photo by Monica Ferroe

Today I am featured in the Hampshire Gazette’s Hampshire Life I.D. Column. Somebody referred me to them as a good candidate, and I suppose my life is rather interesting. The only mis-quote is about me photographing farm animals for VegNews. I am actually the “Digital Photography Advisor” for that magazine, which hasn’t really gotten many of my photographs published in there (I helped them out when they were getting started and it is kind of an honorary position). I photograph the animals for the sanctuaries where they reside, and for the furtherance of the vegan message. But that is all fine, I am happy to have gotten a chance to plug veganism in a mainstream newspaper. It will be something nice to send my mom and dad, too.

The links below are added by me, to make it more interesting for you…

Used with permission from the Daily Hampshire Gazette

For Derek Goodwin, being a vegan isn’t just about deciding what to eat – it’s a lifestyle choice. Goodwin, a photographer from Northampton, became a vegan 13 years ago and since then has gone on to photograph sanctuary farm animals for a magazine known as VegNews, bake and cook vegan foods for the Evolution Cafe in Florence, and co-host a vegan show on ValleyFree Radio, 103.3 FM in Florence, that’s available worldwide as a podcast.

Goodwin, who also works as a wedding photographer and for the bike-based trash and recycling collaborative Pedal People in Florence, has a background in Web design as well. But one of his more recent projects, undertaken with friends, was to buy an old school bus and convert it to burn used vegetable oil. The “Vegan Bus” took its maiden voyage – about 6,000 miles round trip – to Nevada for the 2007 Burning Man art festival, where the crew joined with an organization called Vegcamp to do outreach and education.

These days Goodwin’s working on creating a nonprofit organization to fund the Vegan Bus and his radio show so that he can dedicate more time to animal activism. He says there’s much to learn about animals simply by watching and photographing them: “They are so different from what we are taught they are. They are individuals with personalities.”

Full name: Derek Goodwin

People know you as: Deralique (Zoolander reference)

Date and place of birth: March 26, 1967, St. Louis, Mo.

Address: Northampton

Jobs: Photographer, vegan baker, cyclist with Pedal People

Who lives under the same roof as you?: A giant dog named Harpuah and his owner, Gina

Children: Nope

Education: Rochester Institute of Technology, B.F.A. in fine art/photography, 1995

Pets: Worms in a compost bin

Book you’d recommend to a friend: “The Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu

Favorite movie: “The Matrix”

Favorite television show: Don’t have a TV

Favorite singer or group: Radiohead

What do you waste your money on?: Vegan food, camera and computer equipment

Guilty pleasure: Soy mocha lattes

Life-changing experience: Photographing farm animals at sanctuaries is humbling. … They love to play, they form complex social arrangements, and they are wise in ways which humans don’t often recognize

Funniest memory: My humor is probably not safe for this publication

Strangest job you ever held: I spent most of the ’90s as a stagehand, saw some crazy stuff

Bumper-sticker statement?: Support your right to arm bears

A little-known fact about you: I started to grow a tail and had to have it surgically removed. Oh, and I like to climb trees

Dumbest thing you ever did: Once when I was photographing a wedding, I tripped and fell into the baptismal font. For some reason it was in the middle of the aisle. I lost a couple of lenses and it was pretty embarrassing. Luckily God forgave me

One product, trend or fashion you’d like to see return: G.I. Joe with Kung Fu Grip

What really sets you off? Getting charged extra money for soy milk in my coffee

Celebrity encounters? Anne Rice once told me I was cuter than Brad Pitt

Favorite Web site: http://humanemyth.org

One thing you would change about yourself: I would like to become a Buddha, but not in this lifetime

People who knew you in high school thought you were: A crazy headbanger

Whom do you most admire? I admire my girlfriend, Monica, because she lives creatively, ethically and compassionately, she is sweet and amazingly beautiful, and she inspires me to be my best self

Parting shot: My favorite quote is from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Zen Buddhist monk, writer and peace activist – “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth”

- Compiled by Steve Pfarrer

Close-up of Monica’s skate and her evil ass…

I’m in New Orleans this week visiting my partner Monica who is a star player for the Big Easy RollerGirls (BERG). For anyone unfamiliar with roller derby, it is quite a rough sport and all of the players have satirical names that suggest violence or sexual promiscuity. Monica’s derby name is “Ibeatya Amber”, after a Louisiana-brewed beer called Abita Amber. Her teammates gave me a “derby boyfriend” name, “Ibeathim”.

We took a road trip down to Tallahassee, Florida for their match with Capital Punishment. Unfortunately BERG got their butts kicked, but they did it with style. There matches are always followed by an after-party, in this case at some kind of clam shack. The girls all got liquored up and performed some outstanding karaoke. There was also a leg wrestling match, in which the participants lay on their backs with heads next to the other ones feet, and interlock their adjacent legs. The object is to flip the other person. Monica was really great at this, only one woman could beat her, and she was about twice Monica’s size.

The next day we drove back, with a stop in Ft Walton to go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. All in all it was quite a thrilling experience from start to finish. Ibeatya… my vegan derby dream girl!

Capital Punishment’s “La Voodoo” about to fall on BERG’s Deb-U-Taunt

Buck Wild giving the elbow

Monica and I at a Starbucks in Ft. Walton on the way home

Here is a slide show with all the photos…

These photos are from my recent visit to Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary with my wondrous girlfriend Monica. It was her first time visiting the farm, and she was in vegan paradise! We picked a good weekend to go, as there were some new rescues who are both extremely lovable and ridiculously photogenic.

Anne the baby goat

One of the Valentine piglets

A man in western New York purchased 4 young pigs from an Amish farmer to raise for slaughter. He kept the pigs in a small, unheated garage, and one morning discovered that one of the pigs had given birth during the night. Twelve tiny piglets lay next to their mother, wet and covered with excrement. Eight were already dead and four others lay shivering and barely alive.

The Rehabilitator, Shanon Rumbugh, received the call on New Year’s Eve and she rushed the piglets home. She tirelessly nursed them back to health—but it wasn’t an easy road. Once they were stable, the original owners had the gall to ask for them back to raise for slaughter along with the others.

baby chicks march 2009

As happens frequently around Easter, we received a call from a school teacher looking for a home for 5 just-hatched chicks — the living, breathing result of a classroom project. These fuzzballs quickly grow into larger hens and roosters who have a lot of space, temperature and care requirements, and can live for over a decade.

As soon as the novelty is over, assuming the chicks or ducklings can survive the unnurturing classroom environment, the teacher or parent has to find a “home” — more often than not the end of the road for those animals. The takeaway for the kids is less about biology and more about the disposability of life. If you’re a parent or student who hears of an upcoming hatching project, please encourage that teacher to consider more humane alternatives to hatching.

Jenny Brown, Doug Abel and the baby goat named Anne

Monica, Ann and I

Check out www.WoodstockSanctuary.org to learn about ways you can help out and to see more of my fabulous photographs!