World Vegan Day and Media

November 1st is World Vegan Day and kick-starts World Vegan Month. It was initiated by the Vegan Society in 1994 to mark its 50th anniversary. I'm guessing that veganism will be discussed a bit more than usual in the media as a result for the next week or so. For instance, Time's website has an article called "A Brief History of Veganism" by someone called Claire Suddath. She uses terms like "extreme", "strict" and "ism". Suddoth also insinuates that most vegans aren't really vegan since

like any lifestyle choice that ends in "-ism," there are plenty of people who cheat. The vitamin B12 is found almost entirely in animal products, so many vegans eat fortified food or take a vitamin to get the right amount.

She asserts that "American vegetarianism has broken free of its philosophical [...] roots, becoming an accepted health choice" as if ethical reasons now have less to do with American vegetarians' decision to stop eating animals. She juxtaposes this with veganism by asserting that veganism is "out there on the fringe" and is "still tied to" -- gasp! -- the animal rights movement. She also kinda makes Donald Watson, founder of the Vegan Society, sound like a fearmongerer by stating that when he coined the term and he took "advantage" of a tuberculosis scare to prove that veganism would protect people from "tainted food".

Basically, the article reads as it was written by someone already biased against veganism, but it's done in such a mild way that your average reader, unfamiliar with veganism in the first place, wouldn't really pick up on it, but would just walk away thinking that vegans are radical and hypocritical nutcases who are (or who associate with) nasty animal rights terrorists.

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A San Francisco Chronicle blogger posted that her 5 year old daughter announced to her that she wanted to be a vegan and asked for advice / input. The majority of the responses have been thoughtful, informative and supportive.

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Kim O'Donnel of the Washington Post had her live / online discussion, called "What's Cooking?", about meatless eating yesterday; you can find the transcript here. I've written about O'Donnel's "Meatless Monday" food column before. There'll be a special installment of her "What's Cooking?" feature on Thursday, November 13, when she'll be focusing on how to have a vegetarian Thanksgiving.

Interview with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

We are conditioned to respond in socially acceptable ways i.e. protests, petitions boycotts etc. We also have the problem that nature and other species are an abstraction to us. Humans fight for property, for immediate self defense and for religion. Hominids are a self centered species. When people ask how I can risk human life to protect a whale, I cite the fact that we do not think it is unnatural or unethical to risk our lives and to kill over property like land and oil. And we accept dying and killing for ridiculous religious beliefs. I think fighting for endangered species and threatened habitats to be much nobler.

--Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shephard Conservation Society

Paul Watson was interviewed by Jason Miller recently and talked about his work defending marine life, as well as his issues with Greenpeace (whose solicitors he calls the "Avon ladies of the environmental movement"), veganism, and the conflicts between capitalism and the basic laws of ecology. Read the full interview here on the Axis of Logic website.

Guns Don't Kill People

Absolute stupidity does. Who the hell hands an 8 year old kid an Uzi??

As his father raised his camera, an 8-year-old boy aimed an Uzi at a pumpkin set up at a shooting event. Before his father could focus, the third-grader from Connecticut squeezed the trigger, and the high-powered weapon recoiled and fatally shot the boy in the head.

[...]

In a telephone interview yesterday, the boy's father, Dr. Charles Bizilj, said he stood 10 feet behind his son as a professional trained in using the 9-mm Micro Uzi machine gun stood beside the boy on Sunday afternoon. He said he doesn't think the shooting instructor was holding the weapon as his son pressed the trigger, as guides did with other children firing the weapon.

"This accident was truly a mystery to me," he said. "This is a horrible event, a horrible travesty, and I really don't know why it happened. I don't think it's relevant that [the instructor] wasn't holding the weapon."

Read the rest here.

Crochet Chain Stitch

The chain stitch is sort of the equivalent of "casting on" in knitting. It's basically what you need to do to get started -- to create that first row from which you then crochet your project. I like this video better than the previous video I posted. It only covers this one part, though. Before you can even get to this point, you need to know how to make a slip knot. Click here for a video that shows you how.

