It's About Respect

Has this ever happened to you? You read about someone doing something heroic and you wonder why you aren’t out there doing great things too? “Why can’t I do something like that?” We want to help … we want to help in big ways but we don’t know how and where to start. Even if you can figure out what to do it's tough to stay motivated in today's busy times.

Leaders in the field will often be the first to counsel that it’s not some big, grand scheme that effects change. It’s little, bit-by-bit, grassroots movements. It’s people like you and me, unknown and uncelebrated, who, time after time, bring about the societal change we all want to see.

It's no secret I love animals but this is not about love, it's about respect. So here are a few little things that you can do right here, right now, to help animals.

Trade up! If you have given up “red meat,” now’s the time to give up all meat. And if you’ve given up eating mammals but are still eating poultry, become an “all the way” vegetarian (and that includes fish). If you’re already vegetarian, go vegan. If you’re already vegan but are still supporting corporate America, go local and organic. Take a look at what you’re doing, and see what you can do better.


Leave a comment: Visit sites where animal stories are running and leave comments in support of animal rights. There are always stories about animals on the Internet and plenty of opportunities to educate other site visitors. Also, when you see animal stories in the newspaper, write a letter to the editor.


Adopt a classroom: Pick one teacher or one classroom and visit PETA’s TeachKind program to send the teacher a free (yes free!) curriculum kit, along with free (yes free!) lesson plans, posters, stickers, videos, and other resources. For little or no money, you can spread the good news about animal rights. Most children are still pure of heart and take easily to the message of kindness.


Ask for faux: Does your favorite Asian restaurant serve seitan or wheat gluten products? No? Why not ask them to? Lots of Asian restaurants serve wonderful entrées such as crispy orange “beef” and teriyaki “beef” kabobs using faux meats. Encourage others to do the same. At home one of our favorite dishes is spaghetti with Italian "sausage."


Post a poster: Order some posters about dogfighting, spaying and neutering, or banning the circus. You can put them up wherever you feel comfortable and where legal. Do the same with fliers.






Write the right: Companies know we are their bread and butter. If enough people demand compassionate products they may be motivated to provide them. Write to companies that still test on animals. Revlon has gone animal free but most standard toiletry and cosmetic companies have not. We need to let them know it matters and that we will spend our money on products free of animal testing and animal ingredients.


Feeling brave? Go to a protest. Protest Petland, KFC, the circus, or a roadside zoo. I shouldn't really suggest this as I haven't done it myself. I find that I'm fearful of confrontation. Respectful argumentation where you end with a smile and a handshake, fine. But putting myself physically out there? Eeeeeek! That doesn't mean I won't do it though. Change doesn't come without discomfort.


You don't have to love animals to do these things. Understanding that animals are living, feeling beings to be treated with respect and compassion is a very important element in empathy and respect for others. Those who are violent to animals rarely stop there. Violent acts toward animals have long been recognized as indicators of a dangerous psychopathy that does not confine itself to animals. Personally, though, I think animals have the right to a peaceful life for their own sakes. And since animals in the food, toiletries, and entertainment industries are at our mercy it's our responsibility to speak up.

MY Version Of The Weekend

It's interesting to see Shirin's blog of this weekend and mine. Totally different! She definitely focuses more on people, which is admittedly more interesting to most people, and I focus on pictures of animals and flowers.

Well, here's my favorite flower:

Can little Cyrus get down by himself? Not yet.

He still gets help from his Baba Saeed.

Or maybe the two-handed swoosh!

He is negotiating the stairs by himself now as long as there are railings.

Saeed is definitely in his element.

No, he's not licking the top step. He's peering down from a great height. (Well, it's a great height if you're only two feet tall.)

Cyrus just sort of took off. Fortunately Shirin has fast reflexes.

This playground is in Memorial Park. If you've ever been to Athens, GA you know that the bulldog reigns supreme (U of G mascot.) You will see painted bulldogs such as this all over town, each different.

There's a nice pond in Memorial Park. It had started to rain.

The shower stopped so we left for a nice (humid) walk.

These ducks didn't budge an inch so that we could pass. We carefully walked around them.

This little guy was in the pond.

Saeed and I enjoyed the beautiful flora and fauna.

