10 Questions: Vegan Rockstar with Lani Muelrath...

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When I met Lani Muelrath two years ago at Vegetarian Summerfest, I was immediately impressed by her vibrant, positive energy and friendliness. I was not surprised when she told me that she was working on a book – who isn’t these days? – but I was happy to hear it because I thought that she would be such a great ambassador with her warm and approachable nature. Well, the book is out now and Lani is making a difference by combining her welcoming communication style with solid information that breaks down barriers.

With The Plant-Based Journey: A Step-by-Step Guide To Transition To A Healthy Lifestyle and Achieving Your Ideal Weight, Lani shines at what she does best as a longtime educator, speaker and content creator: helping people to make the transition to thriving, vegan living as easily and successfully as possible. As a winner of the prestigious Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Instruction as an instructor of kinesiology and environmental studies, she has applied her background in education to offer engaging presentations on behalf of the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine and the Complete Health Improvement Project. With The Plant-Based Journey, Lani offers practical but smart and effective tips, recipes and tools for reaching optimal wellness in five stages, from just starting out, which she calls Awakening, to the final stage of refinement, which she calls Champion. Lots of well-researched bits from her 40-plus-year wellness journey are interwoven throughout, from fitness advice to helping people incorporate plant-based diets while traveling and communicating with family members who are not quite there yet and this helps readers find their way to their best health. The Plant-Based Journey looks like a great book for anyone from someone who is already vegan but wanting to improve their health to those who still pretty new to some of these concepts. I appreciate Lani’s friendly and pragmatic approach to shifting away from eating animals and I am honored that I am able to shine a little spotlight on her as this week’s Vegan Rockstar.

1. First of all, we’d love to hear your “vegan evolution” story. How did you start out? Did you have any early influences or experiences as a young person that in retrospect helped to pave your path?

When I was a teen, my mother inspired me to start learning yoga as she was studying and practicing yoga herself.  The yoga literature was infused with vegetarian-speak, which first awakened the idea for me. In college I started teaching yoga, furthered study of meditation, and encountered ‘ahimsa’ –a Sanskrit term meaning 'not to injure' and 'compassion' – as an important companion.  This led me to give up meat, fish, and eggs, though not dairy products. In retrospect I marvel at that, the schools of thought that teach ahimsa but disregard the dairy channel. That came (went?) for me at a later time.

2. Imagine that you are pre-vegan again: how could someone have talked to you and what could they have said or shown you that could have been the most effective way to have a positive influence on you moving toward veganism?

When I look back, every change that I’ve endeavored to achieve has come via the inspiration of someone having something that I wanted.  I’m not talking about physical possessions, I’m talking about embodiment of style and lifestyle. Being attracted to a lifestyle change due to positive modeling and influence is far more compelling to me. This is then underscored by more reasons to make changes. 

The research tells us that we make decisions for what we want and want to achieve based on emotion, and then look for reasons to support our choice.  Those of us who are teaching and sharing the word about the benefits and joys of eating and living animal-product-free need to remember this. When we start with an argumentative, negative voice, it creates barriers. Think about it. If we confront someone who has been eating a standard, animal-product filled plate for their entire life, when we come down hard with the negatives, under the surface the receiver gets the message that all their life they’ve been doing something wrong. And none of us wants to hear that. It is far too threatening, and creates a reactive resistance that may create polarization simply for self-protective reasons. Think about what you would feel like if someone came up to you and told you everything you had been doing about xyz your whole life was a mistake. What would your first response be?

With this in mind, the strongest pro-active influence for me would having someone modeling the benefits of living vegan – by how they live, how they act, the difference it makes – by attraction. Thinking back, that’s exactly what drew me in.

3. What have you found to be the most effective way to communicate your message as a vegan? For example, humor, passion, images, etc.?

Focusing on the positives, modeling consistency over time, being present without pointing fingers, always humor, and always – share good food. It still behooves us to counter the vegans-eat-twigs-and-bark imagery. If you post pictures of your food – which is great for modeling meals and bringing inspiration to the plates of others – post pictures that are appealing. Like it or not, how we act, speak, and how our food looks are important elements of making impressions and changing hearts. Nick Cooney speaks about this quite a bit in How to Be Great at Doing Good.  Everyone seeking to be an agent for positive change would do well to read it.

4. What do you think are the biggest strengths of the vegan movement?

The fact that the environmental factor is finally getting bigger play on the stage. For years – decades, as a matter of fact – I marveled that people who called themselves environmentalists were chowing down on beef, chicken and cheese. It’s a huge disconnect that is slowly getting some gap closure.

5. What do you think are our biggest hindrances to getting the word out effectively?

Picking at the non-essentials. These are divisive, send the wrong message, and are completely unnecessary. Vegans criticizing each other. For example, I recently read a review of a vegan cookbook where the reviewer (vegan) was all over the author for not addressing everything from GMOs to grain allergies. Every book of education, transition, and recipes can’t be inclusive of every single aspect that dietary shift might touch upon. This is an offshoot of the same problem we have pretty much all experienced, where we are expected, as aspiring conscious eaters, to be expert dietitians, nutritionists, environmentalists, and psychologists. It shows up in other conversations such as raw vs. cooked, for example. These are personal choices within the bigger umbrella of simply eating plants instead of animals. Elitism rubs the wrong way yet vegans can be perceived as such – sometimes highly unfairly. But being aware of this judgment can help inform our language and approach.  Being inclusive, compassionate, friendly, and encouraging with your language is more effective at moving people in the direction you’d like to see them go, big picture.

