Tough Love in the Confessional Booth

(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

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...

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 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. It was bleached white, no longer alive. 

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...

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

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...

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…

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?