Two of My Heroes: Emily Dickinson, Vincent van Gogh

I just found out Emily Dickinson was a vegetarian! Yay!

She was born in 1830, so it would have been a miracle if she had been vegan back then. Even to be a vegetarian in the 1800's was gutsy and great. I'm looking forward to reading her complete bio, as I have her book on poems.

Vincent van Gogh was another vegetarian that I love. He was also born in the 1800's too--in 1853. I have all his paintings shown in a book, plus his letters to his brother Theo.

Two beautiful, gifted people, who I love as artists, and wonderful to know they were veg!

Vegans Better for Environment than Meat-Eaters

Carnivores are twice as bad for the Earth as vegetarians, a new study out of Oxford University found.

Researchers found that meat-eaters have carbon footprints about twice as large as vegetarians do. They concluded that the more meat you eat, the more you're harming the planet.

The scientists estimated the greenhouse gases emitted from 130 foods, with each type of gas (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide) getting a specific "weight." Those weights were then assigned a "food code" to show the link between emissions and foods.

High meat-eaters were found to have the biggest carbon footprint, followed by medium meat-eaters, low meat-eaters, pescatarians, vegetarians and vegans.

Meat-eaters have large carbon footprints because more energy is required to raise animals than plants. Plus, cows produce large amounts of methane--from burping and farting--which is a more powerful gas than carbon dioxide.

(Source: NY Daily News)

A Personal Rant Message I Sent, Now for Public Viewing....

Sometimes I feel vegetarians are actually saying something like: "OK now, be nice and VERY patient with me or I'll start eating meat again. I WARN YOU!" Like some kind of blackmail threat.

What happened to the newbie veggies in the world that were all fired up, the way one would be when finding a new interest? Eager and all excited to fight for animals' rights!! Sadly, I see that less and less these days. 

Those new, energetic vegetarians-turned-vegans are the ones to help keep us tired, weary and semi burnt-out old vegans inspired. But they are hardly around anymore.

Instead, I see vegetarians and some newbie vegans with this (at least to me) chip on their shoulder, being ultra sensitive, cranky and constantly complaining about how hard it is becoming vegan. I think those are the ones that are waiting for ANY excuse to start eating meat again. 

Many people are quick to say that they are "vegan", but want to take it real slow in actually becoming vegan. Is it just the title label: VEGAN is all they really want and screw the activism? It seems that way sometimes.

I thought about this and I would say someone saying they are 90% vegan (or whatever the hell percentage they want to say) at a vegan forum, is like someone going to a pro-life forum saying they are 90% pro-life because while they support pro-life, they still have abortions every 6 years or so; I don't think that sort of talk would fly well in a pro-life forum...To me, that's how it sounds when people say they are "certain percentage vegans".

I can understand there needs to be time and ridding of old animal items and such to becoming vegan, but how much time? And the information and products available today is a helluva lot more than when I became a vegan. People on welfare can be healthy vegans. Some vegetarians/new vegans could just be a little more positive about their changing and not look at veganism as some kind of laborious chore. Heck, those type of people should watch Earthlings every freakin' day!!

It would just be nice to find a little nice haven for vegans only, somewhere on the Internet--just for vegans, especially for those who have no vegans friends offline. Well, my search continues in looking for some vegans offline to make friends with, where I can speak my mind privately and not having to worry about non-vegans--or newbie vegans--threatening to go back to their old ways again.