Here's a long video of Liam playing the guitar. The second song is a version of Twinkle, Twinkle as sung by his ECFE teacher (who plays guitar in class). You can hear that version here.
So yeah, the kid likes guitar. Also, we're pretty up-front with our children about death.
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For those of you in the Twin Cities metro, the Riverview Theatre is showing Vegucated this coming Monday at 7pm. I haven't seen it, but it looks interesting. Anyway, more info is here.
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Speaking of the Riverview Theatre, Liam went to his first movie back in September. He, Anna and I went to the new Winnie the Pooh flick. It was fun and he did pretty great.
I wasn't kidding about Annie. At any given point in our house you can hear a song from the movie coming from one of my kids' mouths. Liam hardly watches the movie, but he knows the songs because Anna sings them all the time. Here he is singing the medley Anna and I sang for her talent show.
Jen (my wife) had this great idea last fall. She thought that the kids would be playing less outside once the snow started flying, so she bought a trampoline. The kids love it. Their mom is super smart.
So here are a couple videos involving the trampoline. The first is Anna doing a routine that she and Jen worked out. The music is from Yo Gabba Gabba, here.
I know this video pretty dark, but you get the gist.
And here's a video of them flipping over the safety bar. Isn't it great how kids do that? Take something that's meant to make things safer and use it to make it more dangerous?
This flipping business was Liam's idea. I just looked over one day and he was flipping over the bar. I, of course, encouraged more flipping.
Well, the squirrel was released last Thursday, thus bringing the saga to an end, at least as far as I'm concerned. For all I know, he has a few years left of being a squirrel.
My friend Threse, who volunteers at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota and was nice enough to coordinate his release with me, took this photo of the squirrel shortly before his release.
Looks way healthier than when I saw him a month ago.
Here's video of the release. Anna got to watch. Liam was taking a nap.
So yeah, I'm thinking of donating and/or volunteering at the WRC at some point in the near future. Seems like a place full of hope.
It seems like it's been a while since I've posted a video of the kids. Here you go.
In it, they talk about our upcoming trip to North Dakota to celebrate their youngest cousin's first birthday. Then they sing. Then we talk about the gash in Liam's lip, which he got when he fell down at an indoor playground. I didn't see it happen, but I assume his upper teeth cut into his lower lip. There was blood everywhere. He was playing again about 20 minutes later.
Liam thought that since I was taking photos of him, he should get a blanket out and lay down on it. Then he asked me to take photos of him lying on the blanket. I obliged.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, the squirrel I brought in to the rehabilitation center is going to be released this Thursday. Possibly photos and/or video to come.
Some videos from a few weeks ago (2 in 1, because they're so short). I have some from months ago that I never posted. I may at some future date. But for now, here you go.
Mumble the emperor penguin, in a zoo, yelling at humans: "Hello! Hello from Emperor Land. Good afternoon. Why are you taking our fish? I'm sure you don't mean to, but you're causing an awful lot of grief. Am I not making myself clear? I'm speaking plain penguin. Penguin! Don't you understand? You're stealing our fish! Please! Anyone! Talk to me! For pity's sake, you're stealing our F-I-S-H!"
Voiceover: "After 3 days he would lose his voice. After three months, he would all but lose his mind."
And that right there is when I fell in love with the movie Happy Feet. It took the movie over an hour to get there, but this scene... Whew! The protagonist, Mumble, is in a zoo, put there after he's found on a beach. A beach he ended up on after swimming after a fishing barge. A fishing barge he swam after because he wanted to tell the "aliens" to stop taking their fish. The "aliens" who were taking their fish because, well, why do we eat fish again?
Right after the voiceover tells us Mumble all but lost his mind we see him with the other penguins, swaying back and forth with a vacant look in his eyes, mouth open as fish are thrown over a ledge and down to the penguins.
Anna was watching this scene with a friend of hers the other day and she said, "This is a happy and sad part."
