New Year's Resolutions

Happy Samhain to all! (Starting at sunset tonight by ye olde reckoning) It's the old Celtic new year, pronounced "SOW-in." Literally translated, it means "summer's end," End of summer? Woooooo, spooky!

Being the pagan new year, I am trying to make some resolutions. Then, when the normal new year rolls around, I can evaluate how I'm doing.

1) Give up soda.
I am almost there, except I sometimes have cherry coke at a restaurant. The sugar/caffeine combo is highly addictive for me. I'm trying ot drink more tea instead. Especially my beloved white tea.

2) Work at not being an angry vegan.
This is tough. It's hard to empathize with the victims of such terrible cruelty without feeling angry at those to inflict the suffering. I never verbally get on anyone's case, and I rarely feel upset at any individual. Most of the time, it's just anger at the whole system. I am working on making peace with all this.

3) Eat out less.
It's expensive, it's not that good for us, and honestly, cheesless bean burritos (add guac) from Taco Bell just aren't that exciting. It's quick though, and when you have 1/2 hour to feed, change and get the kids in bed, take out is nice. But still - cutting back. Ideally, we'll eat out once in a while at Follow Your Heart or some Indian or Thai restaurant, and really enjoy it.

I hope everyone has a fun Hallowe'en!

Contrarian Book Club

As you may note from my sidebar, I am reading a book on Christianity. This is mainly because my friend Kestryl, whom I have known for something like 13 or 14 years, has converted, and I just had no idea why. I left Christianity as a teenager, with my middle finger in the air, disgusted with the whole thing and determined to figure out all the big stuff on my own than-you-very-much.

So now, half a lifetime later, I am poking under those old rocks to see what I can see. I doubt I'll ever convert, at least not to Christianity the way it is practiced today. The biggest stretch of the imagination involves me going to the super liberal Christian church where they allow women to preach and gays to get married. But that's a really big stretch.

It has been so long since I seriously thought about Christianity, that the idea of a resurrecting god/man seems like a weird myth to me. I have kind of stayed sane though the years by viewing modern Christianity as some literalist form of a Greco-Roman mystery cult, albeit one that has a lot of political power for a supposed secular democracy. So prying open my brain and trying to understand will be a good challenge for me. I was raised Christian, and went to religious schools for 6 years, so maybe that'll help.

So anyway, Kestryl, the Christian meat-eater, and I, the vegan pagan, agreed to exchange two books in the spirit of understanding views that are different from our own. How cool would it be if others joined in this idea of a contrarian book club? Everyone could read up on opinions different from theirs, and even if they didn't end up agreeing, they could understand a little better. Vegans and meat-eaters, capitalists and communists, Bush supporters and sane people. You'd get your "mentor" who would discuss the book with you, and then everyone would join hands and sing in the spirit of common understanding...

Kestryl loaned me Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, which I have wanted to read for awhile since I heard it was the book that makes Christians out of intellectual atheists. The other book is The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

In return, I loaned him Peaceable Kingdom (a DVD, and if you haven't seen it, go out and do so!). I also loaned him Food Revolution, but I couldn't decide on the second book (we decided on 2 books to exchange, and I cheated by throwing in the movie, but it's such an amazing movie, that I couldn't leave it out). So I gave him The Pig Who Sang to the Moon and Animal Gospel, and he can decide to read either, both or neither.

Prairie Dog Language

Awhile back I read the book The Pig Who Sang to the Moon. It discussed evidence of emotions in farm animals, and though I am totally in agreement with his conclusion that we shouldn't hurt them, I found the book a little disturbing. Some of the things farm animals do are so frighteningly human, that learning about them makes it even harder for me to deal with the "normal" world.

But even with those things taken into account, humans are still set apart. We have complex social groups, tools, art, fire and language. But they've already found animals with the first three characteristics. (Chimps and dolphins using tools and birds who paint the insides of their nests)

So it's interesting to read this about prairie dogs.

They have different "words'' for tall human in yellow shirt, short human in green shirt, coyote, deer, red-tailed hawk and many other creatures. They can even coin new terms for things they've never seen before, independently coming up with the same calls or words, according to Con Slobodchikoff, a Northern Arizona University biology professor and prairie dog linguist.

