Dana takes a delicious taste of shaved watermelon at Karma.

The world spins too fast sometimes. I cover the souls of my shoes with velcro and still I can’t hang on. The hottest day seem to go the fastest, as if Sun is exciting Earth with his radiant splendor, making her molecules vibrate faster. We all benefit from Sun’s frolics with Earth. From their union we are blessed with an abundance of fresh vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers. Bees and butterflies and little creepy crawlies chip in to help spread life all around. The farm share I split with a friend is so abundant with fresh organic food I can barely keep up with eating it all. In our backyard we pick cherry tomatoes and wrap basil leaves around them for a succulent snack. Life is good.

There is a beauty eating plants fresh from the soil. Plants hold Sun in their cells. They hold Rain. They transmit minerals and medicines from Earth into our bodies. They have enzymes and wisdom. Cooking them may not always be bad, but it can diminish the flavor, smell and nutritional splendor of fresh veggies.

A new vegan raw foods restaurant called Karma is opening today in Northampton. It is an ambitious project with a restaurant, a juice bar, a store, and eventually a yoga studio and body work offices. Karma will be serving raw vegan dishes, as well as a few cooked vegan menu options. The juice bar will serve wheatgrass shots, green drinks, smoothies, teas, various elixirs and purified charged water. I will be working there in the juice bar and in the kitchen, learning new skills and sharing old ones.

On Saturday August 7th Karma had an invite-only dinner to try out some of their recipes on guests. I was able to get some friends from the local vegan and raw foods communities on the guest list. They were all impressed with the atmosphere of the restaurant and the delectable flavors offered in the dishes.

The food was presented in a five course meal. The first course was a salad featuring organic greens with onions, carrots and an oil & vinegar dressing. Next was a “palate cleansing’ with shaved frozen watermelon juice, which was amazingly good. The third course was tomatoes layered with sliced zucchini, almond cheese, basil and olive oil. It was heavenly. The fourth course was zucchini noodles covered in tomato marinara sauce with a cashew cream mushroom alfredo tossed with carrot and butternut fettucine. And finally the raspberry coconut cashew cheesecake in an almond crust, simply divine.

Karma opens today and I will be working my first juice bar shift. I hope you will stop in to say hello and treat yourselves to some life-giving deliciousness.

Karma owners Coree and Brian with assistant chef Rin

A view of Karma dining from above

Christopher Phillips with his two daughters Sky and Sirena

Oh Sweet Mama Megan Shackelford arrives with her friend Paul

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

These photos go back to the beginning of this summer, May 25th, and the Northampton Reggae Festival put on by “Bush-I” and Ira McKinley in Pulaski Park. I did not photograph the great Reggae bands that played that day which included the Alchemystics and Black Rebels, because by that time I was too busy hula hooping. What I did get was the amazing performance put on by my friend and fellow vegan Jahara Sara Conz and her Innovative Female Dance Ensemble known as FemmAesthetik.

FemmAesthetik performed the “Oxum” dance in honor of the goddess of love: Mahajoy Laufer and Jahara Sara Conz dancers; Veronica “V” Haddad and Allison Ahearn drummers. There was also a fashion show that Jahara, Chaya, Mindy, Megan E. LaBonte, V and Mahajoy modeled for. The clothes were designed and made by Mahajoy Laufer, the incredibly talented young woman you will see MC-ing the fashion show in my photos. Lastly, “Boogie Back” (Mahajoy’s Lindy Hop group) performed a Lindy Hop piece.

This event was a kick off for the summers once a month Friday “music in the park” jams. You can view all 160 of my photos from this event on flickr.

Primates lookin' good.

tuba or not tuba?

Anyone who lives in Northampton and isn’t a crazed shopaholic is usually cranky about the sidewalk sale. It clogs up streets and of course sidewalks. If you own a business I guess it is nice to sell all the crap no one would buy off your shelves. And I do like those freakin’ samosas the India Palace has out. I just want to know what it is about shopping that causes people to stand in the middle of the sidewalk oblivious to everyone around them who needs to get by. I am forced to go out into the road and dodge the drivers who are almost as unaware, texting and drinking lattes while driving with their knees for all I know.

