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Adventures in making art and living sustainably.

Ellen's PSA against California's homophobic Proposition 8

By Ari | Oct 15, 08 02:25 PM

Ellen Degeneres has made a PSA against Proposition 8, the initiative coming up in California to rob queer folks of the right to marriage. Bravo, Ellen!

Also, I hear her mom has joined Bradd Pitt and Steven Spielberg in giving money to the campaign against Proposition 8. Way to go, Ellen's mom!

Cool vegan travellers

By Ari | Oct 15, 08 02:04 PM

Milo Likes the Bus
Originally uploaded by fourvegans

We've met some awesome people through our vegan ecovillage project, including Sugati and Chris, who are about to travel the U.S. in a bus converted run on waste veggie oil. It's got solar power, and they're going to run workshops on mobile sustainability as they go. These are their kids hanging out with a friend, whose parents are hosting the bus while it's parked, pre-journey.

You can follow their odyssey on their blog, and here's a link to their Flickr photoset about the bus.

It's Ally Week

By Ari | Oct 15, 08 12:50 PM

It's Ally Week this week, a nationwide chance for straight allies to speak up for their queer friends and family at school and in their communities. I know that as a queer person, having straight allies has always been a very warm and fuzzy feeling. Thank you for all that you do, straight but not narrow folks!

I helped design GLSEN's Student Organizing site as well as MySpace and other materials for Ally Week. The Ally Week materials themselves were designed by someone else - not sure who but they look great!
Ally Week Website
Sign up to participate - GLSEN Student Organizing site

Now here's a place where I could work out...

By Shira | Oct 13, 08 12:55 PM

Eco-Gym @ Yahoo! Video

Spreading the Word About Ahimsa Ecovillage

By Shira | Oct 6, 08 04:03 PM

On September 20th, 2008, we presented our idea for Ahimsa, a vegan ecovillage, with members of Club Veg Southern Tier and the Ithaca Area Vegan Meetup. The discussion took place at Smart Monkey Cafe where the group convened for a delicious vegan meal. Thanks to Ben Bristoll for video taping the event and to Bill Huston for taking photos!

Ahimsa Ecovillage Discussion from Shira Golding on Vimeo.

I love this photo of us. Doesn't Ari look like a visionary?

Photo by Bill Huston

Check out more photos from the event on flickr...

Goodbye NYC Flickr...

By Ari | Oct 3, 08 06:48 PM

I'm paring down the many groups (305!) I'm in on Flickr and I've just realized I should say goodbye to the NYC-specific groups I likely won't have many submissions for, at least not until we visit one day. So sad! I really liked a lot of them so I thought I'd post them here, in case anyone out there is also on Flickr, and wants to meet other NYC photographers or share their NYC work.

Brooklyn
Brooklyn Graffiti
11 Spring St
Nature NYC
Figment*
Bushwick, Brooklyn
New York City

Do Not Leave Unattended: Dispatches from Ithaca

By Ari | Oct 3, 08 05:06 PM

Recently I've been doing some work for a fellow blogger, at Randomly Run4istRun (that illustration at the top is based on a photograph by Dorothy O’Connor). She's just launched a new collaborative notebook project called Do Not Leave Unattended, and I'm working on that site too. She sends out notebooks and the recipients get two weeks to fill the next page (or pages), before passing them on. The results so far display a delightful hodge-podge of writing and art. I got one, and passed it on to Shira, and I'm very happy to report that our friend Angela is taking it next. Who knows where it'll go after that?

Yay internets! This is the first time I've done one of these mail-based collaborative projects and it was a lot of fun. I see photos on Flickr all the time of people sending out color-coded packages full of candy and collectibles and art, and other interesting projects, and I always wondered what it would be like to have something like that arrive in my in-box. The answer? It's pretty awesome. I feel like I'm in good company, and I can't wait to see what the finished books look like. Kudos to Jude for creating such a cool project.

Click here to see all of the submissions as they come in... and stay tuned, a new design is coming soon!

A new vegan cat community

By Ari | Oct 1, 08 10:31 PM

I've been frustrated for sooo long by my inability to hook up with other folks who have vegan cats. I mean, I've met a few people online, but it's hard to really share information in any kind of organized way. Where can I ask people for advice on how to talk to our vet without getting instant judgement? Where can I share tips on how to best prepare Vegecat homemade vegan cat food?

Well, I finally decided (as if I don't have enough to do), that I should just go ahead and start a community and see what happens. Maybe I'm the only one out there looking for this kind of thing, I don't know. But it's worth a try!

You can visit the community here: vegancats.ning.com

Please feel free to fire questions at me if this is the first time you've heard of vegan cats! And be sure to check out the always adorable Sid, Zora and Snow, our own dear vegan cat housemates.

This is my first time setting up a Ning from scratch, rather than just customizing an existing one, and I've got to say, it's awesome. Very easy to set up and integrate with third-party services. This one is a bit of a practice run for me because I may be setting one up for our friends at freeDimensional in the near future. Go Ning.

Africans on U.S. Africom

By Ari | Oct 1, 08 05:15 PM

The U.S. has a big new military operation to "improve security and promote development" in Africa. Let's hear what folks in Africa have to say about it: "Africom will not benefit ordinary Africans. I cannot trust America." I agree it won't benefit ordinary Africans, or Americans for that matter. As for trusting America - me neither!

