Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

Written by the same woman who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe, the Mother's Day Proclamation was a powerful plea for the abolishing of war. Originally conceived as Mother's Day for Peace, we are reminded how little has changed. There is still, sadly, so much violence in the world, and we as mothers and children of mothers need to raise our voices against it, no matter how it manifests. This year, in addition to the chocolates and flowers (or perhaps in the place of those things), maybe we can all aspire to find deeper meaning in Mother's Day: a commitment toward peace, love and justice, something any mother could stand behind.

Mother's Day Proclamation

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Newsflash: Liberals think vegans are a bunch of big meanies!

One of the things blocking my precious sensibilities from reaching the state of Zen serenity I so aspire to attain is surely the open disdain directed by the so-called progressive community at large toward vegans. I have been herbivorous since February 1, 1995, (though, admittedly, that first year was frequently one of self-deception , wherein I would occasionally order a muffin and say to myself, "Well, I don't know that it wasn't made with soy milk and egg replacer. It doesn't say that it wasn't...") and as such, I do not harbor many illusions about the fact that the general public views vegans as a bunch of prudish killjoys at the nonstop barbeque-flavored bacchanal of life. I get this and accept it, though I have many skeletons in my closet with numbers in their bony hands, waiting patiently to disprove my putative prudishness. (They're skeletons: what else do they have to do?) As vegans, our mere presence brings to form the elephant in the room, an unspoken - though, to be fair, at times vehemently spoken - disapproval, and a spotlight on what is intentionally glossed over with the consumption of neatly packaged meat: this is a dead animal. When a vegan is in the room, even a discreet, non-confrontational one, so is the elephant and as such, these illusions are stripped bare. I get this.

What I have a hard time with, though, is the vitriol I have encountered aimed at vegans from the otherwise progressive community. This can be witnessed in real life but especially online, where there is a reassuring anonymity one can safely retreat to and he can make longwinded, ill-constructed arguments without actually seeing the other eyes glaze over in boredom, roll in annoyance. You can let your inner-Id come out to play and insult your would-be antagonists with reckless, gleeful abandon without the constraints one would feel in real life, of maintaining decorum or personal safety. In other words, the internet is the perfect playground for letting unfiltered opinions loose like sputtering balloons zigzagging rapidly across the room.

Of course not just the vegan community is subject to this, nor is the vegan community innocent of immature behavior online. It's just that I have noticed a disproportionate and vituperative response from the larger progressive world with the mildest suggestion that maybe, just maybe, a vegan diet might reduce our carbon footprint and animal suffering. You can almost hear the organic, fair trade green tea sputter against Mac screens across the country in spit take after spit take (you know, the classic comic technique of taking a sip of something, hearing some shocking news, and spitting out your beverage out like Old Faithful?) of outraged disbelief. This is always bound to happen when the "liberal" world hears that they may want to reevaluate some of their most treasured privileges, and that perhaps a smiley-faced sun does not rise and set every day specifically because of them and their obvious awesomeness. Such suggestions cause the grass-fed beef manure to hit the solar-powered fan, apparently.

Take Kathy Freston's recent article on Alternet, for example, on the positive environmental implications of going vegetarian for just one day a week. Is that so damn scary or radical a notion? If so, this crowd would have had their biodynamic brains explode in a green gooey mess if they'd have heard just one of my angry rants circa 1997. This woman was on Oprah, and is hardly a radical vegan feminist. Putting aside quibbles on writing style and just focusing on the message itself, we find that Ms. Freston with her simple, bullet-point-y piece, has certainly struck a nerve with the NPR crowd that loves to have their shoulders rubbed while being reassured that they are above reproach, that they are never part of any problem, anywhere. It is a fact-and-statistic based article, no name-calling, no demonizing, yet the letters that follow would have you believe that Ms. Freston had simply wrote Meat Is Murder And Only Murderous Murderers Eat It! You Suk! in 72-point type.

At about the same time, over on Salon, Alternet's preening cousin with literary aspirations, an interview with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson drew a similar response. Masson, an author of extremely popular books about the emotional lives of non-human animals, such as Dogs Never Lie About Love and When Elephants Weep, had the audacity a few years back to explore the complex psychological worlds of so-called farm animals in The Pig Who Sang To The Moon. Now, in his more polemical The Face On Your Plate, Masson apparently (I say "apparently" as I have not read the book yet) draws a line in the sand, challenging the brigade of Conscientious Omnivores to consider the ethical and environmental implications of eating animal products, even those from their beloved pastoral farms. Predictably, this did not sit well with the Salon crowd, and, once again, the hissing sound of spit takes reverberated across the country. In the letters, if you listened hard enough, you could also hear the increasing rumble of thousands of entitled progressive Democrats having overgrown temper tantrums, ones in which they cried, Wahh! But Alice Waters eats meat! and Wahh! I watched An Inconvenient Truth thirty-two times and Al Gore never said being a meat-eater was bad! (True. We noticed that as well. Why don't you go give your compact fluorescent bulbs a hug? You'll feel better as the polar ice caps melt...)

So, given the fact that omnivores are thin-skinned when it comes to acknowledging the implications of meat-eating, and liberal omnivores are the thinnest of the thin-skinned - like, truly, this epidermis is razor thin - I thought I'd make relations between us a little less contentious by fostering some understanding. Because that's the sort of person I am. In the spirit of goodwill, I have drafted a series of stock composites who tend to respond to the vegan position's assault on one's feelings of general awesomeness. How is this bridging goodwill? Well, if such a document exists, perhaps omnivores who are so affronted by the idea that it may not be so nice to kill animals from the animal's perspective, maybe if they see that their widdew feewings are acknowledged, we can just hug it out and move on.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm writing this because it's fun! And as a smug, puritanical, denatured and uptight vegan, I reserve the right to have fun where I can.

Classifications of Omnivores Observed In The Virtual And Temporal Worlds

There are many types of omnivores, from the junk food eating variety to the rarified foodie, from your neighbor Ed to your favorite newspaper columnist, but it seems that the liberal world breeds some stocks that are unique to it. Of course, there are many more to be observed online and in the field, as well as a good many more subcategories, but in the ever-shifting environment in which emergent genetic types develop and then crossbreed, it is virtually impossible to maintain a static status quo. Be that as it may, these classifications are surprisingly and reassuringly predictable.

