So I'm Thinking Of Going Vegan

a vegan's daily companion

2012-05-25T15:58:11-04:00

It's nice to see a vegan's daily companion (in this case my friend Krissa's beloved Spike) heartily support and endorse Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Vegan's Daily Companion. ;)

p.s. speaking of support, please consider making a small donation (but only if you can) to my Team Vegan fundraising effort -- I'm $50 away from reaching the $500 goal! :)

Update: Thanks to gentle Harry and a lovely donor couple who wishes to remain anonymous (thank you all so much!), the fundraising amount now stands at $525 -- so $1050 will go towards raising awareness that ALL sentient beings matter. Because the goal has now been reached I won't badger folk in every upcoming post (although I may issue a reminder of the campaign towards the middle and end of June), but feel free to contribute more to this worthwhile cause anytime you like. :)

please support me as a member of Team Vegan!

2012-05-19T20:02:39-04:00

Yep, I'm helping Vegan Outreach raise funds this year, and need your support. As you know, information is key in getting folk to open their minds (and hopefully hearts) in the battle against animal use/abuse, and this organization does a terrific job in getting the word out. Since 2003 their leafleters have handed out booklets to over 7 million students through their Adopt A College program. You can help reach even more young people, and every dollar you donate will be MATCHED by other supporters.

My goal is to raise at least $500 and to jumpstart the process I put in $100 of my own. Two anonymous donors who wanted to help each Team Vegan member reach a minimum level put in an additional $250 (how awesome!), so I'm already at $350 -- woot! I'm hoping though that blog readers will help raise the final $150, so if any of my blog posts have ever inspired, amused or enlightened, please consider showing me some love and support this great cause. I can easily be found on the Team Vegan page (recognize the familiar name and logo?) or you can skip to Have Gone Vegan directly.

Want to donate but not have your complete name visible for everyone to see? I hear ya, and valuing a bit of privacy as well, got around that obstacle by providing the first letter of my surname only. So whether you don't mind if the whole world knows how terrific you are, or if you'd rather be a bit more anonymous, please donate either way. Thirty readers donating $5, or fifteen donating $10, or ten donating $15, or five donating $30 -- any scenario would get us there! And, $500 would morph into $1000 through the matching program! :)

Thank you in advance for ANY and all help you're able to give. It's highly appreciated.

Update: A very generous donation has been made by my pal Debbie, so the total raised so far has gone up to $450, which means that through the doubling process $900 will go towards the battle. Awesome! Therefore dear readers, I now humbly ask that ten of you donate $5, or five of you donate $10, or two donate $25 so that our sentient co-beings can count on $1000 being raised from this collective pool. I know we can do it! :)

Update #2: We have reached and even surpassed the goal! Thanks to gentle Harry and a lovely donor couple who wishes to remain anonymous (thank you all very much!), the fundraising amount now stands at $525 -- so $1050 will go towards raising awareness that ALL sentient beings matter. I'm really pleased, and because the goal has been reached I won't badger folk in every upcoming post (although I may issue a reminder of the campaign towards the middle and end of June), but feel free to contribute more to this worthwhile cause anytime you like. :)

I'm not a mother

2012-05-15T19:46:46-04:00

(This was supposed to be a Mother's Day post. Guess I'm neither parental nor punctual, snort.)

Rather, I'm an unMother if you will, although I certainly have done my share of mothering (as in "look after kindly and protectively") over the years and in classic role reversal am trying to help both my parents (who themselves were actually not that particularly brilliant at mothering or fathering) in the final chapters of their lives.

