Vegan Victuals: The Blog |
Abuelos, Grande y Grande, Grande
There is a freedom in surrendering to far more powerful phenomena, accepting its influence. The billions of seconds and billions of variables that decided you be here right now– the percentage of them that had nothing to do your own motion, nothing to do with your conscious thoughts. If I think back in my life [...]
✩ ✩ Buy Nothing Day: Friday, 11/28/08 ✩ ✩
1. Break a comfort zone. For the most part, we exist safely in the parameters of our comfort zones. By design, they don’t challenge us. Year after passing year, growing boundaries can keep us comfortable– but should that be the goal of our time here? Today I’ll have a meaningful conversation with a stranger, parallel park a car until [...]
I’ve been thinking about…
Sailors. Probably because I’m reading Thomas Pynchon’s V. (After two weeks I am on page 38, which means in about 28 more weeks I should be finished. But I don’t want to finish it really. I kind of want to stay there. Each paragraph merits more research: sailor dialect, slang, acronyms, Yiddish, French; tracking themes, [...]
Belated World Vegan Day Post
Wok Man and I have been having some heated discussions about food ethics. The extent to which people disconnect themselves from their food choices, and the consequences of those food choices, disturbs us greatly. Food ignorance is wreaking havoc on our health, our ass size, the environment and the millions of sentient beings it enslaves [...]
The Times They Are A-Changing
Even though the students at my school already named Barack Obama the victor in the school’s mock election yesterday, along with other sources on the pulse of today: “Bobble the Vote 08” and Doonesberry, I was skeptical. With a heavy, heavy hope, I distanced myself from prediction polls, colorful electoral college maps and network news [...]
Vegan Mofo #13: The Good Fight
Living in New York City and surrounding myself with friends and loved ones who complement and support my being vegan, or at least have gotten over constantly challenging, simplifying, arguing against and calling attention to this choice, I have forgotten the conflicts of being vegan in a non-vegan world. I forget that I am, still, [...]
Perhaps Labor Day doesn’t come from a store. Perhaps Labor Day means a little bit more.
As the Industrial Revolution took hold of the nation, the average American in the late 1800s worked 12-hour days, seven days a week in order to make a basic living. Children were also working, as they provided cheap labor to employers and laws against child labor were not strongly enforced. With the long hours and [...]
My Own Post-Punk Kitchen
I went vegetarian when I was 16 years old. At the time this decision was much like the color of my hair (swatch: n): a statement against societal norms. Both were a rebellion against what I, in the wake of my development as an young adult, chose not to support… in the case of my [...]
(r)Evolution
It seems common sense to me that an educator would want to cultivate understanding and awareness within their student body and not withhold fundamental concepts of science. If, in fact, the purpose of schooling is to provide students with the knowledge and skills to maneuver through their lives successfully, then the more they can accrue [...]
Teachers College Reading & Writing Project, Summer Reading Institute
Completely overdressed and over-caffeinated, I observe the group I am amongst in Columbia University’s auditorium as we wait for the keynote speaker. I like watching the dynamics of a room, measuring the energy levels, riding them quietly and internally. The collective roar of the hundreds of conversations at once is comforting. It sounds like an [...]
“Compounds are subject to dissolution.”
Meet Michael. I spent the afternoon with him, by chance, and learned a good deal about this Buddha fellow I’ve been photographing. After returning to my guest house from the historical park with the remainder of the afternoon at my disposal, I decided to carry on with plans I had for the following day: a [...]
When the Lord Made Me, He Made a Ramblin’ Man
I’ve always wanted to be a red-nosed alcoholic hobo riding the rail cars in the early 20th century. In fact, my entire adulthood of expeditious wandering has been an attempt to skim the unknown, to embrace the time before G.P.S., maps and the pages of legal fine print that now infilter even the most passive [...]
