Dropping hearts, breaking names
Two words for Duffboy to live by: sleep hygiene.
Things that have me excited: personalized sticker art that I’ve been working on, becoming vegan again (this time, I’m going for the gold!), and the fact that Leia and Mishus have been hanging upstairs once again (my cats’ health was a concern for several weeks, not too long ago).
That is all for now.
A beautiful poem that reminds me that there is so much comfort in approaching a vegan lifestyle.
I’m tired, my knees ache, I have sore feet,
My belly is heavy with child inside.
Head is aching from the blistering heat,
What’s coming is worse, I’m desperate to hide.
****
Last year I cheerfully bore my first child,
All the discomfort and pain were worth it.
My love for him instant, instinctive, wild,
Overwhelmed me, the light in my heart lit.
****
I washed him and nursed him, my suckling angel,
My purpose in life was now clear to me –
To love him, protect him and teach him well.
Like any other mother I would be.
****
The sun set that day and the bright moon rose,
And we spent a blissful night together.
Brief nirvana before that bitter dose,
When hell swallowed me whole, meat and leather.
****
At dawn I heard their heavy stomping feet,
They approached us as I was feeding him.
Without shame…
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I am at a loss for words. Just watch and feel The Sirens of the lambs, part of Banksy`s residency in New York Better Out Than In. Now, for additional context and a vegan perspective, read this post by Mercy for Animals.
A good question to ask. I bet a merciful diet would be one he`d promote.
When my husband and I went vegan, my dad remarked, “I think it’s okay to eat meat because Jesus ate fish.” This stumped me. I didn’t know how to respond because my dad is a devout Catholic and a good man who lives in accordance with his faith. Who was I to challenge Jesus?
Unlike my dad, I don’t belong to a particular religion. Still, I believe that God probably exists and having grown up Christian I’m familiar with Jesus. Whether he’s God or God’s son I don’t know, but his kindness, love and compassion are undeniable.
I’m no bible scholar, but my dad’s probably right that Jesus ate fish. But does this mean that he didn’t care about animals? And does it mean that Christians shouldn’t consider the ethical significance of what they eat?
A Lot’s Changed in 2,000 Years!
I don’t know that the bible provides adequate information for…
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Man, if Chipotle were in Guatemala… I would practically live there!
This week, Chipotle became the first national food chain to offer a vegan meal other than the monotonous garden salad or veggie burger. The new dish, Sofritas, first appeared in January for a test run in Chipotle’s San Francisco locations and was immediately successful.
According to Chipotle Spokesperson Chris Arnold, the Sofritas dish, of which the main ingredient is spiced, shredded organic tofu, “already accounts for 4-5 percent of sales” in Bay Area restaurants.
Due to its popularity during the test period, Sofritas is now widely available at Chipotles in Oregon, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia. Eventually, the dish will be available in all 1,450 locations.
Have you tried Chipotle’s sofritas dish?
Will always wonder if he was killing or helping that dog. It all happened too fast for me to realize if I was witnessing torture or mercy up close.
Vegan and vegetarian options to feed the kids: sounds good to me!
Lately I’ve been feeding four kids for weeks at a time, so I’ve been keeping things simple. One of the kids, “Kay,” says she doesn’t like anything that tastes like anything else. But she’s willing to eat healthy things, so I just make sure to have options that are very plain. She’s excited that she likes tofu. She took a bite of microwaved tofu and said, “It tastes like nothing. I like it!”
Last night I made Tabouleh and that didn’t go over well. I offered DIY toast as an option and they all took it. We also had mixed nuts, green beans, and watermelon. I don’t usually offer nuts for dinner but it was very hot and the power was out until late. The Tabouleh was terrific, though I find the Goya brand I bought to be a bit mushy; it was mostly white, like they’d stripped off the…
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Sometimes humans do not fail us.
A Duffboy six-word memoir, dedicated to the good people at iLifebelt.com
This is a guest post by Alia Tiberius. I kindly asked this vegan athlete to share her vegan experience in my humble blog. Here is what she had to say.
How I became a vegan
It wasn’t really a radical revelation that drove my transition from being born into an omnivore family to choosing to live as a vegan, it was a very gradual process.
I had a fairly normal-ish childhood, I think (I’m no child psychologist so don’t quote me on that). The thing that I remember from way back is that I always loved animals very much (what kid doesn’t?).
I don’t deny that I enjoyed eating meats, but as I grew older and realized that animals were being sacrificed for these dishes, my enjoyment of them definitely decreased. I still ate some meats, but it didn’t feel right, there was always a nagging doubt. I tried to minimize the amount of meat on my plate but it was always a bit of a battle at home. I recall getting lots of apocryphal warnings about how vegetarians would get horrible deficiencies and diseases from not eating meat. As much as I scoffed at these warnings as a rebellious teen, I have to say that they followed me a good distance from my parent’s home.
