Posts tagged with "Health"

Interview with Lioness Filmmakers on MediaRights.org

By Shira | Jul 28, 10 01:29 PM

We've been working with Room 11 Productions, the team behind the documentary Lioness for a few years now, having designed their website, poster and DVDs. I recently interviewed Meg and Daria about the film's impact for MediaRights.org.

Check out the article:
LIONESS Outreach Journal: Engaging Americans Around the Changing Role of Women in Combat

How To Make Your Own Shampoo

By Ari | May 12, 10 07:30 PM

Fun with Powerpoint - Share Tompkins Presentation at Ignite Ithaca

By Shira | May 1, 10 04:59 PM

A few weeks ago, we were invited to do a 5-minute presentation about Share Tompkins at the first ever Ignite Ithaca. Check out the video below and watch some of the other awesome powerpoints on YouTube.

IGNITE ITHACA is a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd. Run by local volunteers who are connected through the global IGNITE network, IGNITE is a force for raising the collective IQ and building connections. Via streaming and archived videos of local talks, local Ignites share all that knowledge and passion with the world.

Ithaca Freeskool: We Are All Teachers - New Video!

By Shira | Apr 21, 10 04:32 PM

We just finished making this video to promote the Ithaca Freeskool. Stay tuned for a longer film...

Ithaca Freeskool: We Are All Teachers from Shira Golding on Vimeo.

Wener Herzog Voices a Plastic Bag

By Shira | Apr 1, 10 04:29 PM

I wrote an article about how to organize a community swap/barter meet for Shareable

By Shira | Feb 4, 10 12:47 PM

Shareable, a website that "tells the story of sharing,” invited me to write a how-to article for their site and I seized the opportunity in the hopes of inspiring similar efforts in other communities.

Read the article: How to Throw a Community Swap Meet

What the Frac?!

By Shira | Oct 12, 09 12:59 AM

Behold the teaser for Frack Attack, a short environmental zombie thriller that we're making with the Dacha Project:

Frac Attack Teaser from Shira Golding on Vimeo.

"A Recipe for Change: Documentaries on Food" - My Most Recent Article on MediaRights.org

By Shira | Sep 24, 09 04:15 PM

Check out my new article on food documentaries. It's kind of a survey/opinion piece and I'd love to know what you think!

Read the full article:
A Recipe for Change: Documentaries on Food

Here's an excerpt:

These days it seems like green is the new black. From designer grocery bags to eco-tourism, popular culture has finally embraced environmentalism and, for better or worse, begun coopting it with profit-driven campaigns. Regardless of how you feel about capitalism, the good news for mother earth is that changing your daily habits to lower your impact is no longer wholly dismissed as radical, hippy behavior, at least not by people in blue states. Core to this cultural paradigm shift is food. Americans are making the not-so-giant-leap in logic that what we eat affects our health and the health of our planet, and documentary films have played a significant role in getting us here.

In 1976 Americans were reeling from the Vietnam War and Watergate. The utopian visions of the sixties were fading memories and food was already firmly established in the collective psyche as a “product” – fast, cheap and out of control. It was in this context that filmmaker Frederick Wiseman released Meat, a cinema verité portrait of what was, at the time, one of the country’s largest slaughterhouses. Years before animal rights activists were capturing the disturbing conditions at factory farms with hidden camcorders, Wiseman invited Americans to meet their meat through his nuanced filmmaking. (Read more)

And, the article got a mention on Ithaca's Food Web, a new blog about local food - thanks Alison!

If you spell something wrong, do you really deserve surgery?

By Shira | Sep 22, 09 01:33 PM

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Ha - nice work MoveOn.org!

Drying for Freedom

By Shira | Aug 25, 09 04:42 PM

I just heard about this documentary from TreeHugger.com. I guess drying your clothes outside is a revolutionary act. It's crazy that we have to fight for the right to not destroy the planet. Anyone want to join my campaign to legalize composting toilets?

Ari and I finally got clothes-pins and started line-drying...

The U.S. Health Care Debate, Simply Put: An Original Animated Short

By Ari | Aug 25, 09 03:57 PM

Via Worldchanging

Learning to Make Pumpkin Cheesecake with the Ithaca Freeskool Vegan Cooking Skillshare

By Shira | Aug 2, 09 10:54 AM

So much fun, so delicious! Stay tuned for the video...

Thanks for teaching us the recipe, Sharon!

Join us for the next class, every other Wednesday beginning June 3rd at 6pm. Check out the Facebook group for the latest info.

Mushrooms - Earth's Natural Internet!

