 by John Beske Last Friday, Marla and I spent a beautiful autumn afternoon wandering through downtown Chicago, and we marveled at the many wonderful things we saw that are completely free for anyone willing to make the effort to experience them. We walked just a sliver of the spaces and it took us hours.  the author at Cancer Survivors Garden at Maggie Daley Park . . . We strolled through Millennium Park, Maggie Daley Park, the Cancer Survivors Garden, a gorgeous little park we found snuggled between the two famous Jeanne Gang skyscrapers (the Aqua Tower and the Vista Tower), and finally the Riverwalk, which stretches several blocks farther west of State Street than I had realized. This is just a tiny part of the open public space in the downtown area – there’s also the Lakefront Bike Trail, Oak Street Beach, The Mag Mile, Navy Pier, Grant Park, the Buckingham Fountain, Northerly Island and so much more.  Marla outside Feed Your Head Café on Chicago's Riverwalk  A section of the western part of the Riverwalk . . . Pretty much every city and small town in the country has at least one nice public place that is free for everyone to enjoy. The tiny little Minnesota farming village where I grew up had a huge beautiful park with a playground, a baseball field, a pretty lagoon where we could skate in the winter and hundreds of feet of lakefront shoreline. In Wilmette, where Marla grew up, there are many parks and of course the beautiful Gillson Park and Beach at Lake Michigan. These spaces are collectively known as Commons – cultural and natural places that are accessible to everyone. Anyone, regardless of age, race, gender or legal status, can visit any of the many public beaches in Chicago, swim in Lake Michigan, visit the many gorgeous gardens and parks throughout the Boulevard System and spend time in so many, many other public places and spaces.  Downtown Chicago in the 1860s . . . Chicago didn’t start out like this. Chicago was all natural prairie and swampland in the early 1800s and grew to a thriving metropolis in less than 50 years. Because it was on the southern tip of Lake Michigan and close to the Mississippi River watershed, it became a major trade center where millions of tons of lumber were hauled from the recently denuded forests of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. Much of this lumber became the houses, shops and other buildings of the rapidly developing city and even most of the sidewalks and many of the roads. Squished in between the sawmills and lumber yards of the downtown area were kerosene storage areas, slaughterhouses, and every manner of industry, all billowing smoke into the air and dumping their sewage into the Chicago River. City leaders went to increasingly ludicrous and sisyphean lengths to try and keep all of the toxic crud out of Lake Michigan, which the Chicago River flowed into, and was the source of Chicago’s drinking water. In all, it was a very productive but smelly, dirty and kind of unpleasant place. All this swift progress came to a sudden halt in October of 1871 when, after a particularly dry summer, the Great Chicago Fire burned down much of the city including nearly the entire central business district. Undeterred, civic leaders spread across the country crowing about the massive potential of this important city that had suddenly become a blank canvas to build on, and one of the world’s most massive building booms began in earnest. And since they didn’t want to build a new city only to have it burn down again, they developed strict building codes, requiring new buildings to be made from stone and brick rather than wood. Building was fast and furious, and by 1892, in addition to rebuilding most of the downtown, they had built a magnificent area just south of there called The White City, where they staged a huge event called the World’s Columbian Exposition. This six-month event drew massive throngs of tourists and many business leaders, artisans and visionaries were all coming to witness this amazing new modern city.  A view of the White City from the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1892. Most of the structures were temporary, but some are still around including the current Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum. . . . The chief architect of the Exposition was a man named Daniel Burnham, who, 27 years later, presented The Plan for Chicago, later known as the Burnham Plan that refashioned the city as a place for people rather than simply for industry. One key and enduring aspect of the Plan was to turn all 26 miles of Chicago’s lakefront into a publicly-owned commons that was accessible to everyone. Over the years, innovations followed that collectively led to all of the breathtaking public areas that Marla and I, along with millions of others, enjoy whenever we get the chance.  The Burnham Plan called for all 26 miles of Chicago's lakefront to be public space that was free and open to the public, including the present day Oak Street Beach . . . These commons not only improve the experience of seeing the city and its environment in new ways, but they are essential places to enjoy the freedom to speak, the freedom to gather and the freedom to confront the government and other forces and policies with which we disagree. These freedoms are fundamental to the functioning of our society and essential to our survival as a democracy. And not all commons are physical spaces. In fact, the largest commons in the history of the world is the Internet, which is, at least in concept, free to everyone, though there are lots of companies that charge people to access it. But fortunately, another wonderful commons, the public library system, offers free internet access to anyone who visits.  In 1998, we added our original little contribution to the world's largest commons . . . In 1998, we determined that we wanted to claim our tiny homestead within this vast commons, and we launched VeganStreet.com, which we envisioned as a lively home away from home for the then-nascent vegan community – a place to grow this movement. Since then, Vegan Street has grown to thousands of pages and home to a large and vibrant community, and the internet is now home to more than a billion different websites that are collectively visited by more than 5 ½ billion people to learn and to share their own stories. All of these commons, both virtual and physical, are vital to our existence. Humans are a tribal species, and from the beginning of our existence, our survival has depended on groups of people banding together in communities for mutual protection and growth. As civilizations flourished though, most people got sorted into a hierarchical system where a few people gained great wealth and power by controlling the labor and lives of the masses who worked to support them. Those who had little survived largely by the strength of the communities around them. . . . Today, in the United States and many other countries, society is still divided into haves and have-nots. The wealthy and powerful have their gated mansions, their luxury cars and boats and their exotic vacations, while many live in substandard housing with food insecurity, unsafe conditions and little room for advancement. The wealthy have always wanted to keep a disproportionate share of the riches for themselves, and have strived to distance themselves from the masses whose labor has provided them with these riches. And time and time again, they overstepped their abilities, often crashing economies, ruining countries, starting wars and destroying entire empires in the process. After one such money-grabbing period in history plunged the US economy into deep depression, a man named Franklin Roosevelt ran a successful campaign for President by promising to redistribute power from the wealthiest to the workers and farmers whose labor and goods built the country. This project, called the New Deal, made the Government into the largest employer, hiring more than 8 ½ million people to build roads, bridges and buildings and to staff schools and hospitals among many occupations.  The Common Man author, Vice President Henry Wallace, with The New Deal and Four Freedom's author, President Franklin Roosevelt . . . A major goal of all of this was summed up in a powerful speech Roosevelt delivered at the dawn of the US entry into WW2 called The Four Freedoms that compelled Norman Rockwell to create his famous Four Freedoms series of paintings, as well as the brilliant 1942 speech by his Vice President Henry Wallace called The Century of the Common Man, where he articulated the need for a society built around the needs and abilities of ordinary citizens rather than those of the rich and powerful. This speech inspired Aaron Copland to compose his iconic Fanfare for the Common Man and helped propel the burgeoning civil rights and labor movements.  The Four Freedoms paintings by Norman Rockwell. Clockwise from upper left: Freedom of Worship, Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear . . . This redistribution of wealth led to decades of prosperity and growth in the US that led to the development of the middle class, the expansion of higher education and the rapid growth of urban areas. The millions of people who migrated to these cities and surrounding areas, as well as the tourists who wished to visit them, required beautiful spaces that were available to everyone, and the wealth generated by the workers, businesses and visitors supplied the capital to make them achievable. Now, the US is engaged in a powerful division between those who want to keep these commons and freedoms for everyone and those who want to continue degrading the middle class and working class by funneling more wealth, power and rights to those who already have more than they need or deserve. Nearly half of the country is willing and ready to throw away these commons and freedoms we enjoy. They are ready to elect a leader who wants to use military force to quell peaceful dissent, to arrest journalists for reporting the truth and punish anyone who speaks ill of him. They are beholden to a would-be dictator who has pledged to build internment camps to send American citizens for the crime of not being of the same race or culture as his, and who wants to take away the right to control their own bodies and futures from more than one-half of our own citizens. The other half of us believe in freedom and Democracy and the right for all of us to have agency over our own beliefs and futures. Let’s all fight for the preservation of all of these commons that we all hold so dear. Make sure that everyone you know votes on November 5th. Our country, our children, our way of life, our rights and our future all depend on it. 
