Veggie Nugget #24

"There is absolutely no single personal change that the average person can make that has a better impact on the environment than going vegan."

From "On the Environmental Disaster of Animal Agriculture" over at Unpopular Vegan Essays.

If you have some time and the wherewithal to think deeply about an uncomfortable subject, then I suggest checking out the rest of his blog.

Kentucky Fried What Now?

Not far from our house, on University Avenue in Saint Paul, sits a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Anna and I were sitting at the stop light yesterday and she pointed to it and asked what it was.

"You mean the red and white building?" I asked, hoping she would say no. She said yes.

I stammered for quite some time, not sure what to say. How do I answer her? Do I tell her it's Kentucky Fried Chicken? Because she's an inquisitive little girl and she might ask what fried chicken means. Am I ready to explain to her that people eat animals?

Sure, she sees people eating parts of chickens at family gatherings and certain restaurants. Yes, she knows more omnivores than vegans and has been visually exposed to all of the most common non-vegan foods. But there's an abstractness to it all. When she asks "what's that" and points to a hot dog her cousin is eating, I just calmly tell her, "it's not vegan .... but we have some great vegan stuff for you right here!"

I'm exploiting the abstract nature of language and I fear the day when it no longer does the trick for her.

"It's a restaurant," I finally said, "but we don't eat there because they don't have anything that's vegan."

And just like that, the conversation was over. No follow up questions were asked. No desire to eat there was expressed.

This happened on our way to Izzy's, an ice cream parlor in Saint Paul. They always have a couple vegan options of soy cream and/or sorbet. Before we went in, I explained to her that most of what she sees won't be vegan. We went in and got a sample of their chocolate soy cream before saying that, yes, we'll take a pint to bring home with us.

Anna looked at all the other varieties of ice cream and pointed to one of them, saying, "I want to try that one now, Daddy."

The day will come, maybe soon, maybe in a year or two, when Anna starts to ask the big questions. Why do other people eat things that aren't vegan? If animals are our friends, then why are we friends with people who eat our friends? Etc. Etc. Dot, dot, dot.

At what age did you first wonder the same thing about religion? Why are other people Lutheran and not Catholic? Why do those women dress like that? If Jesus is Lord, then who is Vishnu and what's the deal with those arms?

Veganism isn't a religion, of course, but the comparison is a useful one. Children are raised with certain values when it comes to food. Some kids start eating junk food at a year old. Some kids have a diet heavy on meat and light on veggies. Some kids have a vegan diet. These choices (like religious choices) have ethical, social and political ramifications whether parents realize it or not

"Remember what I said," I calmly reminded Anna about the ice cream, "those aren't vegan. We're getting the vegan one."

And just like that, the conversation was over. No follow up questions were asked. No further desire to try the non-vegan ice cream was expressed.

I've taken a hard line in my life against animal exploitation. I am against it. I want it to end. Completely end. I want there to be no more ownership of animals. I cannot force myself to shy away from this. I can't pretend like I'm OK with free range this or grass-fed this.

But it's my job as a parent to raise a daughter (and son, but I don't have to worry about Liam for at least another couple years) who can function within society just like I do ... preferably better than I do. I can only hope that she notices how Mrs. Piggy and I socially interact with omnivores (our friends, our family) and realize that even though we may disagree about how human animals should treat non-human animals, we still show each other respect and enjoy each other's company and love each other.

All of which makes the following question more important and complicated than it might seem: When she starts to ask the big questions, do I give her the big answers?

Cute lil Nuggets

Shot some more video of the nuggets yesterday.

My favorite part is this:

Me: Do you want to sing Liam a song?

Anna: No. But I want to sing Liam a song.

Anna and I watched this video shortly after I shot it and she said, "I say it for him because he can't talk. He can't say, 'My name is Liam,' so I say it for him."

Veggie Nugget #23

"I went vegetarian when I was about - I think I was about 8 years old. One day I cut this piece of meat open and blood came out and I asked my mother, ‘Where did this come from?’ And she said ‘animals,’ and that was it. And now these days, you can get everything vegan — vegan marshmallows…so now I’m eating all these things that you couldn’t even get before.”

-Geezer Butler, guitarist for Black Sabbath.

Yeah that's right, Black effing Sabbath.

Here's a photographic journey through our yard in the springtime. Just imagine me standing at a projector in the back of the room, speaking in a droll voice.

