this lovely man, henry freedland, mentioned my "going to watkins glen" zine in his article for paste magazine, briefly but wonderfully in this fantastic article about the zoop II event at farm sanctuary.
it's a great article. it made me cry.
it made me miss zoop, and it definitely made me happy after a rough day at work and a screwed up print order for my new zines.
thanks, paste magazine, and thanks to henry.
did you know i'm perfervid?
it's the word of the day.
and my writing has now been compared to a mountain goats song, which is the part that made me cry, first, and then the memories of zoop, after that.
check it out here.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Vegan Baking Success Comes To Oregon Woman At Long Last
yes, that's right, friends, after several disastrous attempts at vegan baking, and yes, i do mean DISASTROUS, i have succeeded where i once failed in the grandest manner possible.what was once deemed "The Baking Debacle of 2008" has been put to rest finally, with this recipe from the post-punk kitchen, and a few tips from the baking substitution queen, miss ~k~, to whom i give many thanks and a couple hail, hails, though she subscribes not to the cult of tMG. yet. :)
http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=187
i subbed a bit less than 2/3 a cup of applesauce for the canola oil, to make the cookies less full of le fat, this is ~k~'s sub, and i testify to the fact that it worked out great.
i also added a bit of extra nutmeg (i like things to be more spicy than many)
and i added a tiny bit of coriander (i just really like coriander)
i plain forgot to buy nuts at the store, so uhhh, i just didn't put any in. i think it would be great with them, but they turned out great without them too.
i also subbed dried cherries for the raisins, since i'm not big on raisins and i love dried cherries in nearly anything.
SUCCESS. even m is gobbling them down, and states that they are good.
this does not diminish the fact that i am a rock star. a vegan baking rock star.
go forth and bake. if i can do it, so can you. trust me.
i subbed a bit less than 2/3 a cup of applesauce for the canola oil, to make the cookies less full of le fat, this is ~k~'s sub, and i testify to the fact that it worked out great.
i also added a bit of extra nutmeg (i like things to be more spicy than many)
and i added a tiny bit of coriander (i just really like coriander)
i plain forgot to buy nuts at the store, so uhhh, i just didn't put any in. i think it would be great with them, but they turned out great without them too.
i also subbed dried cherries for the raisins, since i'm not big on raisins and i love dried cherries in nearly anything.
SUCCESS. even m is gobbling them down, and states that they are good.
this does not diminish the fact that i am a rock star. a vegan baking rock star.
go forth and bake. if i can do it, so can you. trust me.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
someone was changing from the inside out
so i fell off the no dairy wagon for a few days, i have to admit it.
writing about it here makes it easier to keep myself going.
i fell into a serious binge and it did not feel good, and i don't know if it's because of not eating any and then drastic cheese intake, but i have been feeling ill in my body, off kilter.
i went to a show, the big blues fest at the portland waterfront over the fourth weekend with m and his brother, and we had a really nice time, but something has been weighing on my mind since then that i haven't talked about at all, and since this is the place that i have for it, i will talk about it here.
the fest was sponsored by safeway, the grocery store chain. lately, i have noticed that safeway is really trying to push their meat sales, especially their "rancher's reserve" steaks; they have promotional "green" reusable bags with words like, PORTERHOUSE and TBONE and STEAK on them for sale at their registers, which is just a ridiculous contradiction in and of itself. i don't think, even if you love the meat, you can claim that the industry is green, and doing something like buying a damn $1 bag to carry 20 pounds of meat home from the safeway from is like sticking your thumb up your a--- in a dam to stem the tide. you know what i mean.
at any rate, i find this ridiculous. every time i see these bags, it annoys me. but i haven't said anything because i feel like i complain enough as it is to my partner and he really is trying to be as supportive of all my life changes as he can be, considering that he is not interested at this time at making the same changes. i understand this, because i believe a person comes to these things on their own. and so i have begun to try to keep my grousing to more of a minimum because i truly don't want him to think that i'm angry at him for still drinking milk, for example, when he's been eating so much less meat than i ever could have imagined when i first said "i'm going vegetarian." i also never want to get to the point where i become the sort of angry human being who scared me off of this movement years ago, when i was pre-contemplative about animal issues. i never want to be in that place. we haven't bought more than one or two new packages of meat in our home since i said i was going veg in april. comparatively, this is an enormous difference.
anyway. about safeway.
