One of the things I really enjoy about being vegan is the connection I have with other people who have chosen to remove animals from their plates. It’s something I immediately have in common with someone else who is vegan.

Being vegan isn’t an easy path, but it’s one that I chose. You’d expect most people in the vegan community to be supportive of those who are vegan. I know I’m supportive of the businesses in town who provide vegan fare and a vegan options.

One of these businesses I support is Food Fight. I often buy things there I can easily get over at People’s Food Coop, New Seasons or Whole Foods because I want to support a vegan business. Apparently the feeling isn’t mutual.

This past weekend Food Fight sponsored a talk at PSU on Sunday afternoon about fur. Sunday was perhaps the single nicest day in weeks and so obviously the turn out was low.  Rather than chalking it up to the ebb and flow of people’s attendence, Food Fight lashed out on their site:

Thanks Shannon.

Hey, just wanted to thank Shannon Keith for coming out for yesterdays Let Live “Skin Trade” talk. Even though all you lazy foodie vegans couldn’t bother to come out for this great free event. We understand, brunch ran long, or there were free samples at Trader Joe’s or whatever, we dig. It’s our pleasure to put effort into these things and have crappy turnouts, it’s cool, don’t sweat it.

So, if you’d like to make it up to Shannon for your weak excuses, please visit her site for her upcoming movie, and if you can help get it finished, she could use some donations. It seems like it’s gonna be a great tool for us to have to help combat the fur industry.

Namaste. Blessings. Peaceful holiday. All that.

I can understand the frustration at a low turn out in an event in Portland. It happens. I used to improv and some nights when the weather turned we’d get a dismal turnout. But what I didn’t do is go online and start lashing out at our audience.

So I’m furious. Apparently it’s not enough for me to support Food Fight by shopping there. In their book, if you aren’t showing up at their events then you might as well not call yourself a ‘REAL VEGAN’.

I don’t think Chad and company are aware just how damaging this elitist attitude is.  Anyone who choses not to eat animals and animal products need to be welcomed to the vegan community with open arms.

Standing up for what you believe is absolutely commendable, but there has to be room to let other people in. It’s possible to be Vegan and not march in Fur Free Fridays or attend a Food Fight Movie Night.

This latest missive isn’t enough for me to stop supporting a vegan grocery store, but it doe piss me off. I mean shouldn’t this support be mutual?

Recently a US Army presentation put together by the Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion and found on the Federation of the American Scientists website expressed their concern about how social networking technologies could be used by terrorists (Source: Wired) .

I’m glad the Army is paying attention to social networks, perhaps they could use some of the underlining technologies to better communicate with other branches of government!  “Hey Mr. Homeland Security guy, would you be my friend on Facebook?!”  … “Sorry General, I’m just anti-social.”

All kidding aside, the thing that struck me the most was this passage:

Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences.

Wait a second? Did i read that right…. VEGETARIANS!?!

Unfortunately the report forgot this little reminder:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Twitter isn’t a subversive tool that Vegetarians use to disseminate our no-meat 3 bean chili recipe. It’s an online extension of people’s right to speak their mind (no matter how inane they might say) and freely and peaceably assemble.

I know military intellgence is an oxymoron, but I take very seriously when our country uses the word terrorsit.  It’s a weighty word and it shouldn’t ever be used lightly. Over the past few years that term has been thrown around way to casually, the way in which “communist” was thrown around during the dark time in our country which was called “The Red Scare”.

I really hope when Barak Obama becomes president he addresses the departments of government who seem hell bent on spending their budgets on anything and everything they decided are terrorists.  Because the last time I checked, not eating meat didn’t make you a fucking terrorist!

Lets face it, unless you regularly get into accidents, odds are you think you are a good drive. In fact you probably think you are a great driver. That you are one of the best drivers on the road and everyone else are the fucking idiots. I hate to burst your bubble, but like me, you’re one of those fucking idiots on the road, because like me, odds are you’re not really that great of a driver.

