Who Speaks For Wolf

Buy Nothing Day!!

Today is Buy Nothing Day!  It's a great time to sit back and contemplate where all our consumer dollars go.  What are we supporting when we buy certain items?  Institutionalized animal cruelty?  Unfair labour practices?  Ecological destruction?  It's worth taking stock of which corporations we support in our day to day lives.  So, for one day, try not to buy anything. 

I think it's actually rather freeing in our consumerist culture to contemplate not participating in the market for one entire day of the year.  Many of us who advocate for animals don't have a lot of money to spend in the first place but we still buy products.  On the busiest shopping day of the year it would be great to actually see a world-wide dip in retailer profits just to recognize the impact of keeping our change in our pockets and making do with what we already have.

My store, Comondi,  won't be accepting any sales today but feel free to visit the site for some suggestions should you get antsy about taking the spree out of spending.

Animals WERE harmed during the making of this motion picture

Just discovered a new blog which I love, Eric Prescott's An Animal-Friendly life.  It's like our minds are linked.  :-)  And he offers a plethora of information about animal concerns.

Anyway, was reading through his archives and found this post regarding the re-make of "My Friend Flicka".  I figure it's important for audience members to know that in making this family friendly movie, a wild horse did die, hopefully giving Hollywood pause when it uses wild animals in movie-making.

Some Favourite Sites

I did want to share a few wonderful sites so that more people will visit them and find out about the wonderful work that is being done on behalf of animals.  They range from sanctuaries who care for domestic animals to groups who see no dividing line between human and animal.

Rolling Dog Ranch Animal Sanctuary - I love this place.  It is a sanctuary set up by a devoted couple who care for disabled animals, including blind and deaf horses, dogs and cats.  They are a daily inspiration for me and their blog is, hands down, my favourite on the web.  Throughout all the hard times and sad moments, Steve and Alayne seem to retain their sense of humour and their grounded perspective.  This place is truly a haven in every sense of the word. Please visit.  Once you read their blog you'll never be able to go a day without finding out which sleeping position best suits Widget today or where Travis will choose to play "King of the Mountain".

Animals Asia - Often we are told to start in our own backyard with domestic issues.  And this is, of course, true.  But as an animal advocate it is difficult to ignore the monumental suffering that takes place in countries around the globe.  This organization is a wonderful example of one woman's encounter with cruelty and her commitment to stopping it.  It is a tribute to the staff and volunteers of Animals Asia that they can witness unspeakable acts of brutality everyday but still work towards compromise and education, recognizing that cultural differences mean different starting points in people's relationships with animals. 

I am particularly taken with the China Bear Rescue.  Perhaps it's because I'm a claustrophobic. When these animals, who have been trapped in tiny cages for 20 years, are finally freed and gingerly place their maimed paws on grass for the first time, my soul does backflips and everything in me sings.  Freedom.  Something that should be denied no living creature.  Animals Asia gives these bears back their lives; they feel sun, they snuggle with their own and they really do have teddybear picnics. I dare you not to smile.

Angels Gate Hospice - a place where domestic animals are able to go when they are no longer wanted by their families or when they are disabled or in failing health.  A true mission of the heart.  A place of hope and comfort.  And, yet even these people are being challenged by the status quo, challenged by neighbours who believe "the quality of mercy" is being strained.  They are trying to oust Angels Gate from their home and, in so doing, are potentially paving the way for legislation which would make it difficult for ANY animal rescue to operate in the vicinity.  If you live in the States and in New York State particularly, please write to the local authorities to condemn their actions.

The Beginning of Comondi

While flailing around desperately trying to alight on some way to help animals and align my passions with my day-to-day need to earn money, I remember placing an order at an online store in the States.  My roomie and I were very excited about all the super-duper organic, vegan, eco-friendly items we were about to have delivered to our door in a few weeks.  These American online stores offered so many great items that we'd never even heard of!!  It was an eco-vegan shopping paradise.  Then, it happened.  We went to check out and there was no province listing, no ability to input a Canadian postal code.  Ohio had a lot of the same letters as Ontario but I didn't think it was gonna cut it.  What was going on?  How were my super-duper products going to get to me if I couldn't give them my address?  Back to the Shipping page; crap, they don't ship to Canada.  About the 10th time this had happened to us.  All our lovely items just sitting in their virtual shopping cart never to make it to our welcoming doorstep.