6. All of us need a “why vegan” elevator pitch. We’d love to hear yours.

If you could eat in a way that is delicious and satisfying and has more variety than you ever imagined and that improves your health, vitality, and the lives of everyone around you, wouldn’t you want to find out more about that?

Yet to be honest, better than that has been the few minutes of opening with the presentations I’ve had the privilege to deliver on book tour with The Plant-Based Journey. I’m still working on how to compress this into elevator style. It has been so effective at bringing skeptics to the point of being becoming visibly more relaxed and engaged over the course of the presentation to buying a book at the end and using words like “so inclusive!” and “sounds like something I could do!”. Maybe elevators aren’t the best venue for this cause anyway. For some, yes – I know some vegans who are very skilled at putting it all out there, quickly, and making a difference. My approach is a little different.

7. Who are the people and what are the books, films, websites and organizations that have had the greatest influence on your veganism and your continuing evolution?

I became vegetarian in 1972 - far before all the films and other connections we now have. John Robbins, early on, of course with Diet for a New America. John has always been very generous to me and supportive of my work. More recently, T. Colin Campbell.  Neal Barnard and PCRM I have the highest regard for as they get it on all fronts – the healthy, the animals, and the environment. Dr. Barnard has generously given me lots of opportunities to reach out and add to the education in the vegan world. Farm Sanctuary has had a big impact on me. Dr. John McDougall. I hate to start listing because it’s too easy to leave someone important out. 

8. Burn-out is so common among vegans: what do you do to unwind, recharge and inspire yourself?

Nature is the great rejuvenator. Physical activity. Travel to wild places where the wild animals are. Meditation. Solitude. We live in the woods in northern California. It’s a place where I can run, bike, walk, and write for literally days at a time in quiet.

9. What is the issue nearest and dearest to your heart that you would like others to know more about?

In the past couple of years we have taken two trips to Africa. The elephants are a cause deeply representative of so many issues for the animals and the planet everywhere. Poaching has escalated as the demand for ivory trinkets and gadgets in China and the U.S. has increased. Having seen how community-oriented, social, and caring for their own the elephants are in the wild, the pain of seeing the elephants hacked-up for their tusks and stranding grieving babies and families is unbearable. The orphanages are getting more and more crowded.

It’s a complete disconnect in my mind as to why an ivory decoration would inspire anyone to participate in this horrendous industry. And even with regulations, there is so much corruption at government levels, that it can be hard to get any traction on improvement. The orphanage where our elephant adoptees are – the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust – is perhaps the strongest presence for protecting orphaned animals and poacher intervention.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with so many issues of wildlife, animals, land, environment, sustainability – it overwhelms me when I think about it.  It helps to stay focused on specific issues that you can try to do something about.

10. Please finish this sentence: “To me, being vegan is...”

…being in cognitive harmony and physical and emotional peace with what you eat. When I was teaching school full time, during the years I was still consuming dairy products, every day I drove past the dairy farms in the valley and when I would see the cows out grazing, I would feel as if I was slumping down a bit in my seat. It’s possible to live in wonderful harmony with what you put on your plate and your highest ideals.

It Takes a Village to Find a Cat (Or: Where to Look for a Kitten When You’ve Lost All Hope)…

Last week, we lost our kitten. Because I cannot bear causing you worry, gentle reader, I am going to break a key storytelling rule - one that Nabokov broke, so I am in good company - and tell you right at the beginning that Clara Bow was found the next day and that she is safe and sound and back to waging an endlessly-amusing-to-her battle against our other cat’s tail. From when we noticed that she wasn’t around at approximately 9:00 Wednesday night until 12:30 Thursday afternoon when I received the breathlessly relieved message from my husband, though, I had every dark thought my apparently twisted mind could conjure about what could have happened to our five-month-old kitten: she was in a couch that we’d thoughtlessly flopped on; she was drowned at the bottom of a sink where that night’s dishes were soaking; she was trapped in a wall or a pipe and she wasn’t able to get out. And territorial rats were chasing her, though I am pretty sure that we don’t have any, but they were after her. Or, if Clara had gotten out of the house, my worries were even more catastrophic because that is a vast realm and it is outside of my control: she was in the dark outdoors, darting between cars, chased by sadistic kids; she was being attacked by a rabid opossum; she was carried off by a hawk. Every couch cushion I overturned, every parked car I peered under, I did with great trepidation, terrified of what I might find but unable to not check. There is a quote from the late Dr. Wayne Dyer that I kept returning to as I grew ever more frantic: “When you squeeze an orange, you'll always get orange juice to come out. What comes out is what's inside. The same logic applies to you: when someone squeezes you, puts pressure on you, or says something unflattering or critical, and out of you comes anger, hatred, bitterness, tension, depression, or anxiety, that is what's inside.” Apparently when my orange is being squeezed, I turn into the reincarnation of Edward Gorey.

