New Orleans 'Totally Vegan Potluck' in chalk

I have been here in New Orleans just over three weeks and have landed my first job, as the New Orleans Vegan Examiner! The Examiner is an online news and blogging site that deems itself “the insider source for everything local“.  They have hubs in most of the major US cities and recruit people like me who have a passion for writing about interesting topics to do columns. The pay is based on the popularity of the column and any advertising we can help them secure.

While I do not expect to become rich talking about veganism in New Orleans, I think that it will provide some other nice benefits. I am hoping that I will be able to use the column to encourage restaurant owners and chefs to try vegan options and add them to their menus. I hope it will bring more people to the vegan events being held here in New Orleans. I am also aware that Examiner articles get high Google rankings, so I think that it will bring more publicity to my other vegan projects and perhaps even my personal website. Beyond all that it will help me to hone my writing skills so that I can someday write that New York Times bestselling book I have in me somewhere…

If you would like to help out, please subscribe to my column, post comments on my articles, and keep coming here to check out this blog. You will get so much good karma you won’t know what to do with it all, and you will have to pass it on to others.

http://www.examiner.com/x-37530-New-Orleans-Vegan-Examiner

pigs are magnificent, intelligent, and beautiful. anyone who tells you different has an agenda.

this poem is my gift to you
in this prelude to the new swine flu
we all feared, but who really knew?

who knew these sweet and noble beings?
live confined in their own shit and vomit
on concrete beds beneath artificial light?
thank god they can not think and feel
like we do.

well who really knew?
it did not say so on the pinkish styrofoam
or even on the news.

if i said i knew
you would hang me from the highest tree
for lying to your children.

if i said i knew
you would put your hands around my throat
and choke the words inside of me.

in this time we have to dance tonight
in this sweet twilight of an era
i will say that i forgive you
and tell you that i love you
and that is the truth.

this way has been passed down
from mother to baby
father to child
like faery tales of santa clause and jesus
we flash our funny little teeth
and pretend to be carnivores
something about killing someone else
makes us feel immortal
something about someone else’s flesh
can taste like heaven for a moment.

the world is alive
her strangled seas
her burdened air
her sweet pigs
most noble and loyal of creatures
sweet sweet pigs.

who knew the consequence of commodifying sentience?
pigs so different from us on the outside
but to a virus perhaps not so different
from the impoverished worker
who had to kill mothers and babies
over and over until he was de-humanized

who knew that even a penny of our purchase
went to the man who came home with a pandemic?
it didn’t say so on the cellophane
dripping with blood
it only said cook to a proper temperature
and everything will be all right.