By Shira | Jul 31, 09 05:23 PM

Yes, we have mushrooms on the brain. Here's a great video that our friend Isaac sent us:

We're planning on going foraging for mushrooms again this weekend...

A Truck Farm Grows in Brooklyn

By Shira | Jul 28, 09 11:58 AM

I'm not quite sure why they're doing this in a truck other than that it's quirky, and I feel like they could have gone more low-budget by getting free seeds, compost, etc, but I love the spirit of what they're doing - really great production value and the musical narration is awesome...

Summer Bounty

By Shira | Jul 27, 09 11:46 AM

Last weekend we went blueberry picking in Dryden and mushroom hunting at the Cayuga Nature Center. We didn't find any edible mushrooms in good enough condition to take home this time, but we learned a lot, thanks to Danila! The blueberry place was amazing - the bushes were heavy with big, delicious berries and they were only $2 for a pound! Check out photos and videos below...

Ithaca Freeskool Distance Learning Videos

By Shira | Jul 24, 09 12:43 PM

The Ithaca Freeskool brings people together to equalize the distribution of knowledge and confidence with an emphasis on skills and issues of local importance. As part of D.I.Y. Movie-Making Class that I'm facilitating, we're filming other Ithaca Freeskool classes and making them available online for anyone who wants to participate. We're hoping this will inspire people across the world to start Freeskools in their communities.

This first class I video-taped in full is D.I.Y. Tooth Care, a discussion of tooth care strategies including diet, pain relief, cleaning and preventive care facilitated by Lily Gershon at the Umi House in Ithaca, on July 16th, 2009. The last part of the class is a collaborative experiment in making tooth powder - you can follow along and make your own! For more information on tooth care Lily recommends paradisenow.net/healing.html.

D.I.Y. Tooth Care With Lily - Ithaca Freeskool Distance Learning from Shira Golding on Vimeo.

Stay tuned for more videos...

An island in Canada, a tick bite, a beach in Israel, a cup of coffee in our livingroom

By Ari | Jul 10, 09 07:59 AM

Shira and I just got back from a two week trip. First there was a week on Wasan Island with our friends from freeDimensional. fD was holding their annual retreat. Last year Shira and I went along as participants, and this year, we were involved as paid staff. We facilitated some sessions, offered one-on-one consultations, and are continuing to document the whole thing with photos, video, and Twitter and blogging. You can read my blog here, and my fD Tweets here. It was a beautiful experience, of course - I think being on Wasan is very, very special, and essential to fD's development. As we continue our follow-up coverage I'm sure the dreamy awesomeness will coalesce into something more coherent than I'm managing here, now.

After our week in Canada, we got on a plane to Tel Aviv - we were headed to Haifa, Israel, to attend Shira's grandmother's 80th birthday. On the plane, I felt so terrible I was worried there was something wrong with me. When we visited Albany a few weeks ago, I was bitten by a tick, but it wasn't until we were in Haifa that the symptoms of Lyme Disease showed themselves. I spent a couple of days with a fever over 100°F, (37.8°C) and then antibiotics saved me. Yay medical technology. And yay having doctors in the family! They don't even have Lyme Disease in Israel, so the hospital would have cost a lot for nothing. Instead, Shira's dad backed up my internet-aided diagnosis and helped me get medication. Did you know that many people who get Lyme Disease get a red target-shaped rash around the bite? It seriously looks like a target. It is very, very weird, but a very helpful signal, as if the tick is leaving you a note saying "this right here is why you feel like your whole body is broken." Thanks, tick.

So, I missed Margalit's birthday, but I hear it was awesome, involving a custom-designed and drawn Pictionary-style guessing game invented by our nephew Eli, and a tour of a botanical garden, and dancing. Shira's posting photos and videos on Flickr, so keep an eye on her photostream if you want to see the cuteness. The parts I was conscious for included a drive to Tel Aviv, where we had dinner at a restaurant on the beach, and then went to a modern dance performance that we all enjoyed. Shira and her brother Amit have been working on a film project with Margalit, and Shira took some footage of her one night, also on a beach.

Israel continues to mystify me. I see it usually as an outsider, and am aghast at the politics, the religious struggle, the violence. Going in and out of the country, the security checks frighten me, and when I'm there, the ever-present soldiers and machine guns scare me as well. But in Israel, there is a curious peace. Most of the time, it's just people living their lives. One can forget that the stakes are so high, that there are blind spots. Shira and I walked on a boardwalk and she climbed down some rocks to the beach, while I waited up top. I watched a woman walking her dog, not letting him stop to sniff and greet other dogs. A man rode by on his bike playing Arabic music on a boom box, and a group of kids shouted happily at him and danced as he passed. The lights of the city glittered along the shore. Peace, at that moment, in that place. We were all coexisting, enjoying the warm summer air and the sound of the sea.