At about 1:30 in the morning when she was missing, after hours of fruitlessly shaking her treats and calling her name in our back yard – and watching my husband’s flashlight wobble around outside like a feverish Fox Mulder – I posted about Clara being missing on Facebook. I was desperately looking for comfort, for reassurance, and support. I got that, heaps of it, from people who really should have been asleep. What I didn’t expect, though, was the profusion of excellent guidance for locating a missing kitty. I should have expected it, though, as most of my friends are “animal people” who have a great deal more experience with tracking down vanished felines than I do. A couple of things that I learned from all this: never underestimate how many strange and creative places there are for a cat (and especially a small kitten) to disappear into. Oh, and that cats really, really like box springs, apparently. Between tears, I read stories of long separations and reunions that gave me goose bumps, of improbable “hidey-holes” and cats who have seemingly found portals to disappear into in two-bedroom apartments (Look in the box springs, my cat detective coaches would advise). I also heard stories of heartbreaking loss.

 After sleeping two hours that night, I woke up bleary-eyed and desperate and sobbing from a fragment of dream; Clara still hadn’t materialized. I found myself regretting every time I didn’t kiss her when I could have, when I was annoyed by her picture frames off our shelves, when I reprimanded her for attacking Skylar’s tail yet again. (She really has a thing about that.) What kind of monster was I? Still, there were more messages, texts, comments, prayers, words of reassurance and wisdom. Later that morning, I had a commitment I nearly cancelled but I had unintentionally missed the week before and I didn’t want to do it again. I was reluctant about leaving the house but something told me that she wouldn’t be found when I was home and that I would be getting a text from my husband when I was out. Even though my gut told me this, I thought that maybe I was misleading myself out of desperate hope. I reluctantly left, making sure to check under the car first, of course.

About 1½ hours later, I got a text from my husband: Found her!!! She’s happy and safe and crawling all over me! He’d tried to call but I didn’t hear the phone. I re-read the message five times to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me, burst into grateful tears and called him as soon as I could. It turned out that John was trying to get some work done but he just couldn’t get his mind off Clara Bow. Something made him look back over the thread on my Facebook page to see if there was a tip that he’d missed when he saw this, posted by my friend Linda*, “One of our indoor cats got out once, and we looked in the yard, the woods, the neighbors' yards, etc. only to find him smashed up against the front of the house.” John realized that there was one part of the outside of the house he hadn’t explored and he went to look. He moved some discarded wood trim from our porch renovation that are piled against our house and peered inside. He saw a small dark mass inside that he thought was dirt but, shining his flashlight at it (even in the middle of a sunny day, it was dark), suddenly the mass blinked at him: those were eyes. It was Clara Bow, huddled in a ball. She must have darted out the night before when he was taking the dog out on a walk. He moved the pieces of wood and she came out toward him, tentative and stiff at first after a night in the cold, and then he picked her up. She nestled against him and kissed his hand. By the time I got home a short time later, she was running around the house like there had been no interruption. Holding her warm little purring body, the one I was so desperate to see just an hour before, I was deliriously, wildly happy and relieved, my grateful tears on her soft fur.

My community is like family to me, family that – in many cases – I’ve not met and may never meet but I still love. People who I’ve never met were praying for us, kept awake worrying about Clara, searching their minds for more helpful words of advice, texting me support and so on. That is real family to me. I am so grateful to everyone who cared and helped. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ve compiled the various and assorted bits of advice and helpful quotes that I was given for finding Clara Bow. Any number of these could have been the magic ticket to finding her. If you have found this while you are in your most frightened state in trying to find a lost kitty, I hope that this list helps you as it did me. Please know that I am sending my best to you and reach out: may you get the guidance that you need to be reunited.

These recommendations range from the obvious to the outright bizarre. What can I say? Cats are mysterious creatures.

Tips for finding a missing cat or kitten

* Shake a cat treat container while calling her name.

* Run an electric can opener or open a can your usual way. Just do whatever your cat associates with food. Do it in several different rooms to increase the likelihood of the kitty hearing.

* Look inside couches, underneath chairs, couches, inside mattress linings, under and inside pillows. With even a tiny tear, cats can wedge their way into these spaces. If your kitty is missing, especially if he’s very small, be mindful to check box springs before sitting down.

* Put wet food in multiple areas inside the house.

* Look in clothes hampers or laundry baskets. If it has a lid and it’s shut, look inside, too.

* Look in all cabinets, cupboards, drawers, especially in the kitchen and bathrooms. One cat was found hiding behind a partially open drawer. Check the top of cabinets as well.

* Check under or behind a stove: You may have to pull the stove out to look. Also, look in and around the dishwasher.

* Look inside the washer and dryer – and the hose – as well as underneath and behind. 

“I've been through this more times than I can remember and know very well the awful, helpless feeling. I think it's highly likely that she is in the house. The only thing I know to do is to grab a flashlight and search the house square foot by square foot, leaving not one inch uncovered. It means removing every item from the linen closet, looking on top of curtain rods, at the back of top shelves in closets, inside every boot, shoe and dresser drawer, inside the back of the clothes dryer. Little cats find their ways into the strangest places!” Ginny M. "Also, if an indoor cat gets out, make it very easy for her to get back in via her escape route. It is usually the only entry she will know. When my cat Piper (same age as Clara but semi feral) escaped through a window we put a tall stool outside the window. Sure enough she climbed back in 8 hours later."

