Darling internet,
More soon(ish) but real quick, I just wanted to remind you about my awesome matzo ball soup recipe! Check it out! Oh, and here’s my tzimmes recipe…and yeah, I know tzimmes is usually a Rosh Hashanah dish, but whatevs. God doesn’t care when you eat carrots! He doesn’t even exist!
love and other indoor sports,
Lagusta Pauline
(OK, I just found this weeks-old post languishing all sad in the “drafts” folder. The links are sort of old, but it’s the internet! It doesn’t matter! Also, if you’re wondering if I’m going to ever say anything about anything political that’s been happening [hello, health care]…nope. Too many expletives would have to be involved.)
Dear internet,
Things feel good. Do you feel it?
The new car is amazingly awesome and Jacob is making me crazy nattering on about “German engineering” and “This Amazing Thing I Learned From Reading the Manual” and constantly pressing the unlock button on the key thingie to hear the soft unlocking meow. (We’ve never had a car that did things automatically. It’s amazing!).
Chocolates and cookin’ businesses are both slow [no longer true, woo woo!], but I’ve been using the time to send out endless sample boxes, and to do some serious reorganizing and tidying and long-term planning. Nothing makes me feel happier. Exciting plans are afoot which I hope to tell you about soon. Well, OK, not really all that exciting to you probably, but I’ll ramble on about them anyway…soon.
Speaking of business! I’ve been gathering info from smart and sexy friends about feminist sex shops who might be interested in carrying the Furious Vulvas. I’ve also been using this list, and this list to find smart shops to see if they would be interested in samples. Do you have any places to add (if you’ve already responded on Facebook, thanks!)? I sent out 15 boxes of samples this week, more to come! So far two places are carrying them: Sugar, in Baltimore, and The Tool Shed, in Milwaukee. For some reason (well, I think we all know the reason), the women I’ve been emailing with who work at and/or own these shops are just ridiculously nice. They’ve been offering me all kinds of ideas and suggestions and tips on how to get Furiouz Vulvaz into the hands of feminist sex shop customers all across this fine sexy country of ours. How lovely.
So, if you want to play matchmaker and facilitate a woman-friendly shop (sexy or otherwise) in your town carrying the Bonbons (I wholesale the Vulvas, Vandanas, PB Cups and Peppermint Patties), I’ll gladly send you a care package full of chocolate treats!*
Speaking of chocolates: I finally sent Vandana Shiva herself samples of her eponymous chocolate (remember that whole thing?), and haven’t heard back yet…I’m dying to hear what she thinks! I’ll let you know when I hear.
Speaking of lovely women, I’ve long been obsessed with the illustrator/designer/painter Caroline Hwang. I’ve loved her work in Bust, and I adored her sewn cover type for Readymade. I recently asked her if she would make a handmade banner for the Bonbons (for when I do trade shows and things), and she said yes! So exciting!!
Speaking of Caroline, via her blog I was re-introduced to the work of Megan Whitmarsh, whose amazing embroidery (I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about my love for twee embroidery! Wow, there are always more things to blog about. Unbelievable.) I’ve seen here and there—oh my god, it’s SO GREAT.
Speaking of SO GREAT people: Everything Joshua Katcher writes about pretty much fascinates me. Check out this info-packed post that includes his thoughts on topics as diverse as pocket squares, non-silk ties, and why Sea World must die—and also this one about “green” appliances.
Speaking of fascinating, and have you read Brittany’s post about why you should be social networking? It’s good.
Speaking of reading, if you love Zadie Smith like I do, you might already know that there is a really awesome little TV movie of White Teeth—and you can watch it on Hulu, in four delicious segments. I personally prefer On Beauty, but this adaptation was, as they say, thoroughly enjoyable.
Speaking of watching: have you seen this I-promise-you-not-at-all-boring documentary about the Chicago 10, about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and the other dudes who created a mighty fine ruckus in Chicago in 1968? (My mom, as the sort of Where’s Waldo of the 1960s that she was, was there!) Two quotes from the movie:
We believe that politics is a way you live your life, not who you support. It’s not in terms of rallies, or speeches, or political programs, it’s in terms of images, and in terms of transforming people’s lives. —Abbie Hoffman
The [pick your] war is not just an accident–it’s a byproduct of the capitalist system we have in this country. …We need to put forth new kinds of values in order to create a new kind of society in which a Vietnam wouldn’t even be possible. — Abbie Hoffman
Speaking of transforming people’s lives: time for me to sleep.
I hope only wonderful things, like daffodils and cute embroideries and ramps (!), are happening in your world, dear internet.