My office is accessed through a door on Main Street and so I can easily descend into the madness. On Thursday while I was at my computer conjuring mad schemes and dreams I heard through my window the raucous sounds of Northampton’s finest psychedelic dixieland band the Primate Fiasco. I am their semi-official photographer so I ran outside with my camera to knock people out of their way so they could make it down the street. What were they thinking playing during the sidewalk sale anyway?

Luckily I hadn’t bathed in a couple days and people seemed to move out of my way anyway. I got some great shots of the band on the sidewalk and in the streets and then we went up to the train tracks to do some more. Nothing like some graffiti and train tracks to make a bunch of white guys with geeky instruments look cool. That’s what I’m here for after all, to keep things interesting. But seriously, the Primate’s are one of our town’s musical treasures. Check out their web site at www.PrimateFiasco.com

Primates crossing the road.

Primates in front of the Haymarket Vegetarian Cafe

Primates at the main intersection in Northampton.

Primates on the tracks

The Commonwealth Center for Change (C3) is a nonprofit that provides office and program space, shared resources and capacity building programs to local progressive nonprofits and artists so they can do their work more sustainably, effectively and collaboratively. Storefront ART is a new Commonwealth Center for Change program that supports local artists by working with building owners to creatively use vacant downtown storefronts as temporary artist studio, gallery and performance space. I am currently one of several curators for the future art that will happen in these spaces.

The kick-off event for C3 happened on Friday June 13th, and featured work from all of the curators plus some performance artists. It was held at the brand new “Windows” gallery on Main St in Northampton which is run by the non-profit arts organization A.P.E. (Available Potential Enterprises, Ltd.). The event went perfectly, and we are all very proud of the work we did and the turnout.

We started with a parade through Northampton featuring local dixieland band The Primate Fiasco. We had hula hoopers and my friend Gina Gaetz in a frog costume, and caused quite a commotion downtown. People just love a parade, even when it is on the sidewalk! The security team at Thornes weren’t amused when we marched through the mall, but was nearly as fun getting chased out as it was making a ruckus inside (I should mention that this was a spontaneous idea, and nothing that we had planned with C3).

The show itself kicked off at 5pm and featured performances by folk singer Dave Dersham, modern dancer Vanessa Anspaugh, the Serious Play! Theater Ensemble, youth video art group Video Vanguards and a hula hoop performance by myself (billed as “The Human Centrifuge“) and the lovely Hoop Master Sass. The event ended with an amazing performance by the FemmAesthetik female hip hop crew.

Visual artists in the show included Martha Fleming-Ives, Julia Handschuh, Megan E Labonte, Oceana Shawanda and Brettney Young. Jenny Orozco set up a really cool sound installation piece which was a gold tent people could lay inside and listen to music on headphones. I debuted a new approach to showing my farm animal photographs I called “Reason“. The photos of the animals were displayed in a horizontal row of 11×14 clip frames with text on them answering the commonly asked question “Why are you a vegetarian?” in a variety of poetic ways. In a vertical row of more decorative but smaller frames running through the center of the animal photos I had photographs of meat that gave reasons I have heard people espouse for eating flesh. I just came up with the idea in the last couple of weeks and I am hoping to expand on it in future shows and projects.

I got lots of great response both on my photos and on the hula hoop performances. The whole event was documented by Northampton Community Television (NCTV) so hopefully there will be some video soon. Thanks to everyone who came out and made it a great night!

Promo image from heads 2 Hoops Exhibit

On March 6th Megan E LaBonte and myself held the opening for our Heads 2 Hoops show at the Green Bean in downtown Northampton. The turnout was great and people seemed to really enjoy the work as well. I created a coffee table book in iPhoto and ordered a couple copies, which sat on a table with one of Megan’s heads and our comment book. We also had a companion “Green Bean Exhibit Zine” to go with the exhibit.

Megan’s mother came through in the last minute with some vegan cakes and a vegan peanut butter pie. Megan made several pans of her new favorite recipe, vegan stuffed shells, which were scooped up in the first half hour. I contributed some Scheese, the amazing new vegan cheese from Ireland that tastes great on crackers and comes in several flavors. It is available locally at Cafe Evolution I should add.