* Look behind the refrigerator. If you have a kitten or a petite cat, look inside the refrigerator and drawers. It wouldn’t hurt to check the freezer as well.

* Do you have a hole under a sink that leads to the outside? Check that (and then seal it!).

* Look on the beams of the basement.

“We left our cats with a friend once while we left town with the dogs (while having the floors in our house refinished). Our friend called and said she couldn't find one of our cats. We left the beach a day early. Long story short, he was in the basement, hiding under the bathtub (there was a cat-sized hidey-hole there that one of our friend's cats showed him). They were hanging out together there. Harold just wasn't coming out for meals. Once he heard my husband’s voice, he poked his head out.” – Lisa B.

* Check behind and above books on a bookshelf.

* Make sure that all air vents are properly covered. (If your cat got outside via this route, it is obviously too late for now but a protective measure to be mindful of for the future.)

* Check the drywall and under the sink for holes or gaps, especially around pipes. If you suspect that your cat is in the wall, shining a flashlight up it can help a frightened or disoriented kitty find his way back down. Put stinky food at the hole. If you know that your cat is trapped in the walls and she is not coming out, firefighters may be able to help cut a hole in the wall and release her.

 “Our cat Pippin found a way into the ceiling of the basement!! He was gone for hours then I went downstairs and realized he was above my head in the ceiling. You must channel your inner kitty when looking for her.” – Adrienne H

* One friend reported finding a missing kitty hanging out in a tear in a soft shell suitcase.

* You’d be surprised how many people frantically searched their homes for hours only to find the cat napping contentedly in a closet. Linen closets are especially popular for missing cats.

“I've had to crawl on my hands and knees to see the perspective of a kitten. She may have tucked in underneath a sofa or chair. Or behind a seat cushion. Is there room by your refrigerator? She may have been able to go forward but not backwards. I'd go room by room with both you and John taking each room apart.” Molly D.

* Put the litter box outside right away and it is especially helpful if it is not scooped: the scent can help to guide them back home. If the box is scooped but the garbage with waste hadn’t been thrown out yet, empty some back into the box. Waiting by the litter box can also help.

* Email her picture and description to all the local shelters and veterinarians. Also, visit the shelters: don’t just look online.

* Post your missing cat information on Craigslist and local and national lost cat registries.

“In the event she did get outside, cats are very territorial and rarely venture farther than a few houses in any direction. Leaving a food dish on the porch might help draw her out in the morning.” Laurie S.

* Put out a humane trap – check with friends or they can be borrowed from animal shelters – with an article of clothing from home and stinky wet cat food.

* Talk to your neighbors, print lost flyers and put them in all the neighbor’s mailboxes, ask them to look in their garages, sheds, under porches and under their cars. Look under the cars that might be parked on your street as well.

“If she slipped out, indoor only cats are terrified and will find the nearest safe place. Their safety is paramount and so they usually don't respond. If this happened she will be close by and the best thing is to look in the wee hours of the morning but I hope that she is safely hiding indoors.” – Melanie B.

* Make big lost signs on colorful poster board with a clear picture and as much detail as possible.

* Use a flashlight day or night.

* Check out this helpful advice.

*If you feel inspired by Linda’s words of guidance that helped us to find our Clara Bow, please consider donating to the wonderful animal sanctuary she works with, Triangle Chance for All. Thank you to Linda and her beloved house-clinger, Aky.

!0 Questions: Vegan Foodie with Laura Theodore...

Laura Theodore is an acclaimed actor, jazz singer-songwriter, cookbook author and host of the celebrated weekly PBS show, The Jazzy Vegetarian. Her path as a vegetarian eventually led to her embracing veganism, which she’s been championing since the 1980s, long before there was widespread familiarity with the word. As a talented performer and recipe creator, Laura’s work has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, New York Post, PBS Food, Readers Digest, JazzTimes, VegNews, Variety, and Time Magazine and many other outlets. Laura believes in taking the classic, familiar dishes she grew up on in the Midwest and recreating them as easy to prepare, delicious vegan recipes for all audiences today. Laura is inspired to build a more compassionate, sustainable and healthy world, and she just released a new cookbook, Laura Theodore’s Vegan-ease: An Easy Guide to Enjoying a Plant-Based Diet. I am thrilled to feature Laura Theodore as our Vegan Foodie this week.

1. How did you start down this path of creating delicious food? Was a love for food nurtured into you? Did you have any special relatives or mentors who helped to instill this passion?

As a child, visiting and learning how to prepare delicious food with my Grandma Cook fascinated me and eating my mom’s tasty dinners every night was something I looked forward to. One of my first fond memories is of me, standing on a stool in my maternal grandmother’s kitchen, stirring apples for her yearly batch of applesauce. On Sundays or holidays, I looked forward to entering my Grandma Cook’s kitchen. (Yes, Cook was her real last name!) It was always filled with the intoxicating aroma of a big pot of simmering spaghetti sauce or some other wonderful culinary creation that she was preparing for us to feast upon.