I most certainly hope your government isn’t forcing you to buy health insurance when you don’t believe in the goddamn allopathic craptastic corporate-run health care system in the first place, because that, my friend, that would be a goddamn fucking tragedy.
KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY, AMERICA.
(Perhaps I should write a post about how the idiocy of my government has made me slowly slide toward becoming one of those nutty libertarians or something. Ugh. It’s not that I’m opposed to paying into a general fund so that everyone who needs health care can get some, I’m all for that**…and I suppose me being forced to buy health insurance is kinda sorta, a little bit, the same thing, but….UGH. Listen, USA: I don’t get sick. And when I do, I go to my homeopathic friends and they tell me what remedy to take. The idea of dipping a toe into the shark-infested waters of mainstream health care scares the fuck out of me. I’m so beyond sickened with…oh, you know. Sickened! Ha! A health care pun. Oh my god I am so filled with rage.)
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*The fine print: the shop needs to place at least one wholesale order, and needs to be in the US, as do you. That’s it!
**I’m of course much more for ending the trizillion exercises in useless killing around the world we’re paying for immediately—and when I say immediately, I mean immediately—and using the bajillion dollars saved to pay for health care for everyone, along with, you know, everything else we need and oh sigh—have I mentioned that my property taxes went up like 1000% this year and how unfair that system is and how we need property tax reform that’s based on income instead so that everyone pays their fair share according to their ability and…oh, hell.
I met my friend Christy 14 or so years ago in college, when I was her TA in a class about nonviolence taught by the amazing Robert Holmes. I keep meaning to write a post about that class, our wonderful professor, and how very far I’ve come from the principles of nonviolence, particularly the Gandhian ideal of nonviolence on the internet (well, he would have had something to say about it, I know that).* I guess I’m just waiting for people to not be so ludicrous and worthy of my non-nonviolent thoughts before I work on purifying the red-hot-poker anger out of me. (I’m sure it won’t be much longer.)
Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that Christy (whom you already know, blogreaders) and I have had a mutual-admiration society going on since college. I’m fascinated by everything she does, particularly because the things she does (help women in prison have safe pregnancies, help women not in prison have babies, have babies herself, run a secondhand shop for baby clothes, are things I will never do. She’s one of those amazing good “breeder” women I’m lucky to know who give me, the exuberant childfree-er, hope for the future of humanity. Her punk rock partner is cute as a button, she just built a clay stove in her backyard, she’s gorgeous and generous and snarky and smart….sigh. Oh, Christy, why do we live on opposite sides of the country? Well, I know the answer: because Christy deeply needs to live in Portland. She’s the personification of everything you think of when you think “man, I should move to Portland.”** Thinking, stylish people with amazing politics.
So when Christy announced she’d become a beekeeper, I never questioned for a minute that she was still an amazing vegan. I waited patiently as she ran her shop, worked as a doula, took care of Little E and gave birth to Little P, and knew that one day she’d write a bit about why her bees and her veganism weren’t mutually exclusive. And, like the good student that she was lo those many years ago, she didn’t disappoint.
I agree with everything she said 100%, though I’m not sure my lifestyle is right for bees right now. Vegans (and, uh, I guess other people, if you must), what’s your take?
Christy makes this clear, but I just want to reiterate: this doesn’t mean that anyone should run out and eat industrial honey (which is what most likely 99.99% of products that contain honey use). Queen bees are still raped, their wings still cut off, the hives still sometimes burned at the end of the season with bees inside (in cold climates, so the keepers don’t have to take care of them throughout the winter), honey isn’t given to the hives for their use, etc. etc. It’s not a natural situation, in short. (Most) honey is still not vegan (my god, I’ve been linking to that page for years and years, which is hilarious because the dude who runs it loathes me! Ah, small vegan world, I loves ya.). Industrial anything, obviously, is bound to have been created in such a way that human/animal/environmentalist concerns are not taken into account (hey look, I just explained modern American capitalism in 23 words!). What we’re talking about is keeping bees yourself, or eating honey from home hives or hives that you know for a fact have been managed well. Again, Christy explains all this, but I just want to make it crystal clear.
And from here we could talk about milk and eggs: you could keep a few chickens too, and eat some eggs. You wouldn’t be vegan, and though I find that personally repellent, as we’ve discussed here before (On Being A Bad Vegan, Part Two, in fact), on the scheme of things is it terrible? Nope. I’ll save my ire for factory farms (and “happy meat” fucks). The point is the point I’m always making (and what Christy’s essay is all about): nuance.
Oh! And now I can take pure joy in Sylvia Plath’s bee poems!
