tide had just pulled away. We started instinctively putting shells in our pockets for my son’s classmates, squatting down to examine the radius around us, the foamy water fizzing over rocks. Strange brown birds unknown to me ran on skinny legs along the tide, a kite bobbed nearby, children climbed on the rocks like billy goats. It was during one of those moments when I was crouching in the sand on the balls of my feet, reaching for shells with my son and husband in the near distance when I thought, This is peace. I hadn’t felt that way in years, the feeling of not having any responsibilities or expectations, just of pure enjoyment and being. It was amazing to me with what ease I could transition into beachcomber mode, to being someone who only cared about where the next interesting shell might be found. The only thing that occupied me was plucking my fingers through the sand like nimble tentacles.

After an hour or two, we needed to leave to find a hotel. Walking back, something brought me farther out to where the tide had just rolled out and I crouched again over the popping foam, unable to resist the lure of more discoveries. As I was about to take a step, I crouched again, noticing a small off-white circle in the sand that looked like a drawing of a flower with a stick. Pushing the sand away, I kept digging until my fingers were around a big, perfect sand dollar. Five notches exactly under the flower’s petals, a small star in the middle, a loopy etching of a flower shape on the back, elegant symmetry. Even when I was holding it, turning it around in my hands, I was in disbelief, my jaw open as if I’d just seen a mermaid splashing in the waves.

I am a city girl by choice and temperament. I marvel at architecture daily, at the diversity of accents and faces around me when I’m on the train, at the crackling, robust energy all around me. It’s not so often that I’m given the opportunity to be blown away by the simple, magnificent design of a sand dollar discovered by my own eyes. I’m the sort of person who always looks up a second too late to see a falling star, who catches the merest glimpse of yellow feathers before a gold finch darts away. Nature’s magic show is going on out there, I know it, but it’s always been elusive to my own eyes. Here was something perfect in my hand, something labored over, a home designed out of necessity but artfully crafted without any shortcuts.

What I held in my hand was the sun-bleached skeleton of a sea urchin, the protective bone a spiny animal once covered before the evolutionary drive compelled him to become burrowing creature. The scratchy flower shape is created by the sand dollar’s tube-shaped feet, which are used for breathing. There are scientific explanations for the design and symmetry of a sand dollar, having to do with respiration, gas exchange and evolution. The thought that a spiny sea urchin would work so hard to find food, survive and fight the current - young ones are even thought to ingest sand to better plant themselves to the ocean floor – and still leave behind a work of beauty without expecting a word of praise from its aquatic community kind of impresses me. Just by living, they create a beautiful home in the process, a natural by-product of life itself.

I finally held up the sand dollar, unable to stop grinning, and my son and husband came running toward me, whooping. I could barely speak. Whenever I looked at my son sitting in the back seat of the car for the rest of our vacation, most likely he was turning that perfect disk around in his hands, staring at it in that wide-eyed way he has about him.

Sometimes life can be really, really challenging. We’re just trying to get through our day, get from Point A to Point B, and we’re sent spinning. We’re without an anchor, we can’t see where we’re going, we’re drowning in it all. Burrowing in, though, we can create a beautiful life as something to leave behind. Maybe no one else will ever notice or appreciate it. Maybe our lives will just look messy and confusing and unnecessarily challenging to other people. Maybe it’ll look that way to us, too. At our best, though, we know what we’re doing. We’re digging in and building beautiful lives as if there were an evolutionary drive toward it. A beautiful life is not one without dark, petty, horrible moments and breakdowns. It is seeing our shortcomings, looking at them without fear, and trying to do better, trying to etch pretty little flowers on ourselves just because.

I’m working at it. Sand dollars don’t happen overnight, either.

Checking in, and trauma recovery...

2011-01-24T16:56:00.000-08:00

Hi.

How are you?

Please don't look at me that way. You hate me. I hate letting you down.

It's been so long. I just...I don't know. I needed some space. It wasn't you, it was me.

Would you forgive me?

Love,

Marla

After more than a month, I will be back this week with more of whatever the heck it is I do here (satire! over-sharing! sarcasm!) but in the meantime, if you get the chance, please check out this piece I wrote for the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Advocacy for Animals site. The process of writing it pretty much ripped my heart, a few arteries and miscellaneous viscera out, but I am recovered. That's the vegan diet for ya! If you feel it is worthy, please distribute to your network(s). It is amazing to me that these many years since Descartes, there is still a prevailing attitude that animals are automatons without true senses or emotions worthy of consideration. This is a drop in the bucket toward reversing that attitude, but it is a drop nonetheless.

Hugs 'til next time, and I hope that you're all having a wonderful 2011...

Rebel Jesus

2010-12-24T08:54:00.000-08:00

Well, the family is set to take off for Florida for a week of much, much needed travel and relaxation. I'm feeling guilty for all the writing that's not being done but I'd feel far worse to not take advantage of this opportunity to soak up some vitamin D and maybe grin at a manatee or two. I will be back in the new year with whatever it is that I do here. I am very much looking forward to 2011 and achieving some goals that will be defined on the highways between Chicago and wherever it is we find ourselves in Florida, let the sun shine on them some, then let them start to take root on the long drive back.

This time of year can be a complicated, challenging one for a non-Christian. It can feel isolating, lonely and depressing not just for non-Christians, but for anyone who is estranged from her family, isn't part of a relationship, isn't affluent. Cutting away all the baggage that surrounds Christmas, though, we are left with the story of a man who - agnostic, pagan-leaning Jew that I am - I have a lot of admiration for, I have to confess. I have never been into Bible stories, but the idea of this man truly rebelling against the current, living a life full of complexity, courage and compassion, I can get with that. Someone who preached a life of simplicity and kindness, well, I see no harm in that. I think that so many of us have been so stung by the manner in which many religious people conduct themselves we reject the story of Christ because of all that damage. I can understand that. My point is that whether you believe in Christ or would sooner believe something you read in a supermarket tabloid, there is something to learn and grow from with the story itself.