The Naturals

First off, there are those who we will identify as The Naturals. The Naturals are offended by the merest suggestion that a vegan diet might be worth considering because they are the natural ones, gosh darn it. They are natural because they acknowledge the life-and-death cycle that is inevitable in the world and they really, really want to participate in the death part of it. Do not begrudge them this birthright or they may react violently or, at least, vituperatively. They idolize Alice Waters, Michael Pollan and raw milk. In reality, they are the liberal, highbrow equivalent of Ted Nugent, sharing a good deal of their genetic code with the Republican crossbow hunting Motor City Madman, though this remains largely unacknowledged. They make arguments about us having canine teeth, despite the fact that herbivorous animals like cows also have some sharper teeth for chewing, and they argue the In The Wild, their favorite place for a cerebral sojourn, lions kill innocent gazelles. In general, The Naturals like to pick-and-choose their ethical justifications as if they were going through the line at an all-you-can-eat buffet. They also stop for a little powwow at the Native American section while they are there, and they will say, "Well, like the Native Americans, I give thanks for the animals that gave their lives for my meal." The fact that they do not base all their ethical decisions on their interpretation of WWSFLKD (What Would Simba From Lion King Do?) and that they do not sleep outdoors year-round, bow hunt, starve when food is not available and go without indoor plumbing or hot water does not deter The Naturals from wanting to emulate native peoples in the specific case of meat-eating and whatever else might serve them, such as sweat lodges with their buddies. This is the most common classification with the most subsets. Some speculate that The Naturals are most offended by vegan point-of-view because it threatens to knock them off their pedestal of superiority. The Naturals were too busy placing advance orders of Michael Pollan's next seven books to address or even contemplate this. They see vegans as naive, urbanized, uninformed and, most of all, UnNatural.

The I Grew Up On Farm-ers

A subset of The Naturals, The I Grew Up On A Farm-ers believe that they have both the authority and authentic voice that make them an especially admired population within the larger classification. The Farm-ers use their backgrounds to justify reinforcing the meat-eating status quo and their ability to try to end a debate with six simple words ("I grew up on a farm,") is especially noteworthy. The Farm-ers believe that vegans are confused, denatured, recklessly uninformed and pitiable.

The Anti-Soy Zealots

Another subset of The Naturals, the genetic emergence of The A-SZs can be traced to the early 2000s, around the time that Dr. Robert Atkins passed the torch by having his diet roundly discredited and then, finally, by dying. As with the Atkins Diet, The A-SZs characterize the herbivorous diet as nutritionally unsound and those who follow it as mentally unsound. The A-SZs believe that vegans consume a continuous and voluminous stream of processed soy products, which they regard as Lucifer's bean. According to an A-SZ, soy will cause males to grow mini-teats where he once had testicles, and cause halitosis, vagina dentata, schizophrenia and, ultimately, an early death and unattractive corpse. Especially pernicious because of how easily they are camouflaged within natural parenting circles, a A-SZ can be detected by keen observation: she can be observed feeding her baby raw liver, and she carries a well-worn copy of the A-SZ bible Nourishing Traditions with her everywhere she goes for quick reference. The A-SZs regard vegans as nutritionally deficient, irresponsible, unknowledgeable ticking time bombs, ready to explode at any moment in a virulent torrent of edamame, tofu burgers and soy milk.

The Sensualists

Yet another subset of The Naturalists, Sensualists view vegans as sexually repressed, dysfunctional and puritanical based on their lifestyle. To a Sensualist, anyone who has objections to eating anything at any moment is pushing a monastic, inhibiting agenda that is devoid of frivolity or enjoyment. Sensualists worship their leaders, usually celebrities in the food world, such as Anthony Bourdain and Nigella Lawson, and they like to see themselves in this same crafted image: culinarily unapologetic, sexually provocative. To a Sensualist, one's status as a vegan implies a host of sexual and psychological dysfunctionalities, and they believe that only omnivores are satisfied as epicureans and as sexual human beings. Sensualists see vegans as hopelessly repressed, buttoned up, dysfunctional and confused.

The Hypocrisy Police

Badge-wearing members of the Hypocrisy Police are ever-vigilant for any indication of a defect in character, or, short of this, any sign that the scrutinized is inconsistent. The Hypocrisy Police Force will ask suspects if his shoes are leather, if she is in favor of reproductive rights, and create hypothetical situations to see how a vegan will respond to such scenarios, for example, how one would respond to living on a deserted island with only a few potentially life-sustaining chickens as company. Regardless of how one answers a Hypocrisy Police interrogation, the scrutiny will continue unabated until the suspect collapses in exhaustion or the officer runs out of topics. If the suspect answers in such a fashion as to deflect all suspicion of hypocrisy, most frequently she is then accused of either dishonesty or self-righteousness. The outcome is a foregone conclusion: vegans are guilty of something. Vegans are viewed by the Hypocrisy Police as untrustworthy, morally disingenuous, slippery, dishonest and, at best, naive.

The Whiners

It is a well-known fact that everyone loves a good whine once in a while, and liberals love whining most. It is as natural and comfortable as breathing to many; there are those, though, who elevate the act to a new level. Most Whiners have perfected the art of circular breathing, wherein the breathing and whining are achieved in one continuous loop. The Whiners love to whine about a litany of whiney subjects to vegans. For example, many have been observed claiming that they "triiiiied" (this is how it's pronounced) to be vegan, but it was too hard. Their teeth fell out, their tongues turned green, the phytoestrogens turned them gay, they slept 76 hours a day, their skin peeled right off like tree bark but once they ate meat again, they grew new teeth, their tongues returned to a pinkish hue, they turned hetero again, and so forth. Some reported seeing the clouds split as well as hearing a harpsichord with a chorus of angels upon returning to carrion. But they triiiiiied (again, their pronunciation). Or they will whine about how it costs too much, it takes too much effort, it is too socially difficult, and it's too darn hard, or, haaaaaard. Or they have special conditions that require protein consumption every fifteen minutes, they grew up in a meat-eating home (as opposed to the rest of the general non-Hindu/non-hippie-commune population), or they just like the taste of it. They perceive vegans as a bunch of big meanies if they do anything less than pat Whiners on the back and say in a very solemn tone, "I know you tried, Whiner. I know you tried." The Whiner tends to think of vegans as either mean-spirited bullies or intensely disciplined and ascetic mountain-dwelling monks. No amount of hand-holding or reassurance will divert a Whiner from this initial assessment.