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 It’s September, so the back-to-school vibes are still in the air, right? Even when we have long been out of classroom mode, the school calendar year continues to be imprinted on our psyches. The excitement, the anxiety, the hopes, the butterflies in the stomach, and, yes, the existential dread. There are ways to improve your odds of having a good year at school without needing to go full Carrie White on anyone, though, and I think we can apply some of those same lessons to transitioning to veganism, whether it’s new for you or another try. I’ve put together a list of useful back-t0-school tips that are also relevant to a successful shift to veganism, plus one bonus suggestion to give you a great start. Fulbright scholars don’t happen overnight and neither does going from omnivore to vegan usually. Expect that there will be some bumps and mishaps, brush yourself off, and get back to it. Remember, no one is grading you, going to send you to the principal’s office or suspending you. Just do your best and remember, one day at a time.
Gather Your Supplies What is back-to-school without a bunch of nice, sharp pencils, a pair of scissors, some glue sticks or whatever technologies have replaced them today? It’s the same with transitioning to a vegan lifestyle. Being prepared gives you a feeling of confidence, which can’t be beat. This is not to say that you need to spend a lot of money, either. If you’d like to start the day with a nutrition-packed smoothie or overnight oats, make sure you have the items you need – for example, a blender, or the ingredients – so you are not left high and dry when you are in need. It’s common sense, yes, but too often people who are new at something are ill-prepared. I don’t know about you, but I make regrettable, impulsive choices when I feel desperate, and if I feel hunger pangs along with an empty kitchen, I start to feel desperate. Just like you wouldn’t show up the first day of school with an empty backpack, you need to make sure you have the things you need for positive outcomes for a vegan life. Think about what groceries, pantry items and frozen items you like to have on hand to make a quick, plant-based meal without much forethought. (I have a list to get you started.) Also, think about what simple kitchen tools or gadgets might make it easier for a vegan home and life. How can you slowly transition your wardrobe in a way that doesn’t break the bank? (Second hand, baby!) Non-tangible supplies, including apps, can also be very helpful. Choose Your Crowd Wisely Just like at school, don’t put yourself around people who delight in making you feel stupid, beneath them, like a failure. This is true of our vegan community as well, both in person and online. There is a certain personality that just loves to make those around them feel bad and you just don’t need that in your life as someone who is charting a new course. A successful transition to veganism is made that much easier by choosing supportive, helpful, kind and encouraging peers in the vegan world. Does that mean dropping out or even just easing up on visiting that toxic vegan Facebook group full of confrontational and rude commenters? Maybe. Does it mean that you don’t need to like or even get along with every vegan? Definitely. The flip side of this is the value of finding people who bring out the best in you and encourage you as a newbie vegan. It’s easier said than done to find community, but, again, we’ve got ideas. Community can be one person – perhaps a mentor – and it can be a bunch of people. The main takeaway is to find yourself a vegan squad that brings out your best. Don’t Give Bullies the Satisfaction There will be people all over who may be seriously aggrieved about your burgeoning veganism, from family members to perfect strangers on the internet. What a bully needs more than anything is oxygen and it is your obligation when you are in their crosshairs to deprive them of it. Absolutely, if you want to throw out a zinger or two, I am not going to deny you this singular pleasure, but I will say that going back-and-forth with someone who is determined to get under your skin is a losing proposition. What they need in order to successfully bully you is your continued attention. Keep it moving, friend. They don’t deserve your precious time or peace. Do Your Homework Again, you don’t want to show up unprepared. Homework might have some old baggage for you, but basically this category means to be informed. For example, you might want to have a conversation with a well-informed medical professional you trust on any issues you might need to address as you’re transitioning to make sure your needs are covered. Doing your homework means finding some recipes you enjoy. Doing your homework might mean if you are going to an event, find out if they have a vegan option for you and, if not, make sure your needs are met. Doing your homework might mean if you are going to speak on a subject related to veganism or animal cruelty, you are comfortably knowledgeable on it. Keep Your Eyes on Your Own Work This isn’t an admonishment against cheating as much as a reminder that you are not competing with anyone else’s experience in your vegan transition. If someone else seems to have had an easier time of it, maybe that is all they are showing you, but also, honestly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is your own transition. It’s not a competition, it’s also not a race. Aim to do a little better every day and you should get where you want to be with much less stress and self-doubt. Remember: Each meal and every day are another opportunity to live in alignment with your vegan goals. Extra credit: Choose Your Teachers If we could have chosen our own teachers in school, that would have been so nice, wouldn’t it? Just because we weren’t able to, it shouldn’t stop you from being choosy about your teachers now in the vegan world. Whether they be podcasters or authors, people you meet in person or on social media, you have an opportunity to find teachers who work the best with how you learn. Even being vegan for nearly 30 years, I continue to have many vegan teachers, just like I did at the beginning. As with choosing your crowd, find teachers who extend grace and compassion as you’re learning and help you to shine. Whether or not this is someone you meet in person is beside the point. The goal is that they help you to learn and thrive. Okay, kids, clear your desks: Pop quiz time. Does soy contain estrogen? Just kidding, there are no pop quizzes here. Just relax and you will shine. PS - The correct answer is NO!  Back in the day, “the day” meaning the 1990s, we really didn’t know how to make vegan burgers that could withstand a grill and it wasn’t until fairly recently that they were commercially available. As if being the vegan at the grill-out wasn’t awkward enough, having your burger break in dry, sad pieces to be engulfed in flames upped the ante a bit. So we resigned ourselves to our vegan weenies in cans and drowned our sorrows in mustard. Anyway, the point is, things are much, much better for the vegan burgers in general these days, not just what can be purchased, but recipe developers have been busy innovating some really tasty burgers that can withstand the grill. (Oh, the hot dogs are so much better, too.) If you’re wanting to practice your burger flipping skillz before the end of summer, give one of these recipes a try. Some feature beans, some grains, some mushrooms, some nuts, some wheat gluten, but with an open mind and a willingness to give it a try, you should find a grillable vegan burger that is perfect for you. Don’t forget: The condiments are where it’s at, too! Best Veggie Burgers via Nora Cooks Grillable Veggie Burgers via Sweet Simple Vegan The Best Grillable Veggie Burgers via Make Your Meals Best Veggie Burgers via Love and Lemons The Ultimate Veggie Burger for Grilling via The Kitchn The Best Seitan Burger via It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken The Best Burger Recipe via The Cheeky Chickpea Black Bean Burgers via Healthy Girl Kitchen Actually Grillable Black Bean Burgers via The First Mess Easiest Ever Grilled Veggie Burgers via Bon Appétit Looking for store bought burgers that hold up great on the grill? Check out this list from VegNews. Marla Rose is cofounder of VeganStreet.com.  Hey, all! John and I were so lucky and happy to be able to attend the most recent National Restaurant Association Show this year in Chicago and (if I am not mistaken), I think this is the third time. By year three, I have most of my strategy honed: The booths I most wanted to visit, plans for charging my phone, the most comfortable shoes, left-over containers from home (I hate waste!) and, perhaps most of all, not eating everything that’s vegan just because it’s there. You’ve got to prioritize and save room, baby! It ain’t easy but each year, I think I get a little better at it. Even though the show isn’t exclusively plant-based, we have so many options, new ones each year. I can’t pretend that this show was very different from previous ones, but it’s always fun to try new brands and products as well as see new developments. If I can say anything about this show that stood out to me, it’s the continued innovation not so much in ingredients, but, rather, a return to simpler ingredients and an improvement of texture. Some of these items, like Chunk Foods whole cuts and Oshi’s vegan salmon really nail the separating, flaking texture. The umami, the plant-based world already had down. The textural innovations are really where we've made remarkable gains. Take a look at what stood out to us at this year’s show… Day One  Daiya - hey, Daiya!   Oshi vegan salmon with chimichurri sauce -- yum!   Chunk Foods -- whole slabs and cuts, you all, and so good!     Armored Fresh - so creamy!  Kourellas vegan feta  Lotus Energy Drinks -- I do not understand the sorcery of this product but it is SO good!  Mooji Meats -- jabba what?!    AQUA Cultured Foods - check out these scallops!  Click here to edit UNLIMEAT - delicious options from Korea.  Better Balance, mmm!   Jinka - Vegan "see food" that is just delicious.  Taking a ride on the cheesy mac swing  No biggy, just running into Ms. Pinky Cole . . . Day Two  Milkadamia loves me! Okay, I might just love it back.  WYNK Seltzer - you best I will!   Worthington - OGs represent.    John's going to fry!  Tofurky - OGs again! . . . Day Three  AcreMade - the sponge cake made with their egg replacer was so good!   Prime Roots - it's a brave new world, you all! Here for it.  Wicked Kitchen - can't be beat.  Let's end on a Wicked Kitchen drumstick, shall we?