Then it hit us - if the store is IN Canada then it has to ship to us, right?  Domestic online shopping was the solution.  It sounded easy but we actually couldn't find an online Canadian store which served as a general store for vegan, organic, fair-trade items.  So, we decided to start our own.  And so Comondi was born.

We didn't want to offer a whole new barrage of consumer goods that nobody really needed but we did want to offer alternatives to what people were already buying and would continue to buy regardless of whether we disagreed or not.  We also hoped that the items we would carry would help create positive employment for marginalized people or would support small business like us! 

Basically, we wanted people to think, "I need something to scrub my dishes with but I'd like it to be sustainable, vegan and fair-trade; where can I get such a thing?"  and then find us!  Everytime I went to buy anything for the house, be it tea towels or mops or any mundane item, I always thought "I wonder if there's a more sustainable option?"  We wanted to marry the worlds of veganism, environmentalism and fair labour.  Many products out there fit one or two of these categories but very few fit them all.  We wanted to find those products and offer them in place of the generic Walmart fodder. And that's really what Comondi is all about.  Offering alternatives to everyday items that don't destroy the earth, that contribute to a rising sun mentality.

Well, in truth, Comondi is ACTUALLY about the animals.  From the very beginning, when we sat around and discussed what this company would be, I kept saying, "It's for the animals.  It has to be about them."  So, to honour this, we donate 5% of our SALES (not just profits) to charities and non-profits advocating for animals.  Right now, it's GAN, a great Montreal based organization.  I've met the founders, Andrew and Rebecca, a few times now and really respect their dedication and compassion.  With very few resources they've managed to help so many animals and get the word out about important issues.  Canada is lucky to have them.

And we're hoping to have more links to animal activism and breaking issues so that people are educated when they come to the site. 

For those of you wondering about the ecological costs in RUNNING a business, we spent a lot of time thinking about that.  Primarily, the damaging emissions of all the trucks and planes carrying our parcels and products around the world.  It still eats at us but we had to accept that nothing is perfect, that to create change there do have to be compromises.  But, it's a start and we hope that customers feel good knowing that every dollar they spend at Comondi supports veganism, environmentalism, animals and people...the world really.  And therein lies the name. 

We spent hours and used a lot of scrap pieces of paper to come up with a name.  Finally, it just came out of a book, some book I was reading about the state of the world.  And one of the words was "amundi" which meant "without a world".  And I thought how much I didn't want that to happen, how I wanted every living being to have a world, this very world on which we sit.  And I wanted this new company to be part of that, to be truly WITH THE WORLD, WITH LIFE.  So, I figured if you added a "con", in some amalgamation of languages, that would make it "conmundi", "with the world".  And so, once we'd stylized and played with it, it became "Comondi".

And someday I hope Comondi will be a way of giving the animals back the world we've taken from them.

Image Credit: jcowboy

The Fourth Animal Advocacy Movement

Okay, I've been reading Erik Marcus' book, "Meat Market" and it makes a lot of salient points about how neither the vegetarian movement nor the animal rights movement nor the animal welfare movement have all the tools necessary to dismantle factory farming.  He makes a very persuasive argument for a fourth movement which he calls "dismantlement".  Marcus advocates casting a wide net in order to get as many people as possible involved in bringing down the factory farm industry.  Small farmers, vegetarians, parents, kids, people concerned about their health.  One doesn't need to be a vegetarian to want to see the end of factory farming.  I think Marcus' approach has real possibilities for change but more on that later.

In following Marcus' advice about making people aware of factory farming but not necessarily pushing for vegetarianism I am trying to get my friends to buy an organic, free-range turkey for their Thanksgiving festivities.  So, I found a store in Toronto called "The Healthy Butcher".  I think it's great that they are rejecting the factory farm, looking at the welfare of animals and trying to offer a more humane, healthier cut of meat.  But, as a person who would love to see the end of using animals for food, it's REALLY hard for me not to regard their slogan, "Passion for Food.  Passion For Life." as disingenuous.  "Passion for Life" is juxtaposed against a meat pot pie of some sort.  Seems to me, the passion of that life is long gone.  Regardless of how humanely an animal is treated, if we send her to slaughter there is no passion for life on our behalf.  The slogan should really be "Passion For Food.  Passion for Human Life." 

Geez...this tolerant, don't advocate veganism at every turn is gonna kill me inside isn't it?