Book Review: Animal Gospel

Animal Gospel
by Andrew Linzey

This book argues the case for animal rights based on the Biblical Gospel. This idea isn't totally new to me, but I typically view the Christian churches and their followers as using the Bible as justification for hurting animals through the "dominion" argument. Typically, the idea of mercy only applies to humans, because their God loves humans best, and animals are just for our amusement and use. Sometimes compassion extends to dogs and cats, or dolphins or some endangered species, but usually anyone who professes compassion for farm animals is reminded that we shouldn't place animals on the same level as humans.

What a breath of fresh air this book is. I have heard of Matthew Scully's Dominion, and there are other Christian books out there justifying compassion for animals based on the idea of Christ-like love for the weak and the vulnerable. Pagan though I am, the beauty and significance of the Christ story and the idea of radical compassion is not lost upon me.

I will now share some parts of the book, because they warrant sharing.

With these thoughts in mind, we shall not ridicule, or even dare to smile at, those who feel the sufferings of God's creatures whether they be human or animals. The Gospel truth is that we are empowered by divine grace to feel the suffering of others; that we can so feel is the accomplishment of Christ within us. It is nothing less than shocking to hear Christians speaking derisively of those who care for animals as "sentimentalists." What would these people have said of Jesus' compassion for all those beyond the normal boundaries of concern in his own day - the poor, the diseased, the marginalized, even tax collectors and prostitutes? ... To be united to Christ involves in our own day an expansion of moral sensitivity no less an affront or threat to those in power than was Jesus' own compassion in his day.

* * * * *

In any case the massive exploitation of animals in the world today is not, in the main, the result of many thousands or millions deciding to abuse animals. Indeed, very few people decide - in the sense of rationally weighing the pros and cons - anything at all. The decisions have almost entirely been made for them. People do not choose to kill for food; they find meat packaged for them in the supermarket... People do not choose to put hens in batteries; they simply buy the cheapest eggs; and so on. We are all caught in deeply ingrained habits of life that constrain our field of moral action and awareness.

* * * * *

He goes on to say that in innocent animals we can see the face of the crucified Christ, and to harm innocents is to act against Christ himself. Though I'm not a Christian, I can certainly see the significance of the image of harming the innocent. I'm not the author's target audience anyway. But even so, one part did stick with me as a beautiful ideal. I'm not sure that loving the factory farmers a lot will end factory farming, but it's better than us coming off as a bunch of self righteous jerks.

People who work for justice for animals are often disappointed, angry, unhappy people, and more often than not with just cause. It is incredible that we should treat God's creatures with so little love and respect; incredible that we should despoil animal life for fun and amusement; incredible that we should wantonly slaughter; incredible that we should make wild animals captive for entertainment... It is spiritually infantile that we should continue to look upon the world as "made for us" and animals simply as means to human ends, as resources, as tools, as machines, indeed simply as things. And yet we must not hate those who hate God's world... All of this is very, very hard, especially when we see creatures treated so cruelly that their cause cries to heaven for justice...So I don't want to hate anybody, even vivisectors, butchers, trappers, factory farmers and bullfighters. On the contrary, I want to love them so much that they will not find time, or have the inclination, to hunt, and kill, and destroy and maim God's good creatures.

Book Review: Days of War, Nights of Love

Days of War, Nights of Love
by The Crimethinc Workers' Collective

This is a cool book. It's a book on anarchy, and since I know next to nothing about the topic, it was a fun introduction. If you know more about anarchy than I do, please forgive my ignorance. But here goes.

The central idea of the book is a world without hierarchies - through religion, employment or government. It challenges the idea that civilization will devolve into chaos and bloodshed without these systems of control, and that all people will find meaning, happiness and most importantly, freedom, in doing what they choose to do instead of what they are forced to do.

Now, after just this one book, that idea seems like a beautiful dream. The book never answered the question about who is going to maintain the sewers or do other "soul killing" work if they aren't compelled to by the capitalist system. And the idea of a "gift economy" just makes me shake my head at their beautiful idealism. (But the open source movement displays this quality, so maybe I'm wrong.) The part about giving up your job, shoplifting, living our of dumpsters and sleeping in cars just doesn't resonate with me. Maybe for a young, able-bodied person without kids, it might be a way for them to live outside the system. But for the rest of us... not so much. However, some of the critiques of capitalism and our current society are spot-on.