 Animal agribusiness snares so much in its wake and someone has to be the messenger. I guess it’s us. by Marla Rose On Monday, John and I were running an errand so we listened to an episode of The New York Times podcast, The Daily. This episode, released on Earth Day, was about the reverberations of 2020’s avian flu strain outbreak, ongoing, morphing and the worst in U.S. history. It has been ripping through farms and, more recently, crossing into new species as well as reaching wider than ever, found as far away as Antarctica, where the bird flu had never been seen before but now it is reaching penguin populations, already challenged by other human-made or exacerbated catastrophes. The bird flu, known as H5N1, is spread when waterfowl, like geese and ducks, shed the virus as they roam and migrate, spreading to chicken and egg-laying facilities, where it is much more fatal. So far, more than 90 million farmed birds in the U.S. have died as a result of this iteration of the avian flu, mostly due to mass culls on farms, which are reimbursed by the government for chickens that are preemptively slaughtered but not those that died on their own of the virus. This incentivises culls rather than taking the risk with razor-thin profit margins and it was why the cost of eggs was so high a couple of years ago. As those of us paying attention know now and as The Daily dives into, H5N1 is spreading to other bird species that are also vulnerable to it in ways that geese and ducks are not, having adapted to the virus: Not so fortunate are the eagles, condors, pelicans, owls and seabirds that were referenced in the array of news clips shared on the podcast. Some of us also know that there is now bird flu found in cows on dairy farms in eight states, where it has been mild to the carriers so far but transmitting quickly due to the crowded nature of many farming facilities, and a dairy farm worker has tested positive. It has also been found in foxes, bobcats, bears, even a bottlenose dolphin, as well as reaching South America, where it has devastated sea mammals that cluster together in colonies, like sea lions and seals. The bird flu was so deadly to elephant seal pups, which have no immunity, that it is estimated 17,000 died in Argentina last year alone, losing almost an entire new population of pups to this virus, a mortality scientists estimate to be 95 percent. As the bird flu expands its reach, it gets more virulent and adaptive, more likely to spread to companion animals and, indeed, to us. . . . My partner and I create new content every week to try to expose the hidden corners of animal agribusiness and promote alternatives to the expansive harm of eating animals and their co-products. We create memes, recipes, essays and guides in our outreach, and have specifically addressed the particular ecological nightmare of this strain numerous times. My point is not to get acknowledgement but to say, this is our life’s work, this is what we do. Despite that, despite being vegan since the 1990s, there are times, like when hearing about the wiping out of an entire new generation of elephant seals, makes me wonder what good any of this effort is when we are just viewed as sanctimonious vegans, the finger-wagging enemies of fun nobody summoned. . . . I have this thing where when I immerse myself in stories like this, even when I already know what is happening, it feels like there is a weight on my chest that is just pushing and pushing. There are some ways to relieve some of that pressing weight: Taking walks, suspending myself in water, kissing my animals. One of the trustiest, though, is creating more content. If I can just say it the right way, if I can just create the recipe that would make someone consider leaving animals off their plates, if I can expose people to veganism with a conference or free festival, imagine t-shirts with the perfect marriage of text and image, maybe that weight on my chest will lift a bit. It’s temporary, I know that now, but it’s something, until the next time I get pressed and find relief. In those fleeting moments, it’s a feeling of lightness, freedom and alignment that is hard to describe but I am forever in pursuit of it. . . . After the podcast, that familiar weight on my chest was pressing down hard. I said to John, “What can we do? I mean, other than letting people know that it’s happening and there are other options, what can we do?” “I don’t know,” he said, in a plaintive tone. “Keep doing what we do, I guess. Keep trying.” . . . The vegans I know don’t especially enjoy being the messenger, but when the world is in freefall, someone has to be. Because we know what we know and we feel what we feel, we are often the ones who take on this role. We have to: We want people to know, thinking, perhaps naively, that if people knew what was happening, they would act, they would stop being complicit. Nobody likes a scold, though, nobody likes a complainer. I don’t enjoy being doom-and-gloom but it is either expose myself and try to advocate for change or just put blinders on, keep my head down and keep it moving. I also don’t want to sound like a martyr: This is just the weight we carry in knowing what we know and trying to do the responsible thing by trying to open eyes and create change. I don’t want anyone to think this is my normal state. It is not. I am genuinely happy most of the time. But on days like Monday, the weight and the responsibility of that weight can feel unbearable. . . . The other day, I was scrolling and I saw an image of the most adorable lambs. (Is there any other kind?) The caption read, “It’s that time of the year when my local farming friends send me photos of Spring lambs.” The lambs, their innocent eyes and knobby knees, mouths curling up in natural smiles, who could possibly see something ugly in that? I could. First, they were identified as “farming friends,” not animal rescuers, so I generally am going to assume these farming friends were in meat production. Maybe, maybe not. Second, Spring lamb refers to both the animals and the flesh: Spring lamb, the body of a three-to-five-month-old baby sheep, is considered very tender flesh, a delicacy. Third, the lambs had ear tags, which are used by farmers for identification purposes and to link the lambs to their mother ewes, to figure out who produces the most prolifically and had lambs at the highest slaughter weight. I tried to scroll on, I usually do, but the pressing was there on my chest. I had to comment. I commented on the post to the effect of, yes, they are beautiful but it is sad that they are likely going to be slaughtered like so many other lambs called Spring lambs. Yes, I could be wrong. Yes, they could be at a sanctuary. I admitted that this was an assumption but, not knowing the details, a fairly safe and educated assumption to make. I commented, though, not to be a party pooper but to help people connect the dots to the adorable lambs and other animals they eat. Before long, I was told by one person to just enjoy the picture, stop making assumptions and projecting negativity. Someone else told me to enjoy a 10-calorie head of cabbage. (???) It wasn’t surprising. I was crashing the party of better-not-knowing. I expected it. . . . I know how to have fun and actually I prioritize it because otherwise, I would have burned out long ago. To the people who think in binaries, that you are either a joyless scold or an empty-headed fool, there is a vast middle ground. It’s not either/or. When you know, though, there are some dark times that are unavoidable. It is the price of connecting to what motivates you. Then you – or at least I – have to do something with the weight of it. Sometimes it is the crushing heaviness of it that relieves the weight, at least a little of it. It’s become too much to carry so I escape into blanking out, into some sheltering numbness. The pressing on my chest will return, as will healthier coping mechanisms. For now, between numbness and finding my power again, I am hanging out in this liminal, limbo space. You all. It is just so sad sometimes. . . .