The Proletariots

The Proletariots fancy themselves as voices of the common people, regardless of their circumstances, and, as such, they are offended by the elitism they feel emanates from those who have certain standards of what they will and will not allow into their bodies. To a Proletariot, the mere idea of a vegan is personally offensive and deeply aggravating, even if no actual personal interaction has ever occurred. Despite the fact that the least expensive food in the world is, in fact, vegan, and the most exploitative industry is animal agriculture, true Proletariots will remain unswayed from their conviction that vegans are snobbish, entitled, bourgeois and over-educated spoiled brats who hate "regular" people.

The New Agers (a.k.a., The "I'll Try Any Argument That Springs Into My Head"ers)

The New Agers are characterized by their dogged determination to keep any discussion on an esoteric or spiritual plane. When confronted by the presence of a vegan, they will gently but firmly try to steer the conversation away from anything concrete and measurable (for example, the effect of animal agriculture on water quality) and toward what can loosely be called more obscure arguments, such as whether plants feel pain or what their totem animal urges them to consume. New Agers will also argue that animals wanted to give up their lives to be eaten and, like The Naturals, have been known to delve into Native American culture with an insistence that they give thanks for the dead animals they consume, though no such declarations or rituals of gratitude have ever been publicly witnessed. Every argument in favor of meat-eating is filtered through the New Agers primary valve: that of his preferences. This is true of all of the classifications, though the New Agers are more overt and unashamed about this fact. New Agers frequently will taut their status as former vegetarians in order to bolster their arguments, but, upon further investigation, it is usually revealed that they were never actually vegetarians. New Agers cannot be tied down with factual matters, though, and if they sense they are losing an argument, they will suggest just dropping the subject, regardless of who brought it up. New Agers view vegans as spiritually adrift, chakra imbalanced and overly analytic.

So there we have it. Please feel free to add any categories you have observed in the field or online so we can keep the most thorough record of the classifications rampant within the world of liberal distaste toward veganism.

Shalom, everyone.

Through the lens of a cleanse...

I have this very, shall we say, well-loved, book (okay, it's seriously bedraggled: dog-eared, pages are coming out of the binding, food stained) I bought many years ago, ten or eleven, after I just happened to push my grocery cart down an aisle and wound up by the vitamins and cookbooks. Something about the cover, with it's fresh herbs and tall glass of juice, leaped out at me. Intrigued, I picked it up. The book is a day-to-day guidebook to doing a twenty-one-day cleanse. I leafed through it there, and, me being impulsive, within minutes started grocery shopping on the spot for the three week cleanse I took the executive privilege of deciding that John and I would embark upon the next morning. Into the cart went apple cider vinegar and fenugreek, aloe vera juice and daikon radishes. I came home later that day with adorable carrot tops and beet greens peeking out of our canvas bags, the stitching on them threatening to rip from the weight of it all, and as we unpacked, John tried to extract more information about what this new endeavor.

"So, what are we supposed to do?"

"We're supposed to do what the book says."

"But what does the book say?" He grunted, struggling to close the produce drawer.

"Oh, whatever. It'll be fun."

It turns out, the book says colonics, which we came to learn was pretty much the opposite of what John considers fun. (How was I to know?) It also says a bunch of days on a raw foods diet, culminating an a two day juice fast, and then two more days raw. John also did not consider this remotely fun. Also not fun: the apple cider vinegar-water mixture before lunch, the two hour waiting period after meals for a drink, liver cleansing juices for five days, which was pretty much like drinking not-particularly good, room temperature salad dressing, and the raw soups with blended alfalfa sprouts in the starring role. John being a small-town-turned-big-city boy, though, he is always up for new experiences and as with so many of my capricious little flights of fancy, he was happy to indulge me just to see where it went. He did the cleanse with me that year, occasionally calling during the day for advice ("Is it okay if I put ice in my wa- no? Sigh. Okay...") and to give me updates ("I drank the juice but I'm totally not doing the wheatgrass shot - I don't care what the book says - that stuff is disgusting.") and he generally kept a positive attitude except for when colonic irrigation day arrived and the hose took with it one the last remaining aspect of John's virginity. At the end of the cleanse, though, he felt light and healthy, as did I. Still, he said to me with a sunny smile and bright eyes but in no uncertain terms, "Just so you know, I am never, ever doing that cleanse again."

So on my own I have been lo these last ten or so years of cleanses, which I tend to do every spring. In April, like clockwork, when I come home lugging grocery bags heavy as if they were carrying bowling balls, filled to the top with burdock root (every bit as enticing as it sounds), hijiki and more lemons than Minute Maid's most productive grove, he says in his low-key way, "So it's cleanse time again?" I nod gravely. "Yep."

The first few years, John saw fit to reiterate that while he would continue to love and support me, there was no way he'd submit to such torture again; now he trusts that I won't ask. His reluctance is understandable: it is a bear to get through. Frankly, it works better now that we have a child to have one parent who is not competing in a sort of dietary triathlon. When my friends hear of my cleanse, inevitably they are concerned: "You have to juice fast for two days?"; "Broth for dinner? I don't care how long it lasts, that's like being prisoner in a gulag,"; "What kind of sadist wrote this book? What are her credentials? Is she a dominatrix or something?"; " You're excited that you don't have to drink an oily juice this morning? You have Stockholm's Syndrome, girl, and the tyrant is you." Oh, actually that last thought was one of my own.

