Smells Like Green Spirit

There is, I’m sure, an endless supply of information floating around about the health benefits of veganism. I’m also sure that there is plenty of info about how the animals involved in the food industry are treated. There is some debate as to how healthy a vegan diet is, but if done right it can be of great benefit to one’s overall well-being.

But Lulu, and I’m sure many of her loyal readers, already knows most of this or at least enough to know that a vegan diet is beneficial. The problem that arises most often is maintaining the diet over a long period. This is the problem I’m going to try to address.

I became a vegetarian in 1993. Then in 1995 I changed to a vegan diet. I have followed it for the most part ever since. I would say that the majority of people that I’ve met in that time have come and gone from the veg diet. I’ve even known some militant vegans who conspired to perform terrorist activities towards animal testing facilities and meat factories, protesting violently anywhere they could get some people together. A year later they were eating meat again.

Obviously some people get behind these causes as a fad or to be a part of the “scene,” but even for the dedicated veg it can be hard to stay the course. Whenever someone asks me about it or for advice, i try to explain to them that it’s more important to do what you can rather than to try to stay vegan or vegetarian at all costs. One doesn’t have to prove themselves to anyone. There aren’t vegan police (really) to “bust” you every time you “break the law.” You set the pace that you are comfortable with. If you want to be vegan but can’t maintain it, maybe just say, “I’m going to try to eat as many vegan meals as i can this week.” Just doing little things like that can make changes in the long run.

One thing that I (surprisingly) have to remind some vegans about is that throughout history most people have always eaten an omnivorous diet. With modern conveniences and society, many of us now have the luxury of choice and though it seems that maintaining a vegan diet is difficult, it is much easier today than it was even 10 years ago. Even still, it is important to remember that many people in the world do not have such an easy choice. Many Eskimos and island peoples are dependent on fish to survive. People living in desert regions that bear little vegetation are also often dependent on meat as a main source of nutrition.

Keeping that in mind, it’s quite pointless to attack people for eating meat or dairy, etc., but that doesn’t make the cause any less important. I’ve found that encouragement is a much more effective tool than arguing to attract people to a healthier diet. And if they don’t have people yelling at them about how evil they are because there’s a trace of an animal product in the food they’re eating, they’re more likely to stick with it. 

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I’ve stumbled across this blog several times when doing various google searches for things related to my own blog, so I wanted to tell all you dear readers about the Fake Plastic Fish blog. 

The author Beth Terry is from Oakland, California, and her blog’s tagline is “Fake Plastic Fish… they’re cute, and if we don’t solve our plastic problem, they could be the only kind we have left.”

The blog catalogues her struggles to eliminate plastic from her life, with yesterday’s blog writing about her giving up shampoo!

Check it out, and hopefully Beth can inspire us all to cut down on our plastics! 

Here’s a cute picture of Beth with all her plastics when she first began her blog, from Fake Plastic Fish:

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IF THE NAME FITS…

I heard on NPR yesterday that Lady Bird had passed away. I’ve always wondered why someone could, in good conscience, name a child “Lady Bird,” but apparently her real name was Claudia, and Lady Bird was just a nickname a nurse gave her at the age of two, as she was as “purdy as a lady bird.” Though Claudia hated the nickname, it stuck! Later in life she garnered another nickname, that of the Environmental First Lady.

Never much of a history buff, I never knew until yesterday that Lady Bird was hugely responsible for the beautification of our nation’s highways and cities with native plants and wildflowers, and though her work was largely overshadowed by the rocky presidency of her husband, she worked to eliminate pollution, urban decay, and poverty as well.

Lady Bird was criticized by some for her lack of style and glamour like that of her predecessor Jackie Onassis, but though she did entertain with her Texas charm in the White House, she was more concerned with preserving and increasing America’s natural beauty. Pretty cool, huh?

Here’s some history of the li’l lady in case you’re interested…

oil on canvas 16″ x 20″ painting by Laura Callier

THE “ENVIRONMENTAL FIRST LADY’S” LEGACY IN THE CAPITAL

Many people think of Lady Bird while driving along a highway surrounded by blooming wildflowers. The Highway Beautification Act of 1965 was the first major legislative campaign begun by a first lady, and received the nickname “Lady Bird’s Bill” because of her support. The act encouraged the control of outdoor advertising and junkyards along highways and the planting of native wildflowers to beautify the roadside. As a part of this .25 - 1 % of funds for the landscaping of highways is allocated for the planting of native plants and wildflowers.

She created the Committee for a More Beautiful Capital to beautify DC and make it an example city for the whole nation. Beyond just planting gardens around the capital building itself, Lady Bird inspired businesses to beautify parks and low income areas as well, and she concerned herself with pollution, urban decay, and the mental health of cities’ residents.

Lady Bird worked hard to preserve and conserve historic and natural sites, even helping to prevent the construction of dams in the Grand Canyon and the creation of the Redwoods National Park.

BEAUTIFICATION OF THE LONE STAR STATE

After Lyndon left office, Lady Bird focused her efforts in Austin, becoming one of the leading forces behind the 10 mile hike and bike trail along the Colorado River, and working on the Town Lake Beautification project in the 70s.

Starting in 1969, for twenty years Lady Bird worked for the beautification of Texas Highways, personally paying those who did the best work as a part of her Texas Highway Beautification Awards, and eventually creating the National Wildflower Center in 1982.

SOME QUOTES:

First Lady Betty Ford: “Her beautification programs benefited the entire nation. She translated her love for the land and the environment into a lifetime of achievement.”

wildflower.org: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center “The Wildflower Center is the capstone of her lifelong commitment to the nation’s environment…it’s become one of the country’s most effective voices for protecting native plants, natural landscapes and ecological health.”

“I think there is no legacy she would more treasure than to have helped people recognize the value in preserving and promoting our native land,” Luci Baines Johnson said in a statement after her death.

pbs.org
“Getting on the subject of beautification is like picking up a tangled skein of wool,” she wrote in her diary on January 27, 1965. “All the threads are interwoven — recreation and pollution and mental health, and the crime rate, and rapid transit, and highway beautification, and the war on poverty, and parks — national, state and local. It is hard to hitch the conversation into one straight line, because everything leads to something else.”

Sources:

wildflower.org

lbjlib.utexas.edu

pbs.org

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