 “The reward feels good, and we keep doing what others want us to do in order to get the reward. With that fear of being punished and that fear of not getting the reward, we start pretending to be what we are not, just to please others, just to be good enough for someone else.” - Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements When I first heard about Facebook, I was leery. What is this thing? So you type what you’re thinking and people comment? Like a message board or…? Also: Why did I need this? I was happily living my life when a friend of mine from college who lives many miles away encouraged me to join, telling me that all our old friends were there, that we could catch up and share funny memories. I created a profile, figuring I would leave after a month or two, no harm, no foul. It’s been fifteen years now. I’m not proud of this, I am not particularly ashamed, those are just the facts. Yes, I have had fun reconnecting with old friends and my life has been enriched beyond measure by meeting some new ones but I have returned to that initial place of wariness with the platform – actually more so, because I know more – and have been for some time now. I’m not expressing anything revolutionary or new here. Lots of people have left for a multitude of reasons. I’m just going to try to dive into one here: That utterly human desire to be seen. . . . Facebook, and all social media, is weirdly addictive in ways that I don’t think we fully anticipated, in the ways it presses on our dopamine-seeking behaviors. You know how when you start eating potato chips, they taste great but then before you know it, you can’t stop, even when you know that you’re no longer enjoying them, even when you feel icky, even when you’re regretting it in real time? It’s like having hands with a mind of their own, compulsively reaching for something that you know in your overriding brain will make you feel worse in the having of it. A few potato chips, a few minutes on social media? No problem. But when something lights up the reward centers in our brain, it’s not so easy to set limits. This is not weakness or lack of discipline, it’s how we are designed. Most of us have had the experience of how “Just one more minute” of scrolling turns into 20 more minutes, turns into an hour, turns into, “Where did my night go?,” and turns into, “When was the last time I actually read a book?” It’s us pitted against us. I am not shrugging off our individual responsibilities here. I am saying this is how the platform works if you’re not careful with it. This is what it was designed to do by very smart people. We are supposed to be driven to log on and we are compelled by factors large, like loneliness or boredom, and small, like very easy, free access, to stay on. There is so much more that is harmful about the social media platforms, of course. Issues with privacy, surveillance capitalism, lack of user support, the prevalence of hate speech, the pushing of the algorithm that keeps us both in our bubbles and deeply divided. These criticisms are all valid, all worth deep consideration. . . . Does Facebook, or do any of these platforms, owe us anything, though? They’re free, aren’t they? No one is forcing us to use them. In a hyper-libertarian, strictly transactional point-of-view, perhaps it is this cut-and-dried. However, it is our utilization of these social media platforms – the audiences, users, makers, scrollers, influencers, whatever we are considered when we are on one – that has made the tech companies extremely rich in this attention economy. Given that, I would say that this relationship is an exchange, not a thoughtful gift to us, because they would be worthless without our use, and they owe us responsible, transparent practices. Further, this exchange is not balanced and is weighted to their benefit. The second point, that no one is forcing us to use the platforms, is also correct. Our dopamine, though, may have a different opinion on that. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps us to feel pleasure as part of the brain’s reward system, reinforcing certain choices with the release of its feel-good hormone as part of our survival, which is why it is also so intertwined with addiction. It is that duality of dopamine these platforms excel at tapping into, seemingly superficially, but dopamine centers are not discriminatory or high-brow; they are seeking pleasure, not due to hedonism but because that is how we are wired for survival. It doesn’t matter much to your system if the dopamine is rewarding something that is good for our overall well-being or not, whether you’re savoring a delicious meal with your partner, enjoying a hobby or getting compliments on your most recently uploaded profile picture. It is that an ephemeral but delicious rush of dopamine feels better than not having it. The social media platforms that hack into your dopamine clearly cut both ways: If your sad post about a break up gets just a couple of “care reacts” and no comments or you find yourself plummeting into self-flagellation because you see a happy photo of a group of your friends going out to something you weren’t invited to while you were scrolling, it hurts. I am not trying to diminish this, either. As much as social media has been excellent at hacking our brains, it cannot fully circumvent our deeply human wiring for connection, meaning and belonging. When this is undermined, it can actually feel threatening. A group of your friends going out together without you? Is that such a big deal? No, but to the primal part of your brain, this means you are excluded, you’ve been cast out, you are at actual physical risk. This drive-to-survive part of our wiring is why seemingly benign things can feel so fraught on the platforms. We might feel silly about it but it’s as real as the dopamine release we seek. One behavior we may adopt in search of more dopamine hits is to curate what we post about our lives, among other things. It’s understandable that we bend to positive reinforcement like how plants move toward sunlight. But at what cost? . . . When I started on Facebook, this playing to the crowd felt oddly familiar. It reminded me of when I was in my early 20s and dabbling in the performance poetry scene in Chicago at the place where it got famous, The Green Mill. The Uptown Poetry Slam was and is a Sunday night fixture there but when I started going, I was just a young woman who was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Enter the poetry slams. A poetry slam is a competition between poets in front of an audience. At the end of the night, a poet and their poem is decided by judges and sometimes the audience as the winner of that slate of performers. My roommate and I lived ten minutes away from The Green Mill, and she was a fabulous wordsmith so she suggested we check it out.