So, whatever, it may be cruel and unusual, but it works. I come out the other side really revived and refreshed, my metabolism revved up and everything fine-tuned. You know that expression, working on all four cylinders? That's how I feel when the cleanse is finished, everything humming along optimally. Getting there, though, can be dicey, and it's a little bit like going through the different stages of labor. You think you can't make it - you cry, you beg, you swear you'll die - but if you white knuckle it, you'll make it through to the other side. Along the way, though, there are plenty of dark moments.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, the liver is the seat of anger. If so, it would stand to reason that cleansing the liver might also release stored anger. When one is cleansing in general, emotional aspects come up all the time, and I often begin to feel like Sybil-meets-Dharma-meets-Regan from The Exorcist, which basically combines into a Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme-like character, who, I'm sure, is a delightful housemate. John is now accustomed to the vagaries of my shifting moods as we ride the emotional cleanse roller coaster, though, and he's pretty thick-skinned about being reamed like one of those many lemons for "sneezing too loud" or "folding the newspaper wrong." Now that I'm entering my final week of the cleanse - one in which I can eat cooked food and do not have to drink salad dressing for breakfast - I can say that I feel very strong and wonderful. The cleanse works. And there are things I learned from it that I never would have known if I had never done an extended cleanse. For example:

* Hearing someone crunch on pita chips while you consume your "mineralizing" soupe du jour of blended alfalfa sprouts for the third night in a row can inspire violent thoughts.

* Licking one's fingers after eating a vegan ice cream sandwich will make you fantasize of putting the finger licker's precious fingers in your Champion Juicer.

* If the CIA is looking for new torture techniques, have the prisoner sit in a restaurant while the others at his table eat French fries and he has to nurse a room temperature carrot-beet-cucumber juice.

* When you are really, really looking forward to your evening broth because it is ambrosia-like compared to your daily regiment of foul liquids it helps to reinforce the accuracy of that otherwise annoying expression, "it's all relative."

* You think about food almost constantly when you aren't eating any. Your thought pattern is like this: I need to call back Jane. She might be making dinner. I wonder what she's making tonight? Hey, I wonder what I'm making tonight. John can make dinner. Is it really so hard? They can have pasta and garlic bread. Garlic bread. I wonder when I can have garlic bread again. Oh, god, I have to drink that spinach juice for dinner tonight. Somebody shoot me. Shudder. A spinach lasagna would be amazing right now. I would so devour it. I'm filing for divorce if John asks me what day of the cleanse I'm on...

* If you have a six-year-old, he will say things like, "I wish you weren't on a cleanse so you could try this pizza. It's soooo good!" or "Wow, this is the best pad Thai I've ever had." You won't be sure if he's being passive-aggressive or just effusive, but did he always exalt about food this much?

* Even though you're not cooking, you create as many dirty dishes as you do when you are because of the endless array of fluids you have to prepare.

* Going downtown, when it entails lugging your water, tea, juice and broth for the day, can feel like a slow death for your shoulder. It would lobby to be emancipated from you but it's too damn tired.

* Your friends will tempt your resolve by saying things like, "You know, you don't have to do this," like you were under the impression that a black-masked bandit with a gun growled at you, "Go on a cleanse, NOW." You weren't actually laboring under that impression.

*Foods that normally don't excite you take on new qualities of deliciousness in your fantasies. The anticipation of steamed vegetables in a few days rivals what a child would feel about Santa Claus visiting, brown rice with a little drizzle of sesame oil sounds like a decadent Epicurean feast of the highest order. Again, "it's all relative" ricochets through your mind.

So, yay, I'm nearly done, and yippee, my skin looks great, and woo hoo, no liver cleansing juices for another year and hey, does anyone want to meet me at the Chicago Diner as soon as Sunday? I will most assuredly not be ordering a salad.

Shalom, everyone.

Rage Against The Machines...

One of the great pluses of my relationship with my husband is that we're very much alike in key ways: we have similar tastes, we have similar strengths. It can pretty much be guaranteed that if I'm into a new interest or project, my husband will be right there alongside me, proofreading, brainstorming, running off to get supplies, cutting and gluing and creating a mess to help me make this idea take shape. We are very compatible in this: we are both people who are perfectly content in a creative environment, and we both get all angst-y when we are between projects. I think a lot of our self-worth as individuals comes from our creative output, whether this is a healthy attitude or not.

The downside of being so well-matched in terms of strengths is that we're equally similar when it comes to our weaknesses. Neither of us is very practical, for example, though John is more than I am (his inner-Protestant Minnesotan is to blame), and we are not particularly adroit at the day-to-day business of playing bills on time, making sure our son gets enough sleep, finding our respective glasses, getting the clean laundry folded and put away in a timely manner. Sadly, a lot of this sounds like the stereotypical artist's refrain - how do I still thrive in this world of schedules and deadlines and responsibilities? - (and I am well aware of how pretentious and annoying that sounds, as it's hard not to call to mind the clichéd English lit snob writing an epic hand-wringing prose poem in a smoky café) but it accurately reflects the nature of the challenges we face. Not that every day offers insurmountable hurdles or that we are so tightly cloistered in our precious ivory tower of creativity, but just that the daily obligations one assumes in adulthood seem to be a lot easier for other people to accept, you know?

It wouldn't be so hard if machines didn't hate the two of us.

If it has a motor, wheels, gears, is mechanized to any degree, has buttons one must push, must be programmed, has hard little metal and plastic parts made in a factory somewhere, it has invariably been implanted with a computer chip with the directive to foil the two of us whenever possible. Currently, my oven has blown a fuse and does not work, the pilot light went out in our gas tank (April flowers bring cold showers here), our garage door is dysfunctional and must be manually opened, and, last, the car. Oh, the car.

It safely ferried my newborn home from the hospital, it has shuttled us to all manner of exciting and ordinary destinations, it hosts a number of identity-pronouncing bumper stickers (including my all-time favorite, a scratched-to-the-point-of-illegibility gem from Lawrence, Kansas: Bush + Dick = Screwed) but now the ol' wagon is ailing. Car-eating buzzards are circling overhead. The military band is rehearsing Taps in our garage (they had to open the door by hand, of course). The obituary has already been written for Car and Driver Magazine and it's ready to run at a moment's notice. (Beloved Ford Focus wagon, gunmetal grey, vehicle to John, Marla, their child and several hairy beasts, passed away from complications related to age and negligence on Tuesday...)