My favorite part was the section in which the authors talk about everything in the world being made into a commodity for sale. We sell big parts of our lives to buy symbols of things instead of living the ideals that those things represent. We buy a leather jacket or convertible to symbolize our rebellion or freedom. We buy certain styles of clothing, accessories, home furnishings, each with a message embedded in them about who we want to be or how we want to present ourselves. Instead of being rebellious, nerdy, earthy, punk etc. we buy the crap that represents those ideas. So even revolutionary or supposedly counter-cultural ideas are assimilated into the capitalist system of profit. My favorite example is Hot Topic. You know, the cute goth/punk store in the mall? The delicious irony of this punk stuff being mass produced and sold in the mall cracks me up.

The central message is that a world in which people make decisions based on mutual benefit instead of on profit is not only possible, but is within our reach. They are utopians, but they say that the true tragedy is if utopia is within our grasp and we never reach out for it because we convince ourselves that it's not possible.

There is a lot of good stuff in this book, and I can't possibly go over all of it in one little review. For a younger and more idealistic person, this may be the "exploded manifesto" they advertise on Amazon. For a suburban mom, it's thought provoking, but simply not practical enough for me to put into practice in the way they describe. Then again, they say it's a tool, not a guidebook. So their way of living outside the system may not be mine.

This book gets 10 for sincerity and beauty, 10 for the use of images/layout/copyediting and 2 for practical solutions. So using this very scientific system, 7 open source Linux Penguins it is!

Surgery Update

Everything went fine for my son. He was very calm when they put him under, and when he woke up, he was only agitated about the IV in his hand. We had to keep him from ripping it out, but that's to be expected if you wake up with a cyborg hand. They had him eat a flourescent orange popsicle and some saltines to prove that he can keep down food (ironic that this nasty crap is considered food at a place of healing, but whatever) and then let us go.

The doctor said the surgery went well, and she expects him to have no more trouble. He's a little lethargic now, and wants to lay down and watch a video, so all is well once more.

Wal Mart and the Secret Service

I'm glad that I live in a country in which people have the freedom to disagree with their elected leaders and exercise their first amendment rights. And I'm glad that Wal Mart will stand shoulder to shoulder with the government to defend these rights.

Unless it involves sticking a tack in a picture of the president's head.

http://alternet.org/rights/26503/

Surgery Blues

My son goes in for minor surgery tomorrow. He is having his blocked tear ducts fixed, which involves a little metal probe being poked down into the tear ducts. The ducts are closed, so he gets gooey eyes since the fluid can't drain. This has led to on and off eye infections through his whole life, along with really nasty yellow goo almost the time. We've waited for him to grow out of it, but they say after 12 months of age, the hope is slim. We gave it 3.5 years, just because I hate to do any kind of surgery unless it's really necessary. The goo is icky, but not dangerous.

It's a minor procedure, they assure us. And I'm not afraid they'll poke his eye out or anything. But I am worried about the general anesthesia. He's wee, and there's always a risk.

On top of that, I'm freaked out myself. I had two eye surgeries at ages 5 and 6, which were much more complicated and involved me having both my eyes patched for awhile. (You stop dreaming in pictures and start dreaming in sounds and textures if anyone is curious). My husband will be with my son for sure, because I am worried that my fear and agitation will worry my son. Even if I act calm, he'll pick up on it. I'll be there too, but if one of us has to leave to take care of our daughter, it'll be me. My husband is more of a rock in this situation.

When I was little, I was sure I would die during surgery. I prayed and asked forgiveness for my sins, just like they taught me in school. Then I cried and cried and they put me to sleep. It was probably the scariest thing I've ever gone through, and I had to do it twice. I know there's a lot of projection going on. My son isn't me. But my experience was so terrible, that I'd do anything to keep him from feeling that way.

This morning, I mentioned that he's going to the hospital tomorrow. He knows that the hospital is where you go if you're in an accident or you break a bone.

"Why are we going to the hospital? We're not broked."

I explained about them fixing his eyes. That he'll go to sleep and when he wakes up, we'll go home. He seemed totally fine with that, even though my stomach was in a knot.

So that'll be fun. I lived through them doing a spinal tap on my 7 day old daughter, and they even had to send someone in to warn me ahead of time when they brought her in with an IV in her scalp. She had seven tubes and probes on her teeny little body for four days. This should be cake.

Healthy Lifestyle Expo

I had the chance to attend the Healthy Lifestyle Expo in Burbank, CA this Saturday with my son. I mainly went to be able to browse through an entire expo of vegan goodness. No leather, no dairy, no nuthin' that hurt anything. I didn't have to ask about ingredients or pass up on any tasty samples. The booth part was free (except for parking). I couldn't afford to go to the talks, but last year they posted them on VegSource, so I hope they'll do that again.