they sponsored the blues festival. and we sat on the grass by the river, and normally i love the waterfront by the willamette, it is beautiful. being beside the hawthorne bridge here in portland is one of my favorite places to be, it reminds me of so many things about my adopted home that i love, times that have been good here, and why i left the third coast to come here.
the blues festival. we saw a great show, and i do mean a great show. check out sharon jones and the dap-kings, if you haven't heard them by now, i'm not sure where you've been, heh, this woman is a tiny force of nature.
safeway had a booth set up to promote, of course, their "rancher's reserve" steaks. i guess this is rather a long post to get to the point of this, but oh god, the smell of it made me sick to my stomach. i didn't know it was going to, actually, i thought the opposite would happen, and that something in me, since i ate meat, and even beef and steak and hamburgers for a good twenty-six years, that i would relish the smell of it still, and that it would be nostalgic and even tempting.
oh but how i was wrong. it really made me ill. there were clouds of smoke coming up from the back of the booth and wafting over to where we were sitting, and since we were sitting for about forty minutes before sj even came on, by the time she entered to sing, i felt like i was going to puke. this both fascinates and thrills and disappoints me: i am intrigued that after only a few months of being vegetarian, this scent affects me bodily like this, i can understand being mentally revolted by it now that i know the inner workings of the meat industry, but i would expect a more pavlovian response to it. it thrills me that my pavlovian response is apparently shut off already, and that my mind has triumphed over it, and that i think more of animals than my own baseless want for meat. it disappoints me because i quite frankly am grossed out by the thought of going out places and wanting to leave because i feel unwell and can't stop thinking about the flesh of burning cows, after my time spent with beautiful, beautiful cows at farm sanctuary. it bothers me that i almost wish for a certain degree of desensitization, even just a few degrees to the colder temperature, because it was very difficult to sit there and keep my thoughts to myself. i wasn't with anyone who would be comfortable with chatting about this, and i truly love the people who i was with, and i'd like not to make every single social occasion an awkward one where i process my own stuff verbally and my friends sit there awkwardly wondering what to say.
i think possibly all people in their adolescent stages of life change have these trying times, and i remember at the let live conference jasmin singer saying something about "crying and crying and crying, and wondering why no one else was doing the same," at her first volunteer job. i remember something very similar when i decided that i was going to go into social work, and sitting at the blues fest with my stomach roiling, i hoped that i would not begin to cry and cry and cry.
sometimes you just don't want to cry in public.
hence, blogging.
writing about it here makes it easier to keep myself going.
i fell into a serious binge and it did not feel good, and i don't know if it's because of not eating any and then drastic cheese intake, but i have been feeling ill in my body, off kilter.
i went to a show, the big blues fest at the portland waterfront over the fourth weekend with m and his brother, and we had a really nice time, but something has been weighing on my mind since then that i haven't talked about at all, and since this is the place that i have for it, i will talk about it here.
the fest was sponsored by safeway, the grocery store chain. lately, i have noticed that safeway is really trying to push their meat sales, especially their "rancher's reserve" steaks; they have promotional "green" reusable bags with words like, PORTERHOUSE and TBONE and STEAK on them for sale at their registers, which is just a ridiculous contradiction in and of itself. i don't think, even if you love the meat, you can claim that the industry is green, and doing something like buying a damn $1 bag to carry 20 pounds of meat home from the safeway from is like sticking your thumb up your a--- in a dam to stem the tide. you know what i mean.
at any rate, i find this ridiculous. every time i see these bags, it annoys me. but i haven't said anything because i feel like i complain enough as it is to my partner and he really is trying to be as supportive of all my life changes as he can be, considering that he is not interested at this time at making the same changes. i understand this, because i believe a person comes to these things on their own. and so i have begun to try to keep my grousing to more of a minimum because i truly don't want him to think that i'm angry at him for still drinking milk, for example, when he's been eating so much less meat than i ever could have imagined when i first said "i'm going vegetarian." i also never want to get to the point where i become the sort of angry human being who scared me off of this movement years ago, when i was pre-contemplative about animal issues. i never want to be in that place. we haven't bought more than one or two new packages of meat in our home since i said i was going veg in april. comparatively, this is an enormous difference.
anyway. about safeway.
they sponsored the blues festival. and we sat on the grass by the river, and normally i love the waterfront by the willamette, it is beautiful. being beside the hawthorne bridge here in portland is one of my favorite places to be, it reminds me of so many things about my adopted home that i love, times that have been good here, and why i left the third coast to come here.