With that long-winded introduction, here is my favorite Christmas song, The Rebel Jesus by Jackson Browne. It captures my feelings about the holiday beautifully and I'm sure many people feel the same way. I will see you in the new year! Be well and be happy, from a heathen and a pagan on the side of the Rebel Jesus.

The Rebel Jesus

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
While the sky darkens and freezes
Will be gathering around the hearths and tables
Giving thanks for God's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by "the Prince of Peace"
And they call him by "the Savior"
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
And they fill his churches with their pride and gold
As their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worship in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

Well we guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

Now pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgement
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There's a need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus

Another Disgruntled Alphabet for Vegans...

2010-12-16T07:58:00.000-08:00

Last year I wrote my first Disgruntled Alphabet and because either the idea is so magnificent or my poor brain is turning dirty and crumbly like the snow outside my door, I’m going to resurrect this old chestnut and have another go at it. We can never run out of things to knit ourselves a lovely afghan of annoyance over to warm us on those lonely winter nights.

Like last year, this alphabet is for those days when you wouldn’t change being the awesome vegan ass-kicker you are for anything but you’re tired of the rest of the world, well, sucking so hard. This time of year, the things that irritate and plague us are particularly unpleasant, maybe because it’s all served up with the worst Christmas music etched onto our own brains like a record groove, invasive good tidings from people who couldn't care less about us the rest of the year, crass materialism and red and green junk everywhere. This Disgruntled Alphabet is for days when you just want to curl up in a peevish little ball of dirty looks and judgment and let the stupid year just end already. Make yourself a mug of hot chocolate (extra bitter!), put on your comfiest socks, wrap yourself in your personal afghan of annoyance and enjoy. Last year, my Disgruntled Alphabet had some bright spots interspersed: this year, I'm serving it straight up. You can take it, soldier. We'll get back to the warm fuzzies soon enough.

A is for the predictable but no less Antagonizing way in which your family (or co-workers) think that you can and should just “eat around” the meat.

B is for Buzz-kill, the way you feel when you’re reading the list of ingredients on that fabulous looking chocolate bar or bag of salt-and-vinegar chips when you come upon whey as the second-to-last ingredient.

C is for Caustic, because sometimes you feel like your head might explode if you cannot release the pressure with a caustic aside, like, “Oh, yes. I can certainly understand why you think that tofu is disgusting when you eat animal corpses, mammary secretions and ovum regularly. That makes perfect sense.”

D is for Damn right, I eat plain nutritional yeast straight out of the bag. What of it? Like you don’t have any bizarre habits, freaker.

E is for Eating. Just let us eat in peace. Aren't we supposed to be the annoying and judgmental ones?

F is for Finally, as in I looked through a veritable mountain of winter coats and I finally found one without fur trim or wool and it's not even that hideously ugly.

G is for Gross, as in Gross! What is that at the bottom of my produce drawer? Is that from freaking last summer? Can I just buy a replacement drawer?

H is for Hegan and any other silly media catchphrases that get some attention for about two weeks before being tossed into the dung pile until Larry King half-heartedly resurrects it for five seconds before it is finally, inescapably retired.

I is for, “I’d like to get the burrito without cheese or sour cream. Right. No cheese or sour cream. Right. Could I just get extra guacamole instead? I mean…I’m not getting the cheese or sour cream. A dollar extra? But I’m not getting those things that are costing more so it kind of evens out – oh, never mind. I’ll eat at home.”

J is for Just kidding, as in, “I think it’s awesome that you think you’re rebelling against the status quo by eating bacon like just about every other shmuck on earth. Just kidding!”

K is for Kale because, damn, sometimes you feel so broken down by the world you want to curl up in a ball but you should really try a vitamin infusion from this heavyweight of the produce world instead. Or fine, curl up in a ball instead. Like a gallstone, it'll pass.

L is for Listening, which we are forced to patiently do, while nodding on top of that, as people explain that they're not eating all that much red meat anymore.

M is for Michael Pollan and the zombie-like band of self-important meat fetishists that he helped to spawn. Thanks, Michael. The world wasn't heartbreaking enough before artisan, slow-roasted suckling pig was on every foodie's wish list.

N is for New Year's Resolution, in which you intend to be less bothered by the world, and it works pretty well until January third or so.

O is for the Orange wool scarf you got for Christmas and you need to try to exchange this year without a receipt. O is also for limiting the Occasions that will come up for your sister-in-law to see you in the winter without it.

P is for Prissy. You are not prissy! You are Principled and Perhaps Perfectionistic and occasionally Persnickety but you are not Prissy. Oh, so what if you are?

Q is for Questions: do you get enough protein? Are your shoes leather? What about the homeless? Did you hear that tofu will make your son start menstruating out of his nipples: I read this in a very reliable study funded by the Weston A. Price Foundation...

R is for, "Really? Are you sure about that?"

S is for Sanctimonious, which, apparently, you automatically are if you have convictions.

T is for Thankful, which you're supposed to feel so much you want to start spontaneously pirouetting for the dead, tortured turkey on the dining room table, the stuffing jammed into the poor bird's anal cavity that you're supposed to be able to eat somehow, the cousin who decides that now would be the perfect time to gloat to you about how she convinced her son to stop being a vegetarian. You're so Thankful you could just burst right there.

U is for Unpleasant. Sometimes it just is.

V is for Vegan, long 'e', hard 'g.' No, Mom, not veggin. How long have we been working on this? No, not vaygun! Never vaygun. I am not clenching my teeth. VEGAN. Vegan. Yes, I'm sure that's how it's pronounced.

W is for Why does everyone think that you are suddenly and single-handedly responsible for creating a solution for every hardship or injustice in the world, natural or man-made, just because you're vegan? How is this fair or rational?