Alternative Outfitters had a booth of cute non-leather purses and stuff, but I'm just not cool enough for the hip pink and lime green purses with cowgirl dangly things. The cookies and jerky were more my speed. I bought some Tasty Eats Soy Jerky which tastes just like the meaty kind. In other words, chewy salt and fat. I stocked up. The Larabar people were there, as were the Cliff Bar folks. Animal Acres had a booth, as did a Buddhist organization and some group of religious people in orange clothing with turbans (I don't know what religious group they're from) A row of 5 happy-looking bald Buddhist nuns made their way through the crowd, and I was sad that I couldn't hear the talks because I enjoyed Rev. Heng Sure's talk on Eating for Peace from last year's conference, which I saw on Vegsource's site. (go here and scroll down, it's on the right.)

There were a good number of people, and I had some celebrity sightings. I met the author of Plant Roots, he signed my book for me. I'll be reading it soon. I saw Sabrina Nelson of Vegsource, but she was engaged in conversation each time I saw her, so I couldn't grab her sleeve and be a big dork and tell her I appreciate what she's doing. I also saw Dr. McDougal with his wife, both looking too harried for me to stop them and tell them the same. The couple who runs Vegetarians in Paradise was there, and we ended up sitting at their table for lunch. I told them how much I liked their website, and the man they were sitting with looked familiar too. He told me his website, but I didn't write it down. I think it's The Healing Heart Foundation. Anyhow, everyone was very nice, and I enjoyed being able to hang with them, even if a lot of my time was toddler wrangling.

Next year I should get a veggiegeek.com shirt so I can be a minor celebrity too. Of my 25 or so regular readers (who are mostly too shy to comment- hello shy readers!) only 3 or 4 are in the LA area. So I'd just be pimping my doofy blog, which is such a geeky thing to do, it might be bordering on cool.

Book Review: Son of a Witch

Son of a Witch
by Gregory Maguire

This book had a lot to live up to, since Wicked is one of my favorite books of all time. For a sequel, it holds up well.

This book doesn't delve into big issues the way that Wicked did, but it doesn't shy away from them either. The story revolves around the son of the Wicked Witch and what happens when a person who is a blank slate with little guidance or parenting is turned loose in a corrupt and crazy world.

I don't have a whole heck of a lot to say on it, other than I liked it, and the ending sets us up for a sequel, which of course I'll read also.

I give this book 7 singing Elphabas - very good, but don't rush out to get it.

Why I'm not Christian

Continuing with religious ranting week:

In my post the other day, I said how much I like and appreciate "real" Christians and the things they do. But I'm not one of them. I want to open my post up with the acknowledgment that I'm treading on sensitive ground. And I also want anyone to post a comment if they have insight on anything I have to say. I'm always up for learning something new. I have Christian friends who are super cool, and I do not intend this as some kind of backhanded insult to them or their beliefs. I know that Christians aren't a bunch of brainwashed drones who run around reciting trite platitudes and grinning like labotomized jack-o-lanterns.

And the only reason I give a rat's ass about what other people believe is because I'm feeling all worked up about the Bush administration and their religious appointments to the supreme court, their pandering to select religious groups, etc. I feel like they're cramming their religion down everyone's throats, and it makes me crabby.

I debated with myself on posting this, but one thing I wanted with my blog was a place to say what I think, even if it's not going to win me any friends. These are just my thoughts on Christianity as I have observed it. My view may be limited.

The reason I'm not Christian mainly centers on my distrust of organized religion and abuse of power that I see, along with all the contradictions in the Bible and church teachings. When I say "the church," I'm not referring to all churches, because I have heard of ones that do Christ's bidding the way that I interpret it. I can separate the wheat from the chaff, but there's a hell of a lot of chaff.

And I just don't understand this religion that something like 70% of Americans adhere to and seem to find so much pleasure in. It just seems like an awful lot of rationalizing and mental gymnastics to swallow it all.

The first place where the real Christians and I part company is the idea that Christ was the only son of God and the only path away from our inherent human sinfulness. I think we're all equally "children of God" - if I can use that term - Jesus, me, Paris Hilton, even Karl Rove. And I wonder about the council of Nicea, more than 300 years after the death of Christ, when they finally decided that he was a deity - an actual god on earth. It's weird that it took them 300 years to decide this, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what they were up to - again post a comment if you know something more.