"Wherever American forces go, they become a terrorist magnet." So true. Maybe it has something to do with our being capitalist imperialists with no respect for other cultures and their governments.

"I think it would be better for the US to support the African Union." Right on. America is falling apart at home already - why should we send yet more of ourselves out all over the world, where we're not even wanted?

Now if only our government listened to its people - or to the people we oppress the world over. Our lives would be a lot easier, and everyone else would be able to solve their own problems in peace. I'm all for helping out when it's needed and wanted - but we have no business putting out armed forces all over the world. Remember Rome? That didn't turn out too well, did it?

America at the border

By Ari | Sep 29, 08 11:32 AM

I believe in the power of the positive. Instead of griping about the problems around me I prefer to find or create positive alternatives. So, instead of posting photos of slaughterhouses and detailing the horrors of animal industry, and saying I'm "fighting against cruelty", or that I'm "anti-speciesist", I try to show good vegan alternatives and successful pro-animal activism, and to use terms like "cruelty-free" and "peace and love vegan".

I also believe that instead of spending all of our time trying to fix what's broken, a more positive and productive alternative is to create a beautiful new system that folks are excited by, that inspires hope, and which they'll then want to be a part of. So, instead of trying to reform the government, it might be more useful to create mutual aid networks, free community clinics, free public kitchens, and other things that people really need, and which they can become part of, reducing their dependence on the profit-driven messes that currently drive America.

But now I'm afraid that perhaps the U.S. is too far along its path to destruction and oppression to allow time for a new world to be built in the cracks of the old. I just read Republican and Democratic Congress Members Sound the Alarm: Tyranny is Here, a blog post with some links in it that point to some very scary possibilities: Flu pandemic followed by martial law, the suspension of the Constitution, the government being shot down in favor of a bona-fide dictatorship. Capitalists' and warlords' time is nearly at an end; the people are waking up. But they're still powerful, and if their past record is any indication, they won't go out without a fight.

Reading this post, I remembered an experience Shira and I had at U.S. border control, back in July. We're both U.S. citizens, born and bred. We'd just come from an idyllic, incredible retreat (click for photos) at Wasan Island with our friends at freeDimensional, and were traveling with a dear new friend from Germany. Our bus moved through Canada toward the U.S. border and I began to feel fear. I always feel fear around authority figures with guns, call me crazy. So we neared the border, which was the most brilliantly-lit thing for miles around, a huge industrial-looking series of buildings and equipment and fences with many large threatening-looking signs that said things about how the border patrol would treat us with respect, all very 1984. Even seeing the words "Homeland Security" felt creepy; those words have never made me feel secure.

They made us all get off the bus and put our luggage out for an inspection, and herded us into a big building where we all stood around quietly, shuffling and occasionally whispering to each other. It was not a safe-feeling place. The men who guarded it all had guns, and other weapons, and looked us over appraisingly; their faces were not friendly and their words were not comforting. They gave curt orders and barely communicated with us otherwise. The whole atmosphere was very tense.

They searched our bags first, making us put them up on a table and going through them all. I noticed one guard talking to a couple of young dudes of Asian descent, giving them a really hard time because their bags were so small. "Where did you go? You were there that long and this is all you had? Where are your other clothes? Why didn't you pack more? Who did you talk to while you were there?" They didn't seem to believe anything the guys said. They treated them with outright disrespect. The two young guys had stayed with friends and gone swimming; they seemed very nice - and very quiet, and very compliant, and a little afraid. I was afraid, too, for them. I remember feeling it wasn't right that they were being treated like that, but I was afraid to say anything to anyone about it, or even to watch.

We all had to go up to little counters one at a time to speak with the border control officers; they looked at our passports and waved Shira and I by very quickly and easily with just a couple of questions. Our German friend took longer to get through. Others took even longer. I don't even know if everyone made it back on the bus.

As we drove away from the border, I felt a sense of relief. I also felt deeply embarrassed that this was my country, that my friends on the bus had to deal with such disrespect, that all of us had had to pass through such a creepy and ugly place. I felt ashamed that I had felt so powerless, so afraid, and that my own country had created this experience. Out of what? Fear of terrorists? Those kids coming back from their swimming trip weren't dangerous, they were kids. They should have been greeted warmly, not questioned like they were criminals. It made me feel like my country was a police state, a dictatorship, a place where citizen and visitor alike have no assurance of safety and freedom.

I recount all of this because, well, I hadn't ever expressed it before, and I want it out there on the interwebs. I want to say that I disagree. I want to say I want no borders. I want my country to be a welcoming and beautiful place that makes people feel safe and happy. I want others to be able to work and study and settle here free of harassment. I want to be able to come and go freely and safely. And I don't believe terrorists are going to be stopped by this bullshit at the border. It punishes us all every day, this loss of freedom - and we all know that if terrorists want in, they'll find a way, and no amount of bullying busriders is going to stop them from it. I'm more afraid of my own government than I am of the "terrorist threat" that they're using to take away my rights and freedom.

Is the future ours? Can we create a new world if those who are running this one have all the power - and are willing to use it to keep us from creating our peaceful alternatives by force? How can we break free? Will Obama be enough to begin to change the system, or is he too little too late? Will the socialists and other progressives ever stop in-fighting and reacting long enough to make positive, peaceful change in the here and now? Someone make me feel more hopeful!