I went a few times and enjoyed it enough but being a spectator isn’t my jam so I wanted to be on the stage performing what I wrote as well. In college, I had some experience with performance art and improv, and, yes, I am a natural ham, so I thought, “Why not?” I liked to write, too, so entering myself into the mix seemed like an easy decision. Writing and trying to memorize a new poem each week was a new challenge for me that I enjoyed. From the start, I wrote poems to try to put the Jack Kerouac fan-boys who reigned supreme at The Green Mill in their place: My poems were feminist, dripping with sarcasm, mocking poetic tropes, and fully contradicted by my intentionally doe-eyed, over-the-top girly-girl delivery. Basically, the audience did not know what to do with me, this sweet-and-sour combination in the mini-skirt and platform shoes, so they shrugged and loved me because I was novel and funny. The meaner and the more biting I got, the more confused they became and improbably, the better I was received. I noticed this, of course, so I started to do some hacking of my own. Week after week, I finessed, sharpened and honed in on how I was going to win through increasingly trenchant verse. I wrote on lunch breaks; I rehearsed in the bathtub. And without fail, the crowd hollered, whistled, guffawed and shouted words of drunken praise. Each time, it seemed like the audience moved up in their seats in anticipation of what audaciousness was going to come out of my cherubic mouth. They rewarded it with the popular vote but the leader of the slam did not like me. Perhaps he saw how it was more about me manipulating a response than the poetry; I also think he noticed he was losing control of the audience. (He was also kind of a dick.) To be honest, though, the content of my poems became less and less the point. The point was to get the reaction I wanted. When I got honest about that, I lost my joy for it. I had cracked the nut. I saw that as I got popular at the poetry slams, nuance was torpedoed for cheers. Sensitivity was sacrificed for attention. Depth was abandoned for cheap, easy but reliable popularity. I had trained myself to only aim for a riotous reception, the lowest common denominator, and I was getting tired of it. To a writer, or really any artist or person with a message or someone just wanting to have connection, positive feedback is akin to catnip, not because we want to be liked necessarily (though that is part of our survival wiring), but because we want to be seen. And skewing ourselves to the likes, the claps and the shares is an intoxicating poison to an independent, creative spirit. Electrifying and rewarding at first, yes, but stultifying and perhaps deadly. So this is to say that I am not leaving Facebook, but I have my eyes on a different platform, one that is healthier for human beings and honest communication, one that does not sell with our privacy to whomever is buying. It’s what my husband and I have been envisioning and developing for more than two years. It’s about to emerge in the world. I feel like how I felt when I decided I wanted to be free of catering to what the audience at the Green Mill wanted of me. I feel free, I feel back to myself and I want this for all of us. Part two, coming soon…  Hi, Mark - Nice to meet you. How are you? So obviously icebreakers and small talk are not my thing but so I will just tell you why I’m writing to you. I couldn’t help but notice you posted a picture on January 9 of an enormous steak in the foreground and you sitting with a pink slab of meat on your plate, grinning, hands seemingly eager to slice, on the table. You kind of looked like a kid at his birthday party, excited for his cake. I couldn’t help but notice the post because I’d been tagged and messaged about it at least a dozen times from people wanting me to comment on it. First, though, after seeing the picture, I had to read your words. You wrote: “Started raising cattle at Ko'olau Ranch on Kauai, and my goal is to create some of the highest quality beef in the world. The cattle are wagyu and angus, and they'll grow up eating macadamia meal and drinking beer that we grow and produce here on the ranch. We want the whole process to be local and vertically integrated. Each cow eats 5,000-10,000 pounds of food each year, so that's a lot of acres of macadamia trees. My daughters help plant the mac trees and take care of our different animals. We're still early in the journey and it's fun improving on it every season. Of all my projects, this is the most delicious.” I will take your word at that. . . . We have never formally met, Mark, so let me give you a little boilerplate intro to me, Marla Rose, a user of your platform for 15 years. I joined originally with a little nudging. An old friend from college wanted to hang out on Facebook and get reacquainted with our once-tight gaggle of friends. At first, it really was fun. Not only could we reconnect and update one another on our lives 20 years or so after we’d graduated and slowly lost touch, but I could also meet new people. I could post pictures and stories about my son and his first day of kindergarten; I could share about my mother, who was facing the double whammy of Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinsonism, her move to a condo near us, her eventual move in with us, the funny things she would say when she was lucid, the heartbreak of watching someone you love slip away, bit by bit, the bittersweet sand mandala of losing a parent slowly. Through Facebook, I could also be there for others in similar situations. I got many messages over the years seeking support, guidance and resources for people caring for parents in decline and I was glad to be of help. I could also vent, I could tell funny stories, I could stay connected with friends, I could be introduced to the people I now consider true friends despite the fact that for many, we will likely not meet in person. I have also been able to raise thousands of dollars for very good causes through Facebook, almost $20,000, which I know is pocket change but it’s still useful. On this platform that you and some other smart people built, I could share when my beloved dog Romeo was tragically killed – he was not only deeply enmeshed in my heart but loved by so many virtual connections – and I took my friends, at least the ones who stuck around, on the experience of my husband’s sudden onset of leukemia, the nauseating rollercoaster of fear, doubt, desperate hope, numbing out and anxiety, and then his bone marrow transplant, the ups-and-downs of that, and John’s circuitous recovery. People here talked me off a million 3:00 AM ledges. Being on this platform also helped to clarify to me how to set boundaries (no, I don’t want to hear about juice cleanses curing cancer, thnx) and how to be bold enough to ask for what I needed and speak without apology for what I did not want. Oh, wow, and did my friends, real-life and virtual, show up for me and for us. Thanks to this platform and being able to communicate broadly, efficiently and easily, three needs of precious value to caregivers, we received grocery deliveries, care packages, encouraging words, and financial donations to help offset the huge medical costs to two self-employed creatives and do-gooders. Just so you understand, Mark, I was already a writer before Facebook entered my life but your platform has helped me to find and refine my voice. It’s helped to keep giving me ideas and opportunities for writing. It’s helped me to keep friendships on track. It’s helped me to get the word out about things that matter deeply to me in ways that would utterly gobsmack my internal 20-something year-old self who was leafleting for lost causes in all weather conditions. “You mean, you press ‘post’ and you can reach thousands of people potentially?” I would ask, feet numb from the cold. Yup. Potentially. This is a roundabout way to say that I am not a hater of what you’ve created, Mark; I am agnostic, at best, but mostly, I’m ambivalent. I’m ambivalent because I see the benefits and possibilities of your platform, but I see the many downsides. I do not like the data mining, of course. I do not like the algorithm, wired for reinforcing bubbles or, weirdly, making conflict more entrenched. I do not like the way it’s worked its thumbs into the soft putty of my brain, making me insecure if something I post will be well-received or not, regardless of how important it is to say. I do not like how it has trained my dopamine-seeking self to perform for likes and shares. I do not like the way it’s pressured me to curate only the most flattering photos and experiences. I do not like how it seems to be training our eyes to look only for the most quickly, easily digestible “content,” not nuanced, complex topics. The utter lack of transparency with the