Anyway, here we are back in Ithaca. I'm glad to be back. Sid and Zora and Snow got visits from Isaac, Marina, and Jeremy and Teresa while we were away, and when we came back we found them happy and chill, and our apartment clean and cozy. We're so blessed, with these friends, this community. Today we have another long day of catching up on client work and activist projects; I have a couple of phone meetings and some deadlines and am wondering how I'm going to get it all done. Right now, I'm enjoying a cup of coffee on the sofa with Snow. It's good to be back.

Check Out My Article About Food, Inc. at Documentary.org

By Shira | Jun 11, 09 02:44 PM

I had a chance to see a preview copy of the new documentary Food, Inc. and interview the Director, Robert Kenner. This is my first article for the International Documentary Association's blog, and I'm psyched to get a chance to write about a topic so close to my heart:

Here's an excerpt and you can read the full article online:
Change: It's What's for Dinner: 'Food, Inc.' Takes on Agribusiness

In a world dominated by corporations, it is no surprise that the American food system has been hijacked by the relentless drive for profit. Under the pretexts of affordability and convenience, modern industrialized agriculture has consistently ignored the unintended consequences of their "efficient" practices on our health and livelihoods, the environment and other species.
Equally implicated is the United States government, which simultaneously subsidizes and fails to adequately regulate the agriculture industrial complex. This reality, explored by Frederick Wiseman in his 1976 cinema vérité documentary Meat and more recently by Nikolaus Geyrhalter in the unnarrated montage film Unser täglich Brot (Our Daily Bread; 2005), is more explicitly tackled in Robert Kenner's Food, Inc., which opens June 12 in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and nationwide on June 19.

The issue of food and the many ways in which it affects our lives is an enormous one, and the film is a broad undertaking, exploring everything from the health impacts of ever ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup (one out of three Americans born today is expected to develop early-onset diabetes), to water and air pollution caused by intensive factory farming, to human rights violations perpetrated against undocumented workers by mega corporations like Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer. Viewers are aided in processing all of this information by motion graphics created by Big Star NYC, which worked with Kenner to create an entertaining and helpful visual language for the film.

Ultimately, Food, Inc. is an examination of free market capitalism's disregard for anything other than the bottom line. "This is a film that's about more than food," says Kenner. "It's really about corporate consolidation and irresponsibility and about the relationship of these companies with government. It's not that different from what happened with the financial crisis. These companies have been totally irresponsible and at the end of the day, we're the ones who pay the price."

Human Scale Living

By Shira | Feb 24, 09 03:28 PM

A big part of why living in Ithaca has been so good for us is its small-but-not-too-small size. With a population of 60,000 (30,000 of which are students at Cornell and Ithaca College), there are plenty of people to create culture and innovation. But at the same time, it only takes a few social events to realize that this is a "small town." When I meet someone new, I'm no longer surprised to find out they know at least one other friend of mine, or that they've even "heard of me" - which always makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

ari teaching a freeskool class on web design
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

When we were living in New York City we had a lot of great friends and yet we didn't ever have a sense of community. Part of this was that we dabbled in a lot of different subcultures - independent filmmakers, freegans, socialists, lesbians, radical marching bands, artists, academics, recreational volleyball players - instead of choosing one to call our own. These groups rarely overlapped and I found myself doing a lot of code-switching. Our friends were ideologically and geographically dispersed. The distance between a Red Hook freegan and an Upper East Side grad student is a lot greater than a few subway transfers.

milk with teresa, jeremy and some other folks
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Back in college I took an amazing course called Architecture as a Cultural System in which we explored, among other things, the concept of Human Scale. This is the idea that humans are best suited to live in an environment that is designed to meet their spacial needs. This means walkability, easy access to necessary resources, closeness to the ground and appropriate population size.

meara and serena jamming in the library
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

According to Wikipedia, "Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150."

raw vegan potluck!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Ari and I counted, and in just the last week, we've had 25 different friends over to our house, some of them more than once (you know who you are...Joe). Our friends Jeremy and Teresa came over for dinner on Sunday, Ari taught a freeskool class on web design on Wednesday, we had a ton of extra veggies from our CSA share so we had a potluck/cooking party with a bunch of folks on Thursday, more friends stopped by on Friday after watching Milk together at Cinemapolis (the art house theatre on The Commons), on Saturday the Phillips family came to stay with us for the weekend and Ben and Grace stopped by to join us for dinner and on Sunday we had our second official founders' meeting for Ahimsa Ecovillage with eleven guests, including three kids.