Personally, I think he was a wise and peaceful man who had some important things to say, and that the church used the god-on-earth line to solidify their power. If he's a god, and they're his representatives, that's some sweet power there. If he's a humble rabbi and you're just sharing his message - not so much power there. Not the kind that sets up a hierarchy with the church on top.

Another reason I'm distrustful is that various churches have used the Bible to justify cruelties including slavery and the subjugation of women. You can use that book to justify just about anything you want, and the church and its followers have done just that. Today it's gay people who get the Biblical shaft.

Ever read the whole Bible? It has instructions on how to sacrifice an ox, sell your daughter into slavery, and take slaves (oh yes, it's condoned). It outlines human sacrifice, killing people who are gay, killing those who work on the Sabbath or who are not virgins on their wedding night, killing witches and sorcerers (however they're defined). Eating shellfish is an abomination (listed right with homosexuality), as is wearing cloth of mixed fabrics and eating meat and dairy together. God kills children, whole villages, and smites left and right for infractions that are so small as to be laughable. And don't even get me started on the treatment of women. And what I have learned about Biblical translations bears out the idea that it has been manipulated to say what the powerful of that era want it to say (i.e. modifications of Hebrew verbs so that God appears male instead of male/female)

I can't see living my life by a book like this. Even if you see the New Testament as a new covenant with humankind, the church still picks and chooses stuff from the Old Testament. And if you pick and choose what is true out of it, it sort of defeats the purpose of using it as a guidebook.

Parts of it are great (the peace and love stuff). But it's always up to some priest to tell me how we're interpreting it this century. In the early 00s - no killing gays or non-virgins, no ox slaughter, no human sacrifice, no slavery. Being gay isn't ok, but eating shellfish is fine. So is eating meat and dairy together. You don't really have to help the poor aside from donating some money to the church itself (who will take a cut for "expenses"). Working on the Sabbath is acceptable these days. Sex before marriage is frowned upon, but not a death-penalty offense. Wearing mixed fabrics is totally fine. Women are equals now. Pagans worship the devil whether they know it or not, but you can't kill them any more. Denying them their civil rights is fine, however.

The idea of Satan baffles me too. To me, the idea of some evil being influencing people waters down the idea of personal responsibility to the point where you're almost abdicating it. It's cartoonish to have some bad thing that you can blame evil on. If you feel angry or violent or if you do something bad, it ain't Satan, it's you doing that. And you have to deal with making amends or living with your choices. You want to see evil? Look at pictures of Aushwitz, or Rwanda, or a factory farm (not equating humans and animals, merely comparing them). That wasn't any devil, it was human beings, making choices of their own free will.

Now, if you're not taking the Bible literally, and if Satan is just a personification of human evil, I can see that. But talking about him as an individual person is silly in that context. Is the personification of evil just a way to help the masses understand the idea of human evil? And if so, why not just call it "human evil" or "cruelty" or something? Why the need to make him a person? Why move evil to a symbolic level if you want to address it on a concrete level?

And it's not like God needs any help being mean. If he's omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent, frankly, what the hell is he up to? I read in some religious tract that he's leaving us alone for a couple millennia so we'll see that God's way is the right way, and submit to his authority in heaven. Or that he's teaching people lessons with suffering. Testing their faith or making them stronger. It's the Divine Plan.

Because when a woman cradles her starving baby and watch the flies crawl on his swollen little belly, it's a lesson lovingly delivered by God. When millions of people die senseless and violent deaths, it's proving God's point that humans suck. And by saying it's part of God's plan, it lessens our responsibility to stop it. It's sanctioned by God after all, so though we should help the suffering, we also are without guilt for those we don't help. God teaches through pain and torment. Who are we to question that mystery?

Fuck the mystery. God wants to teach us something? Then why allow the innocent and the small to be tortured to death? Why infants? Why animals? Why the weakest and most vulnerable? And why so violently and painfully?

So with that, I conclude that there can't be a being up in heaven running the show, because if there were, he/she/it would be far too sadistic and cruel for words. So whatever divinity there is in the world must not be individual and separate, not a puppet master, but must be within all of us - me, the Pope, the houseplant, the pig, the rat. Even Karl Rove.