It's Time to Slow Down

I'm sick at home with some sort of cold/flu/fever - choose your virus.  The cloggy head and dripping nose are far from relaxing but being laid up has made me realize something.  Well...not exactly realize it because I guess we all know this on some level but it certainly crystallized it for me. 

We're all living life too fast. We have a million things on the go and the only time we ever slow down is when our body screams at us "STOP!!" with flashing sore throats and siren muscles.  I know something's wrong when I actually WELCOME the breakdown of my immune system because it finally gives me permission to slow down for a little bit...to do absolutely nothing.

Why do we all feel so guilty when we're sick? How many of us have dragged ourselves to jobs we don't care about to the detriment of our health and that of others to assuage that damn Protestant work ethic that still clings to us like some stale odour from a long-forgotten sweater finally recovered from the closet?  Why do we feel we're failing when we're not juggling a zillion balls

in the air? It's become a badge of honour to say, "I only got 3 hours of sleep last night" or "I didn't get home 'til 3:00 a.m." or "I have 18 projects on the go." And those of us who actually get 8 hours of shut-eye or have an evening free or talk to our mothers feel like we're the ones in the shallow end of the gene pool wearing an inflatable alligator around our waists.

I don't think these moments of slow that illness allows us should be an exception; I think slowing down should be mandatory. Granted, on top of my sickness, I'm also reading "In Praise of Slow"...which is bad...'cos I really should just be doing nothing but I can't DO that. Even just sleeping really annoys me. It seems so boring...plus the sickness seems to pack extra clogging power when I'm horizontal.  See?  Sleep boring?  What kind of crazy talk is that?  Sleep essential?  That sounds better, Grasshopper.

We've been living in our new house for over a month and I never noticed that the fireplace in my room right beside my bed is flecked with red streaks through the green marble.  It's quite striking really but I couldn't have told you anything about that side of the room a few days ago.  Never looked.  Never had time to even notice the room in which I sleep everynight.  (Lest my dear readers mistake the preceding description as proof that I reside in a golden palace with fireplaces in every room complete with attendant chimney sweeps, I will add that we are a house of many thereby making virtually every room a bedroom by default). And doesn't this make it all the more pathetic?  To have the NOVELTY of a fireplace in one's room and never notice a thing about it?  Contract a virus my friends and take to your bed!  You will discover all sorts of details about your surroundings that may have escaped you the first 1000 sleeps.

At any rate, the Slow Food Movement described in "In Praise of Slow" seemed to me the most concrete way of getting people to truly slow down in an immediately tangible way.  We choose a day a week or a month to come home, cook from scratch and sit around the table and actually talk to each other, no DVD's, no games, just good food and good company.  We invite other friends and neighbours to get to know them better and, as an added bonus, we show them that vegan food can be delectable and mouth-watering. 

Now that I'm starting to regain my health, I'm still trying to hold onto this idea of slow.  Don't run for the subway.  Don't crowd the streetcars.  There will be another one.  Don't run across the street narrowly escaping traffic.  There's time.  There's always time.  Look up at the sky through the concrete grid.  Stop and fish out a quarter for the girl on the streetcorner with the stretched sweater and bowl-cut hair.  Stop walking so fast (I always walk too fast).  I haven't worn a watch now since we made the move...to be honest I've misplaced it.  But, it's great.  Who knew you could be everywhere you needed to be without a watch?  Remarkable.  Free the wrist.  Time is just another concept but goddamnit does it ever have a vise grip on us. 

Okay, now stop writing this post.  It's time.

Image Credit: ~§سـحــ العـيـــون ـــر§ ~ 

Who Speaks for Wolf?

In university I read a poem by Paula Underwood which has always stuck in my mind as I search for ways to make the lives of animals important to other humans, as I struggle with how to encourage humans to step outside their own heads and look at things from another perspective.  Whenever I read about cruelty to animals and think of how their suffering is constantly ignored, I think of the last lines of Underwood's poem:

And so it was
    That the People devised among themselves
        a way of asking each other questions
                whenever a decision was to be made
                                    on a New Place or a New Way
    We sought to perceive the flow of energy
        through each new possibility
                and how much was enough
                and how much was too much

Until at last
    Someone would rise
and ask the old, old question
        to remind us of things
                we do not yet see clearly enough to remember

"TELL ME NOW MY BROTHERS
   TELL ME NOW MY SISTERS
       WHO SPEAKS FOR WOLF?"

Image Credit: Alive in Calgary