X is for Xylophone. What does a xylophone have to do with veganism? Well, what does the claim that your neighbor's sister's daughter's best friend was allegedly vegan for a week and her skin turned bright green and then she died of aneurism have to do with it, or the fact that while being one you still can't suddenly and single-handedly cure every injustice in the world, or the PETA recently did something embarrassing and stupid that was on the news, or the fact that Drew Barrymore is no longer one have to do with it? So, yes, xylophone.

Z is for Zingers, because even the most dour, humorless vegan in the world has built up a reservoir of plenty of these over the years. It just happens.

She Who Laughs Last…

2010-12-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

This past week, I've been thinking sort of obsessively about the role of the clown, and humor in general, as it relates to advancing culture and causes. If the personal is the political as the formative women’s studies professors in my past asserted - and I agree - we are obligated to start with ourselves. Like I need an excuse to start with myself: self-indulgence is the writer’s most essential motivation and reward all in one, right behind self-expression.

[Why is writing about humor so dreadfully tedious and unfunny? The process is deeply humbling. Despite this, I assure you that I am a barrel of laughs, a hoot, riotously funny. Present moment excluded.]

The first time that I understood that I really, really liked to make people laugh probably took place earlier than this, but that most obvious first internal click that I recall happened when I was about five or six. A man was at our house to talk to my mother about insurance or something equally soporific and as he sat at the dining room table with her, talking about boring, stupid things, my brother and I chased each other around the room, inspired by the novelty of having an unfamiliar visitor. For some reason, I had a styrofoam cup in my mouth as I chased after my brother, and I slipped on the tile floor and fell, which caused the cup to break off in my mouth. This elicited a big laugh from our visitor. In hindsight, it may have actually been a polite little chuckle, it may have been a titter or a full-on, hearty guffaw, but whatever it was, it was unexpected and highly appreciated. For the rest of his visit, I tried to recreate that unintentional pratfall to ever-diminishing returns. Of course, the insurance salesman didn't laugh again, just adjusted his glasses and returned to his papers, and eventually my mother barred me from the room, but it is easy to see in retrospect that a desire to make people laugh was internally wired from an early age.

Maybe I’m naturally inclined toward clowning because of The Jewish Thing, programmed through an ancestral DNA imperative to distract the guys with the daggers and rifles long enough to survive another day. Maybe it's the result of trying to bring levity and fun to an often claustrophobically unhappy house. Probably it's the confluence of a bunch of factors that astrologers, birth order experts and numerologists can argue over. In whatever case, the end result is that I'm someone who consciously and unconsciously strives to be funny, and, as such, I’ve always looked for the comedy in life. A life without absurdity, inside jokes and the well-timed aside would be such a flat, empty and dreary one that it makes me depressed to even consider it. Like you know how you feel when you're all congested from a bad cold and you can barely feel anything for a couple of days but your clogged up, numb head? That's how I imagine a life without humor to be, a vast internal Siberia.

When I first became involved in advocacy, I was in college. Even though I knew that I was supposed to be serious, grim and strident to be respectably outraged by society, I quickly became bored by anything that seemed like a traditional display or form of protest. As a painting major, it was also expected that I be serious, grim and strident and as much as my wardrobe reflected the Gothier side of life, my spirit did not conform. Why shouldn’t I have been happy? I was out of my parent's home. I had a revolving door of cute, irresponsible boyfriends who set my heart ablaze. I was able to drink what I wanted (and, boy, did I), eat ice cream for dinner, and stay out as late as I wanted along with countless other perks. These were all reasons for a celebration, not sour-faced moping. I couldn’t hide my exuberance and I was told directly and indirectly more than once that I needed to tone it the heck down if I wanted to be taken seriously. Occasionally I bowed to social pressure but usually I did not: I couldn’t suppress myself.

Despite my instinctive rebellion against how the traditional protest takes shape, I have done my share. I have stood with countless signs, collected signatures, exchanged words with smug passersby. I have marched, yelled, and chanted with the best of ‘em and I have no doubt that I’ll do those things again. I know that sometimes they’re absolutely appropriate and effective. I just believe that the most successful, persuasive advocates work with their best skills front and center. Being creative with our activism, being fluid and treating it as unique to us as our fingerprints, is essential for our messaging and our longevity as activists. I believe that so many people get burned out on this work because they are not doing the sort of outreach that they excel at and enjoy, whether it’s handing out educational materials, organizing vegan bake sales, suing animal abusers or starting a shelter for dogs and cats.

The pivotal moment when my personal advocacy changed was about twelve years ago, when my husband and I were going out to meet some local activists for a protest in front of McDonald’s for World Vegetarian Day. As much as I wanted to see my friends and let the world know how much I loathe McDonald’s, I dreaded going. Every year, it was the same thing: go to the River North McDonald’s, get mocked by smirking tourists, chant for about an hour, pass out some brochures (and pick up the ones that get tossed on the ground), load up the signs and go home. That year, though, I decided that I was done with business as usual. I just couldn’t abide another year of it. So an image flashed in my head, and I found myself spontaneously telling my husband as it developed in my mind like a vision, “What if I go as a veggie burger this year and hand something else out?”

I am lucky to have the partner I do for many reasons. He’s a kinder, more patient, more considerate person than I am many times over. On this day, though, the qualities I most appreciated were his willingness to roll up his sleeves and get behind one of my schemes and his handiness. The man is an artsy MacGyver with an Exacto knife and foam board. He constructed a colorful sandwich board of a veggie burger that I could wear and I was immediately transformed into my vision: Valerie Veggie Burger. The Chicago Diner agreed to let us distribute two-for-one veggie burger coupons, and my nifty husband put together a nifty new brochure for us to distribute. (You should have seen the well-intentioned but virtually unreadable materials – bad photocopies of print outs from ten years before - we were handing people in the 1990s.)