the blues festival. we saw a great show, and i do mean a great show. check out sharon jones and the dap-kings, if you haven't heard them by now, i'm not sure where you've been, heh, this woman is a tiny force of nature.
safeway had a booth set up to promote, of course, their "rancher's reserve" steaks. i guess this is rather a long post to get to the point of this, but oh god, the smell of it made me sick to my stomach. i didn't know it was going to, actually, i thought the opposite would happen, and that something in me, since i ate meat, and even beef and steak and hamburgers for a good twenty-six years, that i would relish the smell of it still, and that it would be nostalgic and even tempting.
oh but how i was wrong. it really made me ill. there were clouds of smoke coming up from the back of the booth and wafting over to where we were sitting, and since we were sitting for about forty minutes before sj even came on, by the time she entered to sing, i felt like i was going to puke. this both fascinates and thrills and disappoints me: i am intrigued that after only a few months of being vegetarian, this scent affects me bodily like this, i can understand being mentally revolted by it now that i know the inner workings of the meat industry, but i would expect a more pavlovian response to it. it thrills me that my pavlovian response is apparently shut off already, and that my mind has triumphed over it, and that i think more of animals than my own baseless want for meat. it disappoints me because i quite frankly am grossed out by the thought of going out places and wanting to leave because i feel unwell and can't stop thinking about the flesh of burning cows, after my time spent with beautiful, beautiful cows at farm sanctuary. it bothers me that i almost wish for a certain degree of desensitization, even just a few degrees to the colder temperature, because it was very difficult to sit there and keep my thoughts to myself. i wasn't with anyone who would be comfortable with chatting about this, and i truly love the people who i was with, and i'd like not to make every single social occasion an awkward one where i process my own stuff verbally and my friends sit there awkwardly wondering what to say.
i think possibly all people in their adolescent stages of life change have these trying times, and i remember at the let live conference jasmin singer saying something about "crying and crying and crying, and wondering why no one else was doing the same," at her first volunteer job. i remember something very similar when i decided that i was going to go into social work, and sitting at the blues fest with my stomach roiling, i hoped that i would not begin to cry and cry and cry.
sometimes you just don't want to cry in public.
hence, blogging.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
in case i didn't mention it i'm running for first lady
http://kimyadawson.com/audio/02-parade.mp3
you have to write me in. thanks to beautiful kt for sending me this to make me smile today, i hope it does the same for you! take a listen to the lovely kimya dawson.
if you'd like to know an entertaining story about me, i sang the whitney houston song contained herein at a school assembly when i was perhaps eight or nine years old. my memory of it is rather dim, but it's stuck there, as something awesome that i once did, and i still love to sing this when i get worked up about something related to my work, or social justice, or some brilliant beautiful little child that i get a chance to work with in therapy and feel really strongly about. it just spills out of me. there, now you know something silly about me.
happy fourth of july, everyone. in the news today: i ate vegan.
i hope you all had a beautiful day and felt good and did something that made you feel like you had a place in the world, even if you feel a little out of place in the independence day crowds, as i usually do.
i am off to eat fried vegan pies at midnight.
i love this town.
be free, all, be free.
xo.
you have to write me in. thanks to beautiful kt for sending me this to make me smile today, i hope it does the same for you! take a listen to the lovely kimya dawson.
if you'd like to know an entertaining story about me, i sang the whitney houston song contained herein at a school assembly when i was perhaps eight or nine years old. my memory of it is rather dim, but it's stuck there, as something awesome that i once did, and i still love to sing this when i get worked up about something related to my work, or social justice, or some brilliant beautiful little child that i get a chance to work with in therapy and feel really strongly about. it just spills out of me. there, now you know something silly about me.
happy fourth of july, everyone. in the news today: i ate vegan.
i hope you all had a beautiful day and felt good and did something that made you feel like you had a place in the world, even if you feel a little out of place in the independence day crowds, as i usually do.
i am off to eat fried vegan pies at midnight.
i love this town.
be free, all, be free.
xo.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
this one goes out to the ladies at the farm
k~ found this article tonight about how to stop eating cheese if you're trying to go vegan, and passed it on to me.
since this is a place to document my struggles as well as the happy things that inspire me and cause me joy, i must hereby admit to you all that my kneejerk was a long whine in my head that said, noooooo, vegan freaks, you do not know that of which you speak! weaning off the cheese is easier than going cold tofu!