(Before we begin, just wanted to let you know that you can click on any of these photos to view them much larger if you are so inclined.)

In Anna's pre-pre-school class on Monday night she made a bird feeder ring with pipe cleaner and Cheerios. The ring sat out there for at least a week without any action.


Then all of a sudden they were gone. I refilled it a few times and never got to see what was eating them. Until one day, when Anna was at a friend's place I saw this little bugger chomping down. I took a photo to show her later.


Here are the pre-bloom tulips. They bloomed beautifully, but I didn't have a chance to get photos before that friggin' squirrel up there (or one of his/her cohorts) ripped them all off. Petals were laying at the base of the tree one morning. Oh well.


Our back yard tree was full of these little koosh-ball buds a couple weeks ago.


Now the leaves are popping out.


And here's the front yard tree. I love how the leaves in early spring have the same color as the leaves in the fall.


Here is the Al Franken lawn sign that sits below our front yard tree. Caked in mud and not yet where it should be, just like Al.


Fern in our back yard rain garden.


And here are the daffodils. We planted these daffodils, we figured, five years ago. This is the first year they have bloomed.


This one's ready to pop. It looks sinister.


And here's my arty photo, taken at the golden hour and everything.


We had a couple productive raspberry bushes last year. By the looks of the sprawl, we might have five or six this year. I think I'll let these take over half the lawn before I start managing them.


Day lilies haven't bloomed yet, but they're nice and green and lush.


The best part about our back yard, of course, is Anna running around in it.



And finally, a note to self: Try to clean this up this year.



By the way, I did something like this one other time last year during the summer. You can check that out here.

Photos I Didn't Take

I've been remiss in my blog duties as of late. I have a lot of pretty good photos I've been meaning to put up. You're heard it before and you'll hear it again: I'm busy.

Anyway, our good friends Kerz and Britta visited us this last weekend and, as always, Britta took some great photos.

Go here to see them.

Laughing Liam (Left Leg Lazy Lion Licked a Lolly-Pop)

Here's a video I took a few days ago of Liam cooing and laughing at me.

There's a surprise at the end. It's sort of gross.



So there you go. Eww.

Oh, I just looked at a suggested video and this kid has the same chair that Liam does. Cosmic...



Holy crap, I just did a search for "Liam Laughing" and all of a sudden I feel like a loving parent in a sea of loving parents ... which oddly makes me feel like a tool. I mean, look at this kid:



Adorable!

And this one:



I mean, come on!

Well, I guess I'm just happy to be able to contribute to the sea of cute babies and laughter.

Liam belly laughed last night for the first time. I didn't get to hear it, but Mrs. Piggy tells me it was adorable. So...

Expect more laughing babies, dear reader. Expect more laughing babies.

My brother-in-law and nephew visited from Colorado about a month ago.

So I talked with the kid about shooting a movie and we planned the scenes together, shot it in about an hour and then I edited it later on (took about 15 hours to edit ... free time that I don't necessarily have, but what the heck, it's family).

It's open for a sequel, and I'm thinking the next time they visit we can add Anna in as the super villain/evil genius.



I do hope Anna is in to stuff like this when she gets a bit older. I plan on this being the first of many home movies.

Anna watched this a few times and was unsure what to think of it. The last time we watched it, during the electricity part, she said, "I dreamed that in my bed!"

It was the first time she ever told us about a dream. I hope she's not traumatized.

Don't Worry...

Just a quick little video for all of our friends and family in the flooding Red River Valley (and we have a LOT of them). Here's Anna singing a bit of Three Little Birds.



I hope you all stay high and dry and I wish we could be there to help.

Busy, Busy, Busy

So not only do we have a baby in the house, but I'm also re-grouting part of our bath tub and we just went through our third spring thaw yesterday, which means it was the third time I was outside with a shop vac sucking up the very large puddle that pools right by our house in the back yard and dragging it and dumping it out on the street in the front (our basement floods if I don't do this), repeating that 20 times or so (16 gallon shop vac ... I don't do math, but that's a lot of water).

I know. Poor, poor me. (Also, I think that right there is the longest sentence I've typed so far on this blog.)

At any rate, I think once things settle down and we get into a groove with the two kids I'll be able to post more. For the time being though, here are some photos to get you (and me) through.