The experience was transformative: instead of people dodging me and averting their eyes, they came to me, seeking what I was handing out. Instead of jeers, I got smiles and thumbs up. Instead of people covering up their children’s eyes, they took my brochure and had them pose for photos with me. Instead of people mumbling that I should “get a life,” they came to me and started conversations, asking for ideas of where to eat. It opened up whole new dialogue opportunities and created a fresh way of relating to each other that wasn’t defensive or aggressive. The dismantling of the old dynamic was disarming enough that we could actually communicate in a way that was real and mutually beneficial.

After I got a taste of what it could be like to stray from the traditional format, I couldn’t get enough, and being the person I am, it usually took on elements of street theater. We handed out green ribbon-bedecked vegetarian dining guides to Chicago on St. Patrick’s Day with the title “Erin Go Broccoli” instead of Erin Go Bragh. I marched in Gay Pride as Valerie Veggie Burger (my husband was Tommy Tofu Dog) and we amused the revelers with our “Eat me!” signs. We put on puppet shows to the lines of people in front of the Shedd Aquarium. Two of my favorite memories: my husband dressed up as a guitar-playing fox and a happy group of us who toasted our good fortune with champagne, singing joyful songs outside of Andriana Furs when a location went out of business: we actually were able to hand-deliver an oversized card we’d made to them, one that said on the outside, “Congratulations on the new chapter in your business…” Inside, it said, “Chapter Thirteen!” Another time, we went to a rodeo protest, with him dressed as a bull and me as a violent, idiotic circus clown: it was a great opportunity to torment my obliging husband for the purposes of satire.

Not everyone loves this style of activism, that’s clear. Although I noticed that in general fellow activists found their spirits invigorated with our unique approach, others accused us of being silly, making grave issues seem too lighthearted. I can understand the criticisms but I disagree: satire, wit and irreverence should not be underestimated for their sly way of making people challenge their accepted views. Historically, we can look to Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde, political cartoonists, Dorothy Parker and the Merry Pranksters, and we can find that their influence on culture leads us today to Jon Stewart, Dan Piraro and countless others who are upending accepted social mores, exposing the absurdity in conventional thought, and have a talent for incisive wit, forcing people to stop and think about things they’d scarcely even noticed before.

This is unproven, but my guess is that if you can make a person laugh, you can make a person think. It’s the same pathway to the brain. If people are more likely to approach you because the way you’re communicating is more appealing, or if they are challenged to think of things in a fresh way because you’ve reframed an issue, I cannot see the harm in it. In fact, using a diversity of approaches is very much to our benefit. Thankfully, it doesn’t need to be an either/or dichotomy: we can draw from as many sources of inspiration as we like.

More important than the issue of whether to use humor or not in one’s advocacy is that we bring our talents, perspective and passions to the table instead of feeling forced into roles that do not fit us. As I said earlier that is a recipe for burnout and the animals very much need for us to stay engaged, empowered and productive.

Over the years, my personal contribution has become more and more fine-tuned and specific, clearly favoring writing over even my old passion for street theater. When I can merge comedy with writing, that is my ideal point of entry. As I did with the insurance salesman, I’m still seeking that serendipitous comedic moment, that burst of unexpected laughter, and that’s what drives me forward with my advocacy.

But enough about me. What is a passion of yours? How can you utilize it to help make the world a more compassionate place? My guess is that identifying this passion and finding a smart way to harness it (and there has to be a way) is going to be the very best way that you can make a positive difference in the world. It is certainly a better long-term plan than adhering to a tired stereotype or someone else’s notion of what an activist is supposed to be, don’t you think?

World Vegan Month Tip #30

2010-11-30T07:12:00.000-08:00

Adopting a vegan diet is the single best way you can reduce your ecological footprint and make a stand against cruelty to animals. Focusing on locally grown, seasonal and whole plant foods further boosts your health and environmental stewardship. Find a community (online or otherwise), get some cookbooks and set some goals for yourself. A vegan diet is imminently do-able!

World Vegan Month Tip #29

2010-11-29T17:33:00.000-08:00

Want some kitchen-tested vegan holiday cookie recipes in an e-book format for a mere $3.00? VegNews Magazine is venturing into the digital cookbook realm with their Holiday Cookie Collection, which includes recipes Spicy Gingerbread and Candy Cane Whoopie Pies. Impress your family and friends this holiday season with some delicious vegan treats.

World Vegan Month Tip #28

2010-11-28T20:04:00.000-08:00

Chilly weather brings to mind cocoa. The best kind is dairy (and cholesterol) free with fair-trade cocoa and cute little air-puffed, gelatin-free marshmallows. For four mugs, heat 4 cups of unsweetened non-dairy milk, 4 tablespoons of agave nectar and 2 tablespoons of vanilla over medium heat until very hot (not boiling). Whisk in 8 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder and enjoy!

World Vegan Month Tip #27

2010-11-27T09:25:00.000-08:00

Being an urban-dweller can mean that we don't get to see much in terms of wildlife. Many people support zoos and aquariums just so their children will get a chance to see a variety of animals. Please reconsider supporting industries that keep wild animals in captivity and out of their natural habitats. Animal sanctuaries offer a wonderful opportunity to connect more deeply with non-human animals in a non-exploitative, compassionate environment. Sanctuaries need our volunteer time and donations. If there are none near you, two words: Road Trip!

World Vegan Month Tip #26

2010-11-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

Today is Fur Free Friday. My guess is that most readers of this post do not wear fur or support the evil fur industry. In the spirit of the day, though, please take some time to learn more about the fur trade to educate others. Forty-five million animals are brutally killed with steel-jaw traps, gassed, electrocuted and even skinned alive. Please let the people in your life know the truth about these horrible "luxury" items.

Vegan World Month Tip #25

2010-11-25T10:13:00.000-08:00

Vegan Thanksgiving meals can be amazing celebrations of the earth's bounty. Imagine all the colors, textures and fantastic flavors available to us: pomegranates, roasted Brussels sprouts, pumpkin-flavored desserts. A vegan celebration is not lacking in anything and reinforces the message of gratitude of this holiday.