company, lack of accountability and customer service – yes, the platform is free, but we are users with personal stakes in our profiles who are making you piles and piles of money – is egregiously poor form. These are not small matters, Mark. . . . Obviously, though, I need to get to why I am here: That post. That picture. What I want to say, Mark, is that according to Forbes’s real-time billionaires list, as I write this, you are number five at $130.5 billion, and though you recently lost $1.8 billion (did you forget to take your wallet out of your jeans before you washed them? Get locked into a bad time-share?), it’s fair to say you’re doing pretty well, right? I am not going to say that it’s entirely on the backs of cultural creatives and content creators like myself because at least at one point, there was a bit of reciprocity in that one could have their work seen by much wider audiences. (No longer, though.) And I am not going to say it is also entirely on the backs of those whose data is sold to businesses by your platform for targeted advertising. Grandparents like to see their grandchildren’s finger paintings and cute little poems easily. If I sound like I’m being sarcastic, I’m not. I’m here, though, because of that January 9 picture and caption. My husband tells me it would take more than 360 years of spending $1,000,000 a day to spend $130.5 billion and the smarties at Berkeley tell me that if someone counted from one to “just” one billion (so considerably less than your 130.5 B), giving the person about three seconds to say each number aloud, it would take that person more than 95 years to arrive at a billion. So it is all to say, again, you’re doing well for yourself. You are possession of many dollars. With your home compound on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, one of the most expensive properties in the world, guessed to set you back more than $270 million with its two mansions covering a total floor area of 57,000-square-feet, more than a dozen other buildings, a now-notorious 5,000-square-foot bunker on 1,400 acres acquired through buying up kuleana claims - ancestral transfers without formal paperwork to the inheritors of parcels of land you wanted - you haven’t exactly endeared yourself to your neighbors, Mark. Nor have you endeared yourself with the construction noise and pollution, the six-foot-tall walls around the property, which block off the ocean views locals once enjoyed, the draconian NDAs required of anyone who wishes to pass security clearance, like the many crew members working on building your compound, or the complete lack of public review of your massive building project in paradise. For someone got rich by selling our data to corporations, Mark, you sure do like to protect your own privacy and your family’s privacy. I’m just saying I’ve noticed. This is a lot, right? Don’t pretend it’s not. . . . Back to the cattle-ranching, though, my official reason for reaching out. You, the fifth wealthiest person in the U.S. and 16th in the world, would rather spend your money and your time on something as ego-stroking, cruel and unsustainable as playing make-believe as a cattle-rancher on dishonorably-obtained land than, I don’t know, something beneficial? I’ll just spitball a little here, but water purification projects, malaria prevention and treatment, reducing malnourishment and under-nourishment for the chronically hungry, funding smart, genuine efforts to reduce and eventually reduce climate change (as opposed to the hobbyist farming at your compound), all seem like better choices. Beef, even small scale and grass-fed, is one of the most deleterious and wasteful products a consumer could eat in terms of sheer harm to our planet and her resources.
You’re smart, though? You know this. Or is our planet’s need for responsible stewardship and thoughtful actions just as annoying to you as your neighbors wanting some accountability and consideration on Kauai? Are we just killjoys ruining your bro-fest? Are you an exception to everything, Mark? (And, dude, I am not even going to talk about the ethics of what you are doing to the steers because I already know your attitude about dressing up and killing to let off a little steam or belittling the animals you’ve killed in perpetuity to remind the world that you’re a manly man with a cheeky little sense of humor; I also know that considering the lives of animals would be sentimental claptrap to the fans who would do anything to fantasize cosplaying as cattle-rancher with you.) Despite this, I am sure you do good in the world, Mark. I am also sure people will tell me about it on your platform. I am also quite positive they will say that I don’t do a fraction as much good as you. They’ll say this is all sour grapes. Some of this is correct. (Not that sour grapes thing, though.) Given your enormous resources, though, to play up to your fellow rich tech bros about your dedicated room for dry aging meat and to joke about punching the carcasses like Rocky with a laugh-cry emoji, well, you showed your cards, Mark. This ranch is just another toy for you as greenhouse gas emissions doom the rest of us, especially our children and future generations. Boys with their toys, I swear, you’ll be the death of all of us. Mark, your children may enjoy planting the macadamia trees, but what about the other children, the many, many billions more, who are going to grow up in a world with reduced biodiversity, in a world without normal seasons, in a world with the wildfires you were safe from, even when they came to Hawaii, in a world where heat domes, droughts, hurricanes, water depletion and extreme weather are now the norm? In a world of deforestation due to cattle ranching? One day, if you look out the window of one of your compound's many tree houses as your daughters sit under the shade of the macadamia trees, listening to the ocean waves your walls have prevented your neighbors from seeing, as the cattle graze and low, will your fantasy of a high-tech but bucolic brotopia be realized? When would it be enough? How soon will you get bored while the rest of us live in a reality more and more dominated by climate change and soon to become more painfully, personally familiar with terms like “climate refugees” and “climate wars”? Actually, now that I think about it, the state-of-the-art bunker with its blast resistant door and escape hatch is probably your smartest personal investment as the effects of climate change come home to roost. Will you be able to access the dry ager from the tunnels between the mansions to your bunker, though? Most important, will you have the connection to post updates on your meals as the world burns? TL;DR: Can’t you do something much, much better with your billions? There is still time to change your legacy. You’re not even 40 yet. All the best, Marla Rose VeganStreet.com  For ten years, I wrote an annual Disgruntled Vegan Alphabet (DVA) as a way to air my grievances as a vegan in a non-vegan world, but, frankly, I got bored with it and I kind of ran out of grievances. This is generally a good thing. Think of the DVA as a kind of Festivus venting of grievances to the world around me, one for each letter of the alphabet because I’m extra like that. It was fun while the yearly tradition continued but I wasn’t sad to leave it behind. That said, it’s healthy and cathartic to vent a little. There is something to the art of the kvetch that helps us to process the world, get clear on our feelings, get our irritations out of the way and move on. This year, I’m resuming the DVA because I really want to go into 2024 unburdened of some of these gripes and move on to the happy, sunny new year fresh as a daisy. I’m leaving this year’s DVA on the doorstep of 2023 like the stinking paper bag of poop it is and setting the whole damn thing on fire. Feel free to stamp it out, Father Time! As a little extra, this year I decided to include something that I think I may have conjured just on my own, called Bestofus. It’s like the mirror opposite of Festivus. If there’s a big airing of the grievances, don’t we need a Bestofus just to be a little balanced? So I’ve got my lists, the old and the new. To start, I’d like to get a few things off my chest, because hell is other people. The Disgruntled Alphabet
Oy, you all. I’m tired. I feel better, though. Don’t you? Should we move on to Bestofus?  Here goes. This will be quicker, not for any particular reason but, you all, I’ve got things to do.
See, I’m not a grump. In fact, I am positively GRUNTLED about all these things!
What would you have on your Festivus and your Bestofus lists? I highly recommend this exercise as we move through the world and into a new year. See you on the other side!  What a small resting place in a subdivision says about our past and why it’s a cautionary tale for the future.