Everyone starts out at the same place when it comes to driving, we all suck. The first time behind the wheel is a rats nest of nerves and over thinking it all. First time drivers make jerky moves, react too late and all around suck. But somehow all of us transform from sucky drivers into beautiful perfect drivers who know how to merge, can parallel park with ease and always keep our lanes. But that just isn’t the case, in all of us there’s still that crappy ass driver that first got behind the wheel. Drive long enough and you feel like driving is automatic. And on some level it is. But that isn’t an excuse to thumb through your email as you’re stopped in stop and go freeway traffic – yup guilty. That doesn’t mean you can take your attention off the road when you’re driving because you’re engaged in a conversation – that’s me again. And that doesn’t mean you should try to beat yellow lights at intersections without red light cameras. Just today I gunned it through an intersection that I knew didn’t have a red light camera, just nearly beating (or was it missing) the change from yellow to red.

If you don’t believe me how crappy ass a driver you are try this experiment: find a friend to drive with for a full day. In the morning you ride shotgun and watch how they drive, really watch them. Then midday switch and let them watch you.  At the end of the day if you were really honest with each other you’d find that you’re a lot poorer driver than you think you are.  But this whole rant isn’t about you, it’s about me.  I’ve realized that I’m not the best driver in the world, my parallel parking often involves bumping the curb, my u turns are never perfect and I’ve cut off my fair share of people because I wasn’t driving like crap. I know this, and knowing it is the first step…right?

The thing is, I’m actually a really good walker. I’ve been walking for a lot longer than I’ve been driving and aside from some encouraging words from my parents I sort of figure out the whole walking thing on my own.  Sure I stumble and trip now and then, I’ve bumped into people in a crowd, gotten into that dance you get when you meet someone coming from the other direction and both decide to go the same way. But no one has gotten hurt with me walking and the scary fucking truth is in a car my absent mindedness or crappy ass driving could actually kill someone.

So does this mean I’m going to not drive? Well I’ve been trying to drive less (and that decision goes beyond weather or not I’m a good driver), and really I’m not as crappy a driver as I’ve portrayed myself. I’m a fairly OK driver with periods of crappyness. I’ve really tried to become a lot more cognitive about my driving and have worked on changing how I drive so I drive slower and pay more attention. But losing the idea that I’m some sort of great driver is important, it makes me much more aware when I do things that aren’t great and reminds me to do things like put down my sidekick and focus on my driving.

So I’d ask you the same question…. How Good a Driver are YOU…Really? Because I have a feeling you and I are the same fucking idiots we honk at and yell at on the road.

A trend I’ve noticed among the twenty or thirtysomething, iPod wearing, MacBook Pro using, Latte drinking, tattooed set is an increased animosity towards the antics of kids. Now I’m not singling any one place out or one cafe out, this problem is wider than that (spend a day in the Buckman, Alberta, NW, LoBu or Close in SE neighborhoods and you’ll see what I’m talking about). Somehow, somewhere these people elevated to a higher plane, one where they could chastise those of us who chose to replicate and hiss under their breath ‘Breeders!”  I am a father of three, so I’ve seen a lot. My kids have broken down and gone berserk at some of the most unfortunate times in some of the most unfortunate places. My wife and I have always been attentive, always worked to help diffuse the outburst and if needed removed the kid from the area (when we can).

There are lots of parents who just don’t care about what their kids do and who their kids pester. But this piece isn’t about them… It’s about the all to smug, too cool for school cats who think that disdain is the only response to family with kids. And to them I say “Yo Mama’s A Breeder!” Seriously, these same schlubs spending their afternoons milking a single late thinking that it entitles them to rent the spot and the wifi for a day were the same runny nose, screaming and tantruming kids that they now seem to despise.

Portland is world renowned for being a great city to raise kids and the irony is that many of these self important ‘Breeder Haters’ will someday actually get laid and that someday may result in having kids. Then rather than seeing the annoyance in a kid standing in the middle of a cafe yelling NO at the top of their lungs, they’ll see the beauty in life, the raw unfiltered nature of children. The universe of little people who don’t filter what they say, what they say is how they feel and what they think. A skill us adults only seem to find at the bottom of our third scotch or fifth pint of beer.