looking at our future
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

The amazing thing is that there are numerous ways in which all these folks are connected outside their relationships to us. This makes for a very tangible social fabric and a feeling of interdependence that I haven't truly experienced since sleep-away camp as a kid (I went to the socialist Jewish kibbutz-like Camp Moshava for six summers.)

this is what feminists look like!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

As we move forward with Ahimsa, our sustainable, vegan ecovillage project, human scale will be a key concept. How can we create a community that is big enough to create innovation and cross-pollination, but small enough to maintain accountability and trust? How many people does it take to be self-sufficient? How will our size and location (rural vs. urban) impact our connection to the broader Ithaca community? I don't know the answers yet, but I'm loving the process of finding out. In the meantime, I'm enjoying being part of the monkeysphere.

Sometimes Green Building Makes Me Cry

By Shira | Feb 12, 09 05:25 PM

Granted, the voice-over and music are heavy-handed, but I must confess to weeping tears of joy throughout this video.

Via Puppetgov/Rebuild Green /GroovyGreen

Locavore Movie from Japan

By Ari | Dec 13, 08 04:21 PM

Not vegan but very cool. Via TCLocal

Exuberant nudity

By Ari | Dec 7, 08 08:56 AM

I've been catching up on my reading, and have encountered two incidences of happy nudity that I just had to share.

In Carbusters #36, at the end of a report on the World Carfree Day events in Curitiba, Brazil: "Finally we began our bike march: 300 cyclists swept the streets of the city. The feeling of freedom and happiness was so intense that a few riders couldn't resist, and took off their clothes."

And, in Communities Magazine #138, in Anissa Ljanta's story of the shock of moving from an intentional community to a mainstream neighborhood: "I missed being naked, and the ease with which people were naked at Twin Oaks. People made an effort to appreciate beauty of all kinds, not just the skinny hairless women validated by mainstream media. I got to live in a culture that embraced me for who I was, where body image and dress were not fraught with tension."

Ljanta's story is sadder - she goes on to express her resentment at being asked to wear clothes while swimming; she describes her run-ins with sexism and the very real possibility of sexual violence which requires women in mainstream neighborhoods to be careful when walking alone at night, something she didn't fear at Twin Oaks. However, both of these stories offer glimpses of a kind of happy nudity that sounds like something that should happen more often.

Seriously, how often do you feel happy and free enough that you can revel in the body nature gave you? If we're all born with a naked body to enjoy, and we like looking at naked bodies, and all other species are running around naked all the time, what exactly is up with us that we have so many hangups about nudity? Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where nudity was not only safe and socially acceptable, but viewed as a healthy expression of joy?

Shale Shocked

By Shira | Dec 6, 08 03:05 AM

There are many factors that contribute to the fertility and productivity of land that are beyond a landowners' direct control. One of the major issues we need to consider in New York State is natural gas drilling. Ever since the development of more commercially-viable drilling techniques around 2000, major oil companies have been going to town on the Marcellus Shale. One of the main ways they get access to the land is by leasing land and drilling rights from local landowners. While this can be a good source of income for struggling farmers, there are numerous environmental impacts including the distribution of toxic chemicals into the soil and water table.

We've been getting involved with Shaleshock, a local resistance group, and we recently designed their logo and a new website. Check out the site to get up to speed on the issues and take action. One thing you can do now is comment on the DEC's draft scope...

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has released a draft scope document that outlines how they will regulate natural gas drilling of the Marcellus Shale. In addition to commenting at public hearings around the state, you can submit your comments via letter or email by December 15th.

Submit comments to:
Attn: Scope Comments
Bureau of Oil & Gas Regulation, NYSDEC Division of Mineral Resources
625 Broadway, Third Floor
Albany, NY 12233-6500

Or email to dmnog@gw.dec.state.ny.us with "Scope Comments" as the Subject

Download the pdf of the scope

Tortillas and Cider, Delivered to Our Doorstep

By Shira | Dec 5, 08 12:43 PM

A lot of people have been talking about eating local, and the arguments are pretty straight-forward: when you eat local you save energy/fuel, build community, and develop your local economy. Not to mention, your food is a lot less likely to be processed with preservatives and other nastiness.