I asked her why it was happy and sad.
"It’s sad that he’s in a cage and it’s happy that he gets fish."
I was pretty proud of her for recognizing that something could be happy and sad at the same time. And yeah, free fish falling from the sky could be seen as a positive aspect of zoo life. But at what price? Penguins can't really be penguins when they're stuck in a zoo.
And of course, the movie (being a kid's movie) gives us a simplistic view of things. The fish in the ocean aren't any more the penguins' as they are the humans'. Nobody owns the fish. The fish aren't possessed by anyone (that is, until they're captured or eaten).
Here's how I explain it to Anna:
Penguins need fish to live. Without eating fish, penguins would die. They have no choice. Fish don't want to be eaten, but penguins have to eat them to live.
People do not need fish to live. Without eating fish, people live long, healthy lives. We have a choice. Fish don't want to be eaten and we don't have to eat them to live.
She understands this. In fact, she seems to completely grasp the concept.
At the end of the movie the "aliens" decide to stop fishing (at least in the area around Antarctica) and the fish's numbers grow and the penguins' famine is over.
When this happens, Anna's gets happy. She has no aversion to carnivores. She sees nothing wrong with a penguin eating a fish and I see nothing contradictory about that fact.
It's all about choice and the ability to choose. And I'll write more about this in a future post. Specifically, I'll write about how I've explained non-human omnivores to her. For example, bears eat plants and fish. But if they can live on plants, then why do they eat fish? It seems like we intuitively know the answers to questions like these, but try explaining it to an almost-four-year-old.
It's not easy, but it sure is fun.
Anyway, a little more about Happy Feet. There's a part where a leopard seal chases Mumble with the intention of eating him. This is a little harder to explain to Anna, since she's rooting for Mumble to escape. Here we get into the complexities of narrative a little more. The leopard seal is portrayed as a "bad guy", but on the face of it, he's just trying to eat what he needs to eat to live.
Leopard seals eat penguins, penguins eat fish. Who we root for is dependent solely on the story. In a few years, Pixar will come out with a touching movie about leopard seals and we'll all root for them to catch the penguins.
My point is that accepting and appreciating the need for some animals to kill and eat other animals to survive does not contradict an animal rights position. The animal rights position is dependent upon the fact that we as humans do not need to exploit animals in order to survive. We don't need to eat or wear their flesh, we don't need to drink their lactations and we do not need to scramble their menses every Sunday morning. It's all unnecessary.
If it were necessary; if we needed animal products to survive - if we could not survive without them - then there would be no animal rights movement. There may still be an animal welfare movement though who would say (as they pretty much do now) we should still own, rape, exploit and kill animals because we have to ... but do it a little nicer, m'kay?
Luckily for us and for those exploited non-human animals, there's another way. We can live just fine by eating plants.
But this was supposed to be a review of Happy Feet. Let me just say that there are a couple overtly and covertly sexual parts to this movie. Just so you know. I mean, it's nothing that big. Just stuff like one penguin saying, "Gloria! Gloria! I want to see more of ya!" And there's some talk of making love. There's this one quick scene where, no joke, two penguins are stumbling over each other on the ice and manage to hit all the major sexual positions. I don't think Anna picks up on a lot of that stuff, but even if she does I'm not too worried. We're open about the biology of sex with her.
In fact, just the other day I heard her saying to Liam, "Do you see birds outside, Liam? Are they having sex, Liam?" Then she asked us what sex was again, I explained it to her and she then explained it to her baby doll.
Oh, and there's a nice "rational thinking trumps superstition" theme that comes into play at the end of the movie. Have I mentioned that I love Happy Feet?
It's a musical, too. There's a ton of music and dancing in it, which is why I think Anna considers it her favorite movie. It's a movie and a work-out for her. I'm actually quite sad that they don't make more musicals these days. And I'm looking forward to the day when she's old enough to watch West Side Story. Mambo!