I am a fucking hypocrite. Don’t worry, I know this…The thing is, you’re probably a fucking hypocrite too. We live in a ‘do as I say not as I do’ universe. But I’ve picked a particularly difficult path in this upside down crazy train, you see I’ve decided to be Vegan. Make no mistake, it was a decision. No one forced being Vegan on me (and consequentially I don’t force being Vegan on anyone else). For your reference, being Vegan means that I do not eat any animals or consume any products which are derived from animals.  So this means no Cow, cow’s milk, gelatin (made from cow parts), leather, whey (which is a protein made from milk), casein (which is a protein that makes cheese gooey) or anything that is even remotely derived from an animal.

I am not a fanatical Vegan and yet isn’t being Vegan by its very nature fanatical. I’ve adopted a strict group of rules about what I will and won’t eat. When I was young I bitched about the whole ‘kosher thing’ and now I’m following a diet even more strict.  It’s a real dichotomy, by my very nature I am a rule breaker. I’m someone who hates to be told what to do and what not to do.

I’m often asked “Why” I’m Vegan. The answer to this is pretty straight forward – I don’t think animals are on this planet to serve humanity. It’s not our right to do whatever we want with sentient beings. Confinement, torture, inhumane treatment isn’t cool with me and unfortunately a lot of what ends up on peoples plates gets there in a way that I can not stomach. It makes me sick. I’m compassionate and don’t think my own personal tastes are more important that the life of animals.  And yet, I am not someone who draws an absolute line. I think PETA is full of shit when they try to ban companion animals and pets. My life and the lives of my family have been amazingly impacted by our cat. It’s enhanced all our compassion and understanding of animals. I don’t think that using horses for things like police work or pulling carriages is absolute evil.

That’s right. Fucking hypocrite. I should be disowned by the vegan community and cast out as impure.  But that’s not everything. I squish bugs without impunity, lay down ant bait and destroy entire ant colonies. I eat Thai food that’s obviously got fish sauce in it. Friday nights I eat Hallah that isn’t vegan (it has egg in it), I tried Vegan hallah and it just wasn’t Hallah…and the cars I drive have leather seats.  Oh and did I mention, I also eat honey. All these facts come together and make a clear case against me being Vegan. In fact there are people in the Vegan community who would say that I have no ‘right’ calling myself vegan.  And for a while that bothered me.  Then I thought about why I’m doing what I do and why I’ve made the choices I’ve really made.

Vegan is just another fucking label that people put on you. It goes along with White, Jewish, Nerdy, Tall, Funny, Writer, Dad, Neurotic… None of them really accurately say who I really am, they are just societal shortcuts to push me quickly in a box so I can be dealt with.  So I’ve decided that it’s best to embrace and own my hypocrisy. Imperfection is an essential part of the human condition, and to pretend otherwise is to present one of the greatest falshoods you can. So I’ve really come to the conclusion that it really doesn’t matter if I’m Vegan or not. I don’t need a label to validate my own personal life choices, I don’t need to be categorized and defined by anyone else. I know what I do and why I do it, and I’ll leave room for that to change and grow over time.

How terrifying is it to hear that someone in your circle has cancer? Cancer is the Al Queda of diseases, it’s the thing that keeps some level of terror in life no matter what you do.  This past week I got ‘THE’ phone call. It’s a call I’ve received many times in my life, and this one was no different.

“I’ve got some not great news…. Meg has Lukemia”. My brother’s shaky voice breaks my heart, it shatters right there even though we are 1500 miles a part.  Cancer is the big white elephant in the room, it’s something that almost everyone will be touched by, even if its effects aren’t direct… it’s something that someone you know or someone you love will ultimately face and unfortunately I’ve had to face it several times before.

This whole situation is even more complex, you see the woman in question who now has to grapple with this horrid disease is the same one whose barred me and my family from seeing my niece and nephew.  My first thought on hearing the news (aside from deep empathy for my brother) was that somehow the grappling with this disease had some impact on the way in which she dealt with the world and therefore with us.  How long had cancer lurked under the surface before it reared its ugly head? It doesn’t matter anymore, Cancer ends family feuds, it’s the ultimate trump card in any argument and it’s the kind of thing that you simply drop all your shit for and do everything you can to help.