Eating local in Ithaca is pretty easy and it seems to be getting easier every day. The Ithaca Farmer's Market is open April through December and has amazing produce - plus local crafts, live music and hot food. A lot of the stands are organic and there's even one place where everything is veganically grown - Unexpected Farm from Watkins Glen.

the glorious ithaca farmer's market
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

live music, local food
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

veganically-grown!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

breakfast at the farmer's market
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

We've been getting most of our produce from the Farmers Market since we moved here three months ago, and supplementing from Greenstar Cooperative Market - where we're members. Greenstar is definitely not 100% local, but they have really great signage, which makes it so much easier to know the distance food has traveled. But as winter sets in, the Farmer's Market closes up shop and buying local produce at the coop gets too expensive, so we decided to join a winter CSA. We just picked up our first share last week and it was an amazing bounty - carrots, potatoes, leeks, cabbage, turnips, garlic, kale, squash, radichio, bok choi, and salad greens.

ithaca chocolate!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

The cool thing about the CSA model, is that it enables the farmer to get paid up front so that they have the money when they need it most for buying supplies, paying laborers, repairs, etc. And usually, by paying a fixed price at the beginning, the individual CSA member gets a really good deal on a lot of fresh, local food. It is probably the best way to eat seasonally, if you're not growing your own food.

What's really exciting right now is that all these small grassroots distributors are popping up to fill holes in the local market. A couple of months ago, it wasn't uncommon for us to go for a walk and pass by an unsupervised produce stand in front of a house on a quiet residential street.

there's a can where you can leave a quarter
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Recently, our friend Emily was thinking about how there are no local tortilla makers, so she started making vegan, organic, wheat tortillas and delivering them to people on her bike. And then Travis and Ellen announced on the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute's email list that they had pressed a huge amount of cider and could deliver a half gallon or gallon to any one who wanted some.

beach or tortilla?
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

gaia tortilla
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

sunrise apple cider - delivered to our door!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

And these projects are inspiring new ones. A couple of guys who got Emily's tortillas one week, made some hummus to put on them, and it was such a tasty combination that now they're planning on making and delivering hummus. I sampled some of their recipe at the hat band party and it was amazing. I can't wait for them to start distributing!

All this activity has gotten us brainstorming like crazy, especially whenever we meet up with our new friend Joe. He's a true renaissance man - a guy who knows how to build his own house, convert engines to run on vegetable oil, code websites and play death metal. We've been talking about collaborating on a vegan baked goods enterprise in the future.

But with all these microbusinesses launching, it seems like we could take this whole thing a step further. What if once a week, we all met up in one centralized location (maybe a rotating potluck at different people's houses) and we just swap stuff - no money involved. So Emily could bring her tortillas, and Travis brings his cider, and Ellen brings tea, and Dusqkee brings hummus, and Ari brings vegan cookies, and Joe brings vegan muffins, and Danila brings garlic, and Mer and Uriel offer massages, and Rachel teaches yoga, and I bring knitted hats and cozies etc. etc. And instead of paying each other, we would just swap in a mutual aid, take as you need kind of way. And maybe it's one big coop and we all put in cash when we can and take it out when we need it. And there's a local community center with an industrial kitchen and craft studios and workshops. And before you know it, we're a totally self-sustaining community.

This is where we are heading!

World AIDS Day 2008

By Ari | Dec 1, 08 03:46 PM

World AIDS Campaign
ACT UP
Keep a Child Alive
National HIV and STD Testing Resources (USA CDC)
AIDS.ORG
HIV (Wikipedia)

Art for feminist, socialist healthcare

By Ari | Nov 11, 08 04:07 PM

Thanks to Liz Henry of Composite: Poetics and Tech for using an illustration I did for her excellent post, Argentinian feminists in the early 1900s.

You can also see and comment on the art here: "socialist heath care" on Flickr. This art was originally an illustration for an article in Socialist Women, about a woman's struggle in the U.S. healthcare system. If anyone out there is still afraid of socialists, read about Socialist Party USA's wonderful healthcare campaign.

Breast cancer: Prevention is the cure

By Ari | Oct 15, 08 05:31 PM

I did some animation work a while back for a documentary called No Family History by filmmaker Sabrina McCormick. Unfortunately the animations didn't make the cut; the film has been restructured into more of an advocacy piece about the need to focus on prevention in the fight against breast cancer, and so it no longer required animated explanations of chemotherapy and other scientific details of cancer and its treatment. (Prrrrobably for the best, all things considered. They were pretty technical.)