And for those of us with the power of choice, it means we must treat all people and creatures as our kin and act with as much kindness as we can. Not because of a divine parent figure offering us the celestial cookie of a happy afterlife in heaven. Not because we're afraid of karmic retribution for the harm we cause or because we want to be gorgeous and rich in our next incarnation. But because it's the right thing to do, and it tips the scales a little toward the light side, because there's enough cruelty and brutality already.

I have gone on and on without posting on why I'm a pagan. If anyone has any comments on this post, please post them. I sincerely want to understand this religion that dominates my culture, because I totally don't get it. I don't hate the church so much as I'm confused and frustrated by it. And like I said, I have Christian friends who are very cool, and I just don't understand the appeal of this strange religion, and the desire of its more vocal followers to influence public policy.

The next time I hear someone say that they don't support gay marriage because the Bible says it's wrong, I'll say, "Wow, I'm glad you don't eat shellfish." When they ask why, I'll remind them that the two are listed as abominations in Leviticus. So if you pick one part of God's law to make into public policy, why not pick the other? At least marrying makes people happy. But the poor shellfish suffer, even in their rudimentary way.

Bird Flu

I have been grumbling to myself about the avian flu, hoping that it won't spread and that the measures in place will stop it. It must be serious if Bush is talking about using the military to quarantine areas of the US if the flu breaks out.

Interestingly, my thoughts were echoed on the Vegan Freak Podcast this week. As a mom, I think of my two little ones - 3 and 1. The predicted pandemic has a mortality rate of 70%. That means I'm pretty likely to loose one of them. And even if they pull through, my husband might get it, or I might. Four people with a 70% chance each of dying, and that's not even counting my friends and family.

At least with bacterial contamination or mad cow, my family has the option not to eat the animals and die. But this we can't control.

Not surprisingly, everyone is talking about how to prevent the spread of it, and no one is talking about how to prevent the whole mess in the first place.

Stop raising birds in intensive confinement. Stop eating them, and the need to confine them vanishes.

This won't be the last food-animal disease outbreak. But meat eating is so normal that stopping isn't even a thought. Not even at the expense of millions of human lives.

Even if you don't give a flip about animal welfare, what's harder, giving up meat or watching your child die? There will be millions of preventable deaths caused solely by the human desire to eat meat. This isn't some kind of "oops" natural disaster. It's completely preventable and completely unnecessary.


Updated:
I knew I could count on Fox News to comfort me.
"Avian H5N1 looks like a 70 percent case fatality in humans. But this has never been true of any human strain," Longini told WebMD last December. "There has never been any human influenza virus that has behaved that way in recorded or even unrecorded history. The case fatality of even highly virulent flu strains are a couple of deaths per 10,000 people."

Bush and Religion

And speaking of the One True Faith being the law of the land, I found this today.

Impeachment... a girl can dream.

Turning to the Dark Side

My husband and I have turned to the dark side, at least for awhile. It's mainly a matter of convenience. When I was a stay-at-home mom, I had more time. But now, we're just so busy.

We bought some disposable diapers.

After 3.5 years of washing cloth diapers daily, I have found that using them is detracting from our quality of life instead of enhancing it. It's just that having to wash, dry and fold diapers and pack them for our daughter every day is time consuming. And we have little enough time as it is. Back when my son was born, we started off with cloth diapers. I washed them at the laundromat and air dried them in our teeny apartment because we couldn't afford to use the laundromat dryer. We moved and bought a washer, but I kept line drying them because why pay for a dryer when nature dries them for free? Then, when my daughter was born, we bought a dryer, and that made it easier with two kids in cloth diapers.

I know about the toxicity of sodium polyacrylate. I know that we're throwing away money. I know about the landfills and how I'm supporting a horrible industry that pollutes the environment and abuses workers (many get really sick from the chemicals in diaper factories.) This does not sit well with me.

But then there's the siren song of our culture - don't do extra work, throw everything away, don't think about the consequences of your actions. Everyone else is doing it. You're only one person. So your actions don't make a difference, even on a symbolic level.

We pull 14-15 hour days every day. We're up at 5:30-6 and we don't quit working until all the lunches are packed, diapers are packed, dishes are done etc., and that's not until about 8 or 9 pm. So cutting 20 minutes off makes a difference. Especially if we want to shower daily or ever watch a whole movie in one sitting. Right now, we'll try it out. We may go back to the cloth, but for now, the disposables.