These, and the rest of the instructional crochet videos I'll be posting, were found via the Knit Witch website.

How I Spent My Saturday Afternoon

I suspect that once I get the hang of this, it should be a breeze. Here's a beginner's video on how to crochet. The talking and baby in the background are a little distracting, but the instructions and image are clear. I'm sure there are better intro videos out there, but this one was good enough to get me started.

Edit: Actually, the problem with this video is that it doesn't show you what to do when you reach the end of a row. I'll have to find something else to post.

Nicole Atkins - The Way It Is

This was the incredible voice coming through the earphones of my trusty little MP3 player when it plopped through the bubbles and into the tub this afternoon.

That's what I get for letting myself get lost in thought. One less toy...

Veganism in the News

The Baltimore City Paper printed an article in its Eats section by a woman called Violet Glaze (I think she usually covers entertainment). She starts off by asserting that she's a vegan, "but not a very good one". She refers to her "ravenous, carnivorous muscles" sending "red alerts" to her subconscious when she purportedly becomes protein deficient (perpetuating the myth that vegans don't get enough protein). She quips that her skimping on seitan leads to dreams of animal flesh, and that although she knows that she can get sufficient protein from vegetable sources, that it's animal flesh her body craves anyway. She presents veganism as a struggle against these sorts of cravings.

She uses this as a diving board to plunge into -- you guessed it -- an argument for the ethical superiority of eating animals grown and slaughtered locally, versus eating plant-based foods that are shipped in from far away. She quotes Barbra Kingsolver, who mused that opting for plant-based foods and meat alternatives from great distances leads us to "overlook the suffering of victims of hurricanes, famines and wars brought on this world by profligate fuel consumption". Therefore, we're left with an either / or situation where you can either eat local animals and their products or be a vegetarian and have your animal-free food shipped in from far away, which apparently leads to great human suffering. The assumption is that all meat and animal products are local and that everything else has to circle the globe to get to us.

Glaze accepts this either / or scenario and refers to the "rug of vegetarian moral superiority" being "yanked out from under" her feet (perpetuating the myth that vegetarians are, by default, smug and holier-than-thou types). So her solution to what she feels is a true ethical dilemma left in her lap by Kingsolver? To eat insects, since (as she puts it) "an insect is practically a plant, right?". In the end, she asserts that her experiment has likely left her a more "dedicated" vegan, but she continues by saying that if she ever sees insects on a menu in the future that although the "saint" in her won't order them, the "omnivore" in her might.

(Photo of the article's author from the Baltimore City Paper)
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In other news: Time magazine recently featured an article in its "10 Questions" series that allowed readers to ask Ingrid Newkirk of PETA some questions. I liked her response about the whole Ben & Jerry's breast milk campaign that left so many people outraged and ranting. Newkirk essentially points out that it was indeed a joke to get people -- as well as the media -- talking about how cow's milk is meant for calves. I didn't quite like how she answered the question concerning how one could fight for animal rights in a world filled with poverty and starvation. She focused on the unhealthiness of meat, when so much more could have been said.

I'm not a huge fan of PETA, but in all, I guess that this bit by her in as mainstream and conservative a publication as Time wasn't all that bad.

Brooklyn Goes Veg! Responds to The Brooklyn Paper

I'd written a week ago about how Mike McLaughlin of The Brooklyn Paper had proclaimed, based on a few quotes and conversations and the low participation of restaurants this year in Brooklyn's annual vegetarian restaurant week, that vegetarianism is dead. It seems that McLaughlin, whose proclamation had seemed an ill-researched knee-jerk assumption, had misrepresented the Brooklyn Goes Veg! organizer's views in his attempt to stress the decline of vegetarianism. Read the response to his article here.

Apologies and Secrets, Oh My!