When I left my childhood home, I was a flexitarian, I would try to avoid meat, but due to poor meal planning, I’d always wind up relenting and eat meat (just in case, just to stay ‘healthy’ as I’d always been warned).. Once I left university, I really focussed on my career, working long hours and again not really taking care of my diet. I was changing jobs every 1-2 years and often relocating to each one, never really setting down any roots. I had a bit of a wakeup call as I headed towards my 30’s when my lifestyle (poor diet, little exercise) started to catch up with me and I ended up with quite unwell. I reassessed my life and started to think about work/life balance. My diet evolved to be pescatarian and the fish were really only occasional, when I was visiting or eating out.
Gradually I didn’t want to eat fish anymore either…my health was slowly improving and I decided to take much more interest in my health. I think I admired vegans but I was convinced that it took a lot of work and discipline I wasn’t sure I had in me. I resolved to finish an Olympic distance triathlon before turning 40 and trained to make this happen. I’d started to pay better attention to my diet and had seen some postings on Facebook that indicated that there was cruelty in dairy and eggs too. It kept nagging at me and I knew that I would have look into it sooner or later.
I wanted to be a better eco-citizen, I wanted to do what was right for the animals, I wanted to be healthier and I wanted to clear my conscience or at least understand exactly what I was doing (or not doing). I had spent the fall watching Georges Laraque (a big hockey player whose main role was as a fighter/enforcer in the NHL) attempting to be a figure skater. I read up about him online and found out that he was a vegan! Moreover, he went vegan overnight after watching ‘Earthlings’ and even lent his voice to the French version of the movie.
My husband and I watched the movie and I decided that it was time to go vegan (luckily my husband decided to go vegetarian at the same time). I bought a couple of great cookbooks and read all that I could about veganism. I decided to do this in stages to avoid feeling overwhelmed. I first tackled the obvious egg and milk products and let the baked goods slide for the first week. Then I focused on finding good baked goods, found out that most bagels are vegan and found bread that I liked. Then I started to root through my cosmetics and household products and started to research what was made from animals or which companies tested on animals. I found that just by focusing my energy on certain products that I was running low on, it wasn’t too overwhelming. Of course I made mistakes along the way – I was certain that Coffee Mate was vegan for the longest time and I have no idea how I misread the ingredients like that. But slowly I worked away at it and I’m happy to say that I’m about 90% vegan at this point. I know that it isn’t quite possible to be 100% vegan and there are some items I can’t afford to replace right away, but I know that when it comes time to replace them, I will be making smarter choices.
I didn’t find it hard to be vegan but I did gain a feeling of peace and I felt empowered. Yes, horrible things are happening to animals all over the world but no longer because of me! At least I could take that power back, even if I couldn’t stop all the atrocities. I also felt like I was finally living according my values; I knew that I loved animals, I understood that they feel pain and I didn’t want to inflict any pain on another being when it was totally unnecessary. You do get a lot of flak from people who just don’t get it or are somehow offended by your existence and you will be asked where you get your protein all the time. But… it’s worth it, it really is.
A few days ago, while reading The Vegan Sourcebook by Joanne Stepaniak, I came across a passage that I found compelling and that I needed to share with you:
There are people who believe that we should do things in moderation. In terms of compassion, however, what does that mean? Does it suggest that racism is acceptable ten days out of the month as long as you do not engate in it the other days? Does it imply that it’s okay to kick the dog on Thursdays and Saturdays if you don’t kick him the rest of the week? Does moderation make it acceptable to fire a gun at people as long as it’s only occasionally or only people of a certain race, sex, or religion?
Of course not. These examples sound ridiculous because we know that when we believe certain actions to be immoral or unethical, there is no compromise, and moderation seems absurd. Veganism is an ethical practice which, like compassion, cannot be turned off and on for convenience. (page 144)
These words crossed my mind while I inspected a couple of non-vegan salad dressings today. I’m glad I chose not to flip the switch of compassion off.
My first week as a vegan has been challenging, not because of not being convinced of the actual cause, but because I haven’t quite gotten all my food choices narrowed down. For now, I wish to shate with you a paragraph from The Vegan Sourcebook, one of two books that my friend Paola was nice enough to lend me in order to help me out on my recent vegan path:
Egg and dairy production involve as much cruelty and killing as meat –perhaps even more so. Laying hens endure agonizing years of mechanized environments, behavioral and social manipulation, physical mutilations, intermittent starvation, and brutal handling–all prior to a grueling journey before their final, barbaric slaughter. People who want to eliminate the products of pain and death from their diets should begin no less with eggs and dairy than with meat. When it comes to suffering, the distinction between meat, eggs, and dairy products is undetectable and inconsequential.
Remember a few months ago I told you I wanted to read Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer? Well, I did… and it changed my life. There’s so much I wish to write about it, but I’ll just start by quoting part of page 255, after a testimonial from a factory farm worker describing the brutal treatment inflicted upon pigs:
Just how common do such savageries have to be for a decent person to be unable to overlook them? If you knew that one in one thousand food animals suffered actions like those described above, would you continue to eat animals? One in one hundred? One in ten? Toward the end of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes, “I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian…Yet part of me pities him, too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.” He’s right that emotional responses can lead us to an arrogant disconnect. But is the person who makes an effort to act on the dream of innocence really the one to be pitied? And who, in this case, is denying reality?
To be continued…
P.S. Shortly after reading this book for the second time, I decided to become a vegan.
Duff who lives at home 