Well, I'm rambling. I'm going to reward you now for sticking with me for this long. Here's a video of Anna dancing to the end of Happy Feet. The video didn't pick up the sound of the movie, so I threw in a song by Malajube.
So, have any of you seen Happy Feet?
Vegans, how have you talked about the movie with your kids?
Well, 36 people answered the question of why they are or aren't vegan. That's a pretty good turnout. Thank you to all who answered.
To be honest, I was hoping for more, but the responses I did get were all civil and mostly thoughtful, which just goes to show you that vegans and non-vegans can coexist in an online public place without jumping down each others' throats.
We have honest differences, to be sure. And those differences do matter (indeed, they're a matter of life and death). But the point is that we can and do discuss these differences with each other without resorting to name-calling and/or pie-throwing. I think the hardest part of starting a civil conversation about veganism is convincing both sides that it's a conversation worth having civilly (which can include speaking openly and honestly and not stifling our ideas simply because someone's sensibilities might be offended).
Anyway, a pat on all your backs.
Now on to the winners!
(The new camera does widescreen and I haven't figured out yet how to embed that correctly, so I suggest just clicking on the video and viewing it on the YouTube page.)
So that's what eight minutes of my day looks like. If you felt rushed, confused and pulled in different directions while watching it, then you know what my days are like. Let's just say I appreciate concurrent naps.
A note on the video, we had picked names (two of the three, to be exact) one time before what you see in this video, but the camera wasn't recording when I thought it was (it's a new camera that I'm not used to, as is evident by the sound being muffled now and then when I put my finger over the microphone area). So I decided to do it all over again. The same person was picked first both times! Crazy.
And toward the end of the video I give my reason for being vegan. To elaborate, I'm vegan because I don't need animal products to live a long, happy and healthy life. Since I don't need these products, I'm presented with a choice of whether or not I should continue to consume them. I can find no good argument to cause suffering and death when that suffering and death is not necessary ... so I choose veganism.
I'm vegan because animals are sentient beings who should be extended the basic right to not be treated as things; as property. The property status that we place upon animals is what allows we humans to cause the aforementioned suffering and death for reasons such as tradition, convenience and pleasure (not necessity).
Simply and more concisely, I'm vegan because I agree with the majority of humans that it is wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering and death on another sentient being.
For a great introduction to this view visit this page and spend a few minutes reading the pamphlet.
OK! Well thanks again to everyone who answered the question. And to the three who won, Alafair, Ashlee and PL&V, just click on the "email" link on my profile page and send me your address. Then wait patiently for the goodies.
And thanks again Go Max Go Foods for donating the candy bars! You're the best.
Liam's almost a year old! Here he is with his big sister.
Now that he has, for the most part, stopped pulling Anna's hair, they tumble around a lot more. Monkey piles are now regular occurrences in the Piggy household.
The BBC program One Planet recently aired a two-part series called Animals and Us by Victor Schonfeld.
Schonfeld produced The Animals Film twenty-eight years ago.
I've never seen The Animals Film, but it looks like it was one of the first of its kind. It seems to me that it was Earthlings before Earthlings was Meet Your Meat.
So now Schonfeld has produced a two-part radio series, "to give a very personal view on what, if anything, has changed since then."
Gary Francione (who is interviewed in each broadcast), Roger Yates and Elizabeth Collins did post-show commentaries which can be listened to here (review of part 1) and here (review of part 2). I have to admit I haven't listened through both commentaries yet, but I know Gary's podcasts (not to mention his guests) are always insightful and thought-provoking, so I feel confident in linking to them here.
I felt that Animals and Us was well done. Shonfeld, largely by virtue of interviewing Francione, gave quite a bit of air-time to criticism of the use of animals (as opposed to just focusing on the treatment).