Cyrus got out of the wagon to walk. He looks so small on that sidewalk!

The sidewalk goes around the pond, but we took the side-path to the Bear Hollow Nature Trail, a little natural zoo that's home to bobcats, bears, white-tailed deer, river otters, owls, and other species of wild animals. That one below is a wild one, but he didn't bite us.

Zoology 101

I think Cyrus was looking at the alligators.

Red-tailed hawks.

I think the sign said it was a red bear, but I doubt my memory because it looks like a black bear. Well, whatever it was, it was a sleeping bear.

Land tortoise.

Bald eagle.

Shirin said they (the UGA vet hospital) assisted in the transfer of this female alligator to this zoo.

I felt so bad that I took this owl's picture. I'm sure the camera flash disturbed it. I walked away saying over and over again, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." It still bothers me that I did that. Stupid, stupid human.

Time for a water break.

On our way out of the park we came across Shirin's favorite flowers.

They are so bright they almost don't look real.

Cyrus looks back to make sure I'm not lost.

Back home, Cyrus helps his mom water the elephant ears.

Why take a picture of this plant? It's Shirin's basil plant. On her blog you can see that we ate from it when we had our Persian breakfast.

The next series of pictures show the seriousness of Cyrus' love of brooms and basins. Here you see him looking unhappily at Shirin because she's using his broom, the one he wants to use.

C'mon mom, give it to me.

Finally.

Checking it out to be sure she didn't mess anything up.

The happy boy!

Playing with Grandpa:


Dancing to the music (Please ignore Saeed and Gabriel's conversation)


Cyrus and his duckie (notice how he says duckie, sort of):


What a sweet lovey boy (I'm referring to Cyrus):


Remember this seahorse? (look at next video):

Fair Trade Not Always Ethical

The following article is written by Stephanie Ernst, a social activist. I have copied her July 28th article from the change.org website in its entirety and included the photos she used.

"Fair Trade" Does Not An Ethical Chocolate Bar Make

Much ado has been made recently about Cadbury's decision to go Fair Trade with its Dairy Milk chocolate bar line, the top-selling chocolate bar in the UK (sort of like the British equivalent of Hershey's, for Americans who aren't familiar). But although the company should absolutely be commended for its concern for cocoa farmers and its commitment to helping them via a switch to Fair Trade, this move doesn't suddenly make the bars devoid of ethical problems; there are still mothers, sons, and daughters quite literally dying for the Dairy Milk bars from Cadbury and for other chocolate.

And although this announcement was written about and celebrated in various venues, it was the title and content of a recent Guardian article, "Socially aware chocoholics rejoice as Cadbury's Dairy Milk goes Fairtrade," that really struck me. The article began with this line:

Good news: eating bars of Dairy Milk is no longer greedy — it's snacking with a social conscience.

And that's where I let out a sad sigh.

It remains a deeply unfortunate truth that most people's "social conscience"--and that of society at large--is limited to a focus on humans and sometimes environment and/or romanticized wildlife. And so they don't see the problem in "no longer greedy" and "snacking with a social conscience" being attached to a discussion of dairy consumption, when human consumption of dairy (and how we get dairy) is one of the most stark examples of our greed, our selfishness, and the self-serving limits of our "social conscience."

We have no nutritional need for the breast milk of another species (before anyone asks, yes, we can easily get adequate calcium from plant sources). Our bodies are designed to wean off our mother's milk when we are children, just as calves and goat kids and other mammals at some point in their youth are meant to wean off their mother's milk that is made for them. Yet despite the rather unnatural nature of adult humans consuming other species' milk (and despite even the known negative health effects in many cases), we insist that we want it and that we will take it by whatever means--and we do.

Taking and consuming dairy is the very epitome of greed. We take semen from a bull we have turned into nothing more than a semen-producing machine. We then effectively rape the "dairy cow" to impregnate her with it. When her baby is born, the baby she has been carrying and communicating with and waiting to meet for months, we take that baby away immediately--the baby cries out; the mother bellows and struggles; we don't care. We kill most of the babies immediately or within days and sell them as "bob veal" or first confine them, severely restrict their movement, and feed them an intentionally nutritionally deficient diet before dragging them, often quite literally, to the slaughterhouse to also become "veal."