World Vegan Month Tip #24

2010-11-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

Please consider sponsoring a turkey from a farmed animal rescue in the true spirit of Thanksgiving this year. Your sponsorship fee helps to pay for food, medical care and anything else the rescue needs to maintain good care of the animal throughout the year. The small donation very far with these amazing organizations!

Omnivore: Fail

2010-11-24T07:42:00.000-08:00

This essay was born of the recent trend of people publicly disavowing their once passionately held vegan or vegetarian beliefs. For many years, when people would identify themselves to me as former vegetarians, I would counter, tongue-in-cheek, that I was a former omnivore. This is my attempt to flesh out my inability to thrive - emotionally, spiritually and physically - as an omnivore.

I wanted to be an omnivore. I really did.

The path from which I began straying from omnivorism was painful, difficult, heart-wrenching even. People might try to tell me that I did something wrong, that I just didn't try hard enough, but they are mistaken: I tried with all my being to live as an omnivore. When it shattered around me, I wondered how could something that I believed with such a passionate, deeply held conviction - that animals were ours to do what we pleased with - be wrong? Who was I if I were no longer an omnivore? My core values, my deepest beliefs about my place on the earth, were inextricably tied to my omnivorism. When things started going downhill with my animal consumption, when it no longer felt like a natural or decent thing to do, I grieved for that part of myself that I was losing and desperately tried to cling to it more tightly. It was no use, though: eating animals was making me sick, literally and figuratively. Toward the end, it was clear that I was just going through the motions.

If I can trace my falling out with omnivorism, the path would lead back to our family dog. His being helped to usher in the first inkling that something was wrong. I could observe that he had emotions, that he had preferences and the same reasons anyone else would have for not wanting to be exploited, abused, killed. Then, somehow, this view expanded outward, try as I might to contain it, and it grew like a thing out of control to encompass the birds, pigs, cows. Before I knew it, it no longer felt justifiable or rational to eat some but not others.

In other words, it no longer felt natural.

That first bite of cheeseless pizza was something I dreaded but in reality, it was remarkably easy and welcoming. Despite this new consciousness that nagged at me, I tried to continue to live like I had grown accustomed to living, to put cheese on that pizza. I even tried to put chicken on it, but I couldn't bring myself to live the lie any longer. When I threw away the cheese, tossed the chicken in the garbage, it just felt so profoundly right: even more, when I piled the pizza high with gorgeous roasted vegetables, a cornucopia from our local farms, it just felt so correct, deep inside, and I felt the ancient echo of uncomplicated contentment I had been missing from my life for so long as an omnivore. I don't know if I had ever been so hungry or had that innate hunger so completely satisified. Yes, my starving soul nearly screamed with each voluptuous bite of silky roasted vegetables and chewy crust, yes.

I knew then that my days as an omnivore were numbered. I was entering a territory I'd long scorned and derided. The more I tried to force my body to listen to my head, the more it became an inevitability: my body was insisting on becoming herbivorous despite my most fervent wishes.

Nearly from the beginning, when I would see produce in the farmers markets, I realized that there was no escaping the fact that I was part of their demise. The snow peas, proud carrots, pears, ripe little raspberries: they once burst with life. In the market, they are still colorful and plump, but they are no longer alive. They were killed for me. Not long after intitially dabbling in veganism, I realized that I couldn't ask another to do bring these plants to market without being able to face the process myself, so as I moved away from omnivorism, I decided to start my own garden. At first, I started small, just a few packets of salad greens in a sunny little patch, but as I've fully moved toward a life rich in plant material, it has since grown much larger.

As uncertain as I was at first, I still took deep pride in the tender shoots that confidently sprang up and thrived because of my care, because of my nurturing. They could be natural, fully realized vegetables in their ideal setting with the sun warming their leaves, the wind in blowing through their stems, rain gulped thirstily by their roots. That first year of gardening, I understood on a deeper level something that I'd always known: to live was also to die, and that the natural order after birth and life would be death. When it came time to pluck those first spring lettuces, soft, sweet and delicate like a baby's satiny cheek, I was distraught. I cried and thought of asking a friend to do it instead, one who had done this many times before in his own garden. "No," I told myself. "No, I need to do this."

And so I took a deep breath and I did it, tentatively at first. My stomach hurt, my hands seemed shaky. The peppery arugula, the red leaf, the baby mizuna, they yielded at once to my touch, like a sigh. They were so alive at one moment, so clearly no longer attached to the earth the next. As much as it pained me to admit it, pulling them just felt natural and right. The depth to which I felt that I was at the right place at the right time doing the right thing was profoundly stirring. Once the initial sadness subsided, I immediately realized that I was doing more than pulling up plants. I was reconnecting with my vegetable-loving ancestors. My fingers were digging in the rich soil, pulling up the plants and brushing off the dirt to return to the cycle of life and death in my garden. It felt like a dance. The thing I thought I would never do - could never do - felt as intuitive and native to me as anything I'd ever experienced. And I thanked the greens as I collected them in my colander: thank you for giving your life to me.

Almost immediately after I quietly shifted from being an omnivore, I found that I had more energy. I felt lighter, liberated, and the heaviness I'd once felt after a big meal filled with meat and cheese was no longer evident. My heart was light, too, unburdened of the weight of all those hard, undigestible feelings that I'd suppressed for so long. I felt like singing to the world, “This feels right! Finally, I am back to being who I was meant to be!”

I dared not tell my friends, though, the omnivores who expected me to maintain the status quo, who expected me to eat chicken wings with them, to laugh at the selfish, smug meat-abstainers we knew. How could I keep my secret safe at Super Bowl parties, after-work get-togethers, holiday meals? The thought of my parents and how they would accept this betrayal of them and the core omnivorous values they raised me with brought me the most pain and worry. It was too much to bear at times and I suffered in my silence. I continued to eat my delicious stir-fries and curries, but I did it alone, surreptitiously, the light from the refrigerator the only thing illuminating me in my quiet, now-herbivorous kitchen.