Update on Library Pamphlets

Last weekend, I went to the library to check on my stack of Even If You Like Meat pamphlets. I had left 10, and there were none left when I went back. I didn't know if maybe someone had thrown out the whole stack or if they had been taken by interested people. So last weekend I left 27, which was almost more than the pamphlet rack could handle. It would be a test.

Today, there were 10 left. All in the same spot where I left them. So 17 people took one last week, plus, I'm assuming 10 people the week before. I left 25 this week, deciding that it would be my base number to leave each week, and every Saturday morning I'll see how many were taken. Then rub my palms together gleefully at the mental devastation I have caused. Er... I mean, the potential lives saved.

Seriously though, I feel like I should be doing more to educate everyone about factory farming, but this is all I can do right now, so I'll have to be satisfied.

I am tempted to put out some Why Vegan pamphlets, just because some interest is there. The EIYLM pamphlets only show pigs and chickens. But I don't want to overwhelm people or make them just throw up their hands and say screw it, everything causes suffering and being vegan is too extreme. Maybe I'll go with Farm Sanctuary's Veg for Life booklet. It's pretty big at 23 pages, but it's very good if someone is interested in reasons to be veg aside from animal suffering. Plus it's big and colorful, so it'll catch people's eye from the doorway.

What do you all think? Any pamphlets you would recommend?

Hunting

I don't need to open my mouth for anyone to guess my opinions on hunting, but I'll elaborate on it anyway. Because running off at the mouth is what I do here.

Hunting is both better and worse than what non-hunter omnivores do. It's better if the hunter eats his or her prey, because that animal had a better life than some poor wretch in a factory farm. At least the animal gets to be outside, maybe breed and live its life. So in a way, hunting is reducing suffering to a tiny extent. I'd rather be a hunted animal than a factory farmed one any day. The part that makes it worse than the acts of non-hunter omnivores is the mental machinery that needs to be in place that allows people to derive pleasure from hurting things. This bothers me.

It didn't really disturb me much as a meat eater, though I did think it was weird that people enjoyed killing cute animals. I figured that if they ate their prey, then what they were doing was no worse than what I was doing. And I'd be a hypocrite to condemn them.

Now I see it in a different light. Before, with meat eating as a normal act for me, killing animals seemed like the natural and normal thing to do. Circle of life and all that. I didn't view it so much as a choice as just the way things were.

Here's what I don't get. Hunters love nature. They love being outdoors and the stalking of the prey - outsmarting the animal. They usually will say that the animals are beautiful and that they respect the animals. They love being out in the beauty of nature, then they shoot and kill something they claim to love.

Let's apply this logic to other beautiful things. A painting is beautiful - slash it with a knife, music is beautiful - smash the instruments, a cathedral is beautiful - burn it to the ground.

Painters, musicians and architects will make more paintings, music and cathedrals, but we don't use that as an excuse to destroy them. In what other area do we condone harming and destroying for pleasure but in the treatment of animals? Perhaps picking flowers?

But somehow they don't see it as destruction and death. It's like the little animals just run around for their amusement, when the fact stands that they do not want to die. Am I anthropomorphizing? Examine the evidence. Doesn't the deer, bleeding and injured, try to flee when it is shot? Doesn't the duck or pheasant peck and scratch to the last, terrified? Don't they act just like people, but without language? Just like our pets?

How can someone cause this pain and death and take pleasure in it? And how can destruction and suffering be so romanticized in our culture? We are not getting in touch with our ancient ancestors. They had to hunt to survive. And if my life depends on it, I'll kill too. But modern pleasure hunters, just like all of us, have a choice. They can choose not to kill. But they enjoy causing death and suffering. I cannot understand that, and frankly, it seems sadistic.

For some people (the minority I hope), the justification is in their religion. I can only speak for Christianity here, because it's what I know. And I want it to be 100% clear that I'm not bashing the religion itself, but a minority of its followers who use it to justify cruelty.

Many religious hunters say that they are enjoying God's creation and exercising His gift of dominion over the animals. (For me, dominion means a responsibility to be a caretaker, not the right to hurt without cause). So with this idea of dominion, they see a hierarchy of man over animal, and with it a right to cause harm, even if it's only for pleasure and not out of necessity.

I'll write about me and my pagan ways another time, but this is one of the reasons why I can't attend a church that condones hurting things for pleasure based on divine right. Note that I differentiate attending a church verus learning from a spiritual leader's teachings. I also know there are many Christians who are far more giving and gentle than I am, so I'm not saying it's just a religion of people who use it to justify brutality. In fact, there are lots of Christians out there who truly walk the walk in regard to mercy for these smaller, more vulnerable creatures. (http://www.episcoveg.com/ and http://www.christianveg.com/). More on this in another post.