Sabrina's written a piece about the film and the prevention approach for MediaRights, where Shira used to work. Check it out: Reframing the Fight: Why Prevention is the Cure for Breast Cancer. We can't wait to see the film - keep an eye out for it!

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

By Shira | Oct 13, 08 12:55 PM

Eco-Gym @ Yahoo! Video

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.

UN says eat less meat to curb global warming

By Ari | Sep 9, 08 10:02 AM

'In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity,' said [Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize]. 'Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there,' said the Indian economist, who is a vegetarian. (Read more)

Warning: The article has a big gross photo of a chunk of cow flesh right up top.

When we were in India we loved seeing the streets lined with vegetarian restaurants, and found delicious cruelty-free dosas and thalis just about everywhere. Unfortunately avoiding dairy can be a little tricky due to the widespread use of ghee and cream. Kerala, the beautiful Socialist area in the south, uses coconut milk instead. So any vegan Socialists headed to India, now you know where to go. Though if we're reducing our impact, we shouldn't be flying anymore! Does anyone know a good eco-friendly steamship service?

What do vegans eat? See photos of delicious vegan food and Some recent vegan deliciousness. See our map of NYC picks, and our 8 Vegan Restaurants We'll Miss When We Leave NYC.

(Via The Ithaca Area Vegan Meetup Group)

Support healthcare for all - TODAY, NYC

By Ari | Jul 30, 08 12:37 PM

Via our friends in the Coalition Against Privatization:

Wed. July 30: Rally to Stop Healthcare Privatization

As the healthcare crisis deepens, people are searching for alternatives to a corporate-driven system that leaves nearly 50 million Americans uninsured. Not surprisingly, the healthcare industry's solution is even more privatization. GHI & HIP are two of the latest targets of this privatizing campaign. But what if the solution - or a partial solution - to this dilemma already exists?

Continue reading "Support healthcare for all - TODAY, NYC..." »

humans are so...creepy

By Shira | Jul 16, 08 05:30 PM

considering euthanasia for wild horses
gps for tracking hunting dogs
celebrity chef suffocating chicks on TV
running cars on cow fat
sheep as dialysis bags

Anti-capitalist / environmentalist / tech news mashup

By Ari | Jun 14, 08 03:33 PM

MySpace is redesigning and I am so not excited. Sorry, MySpace. You've been too ugly for too long. I'm just biding my time until the current internet evolves into a wonderful free-culture free-software filesharing hive mind. C'mon people. Drop the profit model. Let's abandon the waste of competition and move onto cooperation, see what we can come up with then. My prediction: Awesomeness.
Vinyl shower curtains are deadly and may be banned. We bought an organic cotton one a while back and have been using it with no liner. We throw it in the wash every month or so. Works like a charm, doesn't require regular replacement like a plastic one, and doesn't leach 100 toxic chemicals into our bathroom like PVC ones apparently do. Yaaay.
McCain has declared the ruling on Guantanamo "one of the worst" in US history, and in so-doing, I hope he's turned off millions of potential voters. That is, if Americans like justice. I like justice. But then, I've seen time and time again that the American people don't always vote in ways that make any kind of sense to me.
Here's further evidence of McCain's unsuitability for leadership: Dude is all about the exploitation. To stimulate the economy, he plans to "extend the Bush administration's tax cuts, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, and slash corporate taxes," which to me sounds like "make the rich richer and the poor poorer." What little tax we do pay goes toward fighting oil wars instead of taking care of basic necessities like healthcare and public transportation. Maybe with more cash to spend we can buy more DVDs and sneakers, but why pour our hard-earned wages back into the pockets of global capitalists exploiting animals, workers and our environment for their own profit?

Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World

By Ari | Jun 6, 08 01:12 PM

We've mentioned Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World a bunch of times but never blogged it properly, so here goes. Read it! It's amazing. It was written in 1970 but is still all-too-relevant today. The cover of our awesome 1973 Bantam edition (pictured here), reads, "Why the Things You Buy Are Expensive, Unsafe, and Usually Don't Work! With some startling practical alternatives -- like a radio that costs 9¢, a $6 refrigerator, a television set for $8, and much, much more! Design For The Real World by Victor Papanek: Human Ecology and Social Change With an Introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller; Completely Illustrated". Papanek adorably refers to his friend and introduction-writer as Bucky throughout the book, and relates stories of visionary design teams doing what the two men refer to as Anticipatory Comprehensive Design.