Eventually, I couldn’t keep up the charade any longer and the deception I’d created came crashing around me. How many times could I tell co-workers that, no, I was saving money so I would not be going to order with them from the chicken place before they'd realize that something was up? How many creative ways could I conceal the lack of meat in my lunch before people begin to notice? How many times could I fail to take antacids or suffer from heartburn before those around me would start to wonder? When it all crashed down around me, precipitated by a busybody and a vegan cookbook I'd carelessly left out on my desk, it was horrifying but it was also a relief. The double-life I'd be leading was shattered, a permanent fissure finally ripped through. I could no longer keep the lie alive.

So today in the spirit of full disclosure, I lay myself bare. I am a failed omnivore. I did my best, I really did, for years and years but it just didn't work. The hamburgers, chicken wings, tuna casserole...ew. It's not you, it's me. Instead, when I bite into roasted red peppers, grilled corn on the cob, mangoes, black bean burgers, guacamole, I know this is me as I am. It just feels right. I love the voluptuousness, the harmlessness, the juicy, life-sustaining properties and I am no longer going to be shamed into hiding.

I am a failed omnivore. Judge me if you must, but please know that I tried my very best.

World Vegan Month Tip #23

2010-11-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

On those days when life just seems overwhelming, a walk outside to reconnect with the natural world is all it can take to find your way out. Whether it's a twenty minute walk in your neighborhood, a hike in a nearby forest, a day trip or a weekend away to a quieter, beautiful place, this time outside can be incredibly restorative to our spirits. Don't run on empty: fill yourself up with nature.

World Vegan Month Tip #22

2010-11-22T07:49:00.000-08:00

Vegan Potluck! One of the best ways to try new foods and socialize is by organizing a vegan potluck. Get a list of friends together, pick a date and get moving! As the holidays are coming up, many people are looking for ways to bring friends and food together: why not organize a vegan potluck sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas? They are a lot of fun and not a lot of work.

World Vegan Night Tip #21

2010-11-21T20:08:00.000-08:00

New recipes make the world go 'round! When you feel like you're in a food slump, sometimes it's because you've been relying too much on old standbys. It can be easy to get into the habit of the same old boring meals, and it's just as easy to break that habit. Buy a new vegan cookbook (or check one out from the library), go to a website with great recipe ideas.

World Vegan Night Tip #20

2010-11-20T18:20:00.000-08:00

Movie night! Enjoy a night in with an eye-opening or heartwarming film: The Cove, Fast Food Nation, Peaceable Kingdom, The Witness, Super Size Me, to movies like Charlotte's Web and Babe. Movies have a way of influencing us in ways that are unique to the media. Either with friends over or alone, let a movie transport you.

World Vegan Month Tip #19

2010-11-19T09:25:00.000-08:00

Restaurants usually respond to a very simple supply and demand equation. If you have a restaurant in your neighborhood or near where you work with no or very limited options for vegans, going in and politely saying that you'd love to support them if they had more to choose from can work wonders. Get your friends to come in or call with requests, too. You will likely find that many are grateful for your help.

World Vegan Month Tip #18

2010-11-18T09:11:00.000-08:00

Help dogs who are kept in in backyards year-round by keeping an eye on them. Do they have wind-proof and water-proof shelter? Do they have fresh water and dog food? Do they appear to be thin, injured or in decent shape? If you are uncertain, call a humane investigator anonymously at your local animal control. If there are no violations, offering to walk the dog and leave blankets may be helpful.

World Vegan Month Tip #17

2010-11-17T07:20:00.000-08:00

Blog it! It costs nothing to start your own blog, it can be great fun and you'll meet other people around the world as your share your thoughts, recipes or whatever else you have to give the world. It's a fun creative outlet and you can help spread the word about compassionate living. What is your unique voice, what are your gifts? Don't worry if you don't have it all nailed down: your blog will evolve as you go.

World Vegan Month Tip #16

2010-11-16T07:44:00.000-08:00

Community is everything. If you are new at "the vegan thing" or even if you have been doing it for a while, it is tremendously helpful to have a community of like-minded people around you who understand your point-of-view. You can find online communities, but don't underestimate how important one-on-one shared experiences are as well. Find a vegan community to improve your quality of life!

World Vegan Month Tip #15

2010-11-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

Think of all the places you go during the course of a day and all the opportunities for leaving educational materials behind. A Vegan Starter Kit is a great tool for learning about the cruelty-free lifestyle. Leave one or more behind at places where people love distractions: on the train or bus, the hair salon, your gym, the local cafés.

World Vegan Month Tip #14

2010-11-14T14:22:00.000-08:00

One really easy way to help animal shelters is to 1) volunteer and 2) donate. My son saved money through his allowance and bought a bunch of gently used towels and blankets at resale shops for the shelter we volunteer at once a week. Towels and blankets come in handy for creating a more comfortable environment for the animals and they are relatively inexpensive.

World Vegan Month Tip #13

2010-11-13T08:42:00.000-08:00

Power smoothies! A great way to start out your day with a blast of cancer-fighting antioxidants is with a delicious, fruit-based smoothie. My favorite is with sliced frozen bananas, soaked and seeded dates, orange juice, frozen raspberries, nutmeg, cacao powder and hemp or flax seeds. Switch out the OJ for non-dairy milk for a creamier smoothie. There are limitless combinations you can try.

World Vegan Month Tip # 12

2010-11-12T08:34:00.000-08:00

It is easy to become discouraged by the sheer enormity of cruelty to animals in our society. I have noticed that many of us are also inclined to an "all or nothing" mentality. Many people give up being vegan because they feel they cannot be perfect enough. Set workable goals. For example, try to make more vegan meals this week, or the next time you buy a new pair of shoes, make them non-leather. This is not a purity contest: it's about making it work.

Thanksgiving without blinders...