We couldn’t decide on a title for this mini-manifesto, so please choose from: “Vegans Should Be Beekeepers” or “Real Vegans Keep Bees” or “Grown-Up Vegans Keep Bees” or “You Think You’re Better Than Me, But Really, I’m Better Than You.” (Which Christy tossed out as a joke that I probably shouldn’t post, but it’s almost definitely true, so I’m keeping it.)
The Vegan Beekeeper
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
First of all, if you do not eat honey because you are vegan, that makes sense to me. There is an established and indisputable premise from which I am operating; commercial methods of producing honey are not vegan. In truth, no large-scale industries that prioritize profit above all else are acceptable to the vegan ethic as far as I can see [great minds think alike---see above!]. I mean, lots of consumer goods are produced through the exploitation of one animal that does not fall outside my consideration—humans.
The vegan ethic is complex and nuanced. Any vegan that says otherwise is itching for a (respectful, intelligent, I hope) fight. So I may as well be calling this piece, ‘It’s actually impossible to be vegan, but we are all doing our best.’ To me, veganism is about trying to live in harmony with the planet. My beekeeping is not an exception to my veganism. It is a well-thought out amendment. It might even make me a better vegan, depending on how much of this you follow along with.
Still, I am a beekeeper and I am a vegan and that is a sticking point for about 50% of the vegans I know. This is my attempt to explain my position. I am vegan because I deeply care about animal rights. I dig the other benefits, but in my heart, I believe eating animals is wrong. My purpose for saying so is that it needs to be clear from the start that I really care about bees. I am not arguing that I think killing bees or treating them with anything but the utmost respect is OK. I don’t keep bees because they fall outside of my deeply felt consideration. In fact, I think bees are amazing. Check out this bit from The Melissa Gardens website:
The concept of the “Bien” describes the undividable entity of the hive. The whole is one organism and the hive is more than the sum of the individual parts. Thousands of bees are integrated into a higher-order entity, one whose abilities far transcend those of the individual bee. “The consciousness of the beehive (not of the individual bees) is of a very high nature” (Rudolf Steiner). Their communication and networking capacities, non-hierarchical decision processes and an understanding of service to the greater web of life, which the individual being (bee) is part of, are pointing to a higher level of development and awareness. And such, the bees are a vital part of human culture and an inspiration to the soul. Being in touch with the “Bien” also means to reach out to the flowering world. As bee-keepers we are becoming “flower-keepers” and stewards of the earth as well.
Whenever I think about the shortcomings of the human species, I always end up being reminded of the near perfection of bees. Selfless, female-dominated, self-reliant, dancing, mysterious bees.
Human life as we know it is dependant on bees. It is true that there are wild bee populations; but they are dying. It is a widely held belief within the beekeeping community, and those educated about what commercial beekeeping has done to the world’s bee population, that small-scale “backyard beekeepers” hold the key to preserving disease resistant stock that can survive to pollinate all the foods upon which vegans and non-vegans rely. About 1/3 of the human diet can be traced back to bee pollinated foods. Entomologists have been talking about this a lot since the whole Colony Collapse Disorder hit, so I won’t go into it too much. The information is out there.
The point is vegans need plants, and plants need bees. And bees make honey.
For themselves, you’ll say. I will emphatically nod in agreement.
In excellent conditions, bees produce excess. In the spring, members of the colony gather up that excess and off they swarm with a new queen to get established somewhere else. Swarming is the natural method of reproduction for bees. So, you can think of honey harvesting as bee birth control. They reproduce in direct relation to their available resources. Harvesting honey reduces the number of swarms, which for a commercial beekeeper necessitates heavy-handed intervention to make more hives including the feeding of sugar water. As far as I am concerned, the only acceptable form of hive reproduction is the natural swarm and the only thing bees should be eating is their own honey. If a responsible beekeeper harvests just right, their hive will still swarm seasonally. I ensure the survival of my bees by only taking from the hive much less than they can afford to part with. Greed kills, it always does. But, if you know bees well, and truly care about and see to their wellbeing, you can have some honey.
Sweeteners are notorious for their negative impact on the environment and the people who live where they grow and break their backs producing them. Vegans, tell me what you sweeten your food with and then write me an essay about how good you feel about that sweetener’s back-story.
So, you can see how I came to honey. All I have to do is glance out my window, and see the quality of life of the ‘workers’ that produce my sweetener. They are out there having a blast in my garden, where I have planted all manner of plants that promote bee health and prosperity. My neighbors get the benefits when it comes to the production of their plum, fig, and apple trees, not to mention their vegetable gardens. Our healthy hives should swarm 1-3 times each spring and we will happily give away swarms to friends and use the opportunity to teach them all about ethical, responsible beekeeping.