Basically that means looking at real-world problems and trying to solve them in an ecologically-sound and efficient, forward-thinking way, with the help of the stakeholders, the people who are actually affected by the design problem and its potential solutions. This is opposed to the more common practice of profit-driven design, which uses planned obsolescence and the vagaries of "fashion" to sell the same old crap year after year, dressed up in fancy new skins or even just different marketing. For every cool new low-cost, low-impact tool that's accessible and useful to folks who really need it, there are a million new expensive, ugly and possibly dangerous items put on the market simply to make a profit, Papanek says, and his message holds true today. The design world, for all of its improvements, does continue to churn out useless junk and endless repetitions of bad ideas.

Here's part of the flow-chart illustration with which Papanek ended the book - you'll have to read the book to see the rest of it, including his suggestions for how to get around the problems outlined here. But he doesn't give us all the answers - the flow-chart only goes so far as suggesting possible solutions to the world's problems; he puts it on us to fill in the rest of the chart as we move onto creating those solutions.

Since Shira and I are all about creating sustainable solutions in every area of life including the design work we do for clients, we found the book's message right up our alley, and the suggestions for improvement just as relevant today as they were when they were written nearly 40 years ago. It's encouraging to see that when Victor wrote this book he and Bucky were really trailblazing a new approach, which today has many adherents, with dozens of books and websites now dedicated to designing for the great majority of people instead of the privileged few who pay big bucks for pretty new designer chairs and the like. But we've still got work to do. So, read this book, and act on it!

Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical (going back to the roots) in the truest sense. It must dedicate itself to nature's "principle of least effort," in other words, minimum inventory for maximum diversity... or, doing the most with the least. That means consuming less, using things longer, recycling materials, and probably not wasting paper printing books such as this.

Fortunately, Design for the Real World has been in print for many years, and is available used from many freecycling / swapping networks as well as libraries and used bookshops, so no new materials need be used today in learning from this beautiful and clever and useful book.

Happy List

By Shira | Jun 5, 08 07:20 PM

There is a cat posse in our apartment, same-sex marriages are going to be recognized in New York State, my cousin Amir starred in this Borat spoof (it's a video for his high-school graduation party in Haifa), crop circles on google earth, using skype as our land line, Senegalese hip-hop at the eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival Awards Ceremony, visiting Ithaca last weekend for a co-housing workshop at EcoVillage, looking for an apartment in Ithaca and finding an awesome one!!!, the plants in our window pots are starting to bloom, Obama is the democratic candidate for president, sharing our art and music this weekend as part of Bushwick Open Studios, picking up our first Hearty Roots CSA share of the season in Williamsburg, women's turkish oil wrestling at Galapagos, Renegade Craft Fair at the McCarren Park Pool June 14-15, Pineapple Express at BAM with Director David Gordon Green, tank tops, summer...

Helping Myanmar

By Ari | May 9, 08 12:35 PM

Looking for an effective way to help the people of Myanmar deal with the recent cyclone devastation? Their military government is blocking and intercepting aid, and as we know from 2004's Indian Ocean tsunami debacle, some aid organizations are more effective than others. So how can we best help?

Our friends at freeDimensional report:

Jay Koh, who runs NICA (Networking & Initiatives for Culture & the Arts ) based in Yangoon (Rangoon), and I have been in close email contact this week. His organization is currently accepting donations to be distributed to local relief organizations within Myanmar, the first being the Health and Death Assistant Association, which is managed by a monastery in Yangoon.

I can vouch for Jay: his commitment to his community is incredible, but he is desperate for help right now. With the UN cutting off aid, this is one way to get funds to Myanmar almost instantly. NICA has a PayPal account set up (visit www.paypal.com; send to ifima-at-gmx-dot-net). Please consider making a donation.

Another friend knows someone who works at the Burma Project at Open Society Institute, who suggests folks who want to give aid do it through Avaaz.org, a global online movement with millions of members. Avaaz.org is concerned that the junta can easily delay, divert, or misuse aid. They are partnering with the International Burmese Monks Organization (IBMO) and other local organizations to aid people directly through local networks.

NPR Covers Gender Queer Kids

By Shira | May 8, 08 01:46 PM

On All Things Considered yesterday, there was a pretty in-depth piece about families dealing with gender queer kids. In typical NPR fashion there was an attempt at objectivity by interviewing two doctors with very different approaches - one who thinks kids should be forced to behave accordingly with their biological sex, another who focuses on the child's happiness and sense of comfort and security with their body and gender expression. It's nice to see these issues getting some mainstream media coverage.