WHINGE.
now, don't get me wrong, my head says to me that these people clearly know what's up and are likely very intelligent and that just dropping the bs and saying to myself:
now is the time
is going to be much easier than the constant bargaining that i've been struggling with, which has been going something like this: perhaps just this one thing, a little parm here, don't want to waste this because i've already got it, won't BUY anything else, but can't waste what i've got even though m. could just eat it himself, which he will, let's not concern ourselves with that, things won't go bad around here, not really, not if i'm honest. with. myself.
the fact is i. love. cheese. i love the taste of it, the texture of it.
but i don't love how it's made, or where it comes from, or the wasteful output of the dairy industry in the form of veal calves taken from their mamas and kept in tiny boxes for their entire little lives. i don't love that i know that for every hunk of cheese that i devour, there is a beautiful lady cow out there kept pregnant for her whole life, watching her babies get dragged away, a series of confusing, hellish nightmares that no one should ever have to live through. i think of the beautiful cows that i had the pleasure of hanging out with at farm sanctuary, and i don't love cheese quite as much when i think about those ladies.
i am not sure what i'm going to do yet. when i started writing this post, i was hoping that by the end i would be decisive, sure of myself, certain that i'd drop the cheese and dump dairy, cold tofu, as they say, but to be honest, i'm just not sure i'm ready to say that.
i would love to be certain.
I've seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
And row through the night time
Gone healthy
Gone healthy all of a sudden
In search of the midwife
Who could help me
Who could help me
Help me find my way back in
There are worries where I’ve been
- joanna newsom, "emily"
I've seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
And row through the night time
Gone healthy
Gone healthy all of a sudden
In search of the midwife
Who could help me
Who could help me
Help me find my way back in
There are worries where I’ve been
- joanna newsom, "emily"
Thursday, July 2, 2009
with a winged heart
today i am filled with meaning.
last night i had a brief lapse in my certainty that i am a person of meaning, who is doing good in the world, and i flagged in my resolve to be positive in my looking-ahead. i felt lowdown, knocked down, and stretched thin. i thought, maybe i can't do all of this. this morning started off a bit rough with an alarm that didn't hit me in the eardrum as planned and a late start, then a car parked partially in front of our driveway resulting in a banged in door on the van and a scrape of paint that looks like a smear of blood from a low budget zombie film. fingers, dragging down the side.
that said, i rewound.
called work, took a few minutes to start the morning over, picked up a soy mocha on the way to the couv and listened to tMG and john vanderslice on the way. looked at the sun on the columbia river and even if my mind was half asleep, i was taking it in.
checked my email today and got this lovely, unexpected note from a tMG forumite and zoop attendee who also got a couple copies of my "going to watkins glen" zine while at farm sanctuary, and is apparently putting her extra copy to good use.
so i left one of my two copies of your zine on the kitchen table downstairs with the hopes that my parents would look at it and i received this email this morning:
K---,
After reading Starling "zine" last night,
when I tried to eat my lite yogurt this AM,
I felt nauseous and decided to throw all those gelatin-filled yogurts out.
I don't like to "waste" money but I think I have been converted now.
Thank you.
Love, Mom
aww! thanks, starling.
no, dear, thank YOU for this incredibly well-timed and sweet reminder that i am doing this for a reason. i really needed that today. and thanks, kw's mom, for deciding to not just read my zine, but to take in the story and send it back out into the world in a new way. i love it, i appreciate it, and i am grateful for this moment.
filled with gratitude.
today i am going to walk through downtown on my lunch break and take time to find a place where i can get vegan lunch, all. i will be reporting back on what i find, and i hope that i can find something tasty.
for kw and her wonderful mom:
wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
-kahlil gibran
last night i had a brief lapse in my certainty that i am a person of meaning, who is doing good in the world, and i flagged in my resolve to be positive in my looking-ahead. i felt lowdown, knocked down, and stretched thin. i thought, maybe i can't do all of this. this morning started off a bit rough with an alarm that didn't hit me in the eardrum as planned and a late start, then a car parked partially in front of our driveway resulting in a banged in door on the van and a scrape of paint that looks like a smear of blood from a low budget zombie film. fingers, dragging down the side.
that said, i rewound.
called work, took a few minutes to start the morning over, picked up a soy mocha on the way to the couv and listened to tMG and john vanderslice on the way. looked at the sun on the columbia river and even if my mind was half asleep, i was taking it in.
checked my email today and got this lovely, unexpected note from a tMG forumite and zoop attendee who also got a couple copies of my "going to watkins glen" zine while at farm sanctuary, and is apparently putting her extra copy to good use.
so i left one of my two copies of your zine on the kitchen table downstairs with the hopes that my parents would look at it and i received this email this morning:
K---,
After reading Starling "zine" last night,
when I tried to eat my lite yogurt this AM,
I felt nauseous and decided to throw all those gelatin-filled yogurts out.