At home, I remember being fascinated when my mom took beautifully cooked artichokes out of the pot, or when my great aunt came to visit and made homemade pasta noodles. So when I became interested in a healthier and more compassionate lifestyle, I looked to recreating the traditional recipes from Mom and Grandma’s kitchens, and I started preparing vegetarian, then eventually the vegan versions of their classic recipes you see in my books and on television today.


2. What was your diet like when you were growing up? Did you have any favorite meals or meal traditions? Do you carry them over today?

I liked Spaghetti with Meat Sauce, Meatloaf, Burgers, Stuffed Peppers, and Casseroles, along with Ice Cream, Cookies and Cake…just like most kids! Now I have created delicious vegan versions of these classic dishes and I do not miss the meat!

3. What is the best vegan meal you've ever had? Give us all the details!

Oh, THAT would be tough! Hmmm….One of the best was at my house last winter when I served a meatless loaf based in shredded zucchini and ground sunflower seeds, smashed potatoes and a vegan sweet potato pie for dessert! YUM.


4. If you could prepare one meal or dessert for anyone living or dead, who would it be for and what would you create?

I would prepare one of my delicious vegan mousse or cake recipes for Ellen DeGeneres.

5. What do you think are common mistakes in vegan cooking and how do you avoid them?

I think the biggest mistake in vegan cooking is to try and follow recipes perfectly, rather than making a recipe your own. I believe that, like when preparing omnivorous recipes, everyone has their own tastes. Experimenting in the kitchen is the best way to create delicious, individualized recipes, so maybe it does not taste perfect the first time, but next time around a new recipe is born that will truly please your family!

6. What ingredients are you especially excited about at the moment?

All the colorful and hearty fall root veggies! I love to stuff squash and bake apples!

7. What are your top three cuisines from around the world?

Italian, Mexican-Style and American.

8. Who or what has been most influential to you on your vegan path? Individuals, groups, books, films, etc. included.

Christina Pirello pioneered vegan cooking on television, and opened doors for others to follow.

9. What issue is nearest and dearest to your heart that you would like people to know more about?

That dairy and eggs are one of the cruelest of foods. The industry is far from the idyllic picture we have of cows happily grazing with their young, and chickens pecking and parading in spacious farmyards.

10. Last, please finish this sentence. "To me, veganism is…"

To me veganism is the most compassionate way to live on this earth.

Making Peace with Weird...

I grew up – pull out the violins – as a kid in an increasingly unhappy home and, from fifth grade through eighth, school life also got more Lord of the Flies-like each year, if restaged in an affluent Chicago suburb with upwardly mobile sadists. Thus I had no refuge: there was no respite from the difficulties at home when I was at school and no respite from the stresses of school at home. What I did have: a bushy mushroom cloud of black hair fashioned in a perverse attempt at a Dorothy Hamill cut (no one knew how to deal with curls in the 1970s), a tamped down personality that had grown leery of any attention and a rich inner-world that contrasted mightily with my real life.

In my fantasies, I could escape to being a make-believe girl named C.C. whose blonde hair feathered perfectly and had a just-right sprinkling of cinnamon freckles on her lightly tanned face. I wasn’t sure what her initials stood for, but I liked the sound of it. Maybe her parents – very wealthy, genetically blessed, deeply in love, they never fought – named her C.C. at birth or maybe it was a family name handed down generation after generation after her ancestors first stepped off of the Mayflower. Her name was waspy, precise and perfect, just like I wanted to be. As I imagined her, C.C. was a popular and athletic girl and she was able to mingle with the brains or the partiers, the jocks or the ice queens with an easy, fluid grace. The one faction that C.C. never interacted with was the weird kids – known in the aggregate as the losers where I grew up – a messy grab-bag of special ed students, overweight kids, Trekkies, brilliant bookworms and artistic types who daydreamed and sketched dragons in their notebooks. C.C. didn’t have a drop of weird in her. She was defiantly un-weird. C.C. was the perfectly composed poster child for Normal. In other words, she couldn’t be more unlike me, who, by fifth grade, was already an active member of several weird kid classifications and subtypes.

It wasn’t fun. In fact, other than when I was with my grandparents or idling in my imagination as C.C., the years roughly between fifth and eighth grade were the worst ones of my life. I was “a weirdo” and I felt branded for life. The thing is, though, once I started high school, I started the journey of finding my way and finding my way meant embracing the weird. The things that made me weird were the things that led me down the vegetarian path and then the vegan one. It’s my completely unscientific guess that this is true of many people who eventually find themselves here*. Generally if you meet a vegan, you’ve met someone who has logged considerable time on the outside looking in because it is this outsider’s view that helps us to be more critical of the conventional worldview regarding our relationship to other animals. I am speaking very broadly, of course; people stop eating animals for a variety of reasons today, many of which are not rooted in a deeply altered perspective, but in going vegan, it is clear that one’s way of looking at the world has radically shifted from society’s norms.