Listen to Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences

March to Save Our Healthcare this Friday - NYC

By Ari | May 7, 08 05:01 PM

Every Teacher, Transit Worker, Librarian, and Public Worker will be impacted!
5/9 FRI, 4:30 pm - Protest: "March to Save Our Healthcare."

Join the fight to prevent GHI-HIP from converting to a for-profit company & jeopardizing the healthcare of 4 million policy holders, including 500,000 NYC workers (93% of the workforce) & retirees. Mainstream politicians & union leaders support the change, hoping to benefit from the nearly $3 billion windfall profits of such a sale. Help send a "no privatization" message to the NYS Sup't of Insurance & GHI-HIP. Bring friends & signs.

At Office of the NYS Superintendent of Insurance, 25 Beaver St
(4/5 to Bowling Green, J/M/Z to Broad St , R/W to Whitehall St,
1 to Rector St, 2/3 to Wall St, A/C to B'way-Nassau).

Info: (718) 869-2279, noprivatization-at-yahoo-dot-com (request flyer)
http://www.consumersunion.org/conv/
http://www.metrohealthcare.org/html/hcoa080116.html [video]
http://www.myspace.com/saveourhealthcare
http://going.com/saveourhealthcare
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/05/96895.html

Spread the word!

Travelling the land and opening the mind

By Ari | May 7, 08 12:49 PM

A friend of ours is traveling to a jungle in Peru to take ayahuasca and is getting ready for the trip in his usual thoughtful style:

What helps us plug in, and stay plugged in, to stories of reality that disempower us? Certainly all forms of media, including advertisements and billboards. But I'm guessing that on a deeper level the very structures of our lives, the very things I'm supposed to miss such as electricity and toilets, keep us plugged in to a "modern American" reality that is simply our story, a story not shared by everyone on the planet.

I really identify with this idea. I found that the trip Shira and I took to India was eye-opening in ways I never expected. There's something about flushing your toilet with a bucket, taking cold showers, and being sold handmade items in bags made out of recycled newspaper instead of plastic, that makes Western environmental activism and "conservation" look woefully inadequate. It was that trip that made Shira and I get into low impact living, waste reduction, and drastically reduced consumption with more depth and enthusiasm and understanding than we ever had before. Today these practices are a huge part of our lives, but it was traveling and seeing different ways of living firsthand that turned everything around for us.

Combine a trip like that with ayahuasca and I imagine the effects must be even more profound. Keep an eye on Bunnykitteh's blog for updates.

Go neti pot!

By Ari | Mar 12, 08 09:46 AM

Thank you thank you thank you to all of my friends and contacts who have praised the neti pot and led me to finally acquire one. It is AWESOME. Shira and I both caught this nasty cold/flu thing that's been stewing around in NYC, and mine turned into a two-week (and still going) battle with the asthmatic wheeze I picked up when I got really sick back in college. It only comes back when I'm really ill, so I headed over to the queer health center to get looked at. I think I lucked out - the doctor I saw is an aspiring vegan and not a fan of overmedication. She put me on a mild inhaler that's made it a lot easier to breathe, and suggested I drink a lot of hot tea and try netiing. I picked up a new Himalayan Institute neti pot over at Integral Yoga, and now I think you can call me an enthusiast. It really works.

For those who have not yet been introduced to the greatness of the neti pot, I offer the above ridiculous photo from Oprah, on which there was apparently a segment on nasal irrigation. Basically you lean way over and pour warm salt water in one nostril... which you can then feel going through all of your passages in there before it comes out your other nostril. It's strange at first but I can attest that once you get used to it it's easy and it actually feels pretty good - and in any case, the health benefits are well worth any weirdness. Apparently it's not just good for colds, but also for congestion, allergies, dryness, cough, sinus pain, and a host of other breathing and nose-related problems. Anyway, good stuff.

If Only All Capitalists Were Ed Begley, Jr.

By Shira | Feb 20, 08 05:29 PM

Go, Ed Begley, go!

No more Alba Hawaiian lip balm for me

By Ari | Jan 29, 08 10:19 AM

Alba Pisses Me Off!!
Originally uploaded by Flower~

Alba's amazing vegan lip balm is about to become not vegan. They're adding beeswax! It's such a shame. I will miss the pineapple coconut deliciousness. If you too are an unhappy vegan, write them a letter.

Fortunately, there are a lot of other cruelty-free options available. (Merry Hempsters, Literati, Pussy Pucker Pots, Eco Lips, DIY...)

If you're not boycotting bee products yet, please read Why Honey is Not Vegan. For a glimpse into the world of industrial beekeeping, visit Honey Bee Insemination Service.

Shirari Industries