The Car Talk guys on NPR would egg each other on and laugh and laugh at our sad situation. The transmission is wonky - it gets stuck between gears or something like that - and, lately, the starter has not been, well, starting. We can get somewhere but when we try to leave, it won't start again. And it's unpredictable. Sometimes it takes twenty minutes or so to restart, other times, a couple of hours. Yesterday, we left abandoned the car in the grocery store parking lot and waited for the bus in the cold rain with all our shopping bags to get to my mother's place so I could cook on her stove as ours is currently unusable, as you read two paragraphs up. I am a fan of public transit so that is not an issue, but it can feel a little silly sometimes to be taking the bus to your mother's place so you can cook dinner and bathe (remember the pilot light?). You know, if you're not nineteen or so.

When I have some perspective, I can clearly see that machines do not hate us, at least not all of them. I am writing this right now on a computer that dutifully records every letter typed, and a space heater is warming my legs. Our toaster oven seems to have mastered the job of toasting without complaint. The blender and juicer shouted out from the kitchen that they are humming along just fine.

When the technology around us shorts out, malfunctions or just plain quits, it's hard not to feel like the entire machine world is in on some master plan bent on disrupting our lives. It can take some deep breathing before it sets in that these things are not us, that in our old age, we won't remember the starter problem with the car, but we'll remember the road-trip to Pennsylvania to see friends, the animal sanctuary in Michigan, the adventures with friends and family that the car helped to facilitate.

Maybe in my attempts to make peace with technology, the lesson is that I need to make peace with myself. These are inconvenient bumps in the road, but the real stuff of life is rich, abundant and expansive. Machines can never replace that.

Shalom, everyone.

I'm mental for lentil soup...

By the way, do you remember back to the not-so-halcyon days of junior high when you referred to the stupid boys and your weird uncle and the girl who tried to copy from you as being "mental?" I never quite understood that. Isn't describing someone as mental along the same lines as calling someone cerebral, and, thus, the opposite of stupid? Was I overthinking this? Most likely "mental" is shorthand for mentally retarded in junior high parlance, right? In any case, calling someone - namely, my husband - mental, has become one of my most favorite put-downs, like, "Would you please stop getting all mental about the freezer door being left open? Jeez!" When in doubt, regress. I think The Art Of War has a whole chapter on using the skills you acquired in sixth grade against adversaries. They are lethal.

So, along the same lines of asking general questions of unsuspecting visitors to my little playpen, I have another one: do you ever forget that whole categories of food exist? Like one day, for example, you wake up and say, "Hmm. I'm feeling like making a casserole tonight. It's been a while since I had one," and you flip through your internal Rolodex of recent meals and you realize with growing incredulity that it's been forever, or at least a long, long time, since you had a casserole of any sort, and then the one you make is so delicious and so hits the spot that you get on this huge casserole-making kick until your family tells you in a loving but honest way that it wouldn't be so awful to have a non-casserole-y meal? Of course this has happened to you. Anyway, the point of this whole post is my recently renewed love affair with soup, the bowl of belly-warming, nourishing goodness that has been waiting ever so patiently to be rediscovered. Oh, and also to share a recipe I think you'll like.

I wonder why I forgot about soup? I wonder why it's only before winter has begum loosing it's icy grip from around my shoulders that I finally remembered? No matter. People probably forget about soup all the time: it's like that rather boring friend who is so steadfastly loyal, so there for you, that you kind of neglect her. This is more about you and your screwed up values than it is about your friend. Admit it. In your more aware moments, you realize that this friend is not boring, actually, she's very cool in her serene, non-showy kind of way, the exact sort of person you should seek out more. Soup is like that, too. Unlike your friend, though, who may have moved on to more appreciative company (and who could blame her?), soup remains steadfastly dedicated to you.

Soup is just a notion, hanging out in the farmer's market and cabinet, waiting to take form in a soup pot and then a bowl. From there, it will curve gracefully to the bowl's contours and that of your spoon, and you will think to yourself, "How on earth could I have gone without you for so long?" Soup holds no ill will: that is not the Way of Soup. It was made to do a job: to warm your throat, then a light a gentle path to your belly, with soupy goodness. If it can caress bread or provide a nice canvas for oyster crackers or scallions along the way, that's all the better, but never forget that soup was created to serve number one: You. Call it co-dependent, call it devoid of self-identity (and, thus, ego, and as such, a manifestation of the Buddha) but still, you know, call it.

When we were three and learning our alphabet, it was there to encourage us, an orange-y broth lesson book with floating letters, and when we are toothless and ancient, soup will fill us with nourishment and warm memories. In between it will be there for us when we're at our worst, no questions asked: sick and snotty, heartbroken, tired, impoverished. Soup loves you -- never doubt that.

Public service announcement over, but, first, some random quick points about soup:

1. If you make a big ol' pot of soup every Sunday, or whatever works for you, you will be so rewarded all week. I don't care how busy you are, naysayer: we're all busy! Don't you think I'm busy what with trying to foment the feminist vegan revolution? This is all the more reason why making a big pot of soup is so beneficial. It actually cuts down on time and expense to do this.

A. I have found if I have a container of soup at the ready in my refrigerator, it cuts down on unnecessary snacking. This makes it not only economical but good for those watching their weight.

2. Do what our grandmothers did: keep a freezer bag of leftover vegetable trimmings for making a kick-ass broth or soup. Again, this is economical and elegant in its frugality. You will also feel so rewarded when you obviate the need for a bouillon cube. Would grandma use a bouillon cube? Pish. And isn't frugality and resourcefulness all the rage these days? Create a buzz around yourself with your superlative soup-making skillz. You'll be all like the Joad family in The Grapes Of Wrath but less, you know, desperate and Okie-ish.

3. I'm getting hungry for soup now, maybe something with asparagus and petite peas. Or black beans, chipotle peppers and corn? Soup is the ultimate blank canvas upon which you make something pitch-perfect for your mood: light, spicy, smoky, subtle, tangy, rich, silky. How are you feeling? Soup is here to help match your ever-elusive moods, and, thus, create union with you. I ask you, can a casserole do that? A pizza? Like grandma said above, hands folding down in the ultimate Jewish grandma representation of dismissal, pish.