This past Sunday, I was feeling that familiar invigoration I can always rely on in early autumn, as the leaves are just on the verge of changing and the earliest of households start displaying their Halloween decorations. I convinced my son and husband that we should drive out to Geneva, IL, a quaint, verdant river town in the western suburbs of Chicago, about 45-minutes west of us. We trek out here a few times a year to take in the riverwalk, enjoy the boutiques, and breathe in the air of a fresh season. On Sunday, I got that urge again and my guys were on board so we charged our phones, packed our drinks and set out for Geneva. Just before we left, thank goodness, I remembered that there was a place there that I wanted to see in person, one that had not been on our itinerary before. It was the tiny cemetery of 51 graves on what was once part of the 94-acre property of the Illinois State Training School (ISTS), also known as the State Industrial School for Delinquent Girls or the Illinois State Training School for Delinquent Girls (among other appellations), which was in operation from 1894 until 1977. Just outside the gates of the now-demolished institution you fill find this small cemetery, improbably nestled between and behind two large homes in an affluent subdivision called Fox Run. I had heard of the cemetery before here and there and seen some photos of the spare, old gravestones. I also knew that the cemetery was in an unlikely setting but that didn’t stop me from wondering if our GPS had failed us as we drove around cul-de-sacs and saw children riding their bikes and walking dogs in this decidedly residential setting. When my maps program said we had arrived and we were, in fact, between two large, manicured lawns, I stepped out to look around but I was doubtful. Where would it be? After walking around a bit more, I saw the iron fence and called out for my husband and son, still in the car, to join me. Somehow or another, this was it. We walked over to the fence, first passing a plaque, which reads, “Beginning in 1894, this land was used by various government agencies as a center for ‘wayward girls’. The colonial-style cottages, service buildings and fences are gone, but these 51 graves remain. These graves are a testimony that they are no longer wayward but home with their Creator.” The plaque ends simply: “May God’s peace be with their souls.” The first thing I noticed after walking through the gate was how uniform the simple concrete markers were, bringing to mind photos I have seen of the rough gravestones for the Civil War dead. The next thing I noticed before I began looking at the stones was a tall, utterly majestic oak tree, her branches offering a quiet green canopy for us, over much of the cemetery. The acorns crunched under our shoes. That was the only sound in the cemetery — the crunching, that familiar autumn sensation— aside from the occasional words between us as we took the space in. We split up and walked on our own. At first when I saw some gravestones for boys, I was confused because I knew this was an institution for girls but then I noticed how long they were alive: These graves were for babies or newborns. They are clustered together in one section of the cemetery. The adults, sometimes their mothers, are buried near one another elsewhere in the cemetery. The adults were barely adults themselves: The gravestones indicate that age 20 is about the oldest the dead in this cemetery lived to be. That makes sense, though, because ISTS was an institution specifically for minors. The inmates were juvenile girls, some as young as ten, to the age of 18, though some were younger and many were a little older. Most had been sent because they were sexually active or pregnant; later research found that more than 74 percent of inmates were incarcerated at ISTS, which housed up to 400 girls at a time, for reasons of “immorality,” the unspoken code for pregnancy, sexual precociousness or suspected sex work. As the plaque at the cemetery references, they were “wayward” girls, wayward enough to have been convicted in juvenile court. In the mental and physical examination records, it was noted that some were disobedient. Some were described as feeble-minded, which could mean anything from a speech impediment to being terrified of their interrogators. Some were deemed to be incorrigible. Some were found have unpredictable mood swings. Some there had been convicted of truancy. Some were labeled as sexual deviants, a code for lesbians or even non-virgins. Many were runaways from abusive homes. Most were willful. All had been found guilty of violating society’s norms for girls. All were also poor. Middle class and wealthy girls who ran afoul of social norms weren’t given a free pass, but they also weren’t sent to institutions like this one. I have no doubt that some of the girls incarcerated at ISTS over its 80+ year history were indeed mentally ill and genuinely needed help, but that was not what the institution or even society offered at the time. Ophelia L. Amigh, a one-time Civil War nurse who was superintendent of the institution for 16 years, ruled with an iron fist until she was ousted due to vaguely-worded controversies in 1910. To reinforce the obedience to the matrons, girls deemed rebellious or sexually active with each other were sent to the hole (solitary confinement), subjected to “hydrotherapy,” which meant having their bodies repeatedly dunked in cold water, there were well-worn straps and a riding crop, as well as a chair built by the institution’s carpenter, much like a stock from the Puritan days, where the person it is only had their head poking out. They lived in small cells with just a cot and a barred window. I call them inmates intentionally. Many committed to ISTS ran away and were returned; many ran away and were never found. Some like 20-year-old Sadie Cooksey died by electrocution on the third rail of the nearby railroad line as they attempted to flee. The heaviness and the stillness of this residential cemetery is something that sat heavy on my chest after we’d left. Three days later, it’s still pressing down. Inside the cemetery, there was almost the feeling of a gasp that couldn’t be released while I walked through, looking at the stones, taking photos, a kind of suspension. I have visited many old cemeteries and this one probably had the most palpable feeling of sadness. Then again, it could be because of what I know of the place where they died. There is also the unavoidable cautionary tale of this burial ground. All were indigent, all were society’s outcasts, most were teenagers or babies. Some were Black and kept in segregated cottages, others were mentally ill and abused. All were prisoners without resources, and there were some for whom this hellhole was an actual step up from the abuse they faced at home. While the institution has been bulldozed and an affluent subdivision has been planted over it, and the cemetery certainly looks like something from a bygone era, is the ISTS really just a sad chapter of our history? With states having more to rights over the bodies of pregnant people themselves, with the prevalent attitude that if a woman “just kept her legs closed,” she wouldn’t be in this kind of trouble, with the rightwing mentality of control, coercion and cruelty against those outside their circle of concern: Is it really that far in the past? With each eroding away of the painfully slow and hard-fought gains we have made as a society for people with uteruses, for people with mental illness, for people of color, I can’t help but see this frozen-in-time cemetery as a quite plausible reality for the future. It’s not only plausible, this is the past to which forced-birthers want to return. In 2023, pregnant people in red states are endangered and at growing risk of dying in labor, hemorrhaging, contracting serious infections and being forced to carry non-viable fetuses to term even if it costs them their own lives due to laws that would be perfectly at home when the School for Wayward Girls was constructed and running. (Interestingly and probably not coincidentally, it was only after Roe v. Wade was enacted that the institution closed.) Today's "wayward girls" have to travel in secrecy to other states, whether or not they can afford it, to terminate their pregnancies. They are told to wait in hospital parking lots until they are on the brink of death with blood loss before they can get the medical attention they deserve. Today, people in states where abortion is outlawed who want or need to end their pregnancies, and those coming to their aid, have a dangerous and fraught landscape to navigate, one that is becoming more and more reminiscent of the Underground Railroad than anyone should be comfortable accepting. What would the residents of this cemetery, the girls who were never afforded basic freedoms and rights, think about how much progress we have made, only to have these freedoms and rights wrenched away, eroded, reversed? I can only imagine how sad these girls — victims of a bigoted, unjust and sexist society — would be at learning of our country’s regression, driven by a relative few tyrannical ideologues, that puts so many