So vegans, as always, be discriminating in where your food comes from and make the best decision you can. Always consider your source. Isn’t that what veganism is really all about?
*“We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.” — Mahatma (Mohandas) Gandhi
**Confidential to the AWESOME blogreader gal who called me up the other day to talk about coconut oil and the supremely non-vegan-friendly town she lives in: move to Portland! Take that veggie boyfriend and quit your restaurant job–you won’t be sorry. :)
Dudicals!
I’ve been awash in (I don’t think that quite makes sense, but you get my meaning) making chocolates for holidays an atheist really shouldn’t be delighting in, but MY GOD THE BUNNIES ARE SO CUTE. And the matzo! So salty, yet so sweet.
Anyway, when I get back on my feet, I’ll be posting a truly mind-blowing guest post all about vegans + bees. Get ready to get your irate on! (Hopefully not, but I know how vegans are…)
I go back and forth about New Paltz Journal, our erstwhile tighty righty local blogger.
On the one hand: the dude writes pretty well. And in a small town like this you’ve gotta at least try to make friends with your enemies neighbors.
On the other: I disagree with everything that’s ever come out of his keyboard.
Pretty much. I mean, we both can’t stand Obombs, but for diametrically opposite reasons. And we get our pizza from the same place, and kinda/sorta agree about the NP food scene (you’ve got to wade through 24 comments on that post to see what I’m talking about). Apart from that, the Venn diagram of our interests would be two circles miles apart. I can’t quite hate the dude though, because, ridiculous viewpoints not withstanding….he’s sane. And I respect sanity. I mean, his views aren’t sane, but he’s not an idiot. I like that.
In a classic right wing move, dude doesn’t allow comments on his posts, so I’m just going to take my beef, as it were, to my own little playground.
Here’s my thing: I know the dude is a Flying Teapot believer, and vehemently anti-choice, but do you think he knows just how homophobic he’s being in this post?
The Kingston Freeman editors want Americans to bend over for Obamacare
February 28th, 2010
Most Americans want nothing to do with Obamacare, at least not in anything resembling the form it has taken so far. Polls vary. But when you add up the “no thanks, start overs” with the just “no thanks,” the total “not this, no way” number pushes up over 60%.The Left, though, was thrilled at the outset by the idea of Obama snapping on the latex glove. [PROOF, maybe, Mr. McPhillips? Proof of the real left, not the Obama-brainwashed, please.] And it’s a rough deal crowbaring that idea out of their minds. It appeals to something fundamental inside them.
The editors of the Daily Freeman, up the road in Kingston, N.Y., though, want Obama to forget about the latex glove and snap on the condom instead.
“Bend over, and take it like the ignorant proles we know you are,” they seem to say. They don’t want any of that old Senate rules stuff when it comes to putting one-sixth of the U.S. economy under a federal bureaucracy. Do it the cheesy, rotten, dishonest way, they urge.
It’s the “government as prison rape” theme, taking root in the brackish backwaters of journalism.
I just can’t decide. Because if he is aware that he just called the way that many men and oodles of women have sex the “cheesy, rotten, dishonest way,” I might just have to openly start hating.
then you see something that makes you want to die.
Fucking world.
I’m still having periodic flashes of rage over this, too. Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Car dealership dudes do not take good photos, what can I say. Note that we are both wearing grey to match our new silver sweetheart! (Jacob’s sweatshirt is Alternative Apparel, not AA, hooray! [The only reason I pointed that out was to work in that hilarious link.])
I’m just gonna stop pretending that I’m going to post these little bits-and-pieces posts on Monday. I just like alliteration, OK? The truth is the Monday is most often my craziest day of the week. But, through the miracle of blogging and the expected slackerness of bloggers, it doesn’t really matter. It’s Tuesday! I’m a whole year older than I was last time I rapped at ya (among many other lovely gifts, I got the whipped cream thingie!!)!
And I have a new car! A 2005 silver diesel stick shifty TDI Jetta station wagon (I just learned today that the D in TDI stands for diesel and so I shouldn’t say “Diesel TDI,” but what about people who don’t know what TDI stands for?)! Jacob has spent the past two weeks exclusively talking to pals of ours—on the phone, over email, through my own Facebook page—and obsessively reading the TDIclub.com forums (!!!) about the elusive pre-2004 (there’s something about the engine of the pre-2004 ones, don’t ask me) TDI manual Jetta wagon, and after a week spent running all around the universe (that is: CT, NH, NY, NJ) taking potentials to insanely obsessed VW mechanics and sternly talking to our bank and our checkbooks—it’s done. As Plath would say: We’ve come so far, it’s ova.