A. Experimenting with flavors and textures in your soup creating will make you a better cook. It's all about alchemy, and soup is the ideal vehicle for such experimentation.

4. There's so much to say here, about how adaptive soup is to the seasons, how it is comfortable with both peasants or royalty slurping on it, what a spectrum of colors it can come in, and on and on. I'm getting all verklempt.

5. Oh, last, perhaps my final point is soup is perhaps my clichéd Proust's Madeleine as my beloved Grandmother (do you seem how many times grandmother has been invoked here?), who was a very good cook, had a special way with it. I can still see her (totally non-vegetarian, but still, a warm memory as is everything associated with her) matzo ball soup with the round yellow fat puddles on the surface. My grandfather, a man whose mother died in his childhood and who came to this country by himself as a teenager, would hum to himself as he ate it. I wonder how much my Grandmother's soup helped to instill a sense of security, of gratitude, in her husband? Grandma was a wise, generous woman. I can say, my grandfather ate a lot of soup - pretty much at every meal - and he was a very content man. I'm not saying this will work for you but it's worth a try, right?

But enough with the talky-talk. Get out your soup pot and let's get started.

Mental for Lentil Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over a medium-high flame. Add the onions and garlic; sauté until the onion is golden, about six minutes or so.

1 large carrot, sliced
1 large stalk of celery, chopped

Add this to the onions in the pot and stir together for three minutes or so.

2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons coriander
1 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Salt and pepper to taste (lemon pepper would be good here if you have it)

Add to the pot and sauté for a minute or so. If the vegetables become overly dry, add a tablespoon or so of water.

2 cups red lentils*
6 cups veggie broth or water
1 tablespoon tomato paste

Cook over medium-high heat until boiling. Then lower the heat to medium-low, cover the pot and wait for about twenty minutes or so. The lentils should have smooshed by now as they don't hold their shape like other lentils. Blend this with an immersion blender (an indispensable tool for the soup fanatic) or standard blender until smooth. Return to the pot if necessary.

1 lemon

Add the juice of one-half to one whole lemon, depending on your preference. I like lots of lemon in lentil soup. You can juice one half and put a wedge on the side as well.

Season until it's just right and enjoy, preferably with basmati rice.

A last note: this is more of a dal than a brown lentil hippie soup (not that I'm casting aspersions) and as such can be emphasized more as such. Add kidney beans after it's been blended, step up the curry. I have to keep things fairly tame for the developing palate in our home. Add water as you reheat.

Shalom, everyone.

*Why red, as these are little babies are undeniably, gorgeously, proudly orange? Is this along the same lines with why people with orange hair are referred to as redheads? It must be. If so, why the orange phobia? It can be a lovely color, it's the color of your second chakra, and is nothing to fear. Is the word more recent and all things with that hue were referred to as red? Very curious.

Look at me! I'm (no longer) pink like a newborn baby now!

As a former '80s wannabe-goth whose wardrobe still rests comfortably in the spectrum between midnight and onyx, this pink thing may not be long for my little corner of the blogosphere, but sometimes one needs to try something new, right? Along those same lines of trying something new, well, I've decided that eating meat is not such a bad idea and stripping is both an excellent expression of female empowerment and an obvious pathway to animal liberation.

Happy April Fools' Day, darlings!

Now that that's out of the way, please redirect your attention while I gracelessly segue to the theme of today's introspective gaze into my tormented psyche: I do not fit in, not now, not never, as Daffy Duck would sibilantly say. I was reminded of this the other day, when I was at the grocery store in the checkout aisle. There was a woman standing behind me who had started to load her items on the conveyor belt when I saw from the corner of my eye that she was drinking oil. I thought to myself, "That's odd," but I didn't think much beyond that because I've known some raw foodists in my life and they consume some very strange things. As I turned to finish unloading my cart, though, I noticed that she was not, in fact, drinking oil, but apple juice (which really should be the first conclusion one draws when seeing someone drink a golden-hued liquid from a bottle). I laughed to myself and remarked, "Oh, I thought you were drinking oil for a moment there." She looked aghast, not so much at the idea that I thought she was drinking oil, but that I was speaking to her. Totally devoid of humor or even the slightest bit of warmth, she pointed to the label on the bottle she was drinking out of and said, "No. It's juice." The look on her face, though, said it all: Oh, my goodness, the fourth wall has come crumbling down and I am no longer just invisibly going through my day. Make it stop! Am I being punk'd?!

I am generally pretty good at reading body language and have little interest in conversing with those who might be so traumatized by a (non-threatening, recently bathed) stranger making a little silly observation in the checkout line. It does seem lately, though, that my will-freak-if-spoken-to detector is off, or is faulty, or maybe I never really had one and I was just better at faking my way through that sort of thing. I do know that the older I get, the more it seems like most other people (other people means those who are not my friends) have been given some sort of rule book on conduct and I never received the book or the memo. It's not like I'm hanging from light fixtures and shrieking like a chimpanzee or anything, but it does seem like me at 25% of natural capacity is about what most mainstream-y people can tolerate. It's mostly just amusing to me now, but this was hard when I was growing up and so desperately sought acceptance: at any point before the age of, say, sixteen, I would have gladly traded my soul to be a detached, straight-haired Wasp who excelled at volleyball just so I could just fit the hell in finally. Thank goodness no lobster-skinned devil with a pitchfork whispered such an offer in my ear or I surely would've shook his gruesome hand over it.

Today, I accept and even enjoy my differences, but when I have little moments like the one in the grocery store the other day, my innate failure to grasp and apply the Rules of Acceptable Social Engagement and Behavior comes flooding back to me. There are many reasons for my disconnect (though I just think I was born this way) and I'm sure that a psychotherapist, gestalt practitioner and Zen master would have fun exploring my circuitry, but I am largely content. As long as I'm not being rude or thoughtless, I'm happy to continue on my path, ferreting out the stray mom at my son's piano class who's just a little weird-in-a-good-way weird, the other family that bikes everywhere in the summer. Still, even in my precious little community that pats itself on the multicultural shoulder every day for its diversity and progressiveness, I am reminded daily of the myriad ways I fail to fit in.