All the while, the babies search and cry out for the mothers. All the while, the mothers cry out for and mourn them. All the while, we keep taking and drinking the milk that those calves needed and for which we are ordering they be killed. The female calves who aren't killed as babies are kept alive so that they can replace their mothers, who will soon be old and worn down before their time, as the cycle of rape, impregnation, and separation from and killing of baby repeats each year, every time the mother's milk intended for her now dead, packaged, and veal-labeled previous baby starts to slow. Following year after year of physical exploitation, emotional trauma, abuse, painful infections, and more, these "dairy cows" will find themselves in the same slaughterhouses, on the same killing floor, where each of their trembling babies died over the years.

This is not true just of "conventional" or "factory farm" dairy. These basic facts are true of all dairy. Organic dairy. Dairy from "grass-fed" cows. Small-farm dairy. And yes, dairy from other species too, such as goat dairy. Newborns and young babies are traumatized, put through hell, and killed, and mothers are traumatized, abused, exploited, and repeatedly put through the most excruciating experience a mother can imagine, for years, before ultimately being brutally slaughtered and turned into hamburger, all so that humans can eat and drink something they don't even need. That is greed, my friends. It is cruelty, and it is absolutely greed.


If you want your eating to be "no longer greedy"? If you're committing to "snacking with a social conscience"? Dairy--in any form, from any farm or company, as an ingredient in any food--does not fit into that equation. Dairy consumption is inherently cruel, inherently greedy.

So in this particular case, I am not comforted by the idea alone of farmers being compensated fairly for the cocoa they provide--because the ones being harmed most by Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and other dairy-containing products are still the ones suffering the most, and there is no adequate compensation for what is done to them.

Food Inc.

We have been trained as a society to buy food at the supermarket, get it as cheaply as possible, and not consider where it came from, who it effects, or what it is doing to us. When you think about it, the whole thing seems fairly irresponsible. Few choices we make have as much of an impact on the planet as our food choices do.

There's a new movie out called Food, Inc. which we plan to go see. The filmmaker, Robert Kenner, "lifts the veil on our nation's food industry." It features Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) who expertly break down these hard truths into digestible pieces making it easy to understand what is happening in our food industry without having to be an expert yourself. I've read both of these books and thought them very good, Pollan's especially.

Fortunately, we all have the power to change this system. The Food Inc. website has some great resources to check out after you’ve seen the movie including 10 Simple Tips towards eating better. I doubt it'll satisfy this vegetarian's heart, but perhaps a future movie will. Changes don't occur overnight, but step by step :-)

Here's the trailer:

Sale Of Ivory

I just signed a petition to save elephants from extinction by permanently banning the sale of ivory. Please add your name today: http://www.care2.com/go/z/19778191

Kenyan Wildlife Authorities recently seized $1 million worth of elephant tusks bound for ivory markets in Asia. Kenya's government has called on the global community to support a permanent ban on ivory sales to ensure that elephants won't go extinct. Can you imagine a world without elephants?

Please support Kenya in trying to save these beautiful, smart animals. Join the global call for a permanent ban on ivory sales. Sign the petition here: http://www.care2.com/go/z/19778191

Thanks!

A Couple Of Funny Pics

My personal frustration with people 'driving while talking' hasn't been all that bad. People have always multi-tasked (not that that's a good thing to do) while driving - eating, putting on make up, beating their kids in the back seat, etc.

What really exasperates me is people in stores who are so involved in their phone conversation while I'm trying to shop that they can block the whole aisle and not even be aware that someone is trying to get passed them. Old people who are slow and unaware I have patience with. Younger folk strolling at a snail's pace while yakking on the cell while I'm trying to make it back to the office in time --- grrrrr. So I'd like each store to put up this sign and hire little hall monitors to punch a hole in a person's ticket if they're caught blocking an aisle while on the phone; each hole represents a $10 fine at check out. Proceeds go to PeTA. More than 10 punches per month result in community service, more than 10 punches per week... jail time :-)

~

My friend Holly sent me this picture. These little guys (and gals?) are protesters at a global warming rally. Very clever. Someone took a lot of time to create all these little activists; I particularly like the little angry guy in the front with the blob (is that a winter hat?) on his head. I feel sure many of those little snow people would be my friend if I were a little snow person.