The whole thing was a sobering reminder to me not to delay the enjoyment of my life. On a walk home from a haircut I got that day, I was walking hand and hand with my son Aaron and I said to him “you know I love you, no matter what…. Whatever you do, I will always love you.”  That’s the kind of stuff we SHOULD be saying to our kids, and hearing the news that my brother and his wife are now hand in hand in a fight for her life was just the kind of kick in the pants to remind me to make sure I say the kinds of things to my kids that a father SHOULD say…These kinds of things DON’T Go without saying,

The moments in the day since that I am alone with my thoughts I run the what if scenarios through my head. How could my brother survive the loss of his wife, be a lawyer and raise two kids?  The answer is, I hope he never has to find out. But if this story doesn’t have a happy ending, I belive in the amazing capacity of people, to survive and transcend tragedies. My deep hope is that this is something that Jeremy and Meg can beat, if not for good, at least for a good long time.

Fucking Cancer.

It’s this very question that I find myself grappling with today… How Jewish AM I…Really? Technically, I am very Jewish. I was born to two Jewish parents, went to Hebrew school, had my Bar Mitzvah at age 13 and then what? Since 1983 the whole definition of my religious beliefs have been muddled. From Age 13 to 18 I spent most summers at Jewish Summer Camps. I enjoyed the communal Jewish experience, the community shabbat, singing Jewish songs around the campfire… if you asked me at the end of a never-long-enough summer, I would answer ‘VERY JEWISH’. But the with the return to school and the soon to follow ‘High Holidays’ my passion and connection would quickly fade.

By Yom Kippur while fasting I’d quickly change my answer to ‘Not Fucking Much’. You see, I hate Yom Kippur. Despise being ‘trapped’ at temple, pressured not to eat anything. I dread the ever repeating service where my most common activity is flipping through the pages of the sedur to find when the damn thing is going to be over. And it’s always puzzled me, how exactly did my passion and love get so quickly transformed?

This cycle of love and dread has continued through most of my life. There have been times where I have embraced my religion, held my arms out wide and then held it close. Then there are times when I’ve crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash. One of the most challenged times for me with my relationship with my religion was when my father died young from cancer. Since that point I’ve never really been able to fully reconcile a belief structure with such a rigid view of the universe and the death of someone who I loved dearly and who by all accounts was a good man.

At times I think I’ve stuck around Judaism out of pure pressure. I mean my religious path was always well established – I’d get Bar Mitzvah’d, go to Israel after being ‘Confirmed’, Marry a Jewish Woman and raise my kids Jewish. And while I’ve deviated from that path, I’ve always felt that I’m locked into it. At 13 I did have my Bar Mitzvah, but almost the next day I told my parents that there was no way in hell I was going to study any more and get confirmed. To this day I still haven’t been to Israel. I married a woman who converted to Judaism and yet every member in my extended family married someone who isn’t Jewish. I don’t really celebrate Shabbat, only go to temple to drop off my kids at Hebrew school and no longer fast on Yom Kippor.

I do have quite pleasant memories of my Bar Mitzvah. I can remember riding the long bus ride from Moraga to Danville (where I had a short stint in private school) listening to my Torah portion on a Walkman the size of a brick. My mother brought over the DVD copy of my Bar Mitzvah tape the last time she visited, and I was of two minds about the whole thing. The first, that the party and all those people were more about relatives and friends of the family than anything else, and second that I look like I had a really great time.

But mixed with any good memories are ones which are not so fond – fighting with my parents (usually my mother) about exactly what we could or could not eat on Passover (I mean corn syrup in coke…give me a break! Also I never understood the idea of a passover cake!). Also many of my memories of temple involve either being bored out of my mind, or the feeling of being trapped…. flipping pages, looking for when it will all over.

When I start to really think about how religion even fits in my life I have an impossible time reconciling something that makes me miserable with something I’m supposed to be doing. What is this for exactly? I’m not trying to be coy, I don’t think I’m every really clear WHY I’m struggling with being Jewish. I mean, shouldn’t it be obvious? Shouldn’t it be clear why I’d go to temple, why I’d celebrate holidays, why I’d what to teach my kids the same things I was taught?