2010-11-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

Turkeys, like other animals unfortunate enough to please the human palate, are born to be forcibly impregnated, grow impossibly huge in the briefest amount of time possible, get wedged into a crowded, horrid place and are then killed, plucked, decapitated, plastic-wrapped, sometimes frozen, shipped and consumed in quick order. They are born for the sole purpose of being slaughtered in a hurry, to be literally served on a platter. They are stuffed with wild rice or dried bread or even oysters, they are basted in their own oils and they are roasted until golden, until the little plastic thermometer pops out, until the timer goes off. Limbs are removed and their flesh is carved until just the skeleton of a once-living bird remains. On Thanksgiving alone in this country, 46 million birds’ corpses are said to symbolize the spirit of the day and as such are expected to evoke warm feelings of gratitude, blessings and togetherness.

I apologize if this sounds strident or condescending, but this is what happens on Thanksgiving, right?

Is it really so strange that vegans look at the world, at the accepted norms and values around us, with an outsider’s perspective of incredulity and dismay? We have this built-in refractive lens, cultivated over years or in one big epiphany that changes us forever, a lens that makes it impossible to see what others may take as a birthright and accept it as the truth. We have a different sort of vision and sometimes it renders us pretty incapable of feigning otherwise. This isn’t always so. Speaking personally, it is often the fact that I can put blinders on that makes life manageable. Those blinders are not always reliable, though.

Sometimes when someone is eating an ice cream cone, I see dairy cows in confinement, their babies wrenched away and milk stolen. I cannot help it; it’s not that I want to see that. There are times when I’m on the train and I see fur trim on the coat of a fellow passenger, and all I can think is miserytorturedeath until I can find something to distract myself with instead or one of us gets off the train, whatever happens first. I go to my son’s school sometimes and the smell from the cafeteria immediately brings to mind crowded broiler hens with their beaks seared off. I don’t want my mind to go there, I’ve tried to train myself over the years to do anything but think of it, but sometimes I cannot control these gut reactions. They’re honest responses to a violent world I can’t pretend doesn’t exist and doesn’t affect me.

People who ask vegans to not know and feel what we know and feel are asking us to be complicit in a lie, in a crazy-making mass deception that says that what is plainly obvious does not really exist, and if it really does exist, it’s not so awful. Speaking of it is far worse.

Around the Thanksgiving table this year, many of us will be told in subtle and overt ways to muffle what we know and just play along with the annual charade society has created around the holiday. We are the minority in our families and in our communities: we are the ones who need to make the accommodations. That is not a dead bird on the table: it is a symbol of our family bond, of our blessings. The happiness of the event depends on us maintaining the lie, averting our eyes and just getting over it already. Even if you don’t eat parts carved off the dead bird, you should smile and be nice. In such situations, it’s impossible for me to not think of an abusive alcoholic who insisted that his family pretend that everything was acceptable and okay.

It is not acceptable and okay. It’s also no surprise that every year around this time, things start boiling up more than usual between herbivores and omnivores. It is just damn hard to pretend to not see what one does.

This doesn’t mean that the vegans at these countless Thanksgiving meals need to be rude or standoffish. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to force everyone in attendance to watch Meet Your Meat. It means that we’ve already determined that we’re not going to play along with this lie that everything is all right. Most of us will white-knuckle it and power through, concentrating on our beautiful side dishes, trying to not look up too much. Others of us are able to truly disengage and close ourselves off, feeling not much.

This year, as I’ve been doing for many years, I am fortunate enough to be going to a vegan Thanksgiving celebration. No one will ask me to be complicit in a lie. I will not ruin the day for refusing to “take just one bite and make everyone happy.” It will not be implied that I am a ridiculous extremist for maintaining my convictions, even on Thanksgiving. It will not be implied that I’m selfish for being the way I am, the way that feels right to me. I will not be resented for being the elephant in the room, and I will not resent others. I will laugh and enjoy myself and eat without judgment.

It will be a day of true gratitude and love, consistent with the true spirit of Thanksgiving.

World Vegan Month Tip #11

2010-11-11T07:50:00.000-08:00

Circuses, rodeos and other forms of "entertainment" that use animals in confinement to amuse audiences use incredibly cruel methods to break the spirits of the animals and get performances, from using atrocious bullhooks to electric shocks as well as other forms of abuse. Please educate yourself: never support an industry that profits from the unjustifiable exploitation of animals and let your friends know why you will not be supporting them.

World Vegan Month Tip #10

2010-11-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

You know you're perfect just as you are, but if you ever want to add another level of sparkle to your natural glow, please consider buying cruelty-free cosmetics. By definition, vegan cosmetics are made without animal testing or animal-based ingredients. Also, choose more natural, paraben-free vegan cosmetics by letting companies know that there's a demand for it.

World Vegan Month Tip #9

2010-11-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

To me, there's little better than a big salad at lunch to give me energy for the rest of the afternoon. My favorite is often the same: baby lettuces, lots of carrot strips (I use a vegetable peeler to make them into "noodles"), pitted kalamata olives, red onions, toasted walnuts (or chickpeas) and sometimes a diced apple in a homemade vinaigrette. My cat even begs for a bite. Who says you don't make friends with salad?

World Vegan Month Tip #8

2010-11-08T07:03:00.000-08:00

According to HSUS, animal shelters in the United States care for an estimated six to eight million dogs and cats each year, and between three to four million are euthanized. This is an unnecessary tragedy. Be a responsible guardian: keep your companion animals safe and healthy and commit to them for a lifetime. Please have any animals you have spayed or neutered. Last, please do not ever support pet stores or breeders as they are largely responsible for overpopulation. Adopt instead!

World Vegan Month Tip #7

2010-11-07T07:24:00.000-08:00

Seek a mentor. If you are new at this vegan thing, it can be helpful to have a mentor with a few more years under his or her belt help you with everything from finding stylish shoes to the best deals on organic produce in your community. Conversely, if you're old hat at the vegan thing, why not make it easier for a newbie by offering some (solicited) guidance? Find others through your community's vegetarian society, vegan meet-up or school organizations.