I’ve heard recent speakers in the vegan movement assert that the latest in social science tells us that people are more inclined to listen to those who are like them as a way to encourage activists to be as “normal” as possible. Guess what? I’m not that normal. I am going to hazard a guess that you aren’t either.

I am concerned that in our quest to “normalize” veganism and skew ever closer to what we believe to be prevailing mainstream norms, we are being asked to ignore those who are traditionally the biggest allies in the vegan moment – the artistic kids, the ones who reject the status quo, the ones who are less afraid to take an unpopular position – and this could have very sad consequences for our movement, and, most important, the animals, if we decide that fitting in is the best tool in fostering acceptance.

Someone asserting that the respectable norm (which usually happens to line up with the affluent, hetero and white male norm) is what we should be aspiring to in our outreach simply is ignoring that we represent a multiplicity of individuals and we will be talking to a diversity of potential vegans who are influenced and dissuaded by a wide variety of people and approaches. We are not cyborgs. We have histories and interests, attractions and disincentives because our species is just not that predictable. If having a certain approach were that much more likely to result in success, and if by inserting Tab A into Slot B, our efforts would result in more vegans, I’d love it. Again, though, it’s not that straightforward. People who might be less influenced by me might be more likely to listen to someone else. People who unmoved by one argument might be thoroughly compelled by another. The real world is messy and disorderly and it is just not that predictable, as alluring as that idea might be. I have no studies to back this up; I simply know this from 20 years of advocacy work. We do not live in a controlled laboratory setting. We live in a complex, untidy and endlessly fascinating world that we need to remain curious about, not believe that we have all the answers to, because we most assuredly do not.

This is all to say that in our drive to create more vegans, I think it is wrongheaded to deny that we are, for the most part, a rather weird population, meaning that we are innovators, more independent and more likely to reject the status quo. We have a worldview that is informed by beliefs not shared by the vast majority of the population and that perspective has compelled us to change our practices to live in accordance with our values. That is unconventional and that is more than okay. Instead of trying to conform our personalities to appeal to some amorphous “norm,” I believe that we should be modeling to the world how amazing it feels to live with consistency and to care less about fitting in and more about creating the world we want to live in. Confidence and honesty are alluring and captivating; shrinking and disingenuousness are not. By owning our values without apology in this messy world, we inspire courage in others to do the same.

There would be no animal rights movement without the weird kids. The C.C.’s of the world would not have created it. When I got comfortable with the idea that I was weird for life, C.C. faded from my imagination. I embraced the weird and my life became better for it. We are going to reach a lot more people being genuine and speaking honestly than trying to conform to a vague notion of socially acceptable “normalcy.”

* If you are an aggressively conventional vegan, congratulations, you are now officially weird, too. It’s okay.

10 Questions: Vegan Rockstar with Gary Smith

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Often it feels like I just wish I could click my heels and return to the days before social media. Between all the petty disagreements and mindless distractions vying for one’s attention, it can enervate us and all this access to “information” and one another’s opinions can feel like it’s more trouble than it is worth. Then I think of people like Gary Smith, someone I may not have met if not for Facebook, and I instantly remember that there are indeed many benefits to social media. Not simply for meeting inspiring individuals but for being exposed to those who help us to step up our game as animal advocates because they are using social media to create a better world in very smart and effective ways. (Yes, there’s more to Facebook than cute cat videos and cupcake recipes.)

Gary Smith is leaving breadcrumbs to a better world with his blog, The Thinking Vegan, and through his savvy public relations firm, Evolotus, which he runs with his equally inspiring, whip-smart partner, Kezia Jauron. Evolotus’ clients are a veritable who’s-who of progressive and powerful change-makers such as Mercy for Animals, Forks Over Knives, Tofurky and Jenny Brown of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. Gary and Kezia get the best possible spotlight on their clients in the media, helping to bring issues, messages and products that might get lost in our increasingly crowded public sphere to a wider and wider support base.

I love Gary’s thoughtful and penetrating approach to animal rights as well as his unapologetic, passionate vegan convictions. I know you’ll love him, too. I am so honored to have Gary Smith as this week’s Vegan Rockstar.

1. First of all, we’d love to hear your “vegan evolution” story. How did you start out? Did you have any early influences or experiences as a young person that in retrospect helped to pave your path?

Late one night in college, I was listening to KPFK, our Los Angeles Pacifica station, and heard about Diet For a New America by John Robbins. The next day, I went out and bought the book. I turned to the first few photographs of factory farms, and that moment, I stopped eating animals. About ten minutes later, I converted my first new vegan, just by describing the photos to my then-best friend over the phone.

I had no idea what I was going to eat, but knew that I could not support the brutality and violence that I had awoken to. Keep in mind, this was long before the internet. Fortunately there was a health food store nearby, and bean burritos from Taco Bell and Del Taco. Around that time, I took a class on the study of nonviolence. I became friendly with the professor, gave a couple of lectures for him at a community college, and did research for his books. With that foundation, I became focused, dare I say obsessed, with studying suffering. At the time, that meant human suffering, but now animal suffering is the obsession.