Too many years ago, whilst going to school somewhere in the Ottawa Valley, I enjoyed a few years of the most amazing radio reception I've ever had in my life. I'd stay up late at night -- college insomniac, often cramming for midterms or forcing essays out through writer's block -- listening to American talk radio on AM stations that would sort of disappear at sun-up. (Yes, even then, Rush Limbaugh was still a sorry jackass.)

I remember being fascinated with a program that I think ran on late night American radio (although part of me is tempted to say that it ran on CBC). It had a twisted sort of appeal that tapped into my inner-voyeur. The program involved the broadcast of message after message left on Allan Bridge's Apology Project phone line. The art project was a confessional sort of thing, meant to provide catharsis to callers (and inevitably, a bit of titillation for those who listened to the messages or read about them). Bridge, or Mr. Apology (as he called himsef), left posters around NYC inviting people to call a phone number to apologise anonymously for something they'd done -- to relieve themselves of the guilt of long-held secrets. Of course, many probably took off running with it, although from listening to some of the messages, I'm sure that many took it quite seriously. I was surprised, upon Googling the whole thing, to find out about the book and movie the project led to, as well as about the magazine Bridge apparently published called Apology, which contained transcripts of the messages. Bridge, as it turns out, was killed 1n 1995 by a hit-and-run jet skier.

I was reminded of all of this earlier this morning as I sipped my green tea and tried to liven myself up to shower before heading off to work. I came across a blog called PostSecret, which is another sort of art project. In this case, people mail in their secrets on one side of a postcard, and the product mailed in gets posted to the blog. Some of them are funny, but so many of them are so incredibly sad. I guess that this project is churning out books, as well.

(Photo: From the PostSecret blog.)

Book: Alan Weisman's The World Without Us

Has anybody here read this book by Alan Weisman yet? I just nabbed a copy through the library and am about 40 pages into it -- it's hard to put down. It examines what sort of impact we've had on the world and the earth's ability to heal itself. It follows a sort of timeline going from things that would occur a mere handful of days after humans were taken out of the overall equation, to what the world would look like a few years down the road, hundreds of years, thousands, etc. Weisman talks to scientists and experts to get as accurate an idea as possible of how things would pan out. The first section looks at New York City and how quickly the city would fall apart without the constant upkeep of human beings -- everything from water flooding the subway tunnels to larger species of wildlife repopulating places like Central Park.

As much as the book uncovers the extent of the damage we've caused to the planet and its other inhabitants, it's almost a relief to read about how quickly a lot of this damage could -- or will -- be undone.

There's an excerpt on the book's web page that talks about the crazy longevity of polymers and plastic that's a must-read. It's been out for a while (it was first published in 2007) and it's been getting great reviews. There's a great piece by him in Vanity Fair from earlier this year that's worth reading, as well.

First Monsanto, Now Dow

A company that makes the commonly used herbicide ingredient 2,4-D is challenging the Quebec government under the North American Free Trade Agreement for banning its product.

The Canadian unit of Dow AgroSciences alleges the prohibition of the weed killer is without any scientific basis and in violation of the trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico.

"We are of the view that this is in breach to certain provisions of NAFTA," Jim Wispinski, president and CEO of Dow AgroSciences, said in a press release. "We don't welcome this step but feel it is necessary given the circumstances."

Wispinski called the province's prohibition "tantamount to a blanket ban based on non-scientific criteria." He argues public policy decisions should be based on scientific evidence and a clear set of rules.

The company is challenging the province under Chapter 11 of the free trade agreement, which includes a provision that allows private companies to sue the federal governments of any of the three countries if a member country enacts laws that "expropriate" their profits.

(Read the rest here on CBC's website.)

Yet another agribully forcing its product upon someone who's said 'no'...

Knowledge: Liberating or Debilitating?