Schonfeld is clearly taking an activist stance in these broadcasts, which I find refreshing. He states early on in each broadcast, "Be warned. This is not balanced dispassionate journalism. I'm opposed to animal suffering for human needs and pleasures, as are most of the people we'll be hearing from."
Given his activist stance, my main qualm was that there was too much of a focus on lab animals in the second broadcast (pretty much the whole thing). The overwhelming majority of animal exploitation occurs within animal agriculture. That's not to say that we shouldn't also care and talk about vivisection, fur, circuses and zoos. But when all you have is two 28 minute broadcasts I think the most productive angle to take, from an efficient activist point of view, is to focus on the use of animals for food.
Not a huge qualm, but a qualm nonetheless.
Did you listen to Animals and Us? Have you seen The Animals Film?
Liam's almost one year old already. When Anna turned one I made a 15 minute slideshow of photos and video. In my attempt to give Liam as much media-exposure as his big sister, I'm putting together a slideshow of him, too.
There is significantly less time to do stuff like this these days, but I'll be glad I did it down the road.
Anyway, while going through the video from the past year I came across this and was shocked that I didn't post it at the time. Here's Anna singing a made-up song back in June.
Anna goes to dance class on Thursday's. She loves to dance and always has, so we figured, why not? It's an eight week program and she's half-way done with it.
So here she is dancing. I didn't edit this video down at all, because I love every second of it. (Note: at about 30 seconds you can hear Liam crying from all the way upstairs. The kid's got lungs.)
About the dance class:
Anna loves the class, but she's unsure about the other girls and has actually told me she's scared of them (and then later, that she's shy of them).
It probably is just her being shy, but part of me wonders. The class is for ages 3 to 5 and most of the older (and even some of the younger) girls wear actual ballet slippers and leotards. It's an informal class and there is no dress code.
Part of me is mad at the parents who dress their kids in dance clothes, because they know full well that not all the kids are going to wear that stuff, and why make the kids who don't wear it feel inadequate?
The other part of me wants to buy a leotard and ballet slippers.
Anna told me she bumps into the girls and she says sorry to them when she does, but that they don't say anything back to her.
Unfortunately (but probably fortunately) they don't allow parents to sit in on the classes. We just get to watch the final class, where I assume it will be different than a normal class anyway. I suspect subtle bullying. Who knows.
Anyway, the teacher is nice and the girls all love her (yes, it's all girls in the dance class). But we're still not sure if we're going to sign her up for more classes. She's also in swimming lessons and we'll keep doing those.
We're thinking of maybe putting her in yoga next, since she's expressed interest in that too. Any suggestions or recommendations for fun active classes for a three-year-old?
Here's the second half of that video I posted last week. Anna stole the spotlight from Liam.
Warning, the first few seconds are extremely loud. Anna yelled some Klingon (which is what her made-up words sound like to me) into the webcam and (even though I turned the audio down quite a bit when editing the movie) it's still ear-splitting. Especially if you're wearing headphones.
"Rug words" has no meaning. She just said the first thing she saw. What kind of word is it? Well there's a rug, so it's a rug word. She does the same thing when I ask her what she dreamed about or what one of her dolls is named. I like that dolls are named pillow. It's fun.
Oh, and part of this video is missing. It's over to the left there on the sidebar. Check it out.
They just keep getting better, folks. But this might be the last one of Liam in the jumper, since we just got him a walker. And the boy wants to constantly walk. So ... maybe a "Video of Liam in the Walker" tag will be warranted.
Anna kept talking for about 6 more minutes. I'll edit that and get it up soon.
I just saw this video over at On Human-Nonhuman Relations and thought I'd pass it along. This is the first thing I've ever watched from vegan.fm and I look forward to watching more.
Note for the squeamish: There are no images of animal cruelty in this video whatsoever. All you'll see are animals living a life of peace and freedom. Enjoy!
I can't wait to someday visit this place. We were so close to touring it the last time we were in Denver, but then it had to go blizzard all over the place.