I don't like to "waste" money but I think I have been converted now.
Thank you.
Love, Mom
aww! thanks, starling.
no, dear, thank YOU for this incredibly well-timed and sweet reminder that i am doing this for a reason. i really needed that today. and thanks, kw's mom, for deciding to not just read my zine, but to take in the story and send it back out into the world in a new way. i love it, i appreciate it, and i am grateful for this moment.
filled with gratitude.
today i am going to walk through downtown on my lunch break and take time to find a place where i can get vegan lunch, all. i will be reporting back on what i find, and i hope that i can find something tasty.
for kw and her wonderful mom:
wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
-kahlil gibran
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
she gather my pieces
~k~: ps-- you will be pleased with me: i was completely veg today
starling: yay!
~k~: no dairy even :)
starling: i am!! good job! i did pretty good today too! high fives to us.
~k~: i am trying to support what you stand for, and think twice about stuff.
starling: you are so great, i love you too, too much.
~k~: i thought in light of the [unsupportive friends], i wanted to let you know i was supporting you, from here and doing my best :)
starling: thank you so much, that means so much to me, it really does.
it is so good to know that people are supportive.
~k~: no promises, but today was a good day.
starling: i get it, even one day a week is still meaningful.
~k~: so (((veg hug)))
starling: haaa, totes! veg hugs, i love em!
this woman is all the way in chicago and is one of my oldest friends. the first to start being really food conscious in my group and at the time i had the nerve to tease her and think she was freaking over nothing. HFCS? COME ON, we've all been drinkin' it, suckin' it down by the gallon for years and nothing happened to us, am i right? well, except for the weight that we've gained, and the untold effects it's had on our brains and veins and hearts and stomachs that we don't know about! but she planted a seed, whether she knew it or not, whether i knew it or not, and now years later, as john darnielle said at zoop, when i was ready to hear the message, oh, i heard. i can suddenly hear. when you are ready for the message, the message comes.
and i remembered ~k~'s words, years later, her gentle informations and passing alongs of the things that she was learning, bit by bit on the way to a healthier life.
thanks to ~k~, for her patience with me, and her unflagging love.
i listened to the new bob dylan, bowie's hunky-dory, and joni mitchell's mingus today and ate vegan lunch today that i made. it was fabulous.
go out and give yer friends a veg hug!
starling: yay!
~k~: no dairy even :)
starling: i am!! good job! i did pretty good today too! high fives to us.
~k~: i am trying to support what you stand for, and think twice about stuff.
starling: you are so great, i love you too, too much.
~k~: i thought in light of the [unsupportive friends], i wanted to let you know i was supporting you, from here and doing my best :)
starling: thank you so much, that means so much to me, it really does.
it is so good to know that people are supportive.
~k~: no promises, but today was a good day.
starling: i get it, even one day a week is still meaningful.
~k~: so (((veg hug)))
starling: haaa, totes! veg hugs, i love em!
this woman is all the way in chicago and is one of my oldest friends. the first to start being really food conscious in my group and at the time i had the nerve to tease her and think she was freaking over nothing. HFCS? COME ON, we've all been drinkin' it, suckin' it down by the gallon for years and nothing happened to us, am i right? well, except for the weight that we've gained, and the untold effects it's had on our brains and veins and hearts and stomachs that we don't know about! but she planted a seed, whether she knew it or not, whether i knew it or not, and now years later, as john darnielle said at zoop, when i was ready to hear the message, oh, i heard. i can suddenly hear. when you are ready for the message, the message comes.
and i remembered ~k~'s words, years later, her gentle informations and passing alongs of the things that she was learning, bit by bit on the way to a healthier life.
thanks to ~k~, for her patience with me, and her unflagging love.
i listened to the new bob dylan, bowie's hunky-dory, and joni mitchell's mingus today and ate vegan lunch today that i made. it was fabulous.
go out and give yer friends a veg hug!
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