I'd rambled on about knowledge and freedom a while back. I went back and re-read it after an online friend paraphrased Paula Poundstone earlier today -- a quote about the potential effects of knowledge. I found the original in a Mother Jones article: "What moron said that knowledge is power? Knowledge is power only if it doesn't depress you so much that it leaves you in an immobile heap at the end of your bed."

She's right. Sort of. There's more to it, though. I've had conversations that have danced around this notion with my dear friend J. who (for the record) personifies the term 'piece of work' in more than one of its aspects, and for whom learning is like breathing, with knowledge his oxygen. J. introduced me to the issues surrounding Peak Oil, including its probable implications in terms of industrial food production. We've talked about the differences between denial and saturation points, about indifference and that 'deer-caught-in-headlights' sensation that can leave someone seeming avoidant or shell-shocked. The manner in which J. approaches knowledge is contagious and consistent, regardless of how dark and radical it may appear, or of the hot potato that bit of knowledge may actually be. J.'s response to the scenario presented by Paula Poundstone would be to tell the person left in an immobile heap at the end of the bed to "get off the cross" -- to get over it, because there's no time for wallowing.

In a sense, this takes the onus off of the knowing and puts it on the doing. You don't avoid knowledge because it's too depressing. If it's too depressing, then there's a reason for its being depressing. It's information about something which you feel or think isn't right. If you can do something about it, then do it; if you can't, then walk away from it. In avoiding the 'knowing' in the first place, though, you can never get to that point where you can -- and need -- to make this decision for yourself. Then you really need to ask yourself what's motivating you to avoid making that decision. Fear? Apathy? Laziness? Who wants to be motivated by that?

Vegan Recipes in the News

The Food & Dining section of the Courier Press from Indiana features an article today by Sara Anne Corrigan on her attempts to throw together a tasty vegan meal for her guest, the town's new vegan rabbi. In it, she describes the addictiveness (and B vitamin goodliness) of nutritional yeast. She includes recipes for Soy Fritters and Tofu Dipping Sauce from the wonderful The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook (I have a copy of it myself and need to buy the most up-to-date verion). She also features a strange-sounding recipe for a Molded Gazpacho Salad that conjures images from my mom's old 1960s cookbooks. This salad in question is made with vegan-friendly Pomona's Universal Pectin, though. (The Farm's cookbook can be ordered via their catalog here.)

The Patriot Ledger from Quincy, MA has an article on raw-food chef Brenda Richter and includes a recipe for her Garden Blend Soup. (Since when is miso considered a raw food??)

Green Crafts: Making Paper Outta Lint

I stumbled across this Instructable on a craft blog -- it gives you step by step instructions on how to make paper out of lint. I usually compost my dryer lint, but am going to start collecting it to try this out. I'm not sure I have enough at home right now (I don't remember how recently I emptied the container into which I usually stuff it). Depending on how fine the screen mesh needs to be, I may at least be able to make a deckle and mold this evening. I think that I still have the screens from the old recently-replaced windows from the back of my building. I'm not sure of how practical this finished paper actually is. I suspect that it may be tricky to write on it. It could be used to make mattes for photos or to make decorative wall hangings or to add to collages. I'll have to think about this for a bit or Google some more.

Other uses for dryer lint (according to various tips online) include: using it to cushion small parcels you mail, making stuffed animals or leaving it hanging from trees in the spring for birds to use for their nests. You can even make dryer lint clay or papier mâché. And then there are folks like these who take it to a whole other level.

The nice thing about dryer lint is that it's easy to get your hands on it. Especially from people who'd otherwise just throw it out with the trash.

Todd Palin Says America's Core Values Are Hunting and Fishing

I found this article via the Huffington Post, which found it via this blog. Word gets around, I guess.

Todd Palin spoke at a gun club in Pennsylvania on Saturday and proclaimed to the 75 or so people present that "it is important to have a ticket that 'supports our core values -- hunting and fishing'".

How can fishing be a 'value'?