Back on topic - At least omnivorous non-hunters have the denial thing going - just talking from personal experience here. I've never met one yet who wanted to know where his or her food came from. To be mentally healthy you have to disconnect yourself from the pain you cause.

But the hunters revel in their power over nature, their ability to kill. When I was a little kid, I hurt ants and snails, and felt a terrible and exhilarating dark feeling in my tummy. I felt power over these tiny creatures because I could hurt them and take their lives. But, like most kids, I outgrew that phase and my parents taught me not to hurt living things (except four or five specific types of animals which existed for our consumption). Now the idea of torturing bugs is terrible to me. Imagine a 30 year old burning ants in the driveway with a magnifying glass. Messed up right? So why is shooting and chasing down a helpless dumb animal more mentally healthy?

I'm not the first to propose this idea, but why not take pictures? You can hide, stalk and enjoy nature. Then instead of paying a taxidermist to stuff your dead animal, pay someone to blow up your picture of the animal and then put it over your fireplace. Look, I "shot" that doe, and next year, maybe I'll "shoot" her fawn or her grand-fawn. Go camping, go hiking. Take your dog if you love animals. Appreciate and enjoy without destroying and killing.

Or just get something like this.

Book Review: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

I love this book. This is my third time through, and fortunately, my memory isn't that great, so a lot of it was new again.

The first time I read it was in 1998. It was obscure then and had not been made into a musical. I had the worst fever of my life, and I alternated between sleeping, reading and shuffling around the house in my pajamas. My feverish state worked well with the oddness of this book.

I read it again in 2000, but I don't remember much about it that time. And now, five years later, I picked it up because the sequel, Son of a Witch was coming out, and I needed to refresh my memory. I am glad I did.

As you would expect, this book tells the life story of a green girl named Elphaba, who became known as the Wicked Witch of the West. Among other things, she was an Animal rights activist (lower case "a" animals can't talk, capital "A" Animals can), and a revolutionary who tried to overthrow the corrupt Wizard who was taking rights away from Animals and doing other nasty things.

The beauty of the story isn't solely in the fleshing out of this character that I had always dismissed as just plain evil. It's in the issues that weave their way through her life. For example, humans just accept the inferiority of Animals, even though they know that Animals can talk, read and have feelings. Lower case "a" animals are screwed from the start - no one even considers them as worthy of anything. Though I know the author probably intended this to be a critique of racism, the pro-animal reading isn't hard to find. It's kind of like the Animals are an intermediary step between animals and humans. Most people in Oz don't want to hurt Animals because they are too much like humans. But they accept that it's ok to ignore abuses because they aren't enough like humans to really matter. Sound familiar?

This part never occurred to me the first two times I read it. But then, I didn't really think of meat as a dead animal either. With books, you get out what you put in.

The book also explores the idea of forgiveness. In the original Wizard of Oz, the witch's failing is that she couldn't forgive Dorothy for killing her sister, even though it was an accident. So the desire for revenge consumed her. This story presents a different slant to that tale, and it shows what happens to someone who feels she's responsible for something terrible, but is denied forgiveness. How can she forgive someone, when she herself had never been forgiven for anything?

The author's handling of government corruption, propaganda and the manipulation of the public isn't anything too new, but it's fun to have it happen in this fairy tale land. Another fun part is the exploration of the nature of evil. Is evil something assigned to you, an attribute like popularity? Is it a type of psychosis, a poisoning of the soul? Or is it merely the absence of kindness?

Elphaba is anti-social, and does not have the aptitude for telling socially necessary lies like Glinda does. She also is too smart for her own good, and speaks out against injustice or falsehood where she sees it. Just like in the real world, combine these traits with a lack of concern over other people's opinions - and you get labeled as a bitch - or a witch.

I highly recommend this book. It's no cutesy fairy tale, but a fun and sometimes sexy retelling of a story we all thought we knew. (And don't you want to read about the Wicked Witch's lover when she was young?)

I think I need to come up with a different ranking system. Maybe separate non-fiction, classics and modern fiction. Because I feel like I want to give this book 10 flying monkeys, but how can I justify putting it up there with The Greats like Wuthering Heights?

Screw it. It's in my top 10 books of all time - so 10 flying monkeys it is!