Shall I enumerate?

1. All my pants are frayed or ripped at the bottom from getting stuck in my bike's chain ring. Every single pair without exception. This drives my poor mother insane.

2. I have, approximately, four pairs of shoes (rain boots with umbrellas, cowboy boots with stars, little floral-printed canvas ones for the warm weather, and your standard black with a heel). I am content with my relative lack of footwear.

3. My inability to fit in is perhaps genetic, definitely modeled, to my son, who, at six, refers to the one classmate he doesn't like as being "passive-aggressive."

4. He also sees aliens, UFOs and space cats as he's visited by them regularly. They crash in our front yard and he has conversations with them using an invisible device when we're at the post office.

5. We have a electric peace sign in our front window and an earth flag hanging in front. We had a Kucinich For President sign in our front yard up until last summer. John says this keeps any Republican canvassers who might dare to enter our town away from our house and I tend to agree. Shoo!

6. Speaking of our front yard, we cannot for the life of us grow grass. It simply will not take. We are not burdened with any more shade than anyone else on our block, yet, still they have lush, verdant, photo-ready lawns. I think this is a sign to rip it all out and re-plant with native grasses and flowers. Lawns are overrated.

7. We're vegan.

8. We have a spring ritual every year that revolves around our son finding the dyed turnips we have hidden in our back yard.

9. At the playground, I cannot share my impressions of Dancing With The American Idols because I have no idea.

10. I have a record in Wisconsin. No, really.

11. My friends are all weirdos like me: kombucha-brewing, pulling-three-kids-on-one-bike, knuckle-tattooed, animal-rescuing, passionately engaged and outspoken subversives. In fact, I often feel like quite the young Republican (appearance-wise, of course, and just relatively speaking at that) in their company. Even the ones who seem like they aren't weirdos, trust me, they are.

12. I do not know how to make coffee or use an electric can opener.

13. Small children stare at my husband unabashedly because they cannot assign a gender to someone who possesses both long hair and an Adam's apple and thus are unable to reconcile the two. Once children know John, though, they love him.

14. I wear a bright red hat with cat ears.

15. I cry extremely easily and over relatively silly things, and then, almost inevitably, I start laughing hysterically at how funny it is that I'm crying over something so silly. The overall effect is a bit disconcerting, at least from what I've gathered.

This is just off the top of my head, of course. And now I'm off to start up conversations with nervous strangers in my red cat hat and frayed pants. Have a great one!

Shalom, everyone.

Of naked ladies and gassed chickens...

When I was in college in the late 1980s, I was introduced to an organization people were uncertain of how to pronounce but still eager to discuss. People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals, which was known from its founding as its acronym, was pronounced as pet-a by some, like the word pet with a graceful ah at the end. Others knew that PETA had a hard e, and it was pronounced like the word pita bread, an essential part of the falafel sandwiches we had all recently discovered. However it was pronounced, though, the name started gaining broader recognition during my college years: it was the passionate, heady time in my life when I was discovering the sort of person I wanted to be, and PETA’s uncompromising, bold message was very much in synch with that. There were flyers of rabbits being tortured by Revlon laboratories stuck to the bulletin board in the Art and Design Building by pushpin; there were brochures produced by PETA and passed out by the university’s animal rights club at any opportunity. Their message was unambiguous and staccato, like a hammer hitting a nail repeatedly: Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment. PETA’s stance helped to fuel my revolutionary zeal.

Fast-forward twenty years, and the PETA of today is virtually unrecognizable from that stalwart grassroots organization founded by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco in 1980. They exploded on the scene that year with their undercover investigation of the staggeringly brutal experimentation performed on macaque monkeys in the Silver Springs, Maryland Institute of Behavioral Research, transforming PETA from what Newkirk called, “five people in a basement” to the juggernaut they are today, with offices in eleven countries, nearly two hundred employees, two million members, $31 million in revenue and the power to make a powerful CEO sweat at the mere utterance of their name. Clearly, PETA has moved up a floor or two from the basement: in fact, they have their own building in Norfolk, Virginia. I visited PETA’s office building almost seven years ago after hours with my friend who worked there, and it was a little overwhelming walking down those halls, a whole building of people working full time to change the public’s attitudes about non-humans. Other than the entirely vegan vending machines and mixed breed dogs resting on cushy beds in the various offices, it looked just like any other corporate business building. It was impressive and underwhelming at the same time with its normalcy.

Looking at PETA in 2009, though, it is obvious that they've changed in more ways than just size and scale since their inception. Somewhere along the line, they seem to have made the strategic decision that, regardless of how they were perceived, publicity was an end in and of itself: as the old saying goes, any publicity was good publicity, and this remains true today. They also discovered that controversy, or at least the providing the cultural identifiers one associates with controversy, is the most effective avenue in to publicity. In PETA’s bag of tricks today, almost inevitably, they reach for nudity, sexual innuendo and shock tactics when trying to court publicity.

Take the minor uproar surrounding their latest commercial, submitted to NBC to play during the Super Bowl. Shot with a lot of quick cuts and pounding rhythms, the commercial features models actively disrobing or in their underwear, presumably pursuing intimate relations with heads of broccoli and bunches of asparagus, wanting to show those pretty vegetables that their love of produce goers beyond the merely platonic. The point? According to PETA, studies show vegetarians have better sex lives. (And, below the surface, that a healthy woman’s libido doesn’t require more than a vegetable or two to be satisfied: the idea of the commercial featuring presumably heterosexual males in this particular relationship to inanimate objects is laughable.) The television network rejected PETA’s submission because of its explicit nature, but, despite their unusually coy claims of surprised disappointment, the organization got what they wanted: another giant media footprint and millions of viewings of that same commercial on their website. Instead of paying the network $3 million to screen their commercial, they got exactly the kind of exposure they sought and more.