We’re now those people, I can tell already, who will never not own Volkswagens. Isn’t it weird how that happens? One day you’re someone who wouldn’t dream of defining yourself by your car, the next you drive Volkswagens—all bold and everything. Weird.
The whole affair has me thinking about two things. I’m going to write about them and set myself the challenge of working in some of the Monday Misc. links I’ve been collecting. Sound fun? Did you notice that I’ve already started? Let’s go!
1) Jacob’s newborn-yet-full-blown TDI obsession has reminded me about my obsession: obsessed people! I’d like to write a whole post about these two mechanics we met with in New Hampshire. I was biting my tongue to keep myself from asking to take their picture, so adorable were they. They were probably about my age, early thirties, wearing identical black pants, identical grey hoodies and identical grey New Balance sneaks, with an identical insane insane INSANE love for/obsession with all things VW. They went over the potential car we brought to them with the finest-toothed comb you can imagine. They had us walk underneath it while it was up on the thingie (have you ever stood under your car? My god it freaked me out) and shone a flashlight on every inch and talked about how at every turn, the dealer had fixed it up in the cheapest, jankiest way possible. We were there for almost two hours.
It was akin to taking a tour of this studio that a musician Jacob tours with owns. I can’t even start talking about Dave’s studio, Woodland Studios in Nashville. I don’t have the sound engineery chops to adequately describe how mind-blowing it is, and the verbal secrecy pact I swore when Jacob gave me the tour would prevent me from doing so anyway (there is an entire room filled with vintage electrical/metal-working/repair-type stuff Dave bought on eBay and taught himself to use so he could repair his precious vintage instruments himself, that’s all I’ll say), but I visited it last spring, just as I was launching the bonbons, and it was deeply inspiring when I was about to step off into the deep end of learning to do exactly and only seven things flawlessly.*
I’ve long looked at Dave and his partner, Gil, as the finest examples I’ve ever known of a very certain type of person I’ve always aspired to be: the person who focuses on one thing and does it perfectly. Gil and Dave have taken their craft to the highest levels possible—at every turn you are surrounded by their deep, wonderfully obsessive care for their profession. Most musicians pour their hearts into their music, but the singularity and purity of Gil and Dave’s knowledge and experience and passion is always touching and inspiring.
I felt the same way about these young, energetic, wildly passionate mechanics. They convinced us that unless the dealer halved the price, the car wasn’t worth it. We drove the four hours home in our rental car (a Jetta sedan was the only one available—a sign from the universe if you believe in that kind of shit), and talked about how awesome obsessed people are, and how we could feel ourselves, in this humiliating (for little old anarchisty me), American, capitalist-brainwashed way, becoming VW owners and being proud of it. When Jacob talked to Randy (one of our all-time favorite obsessives, by the way–bike lovers! You must befriend him so that one day you can wrangle yourself an invite to his magical bicycle basement!) the next day and he said that he’d thought of a Jetta as being a good car for us all along, it all started to click.
And so today we got up early (for us, horribly, that means: 9 AM) and got some oj** and bagels on the way and now it’s done, and we both keep looking out the front window at the little cutie waiting to take us to dinner at the place Kara recommended tonight (Oh! Vegans—click on that link, it’s a post about Daiya cheese that takes the melty words right out of my mouth!!)
2) Can we talk about biodiesel? And cars generally?
One disclaimer first: I know nothing about cars. Our car search was entirely conducted by Jacob. As my mom put it: “Finding a car to buy is so annoying. You’re lucky Jacob is doing it all for you.” For sure! And he’s lucky I cook all his food (why yes, I do have the most gendered relationship of any radical feminist ever, why do you ask?). So if anything I’m saying makes no sense that’s because I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
Some bulleted points I’d like to share about our car search and our new car:
It’s not perfect, but it’s something!
Gotta go to dinner, no time to proofread!
*vulvas, raspberries, vandanas, pyramids, pb cups, patties, trufs!!
**Dudicals, do you know about the massive oj swindle? I’ve known about it forevs, but I still treat myself to a little Tropicana when I have a long car trip, because it feels decadent for some reason. It’s pretty fucked-up though. The book referenced in that link is one of those foodie tomes I feel I have to read, even though I already feel like I know and believe everything it says—years-old orange concentrate, secret flavor additives, slavery slavery slavery. I believe it all. Yuck.
that’s what she said