I ate a vegan diet for three and a half years before sadly going back to eating fish, dairy, and eggs. Though I went vegan for animals, in retrospect, I didn’t fully grasp the larger philosophy of veganism, didn’t connect it to anything else swirling in my head, and I didn’t make changes when it came to clothing, and entertainment. I did learn about or products tested on animals and purchased cruelty-free products.

After going back to eating fish, dairy and eggs, there was always a voice in the back of my head telling me what I was doing was wrong. The voice grew louder, until I heeded it, almost ten years ago. I gave up fish, then a few months later, dairy and eggs. I recall that I wanted to see what it would be like to eat a vegan diet again, but wasn’t fully committing to it. After a day or two, I had this peaceful feeling come over me. I knew that I would never consume animal products again.

What was different this time is that I educated myself. I pored over books, websites, etc., wanting to fully understand veganism. The more I understood, the more outspoken I became.

I’ve dedicated not only my life to activism, but also my career. My wife and I created Evolotus PR, a public relations agency, where the majority of our work is for animal rights and animal protection nonprofits, campaigns, and vegan-themed documentary films and books.

2. Imagine that you are pre-vegan again: how could someone have talked to you and what could they have said or shown you that could have been the most effective way to have a positive influence on you moving toward veganism?

The activist Anita Mahdessian has a story about this that rings very true for me. She wrote, “Many years ago, I had a very brief encounter with ‘my first vegan.’ He seemed to be a very peaceful man, a ‘love and light’ vegan. When I asked him, ‘what is a vegan,’ his answer was ‘vegans do not eat or use any animal products.’ He did not tell me why, and I failed to ask him. If only my first vegan told me the truth. If only my first vegan gave me all the facts instead of ‘love and light,’ I would have gone vegan that very day. My first vegan failed me. My first vegan failed the animals. However, my second vegan did not. And I am forever grateful that he was merciless with the inconvenient truth.”

I have often said, on The Thinking Vegan and elsewhere, that I advocate telling the truth about how nonhumans are being exploited and brutalized, in a forthright, sincere, truthful, factual manner. One of the most popular blogs I’ve written relates to this very topic. Certainly, we shouldn’t be assholes about it. We don’t have to be combative. But the truth needs to be told, whether people want to hear it or not, or are ready to hear it or not.

I’m not saying I would have been ready. But at least I would have had the truth, which I didn’t have.

3. What have you found to be the most effective way to communicate your message as a vegan? For example, humor, passion, images, etc.?

There is no one way to advocate, no one magical “tone” that will appeal to everyone, no single argument that will make the world vegan. I have to follow my own voice, and my own values. People can smell an inauthentic person from a mile away, and I wouldn’t be effective if I pretended to be someone that I’m not.

I tend not to pet people for taking baby steps, not eating animals one day a week, or switching to cage-free eggs. I don’t want people to become confused about what I advocate. There is no way to humanely or ethically exploit another being. Ethically, we are coming from a place of strength. Coming from a place of strength means we can ask for what we want.

I find that people acknowledge this strength, and one way it manifests is people often subtly seek my “permission” to use non-human animals. They’ll tell me that the zoo they take their kid to really, really cares about conservation. They’ll tell me they gave up red meat, or that their toddler flat-out refuses to drink cow’s milk. They’ll tell me they tried once to adopt through a rescue or shelter, but it didn’t have the brand of dog they wanted so they “had to” buy a puppy. They want me, the token ethical vegan, to give them a cookie for their labors, so they can carry on guilt-free. But I don’t give it to them.

This comes up while mentoring new vegans, too. People ask me if it’s okay to eat animals on vacation with their family, or in a restaurant once in a while, or to use a certain hair-care product that is tested on animals, or some other scenario when being vegan may be temporarily inconvenient or undesirable for them. These questions only represent new vegans lacking enough confidence to stick to their new ethical awareness. Happily, I find that when people trust in whatever brought them to that awareness, and are reassured that they can make different choices, they stay with me. It’s an empowering thing for people, and an effective thing.

4. What do you think are the biggest strengths of the vegan movement?

We’re loyal to the companies, organizations, and movement leaders that have influenced us, innovate products for us, and share our ethics. We’re fairly well mobilized and we support our own when we feel we’re called to do so. The successful crowdfunding campaigns for documentary films, books, restaurants, or food companies speak to that loyalty and support. Having said that, I do wish there was less of a focus on veganism as a consumerist, capitalistic lifestyle, and more on veganism as the social justice movement that it truly is.

5. What do you think are our biggest hindrances to getting the word out effectively?

Being in PR, and working with mainstream media every day, my biggest hindrance is that veganism and animal rights are not yet taken seriously everywhere and by everyone. Bear in mind that our clients are usually very deeply offensive to the meat and dairy industries, fast food, processed food, pharmaceutical companies, the medical and healthcare industry. These are the industries that advertise on the nightly news.

Secondly, our credibility is questioned by media and the general public too. We are promoting ideas that are out of the mainstream, so we’re going to be scrutinized more. We have to be better than they are, more professional, more credible. There must be no factual or logical holes in our arguments and our materials. Unfortunately, we’re perceived as having an “agenda,” as if the animal-exploiting industries don’t also have an agenda, which is profit.