And yet, I find myself joining and quitting congregations in a town far too small to be changing dates at the dance. As I stood last week, arms crossed, ready to explode at my son’s Hebrew school I realized that I had to start dealing with my real feelings about it all. The issue which got my blood boiling was the explanation of a series of annual benchmarks that my children had to meet in order to be granted a date for a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. While this might on some level be entirely reasonable, I mean kids do have to learn what they need to learn in order to have a Bar Mitzvah, the idea that there’s some standardized testing of sorts for faith just struck to the core of my problems with my religion.

After all…. Isn’t religion supposed to be something you feel inside, something that connects you to others and something you WANT to do!? When did a sort of standardized testing get into the mix. And then it hit me, the feeling of being trapped, flipping through the book to find out when we’d be done… it’s the same awful feeling I felt in school when I wasn’t learning and wasn’t having any fun. It’s the same… YOU HAVE TO… feeling I felt growing up, when my destiny wasn’t in my own hands.

So with the annual renewal form sitting on my desk I’m drafting another letter of resignation to another congregation I’m going to no longer be a part of. It’s like agreeing to have your car towed away… What the fuck do you do next? And that’s where I am at, or rather it’s much more complicated than that…. Because it’s not just about me, I have a wife and kids. So it’s not only my own beliefs and connections but the responsibility for my children’s.

So back to that question… How Jewish am I Really?! I’m starting to think that the answer really isn’t important. The truth is, on some level I AM Jewish, but I don’t think that really needs to be measured. My path clearly isn’t an easy one and I realize that I need to not let the expectations and impressions of others dictate what and how I do. Perhaps if there’s some way to find my way back to those not-nearly-long-enough summers and that feeling I had so long ago.

It was late, well past midnight and it was the last day I was going to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area before heading off to college. I had called in to Live 105 and was chatting with Big Rick Stuart who was jockeying between our phone call and the on air play. Rick came on the air and wished me a safe trip and played a song to send me off. That was the kind of radio station Live 105 was.

Mark Hamilton was a DJ at Live 105. He was the voice you’d also hear promoting the DJ’s spinning tunes down at One Step Beyond or The X nightclub. He was surrounded by great music and great people. So it was a fantastic revelation (Back in 1994) to find that he landed here in Portland at the very young KNRK. I met him at one of the early KNRK snowball shows, the one with Everclear and No Doubt. He seemed like a great guy.

Unfortunately it seems that Mark has forgotten what makes a great radio station. Over time he tweaked the playlist favoring retreading bands like Sublime over debuting new music and new artists. Sublime might be a slightly notable band but I doubt they should be continually haunting the airwaves of an alternative station.

Recently KNRK did a major revamp to their playlist, out was most of the new or truly alternative music (except for bands coming to town in KNRK sponsored events) and in were classics. KNRK effectively remade themselves into a Rock Mix station. The switch started gradually, with ‘classic alternative’ artists like David Bowie. Listen to KNRK for 2 hours and you’ll hear classic Bowie at least once….Then came bands like The Cars and Tom Petty. Tune in enough and you’ll wonder if KNRK hasn’t fused with KGON. At times even KUFO is more alternative… Which is sad.

Perhaps KNRK is a victim of its own success. Late last year their morning show with Greg Glover began to beat the competition. Perhaps that taste of popular success fueled them on to chase the popular audience. But what used to be a fairly descent alternative station is gone. Many of the good people are still there. Greg is smart guy, knows his music and takes risks (Listen to his Bottom Forty Sunday Nights). Gustav is still the friendliest face of the station, his perfect playlist and track 7 show he wants the station to be a good one. Tara is just plain great, she knows what’s going on, but she’s as powerless to fix it as anyone.

It all boils down to Mark Hamilton… Program director. Who has made a major misstep with the station by building a playlist that simply isn’t alternative. At my home office I’ve switched of KNRK and listen to KEXP online. KEXP, based in Seattle, ironically is the station supporting MusicFest NW (while local KNRK is notably absent). I hear new music via myspace and am more likely to fire up my mp3 player than my radio…

Next year Community Supported KZME 91.1 is set to launch. If KZME follows KEXP’s model it could give KRNK a serious run for its money. Until then fans of alternative music need to email Mark Hamilton and let him know that the playlist changes aren’t welcome, and remind them what ‘It’s Different Here’ really means. KNRK keeps saying it’s YOUR station… So tell them what YOU want.