But it seems to me that both mothering AND fathering should be defined as looking after kindly and protectively (in other words, nurturing), and that this quality (shared by all sentient beings who try to look after their young) gets no respect. Consider how almost everything in our lives is regulated or licensed to some degree (whether you want to drive a car, own a business, or apply for a passport to name just a few examples), except when it comes to nurturing living beings. Wanna have a baby? Go right ahead. There's no course to follow, no exam to take, no one to judge whether you'll be a fit parent, and virtually no follow-up unless you're really beating the crap out of your kid and someone reports you. Wanna "own" a kitty, puppy or bunny? Again, go right ahead. You can do as you like and treat your "property" as you see fit. No wonder that as a society we're not too overly concerned about the maternal bonds/relationships between other sentient beings and their offspring given that we're pretty damn lackadaisical about our own.

So maybe we need to get our nurturing acts and asses together and treat all living beings with as much respect (or more) than we currently give to our cell phones, ipods, Kindles and laptops (again, just to name a few examples.) If nurturing (whether provided by mothers, fathers or any caregiver regardless of species) were taken seriously, then perhaps we would make more headway. Or am I off base here?

nifty new meat-eater beater ;)

2012-05-12T20:09:23-04:00

Think this is just an old vintage rug beater that I gleefully picked up at a garage sale? Think again.

Guests crossing my threshold will now get a friendly yet firm whack on their backside with my nifty new meat-eater beater if they're not repentant of their carnist ways, snort.

be kind to animals week

2012-05-07T20:48:13-04:00

Celebrated this year during May 6 - 12, this week (apparently the oldest of its kind in the United States) was first observed in 1915 and was established by Dr. William O. Stillman, leader of the American Humane Association at the time.

Admittedly, my first thought upon seeing this on my calendar was, "what, only one lousy week?", but I suppose that even just officially recognizing the notion of kindness towards other sentient beings can't hurt. But as vegans know, we should extend compassion to all others all the time, and one very simple but powerful way to do that is by not eating them. This one act of kindness alone, if practiced by enough people, could do wonders.

“We know we cannot be kind to animals until we stop exploiting them -- exploiting animals in the name of science, exploiting animals in the name of sport, exploiting animals in the name of fashion, and yes, exploiting animals in the name of food.” ― César Chávez

animals in laboratories

2012-04-30T22:42:11-04:00

April 21-29 was officially World Week for Animals in Laboratories, and Tuesday April 24th commemorated World Day for Animals in Laboratories. Sadly, as shown in the image above, harming animals during testing and research has a long sordid history, and like other animal use is difficult to stamp out in part because it's such a profitable enterprise. Never mind that nicotine experiments are STILL being conducted on pregnant animals, or done to figure out whether Harry Sadistic Asshole Harlow ("The only thing I care about is whether or not the monkeys will turn out a property I can publish. I don't have any love for them. Never have. I don't really like animals. I despise cats. I hate dogs. How could you like monkeys?" quoted in Deborah Blum, The Monkey Wars, p. 92.) was actually right about maternal attachment and deprivation. The truth is that most animal testing and experimentation isn't done to promote human welfare as falsely claimed, but exists to feed corporate drug companies and keep scientists spinning on their academic research wheels.

As a vegan I object to any use/abuse of other sentient beings, and while I know that vastly more beings are tortured and killed for food, animal experimentation and vivisection seems to send its own particular chill down my spine. Maybe it's the prolonged confinement and repeated torture, or the fear and terror that can't be escaped time and time again, or maybe it's the outrage I feel toward educated scientists and physicians who obviously don't give a fig about the "first do no harm" principle that should be emblazoned on their hearts and beings. I don't know, but there seems to me something so heinous about this form of use that I can only describe it as Mengelian.

So what can we do? Here are a few ideas:

become informed about the scope and reality of vivisection today
inform family, friends and others about what you know
send letters to editors of local papers to reach even more people
go cruelty-free and boycott products tested on animals
make sure that the charities you donate to do not fund animal research
contact the alumni office of your university to let them know how you feel about animal research done on campus (every time I get called to make a donation I tell them exactly why they're not getting a single penny from me)
support legislative efforts such as the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act
celebrate stories of rescue like the raid in Italy against Green Hill
and finally, remember and share this vegan rule: if there's something you wouldn't do unto another human, then don't do it to any other sentient being

happy (b)earth day

2012-04-22T06:31:00-04:00

have gone vegan

if the path is vegan, don't run around the mountain

2012-04-21T16:57:38-04:00

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,

all leading in the same direction,

so it doesn't matter which path you take.