I still see a lot of sensationalist campaigns, protests for the sake of protesting, and a lack of strategy or substance behind some of what animal activists are doing. There is no longer a need to get media attention for media attention’s sake, and we’ve turned down many potential clients who wanted stunty campaigns. We really don’t need to scream and wave our hands at people, and media coverage can backfire very quickly if we are portrayed as fools or propagandists. We can raise the level of dialogue, we really can.

6. All of us need a “why vegan” elevator pitch. We’d love to hear yours.

The ethical choice is vegan. All sentient beings feel pain. Meat, dairy, and eggs come from sentient beings. Meat, dairy, and eggs always cause pain. If you choose to eat meat, dairy, and eggs, you are choosing to cause pain and to participate in exploitation and murder. Participating in pain and murder is always unethical. The ethical choice is vegan.

7. Who are the people and what are the books, films, websites and organizations that have had the greatest influence on your veganism and your continuing evolution?

I’m inspired and influenced by so many people and animals. Our dogs, Frederick and Douglass, inspire me every day. I cannot imagine the life they had previous to living with us. They spent the first five years of their lives in cages in an animal testing laboratory, having all manners of terrible things done to them, and yet they are forgiving and open to experiencing life – some of life, at least. I look at their example and want to not only be a better activist, but a stronger and more resilient person.

I’m inspired by all of the farmed animals that I have met at sanctuaries, and those I’ve helped to freedom but never met. They have come from such horrific surroundings and yet seem to have made peace with the world.

I’m inspired by Kim Sturla, Marji Beach, Jan Galeazzi, and everyone else at Animal Place, Nathan Runkle and the entire Mercy For Animals team, and lauren Ornelas’ work at Food Empowerment Project blows me away. Some of my heroes are Thomas Ponce, who started Lobby For Animals at 12 years old; Jo-Anne McArthur, who puts herself through such personal suffering to bear witness to animal suffering; and Tony Kanal, who constantly combines bravery and thoughtfulness in his activism. Ari Nessel from The Pollination Project makes me want to be a kinder person, and his sister Dana Nessel, the civil rights attorney who nearly singlehandedly won the right to marry for everyone in America, makes me want to be a more kick-ass person. Kia Scherr from One Life Alliance taught me about forgiveness.

Aside from Jo-Anne’s book, I recommend Mark Hawthorne’s Bleating Hearts and Ruby Roth’s children’s books.

Through our PR work, I’m also lucky to be tapped into a network of vegan documentary filmmakers and to have early access to a lot of the most influential projects: Earthlings, Bold Native, Got the Facts on Milk, The Ghosts in Our Machine, Speciesism, Cowspiracy, and the upcoming, next big AR film, The Last Pig.

My wife Kezia influences and amazes me. We have been together for close to 20 years. She is my best friend and the smartest person I know. I learn from her all the time.

8. Burn-out is so common among vegans: what do you do to unwind, recharge and inspire yourself?

The reality is that I am preoccupied with ending animal exploitation. It’s quite literally the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. But I get so much energy and excitement by working on these issues, and thinking about how we can be more effective as activists, that I don’t really notice the time go by.

Also the work we do at Evolotus inspires us. Getting the Wall Street Journal to write about a client’s work has the potential of being read by four million people. I could spend the rest of my life passing out leaflets and probably never reach that many people. We are constantly looking for the next big thing that will put animal rights issues into the mainstream. Finding that new next big thing is inspiring and recharging.

To unwind, I’m not ashamed to admit, we do a lot of cocooning with bad reality TV such as competitive tattooing shows, the home and garden channel, and lately binge-watching TV series on Netflix. I also love to shop for and read novels. I’ve already surpassed my goal of reading 100 novels this year! We also are lucky to live in a city with dozens of vegan restaurants, so going out to lunch or dinner, or picking up vegan donuts on the weekend, is something we do frequently. Maybe too frequently!

9. What is the issue nearest and dearest to your heart that you would like others to know more about?

Living with Frederick and Douglass, clearly, the answer is vivisection. Rescuing beagles from animal testing laboratories, fostering them, helping them create a new experience of the world, has opened my eyes to how important it is to consider individual lives, versus abstract concepts and numbers such as ten billion land animals.

To say they have changed our lives would be a massive understatement. We are completely invested in making sure they are happy, healthy, and at peace, after the five-plus years they were confined in a laboratory. They still have emotional and physical scars, but with each day that goes by and each belly rub, they grow more comfortable and adjusted to freedom.

It also puts a different perspective on so-called “single-issue campaigns” because our dogs, and millions more animals like them, are simply overlooked by vegan education outreach. Just one or two decades ago, the animal rights movement included in its focus animals in laboratories and animals used for fur. The truth is, we’ve dropped a massive strategic ball on vivisection, and as a result we’re losing a relatively winnable issue. There’s simply no reason animal testing – at least nonmedical testing, meaning consumer products – should continue today.

Today, this movement is primarily concerned with animals used for food. I understand the logic behind this, and with my experience in hands-on rescue, and this expansion of my consciousness from abstract numbers to specific individuals, has made me appreciate the work of farmed animal sanctuaries differently.

10. Please finish this sentence: “To me, being vegan is...”

The greatest gift you can give to yourself, the animals, and the planet.