World Vegan Month Tip #6

2010-11-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

Vegan Chili! During these cooler months, sometimes a hearty chili is exactly what you need to warm that belly. There are seemingly endless variations, but sautéing vegetables, then adding them with beans, tomato sauce, chile powder, water, maybe tofu (or seitan or crumbled tempeh or even crumbled veggie burgers), then cooking it together until I can't wait any longer is my general method. Serve over rice or quinoa, with diced red onion, chili peppers, vegan sour cream and hot sauce on the side...mmm!

World Vegan Month Tip #5

2010-11-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

Libraries are a phenomenal resource in most communities, and many have well-stocked cookbook sections. This is a great way to "test drive" a cookbook before committing to it. Also, educate yourself about the benefits of a plant-based diet and the cruelties of animal-based agriculture with the books and films available. If you don't see what you're looking for, don't be shy about requesting that they order it.

World Vegan Month Tip #4

2010-11-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

Slow cookers (a.k.a., crock pots) are amazing tools for working people or anyone who likes a flavorful, healthful meal with a minimum of effort. There is nothing like coming home to the aroma of an already cooked meal to make you feel energized. Usually requiring nothing more than a quick sauté and then loading the ingredients in the slow cooker for a set amount of time, you can easily prepare everything from vegan stews to lasagne in your trusty device. This book is an amazing resource for any dedicated slow cooker. (I recommend getting a model with a timer and an inside pot that can be removed from the base for easy transportation.)

World Vegan Month Tip #3

2010-11-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

Take care of yourself. If you're tired, sick and/or stressed, you're not a compelling role model. It's obvious that animal and earth advocates have our work cut out for us. This is why it's important that we keep ourselves physically and emotionally well. Take your B-12 and Omega 3 supplements, eat whole foods (emphasizing fresh produce), rest when you need to, take time to laugh, nurture interests and friendships. If you don't take care of yourself, you won't be effective for anyone else.

World Vegan Month Tip #2

2010-11-02T08:09:00.000-07:00

To avoid that "It's 6:00: what's for dinner?" panic that many of us face, it pays to be organized. Often the meals we choose at the last minute aren't the healthiest, just the quickest. When you're trying to eat more healthfully and save money by eating more at home, keeping a binder full of your favorite recipes is a smart idea. Go through your cookbooks and copy your favorite recipes; print out the ones you like online. Having your favorite vegan recipes in one spot saves time and money

World Vegan Month Tip #1

2010-11-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

There are frightening and unhealthy chemicals in many cleaning products, and so many are also tested on animals in laboratories. Carcinogens, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and phosphates are some of the dangerous by-products found in conventional cleaning products. Why not save yourself some money, create a healthier home environment and protect the environment by creating your own cruelty-free cleaning products? They are harmless, effective and cost a fraction of store bought brands.

World Vegan Month!

2010-11-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

It's November 1 so that means it's World Vegan Month. For the second year, in honor of WVM, I will give a tip a day to help people adopt more compassionate and healthy steps toward adopting a vegan lifestyle, or help make it just a little easy for those who are already there. I'm excited!

Vegan Feminist Agitator

Another Disgruntled Vegan Alphabet, 2011 Edition

I Killed Kale: A Love Story...

Top Fifty Things Bacon Will *Not* Make Better

World Vegan Day Tip #22

World Vegan Day Tip #21

World Vegan Month Tip #20

World Vegan Day Tip #20

World Vegan Day Tip #19

World Vegan Month Tip #18

World Vegan Day Tip #17

World Vegan Month Tip #16

World Vegan Month Tip #15

All beings tremble...

World Vegan Month Tip #14

World Vegan Month Tip #13

World Vegan Month Tip #12

World Vegan Month Tip #11

World Vegan Month Tip #10

World Vegan Month Tip #9

World Vegan Month Tip #8

World Vegan Month Tip #7

World Vegan Month Tip #6

World Vegan Month Tip #5

World Vegan Month Tip #4

World Vegan Month Tip #3

World Vegan Day Tip #2

World Vegan Month Tip #1

Ay yi yi! Chicago VeganMania!

How a vegan is born...

Of Babies and Bath Water: Insistence on Another's Purity is a Losing Battle

Soy will kill you DEAD.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Unplanned vacation...

An Open Letter to Summer

Urban Woman: From Dirt Bike Wheels to Vegan Heels

This Artisan Life

The Universal Mother…

When You Wish Upon a Star...

The VegNews Scandal

Vegan Bake Sale Bliss

Hounded by Kate Bush: A Tribute...

The Case for Why Vegan Feminists Should Just Rule the World Already

Let's hear it for the weird kids!

The Emotional Pipeline of Food

Tough Love in the Confessional Booth

The Zombievore's Dilemma

The Sand Dollar...

Checking in, and trauma recovery...

Rebel Jesus

Another Disgruntled Alphabet for Vegans...

She Who Laughs Last…

World Vegan Month Tip #30

World Vegan Month Tip #29

World Vegan Month Tip #28

World Vegan Month Tip #27

World Vegan Month Tip #26

Vegan World Month Tip #25

World Vegan Month Tip #24

Omnivore: Fail

World Vegan Month Tip #23

World Vegan Month Tip #22

World Vegan Night Tip #21

World Vegan Night Tip #20

World Vegan Month Tip #19

World Vegan Month Tip #18

World Vegan Month Tip #17

World Vegan Month Tip #16

World Vegan Month Tip #15

World Vegan Month Tip #14

World Vegan Month Tip #13

World Vegan Month Tip # 12

Thanksgiving without blinders...

World Vegan Month Tip #11

World Vegan Month Tip #10

World Vegan Month Tip #9

World Vegan Month Tip #8

World Vegan Month Tip #7

World Vegan Month Tip #6

World Vegan Month Tip #5

Top Fifty Things Bacon Will Not Make Better