The only one wasting time is the one

who runs around and around the mountain,

telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.

-- HINDU TEACHING

"I'm going veggie."

2012-04-08T22:04:16-04:00

If I can go veggie (specifically, vegan), and if Earl (from the Mutts comic strip above) would like to, and if Lisa (who left the nice comment on my Farm to Fridge post below) can do it, then so can you! And what better day to begin than with Easter? Think of it as a renewal of your commitment to be more compassionate. Jesus, if you're a follower of the Christian faith, may have had the choice to sacrifice himself for the rest of humanity, but the sacrifice that humans force upon billions of other sentient beings? Unconscionable if you ask me.

I "stumbled" across your blog while looking for vegan recipes. My husband and I had been talking about going vegetarian for health reasons for quite a while now (we already hardly ate meat,just dairy), and then he mentioned going vegan. So, I was online looking for recipes when I came across your blog. After a little hesitation, I decided to watch the video. My husband walked into the room to find me sobbing in front of my computer. Then he watched the video. That was Feb 4, 2012. We haven't touched any kind of meat or dairy since. That was all it took for me. On a good note, we've both never felt better and our health improved! That's so awesome, Lisa, thank you!

Patrick McDonnell's comic strip above, by the way, can be ordered as a print and I did, Because I'm worth it, snort. The company behind that advertising slogan though? Nope, they're not worth it (they still do animal testing, or pay others to do it for them), so buy your cosmetics elsewhere. Although I do appreciate their ToxCast donation.

Amazon books that are pissing me off right now

2012-04-06T17:45:55-04:00

The problem with reading blog posts and linked articles on Twitter, YouTube and FB is that you can come across stuff that even as a fairly seasoned vegan you didn't anticipate. Who knew that the training of K9's involves such cruelty? Never occurred to me. Another blind spot on my part I suppose, although every institution engaged in animal use is complicit to some degree in keeping practices secret from the general public. But now that I know, I can't unknow, and the information on the site regardless of its actual accuracy haunts me. Because if this is how many police dogs ARE trained, how can we expect officers to care about other forms of animal cruelty?

Vegans becoming hunters. WTF? Hunting now promoted as a cool hip thing for women to do. The taking of life somehow seen as a badge of gender equality. Again, wtf? And all this nonsense about being "connected" to nature, "knowing" your food, and showing "respect" by becoming a DIY backyard slaughterer. It makes me think Sir James Paul McCartney had it all wrong -- glass walls won't make a damn difference.

So being already annoyed by a sign advertising an annual church-sponsored pig roast on my way to town earlier (guess the Would Jesus Eat Meat Today? booklet I sent them last year didn't have much impact), I then get thoroughly disgusted by some of the glowing but-make-me-puke reviews of the following dreck found on Amazon:

Chicks with Guns
Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time
The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian's Hunt for Sustenance
Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain and last, but probably the worst of all (although at least it got negative reviews as well)
Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature's Favorite

Bah! And having, um, some anger issues, snort, I resort to tweeting and emailing rude responses to dickwads of both sexes. Not effective I'm sure, and not what Colleen Patrick-Goudreau would stoop to, but like I said, anger issues. Sometimes I really DO understand wanting to hide your head in the sand. There are days when I just don't want to hear of another instance where humanity treats other sentient beings like complete crap. The best antidote for me at those times is to burrow my face in my feline's furry belly or indulge in a helping of Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul. Yeah, I know, singling out one cute species is probably speciesist, but don't you dare tell me that today cuz I'm not in the mood! ;)