disadvantaged people at such grave risk. Before we left, I walked back to the oak tree. It felt like the branches were sheltering arms over the small cemetery. I found an acorn that had been fused together, two smooth, adorable acorns in one. There was a grave marker for the twin daughters (abbreviated as dau’s) of an inmate named Betty Carroway, newborns who died the day they were born, I presume. This was the spot for the two acorns together, connected by the stem. It felt deeply insufficient but also important to leave this at their gravesite. The twin girls, together forever, symbolized by this simple offering. I don’t know if it brought anyone a small feeling of solace except for me, though. Some of the other grave stones had tokens on them: Scattered coins, crystals, even a statue of a mournful angel. I imagine people who left them felt compelled as I did to acknowledge, to see, to offer just something, knowing full well how ultimately insufficient it would feel. More than acorns and crystals, I think if we can do anything to honor these girls and their babies, we need to strive to be on the right side of history, and if we find ourselves on the side of cruelty, coercion, oppression and unjustness, we must course correct as fast and as fully we can with as few victims as possible. We have to recognize that the cemetery at the Illinois State Training School is not an aberration but a reminder of happens when rights are denied and the lives of our most vulnerable — people of color, people with disabilities, people who are poor, LGBTQ people, people who have had their reproductive systems weaponized against them — are most threatened. Please join the fight for bodily autonomy and personal rights. Anyone who denies rights and freedoms, who values fetuses over actual human beings here on Earth, is squarely on the side the kind of cruelty and oppression that put these babies and girls in these sad little graves. To the buried dead of Illinois State Training School, you are seen. You are seen, and those whose lives are not marked by gravestones but by the trauma and abuse of being born in a punishing time, you are seen, too. We see you, we are fighting for you and we will not forget you. We are also fighting for ourselves and each other.  I reached out to a friend the other day who had recently adopted a paralyzed kitten and I wanted to see how things were going. How was the kitten integrating? I sensed immediately by the pause and then the crack in her voice when she broke the silence that it wasn’t good news. After being assessed by the veterinarians at the clinic my friend trusts, it was determined that the kitten was in far worse condition than anyone involved in her rescue truly realized and would very likely have a short life full of pain and suffering. The difficult decision was made that euthanasia was the most merciful option. My friend, who works full-time from home, was already mentally prepared to care for a cat with inoperable paralysis and in diapers due to her inability to control her bowels, and she was devastated that the sweet kitten she’d had for just a day was in pain with no hope of relief. On the phone, my friend was questioning if anything could have been done, if she could have rearranged her home and her life so the outcome could have been different for the kitten. She has multiple special needs and senior animals and was not apprehensive of the emotional, time and financial resources that this disabled kitten would require. On the contrary, my friend was ready. Knowing that the kitten was suffering and there was no likelihood of reducing it was a different matter, though. She understood that euthanasia was the most humane and compassionate outcome for this kitten but my friend did not make the decision lightly. In fact, she was wracked with grief and self-doubt. I tell this anecdote because it is absolutely consistent with what I have observed in the rescue community: People who will move heaven and earth to help animals in crisis. My friend is one of them. I have been blessed in life to know some truly wonderful people. . . . After college, I started working at a large animal shelter in humane education and that was where I was introduced to the concept of “animal people”. Yes, I was a vegetarian when I started there and then vegan when I left but I cannot say I was ever in the league of these incredible rescuers I came to know. There were the ones who would bring in feral cats they’d trapped every week to get spayed or neutered and pay for their surgeries out of pocket so more kittens wouldn’t be born without homes or care before TNR was a common practice. There were the ones who would spend their winter nights trying to catch loose dogs running in the streets. There were the ones who bottle-fed newborn kittens who were orphaned or abandoned. There were the ones who always adopted the hard to place animals, the seniors, the dogs who were missing limbs, the cats who were skittish. There were the ones who volunteered after work or on their weekends to socialize the cats and walk the dogs, to clean the cages and help tackle the truly endless piles of laundry. And then there were their opposites, the ones who make working at an animal shelter so soul-crushing, the ones who provide ample fodder for a shelter worker’s nightmares. All these years later, they still haunt me. These are the people who would bring in middle-aged or healthy senior animals because they simply no longer want them, knowing that they could die. They would surrender animals because their new love interest didn’t want them. They would move but not look for a place that accepted animals. They would say the dog “smells funny,” the cat is “too affectionate” or, and this is truly one I saw, the companion animal did not match their new couch. There was far worse that I saw at the shelter, of course. I saw dogs brought to us with severe frostbite, kept outside in Chicago all year without adequate shelter. I saw a cat who’d been set on fire, rubbing his raw skin against the wires, purring with contentment at seeing a random person outside his cage, he was still so friendly. I saw survivors of dog-fighting rings and I won’t describe that. I saw skeletal, barely alive animals regularly where you could count every rib. I saw things that I had to immediately block out. The shelter I worked at, like all decent shelters, was a refuge where survivors of human irresponsibility and cruelty had a chance at adoption, but if not – if they were too sick, too old, too unsocialized, too injured – at least they were off the streets, we told ourselves and each other, at least they weren’t suffering anymore, at least they had some moments of human kindness. We held tight to the happy outcomes but were tormented by the others. . . . One of the things I realized early into my five-year stint at the shelter was that ample evidence of the best and the worst of humanity could be found there. It was such an unbelievably wide and stark spectrum. The kindest end and the most heartless end of the spectrum are the people who made the most long-lasting impression on me; same with the animals. The ones who had a perfect outcome and the many who could have only been offered mercy stick stubbornly in my mind 25 years later. The experience of working at the shelter left me with an understanding that was new to me, that our species is capable of extremes of unfathomable cruelty and deep, selfless altruism and love. An animal shelter is where you see those polarities represented in great abundance every day, as well as materialism (“This is a purebred! You should pay me for giving him to you!”), empathy (“There’s a dog tied up in our neighbor’s yard and I wonder if we can do anything,”), entitlement (“I don’t want this cat anymore. Come pick it up.”) and appreciation (“Thank you for the work you’re doing. You are superheros.”) There were people, lots of them, who called with threats, telling us that if someone from the shelter didn’t pick up their animals immediately, they were going to kill them, and there were people, also lots of them, who so loved their adoption experience that they became the best volunteers. So many ways of behaving, so many perspectives, so many different kinds of people. There is something about companion animals, how we think of them and treat them, that brings out the best and the worst of humanity. As opposed to the animals people eat, where even compassionate people generally put on blinders to avoid thinking about it, homeless companion animals are where we see the best and the worst of humanity collide. So much kindness, so much cruelty. I guess my point is, thank goodness for the compassionate ones, the ones who are so far on the side of kindness, the ones like my friend, who was more than willing to turn her life upside-down to give a kitten she had barely met a chance at a good life. This alone gives me hope. I am going to ignore her polarity now so I can just enjoy knowing that she is in the world for a moment. Rest in peace, kitten. You were loved, that much I know. . . .
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
November 2024
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