The objectification of women in PETA’s various campaigns has been explored since they first started featuring undressed celebrities in their “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign in 1991 with The Go-Gos. From there, women have been objectified in a dizzying array of PETA campaigns, from being naked in cages (ostensibly to draw attention to the abuse of non-human animals) to making a parallel between a woman’s unshorn pubic hair (unattractive!) to fur trim on coats (also unattractive!). One could easily get the impression that PETA’s campaigns are conceived by a bunch of high-fiving, beer-guzzling, porn-addled frat boys with a soft spot for those with fur, fins and feathers. It is easy to understand why they are accused of haphazardly trading one oppression for another, and rightfully so. At the same time, they are not a feminist organization by mission, despite having an outspoken woman at the helm with Ms. Newkirk: their only objective is to advocate on behalf of animals. They are not beholden to any political party or orientation other than one that espouses kindness to animals. If a leftwing, otherwise progressive political figure takes her grandson to the circus, PETA will attack her with no holds barred. Similarly, if a fascist dictator happens to thumb his nose at animal products while enforcing some very draconian laws on the local populace, he can expect to be fully embraced by PETA. They see no schizophrenia in this.

In terms of having a positive influence on reducing animal exploitation and cruelty, their sway is questionable. There has been no effect on the use of fur, for example, and the consumption of meat is higher than ever. There are those who proudly claim to eat meat because of PETA, not in spite of them. Despite their detractors, and there seem to be at least as many outspoken critics as there are fervent supporters, PETA’s influence on popular culture is undeniable. They can be called – and have been called – many things, but their ability to insert themselves into the public dialogue and make themselves culturally relevant is remarkable.

The fact of their ubiquity is much of what makes PETA’s recent strategic decisions so troublesome to activists. In 2000, after McDonald’s Corporation implemented some basic, minimal improvements in their animal welfare standards, PETA agreed to self-impose a moratorium on campaigning against the fast food giant. This had many activists in a furor and also confirmed what some had begun thinking: that this once radical organization was now compromising, and, depending on one’s perspective, colluding, with the most conspicuous animal exploiters on earth. Emails were fired off, longtime friends severed ties, message boards fairly burned with the sort of vituperative rage once reserved solely for Ted Nugent and Colonel Sanders. Suddenly, many activists saw PETA as worse than McDonald’s: they were outright traitors, selling out the animals for negligible victories that were seemingly devoid of long-term, coherent strategy. In addition to being branded as turncoats, PETA’s agreement with McDonald’s seemed to point to something much more damaging: still perceived as the voice of the vegetarian activist community, their arrangement gave the public the impression that the animals that make up McDonald’s 99 billion served were “humanely” treated on their way to the grill. PETA’s moratorium reinforced the status quo and created an obfuscated state around the issues that made it easier, in fact, for people to eat animals with a clear conscience and thus more were eaten. To many, the confusion PETA created around the eating of meat was the most indefensible of their trespasses.

The effect of PETA’s agreement with McDonald’s was felt directly and immediately by many of us in the activist community. I remember tabling for a vegan organization on the first Earth Day after the moratorium was announced and several people told me how “wonderful” it was that they could now eat at McDonald’s with a clear conscience. I talked to other volunteers who reported hearing the same thing. Once the scourge of anything associated with ecological stewardship, McDonald’s now had a shiny new coat for itself in a distinct shade of green, thanks to their arrangement with PETA.

Many of us are still trying to find our way in this environment, one that is perhaps intentionally confusing to people. To illustrate what an ethical disarray PETA has created in their mad dash to garner publicity and remain culturally relevant, we need to look no further than their most recent ill-advised chess move against McDonald’s: they have decided to call off the moratorium against Ray Kroc’s fast food empire. This is good news, right? After do many years, had PETA returned to its grassroots, no-holds-barred style of agitating against animal oppressors? Not really. They dropped the moratorium in order to advocate that McDonald’s enforce that its suppliers gas the chickens as it is considered more humane than the current method of hanging them upside-down in metal shackles, slicing their throats and immersing in scalding water (many chickens are still alive at this point). It certainly is more humane. If I were given a choice of how to die of the two methods, heaven forbid, I would surely choose gassing, Given that there is no third option offered, it would require less brutality, less suffering.

But…

I know there will be people who are offended by me saying this, but I have to: my ancestors were gassed in concentration camps. Groups were led into windowless rooms and they were locked in, no chance of escape. As they found their breathing diminished by the gas being piped in, I have no doubt they began to panic. I have no doubt their suffering was compounded by the terror around them, of beings desperate for that one elemental necessity we can’t go for more than a very short time without: oxygen. The climbed over each other, scratched and trampled one another to escape. They died, their systems poisoned, lungs filled with lethal gas.

That was a horrible, horrible paragraph to write. I did not do so flippantly.

If my primary purpose is to protect animals, I do not engage in any sort of negotiation where we haggle over the least atrocious way to kill for my consent. That is just not done. As long as non-human beings are considered property, I will fight to minimize the suffering and cruelty they must endure by the systems in place that hold them captive. I will not, however, stand behind such measures and give my stamp of approval as a vegan. My job is not to reinforce the dominant paradigm here: my job is to try to alter how our culture perceives animals. That’s PETA’s job as well, not to negotiate and approve of different methods of killing and consuming.

A month or so ago, my son had the day off from school on a Monday and we were looking for something to do. My husband found something in the newspaper as a suggestion: PETA would be in town that day protesting McDonald’s. That in itself wasn’t all that enticing – I’ve been on a sort of strike against PETA for so long because of their sexist campaigns – but he mentioned that Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders would be there. I have loved Chrissie Hynde since I was in high school and her Brass In Pocket became an anthem of womanly confidence to me. Now my interest was piqued: I would love to meet her in person. As I read the article, though, my enthusiasm came crashing down. PETA was going to be protesting outside of a McDonald’s to draw attention to their new campaign: pressuring McDonald’s to drop their current slaughtering method and gas instead. There was no way I could take my son, whom we have been raising to be a compassionate, non-violent person, to an event that advocated the gassing of sentient beings. I couldn’t consent to such a message. That would have been irresponsible and dishonest of me.

We went to the museum instead. Chrissie Hynde would have to wait.