100th post, pro-choice, and travel

First off, WOO HOO! This post marks my 100th post for this blog. It seems just yesterday that I reached the 50 post mark!

Secondly, I just read a blog post that states that today is Blog For Choice day. Now, I don't want to blog on the official topic (What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?), but I figured I would blog about my opinions on the issue. I am pro-choice. Most definitely. If a woman is raped, or even if birth control fails, and she gets pregnant, she has every right to choose whether or not she actually has the baby. Not just for the mother's sake, but also for the baby. I don't think this world needs any more unwanted children. That said, I don't think abortion should be used as a method of birth control either. Birth control was invented for a reason, and should be used! Oh, and I also have a problem with the term "pro-life". I saw a video I really liked on pro-choice stuff, and I really like that he commented that to be truly "pro-life", you also need to be anti-war and vegetarian. I'd add to that, and say to be truly "pro life", you can't own a computer (who's manufacture causes women in Thailand to die of cancer), or use paper products (which kill forests and all those who dwell in them, including non-humans and indigenous peoples), or do any one of the nearly endless list of things we do in this culture that causes death. Say you're anti-abortion, but saying "pro-life" really doesn't work, in my opinion.

In other news, I looked up tons of stuff on travel today. I still have the tourist sites up for Ireland, Scotland, England, Italy, Greece, and France. I also ordered travel guides for British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Yukon, and New Mexico. Now I have to wait excitedly until they arrive in the mail! :-D

I haven't really posted pictures on this blog in a while, although I have been updating my photo blog pretty regularly, so I'll post a few that I took today.

Our lovely old Flora, aka Foo Foo, aka Flora Bean

Beautiful Minni, aka Minnikins, aka Minni Minou

Sweet Henry, aka Hempers, aka Hempsicord, aka Henny

The wood stove, burning brightly

Lovable Winston, aka Boo Boo, aka Winduffy, aka Winduffers, aka Windy

Yes, I take too many pictures of my minnikins ♥, but I can't help myself!

And by the way, I'm keeping track (sort of) of the things I'm doing this week, so on Monday I should have a Week in the Life of an Unschooler post up!

Peace,
Idzie

Poetry

I love poetry. I have for a very long time. From the time I was little my mom would read to my sister and I. She'd read EVERYTHING! Fiction, poetry, the newspaper... So before I was even reading books more advanced then readers on my own, I was writing poetry. Soon, I was reading and memorizing poetry. When I was eight or nine I memorized all of The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes, and wowed all of the parents when I recited it at a homeschooling talent show. :-P Last night, my mom and I got talking, and I wondered if I could still recite The Highwayman. I got most of the way through before I stumbled, so pulled out one of my poetry books to see where I was going wrong. And once I had a poetry book in my hands, of course I couldn't read just one! I read all of The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, which in my opinion is a great read aloud poem with a really cool rhythm to it, and The Solitary Reaper by William Wordsworth. The verse:

"What'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;
I listened, motionless and still;
And as I mounted up the the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more."

Is truly beautiful, as far as I'm concerned. I also discovered I still know Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost perfectly. "Whose woods these are I think I know, his house is in the village though"... By the time I got to bed, it was 3:00 am!

I also wrote a new poem last night, which can be found on my poetry blog as usual. When I read the masters, my poetry just looks so awful in comparison...

Oh, and yesterday my mom cleaned out a drawer, and of course my cat thought that the empty hole created by the lack of a drawer was the perfect place to hang out in. Minni is just so darned cute and lovable! :-)



Peace,
Idzie

Vegan. For a month, at least...

I've been thinking for a while now about becoming vegan... I've been vegetarian for nearly ten years now. When I was six (so my mother tells me), we were at some type of street fair, and one of the tables was a setup on animal cruelty. Apparently my six-year-old self was so moved by compassion for what I saw that I declared I would no longer eat meat. Being the wonderful unschooling mom that she is, my mother supported me entirely in that. I didn't stop eating chicken fingers and hot dogs until I was eight, as those were my favorite types of meat, but from eight on, I haven't eaten any meat whatsoever. Because of my vegetarian diet, I learned a lot about nutrition at an early age. We as a family have never been much into following the Canadian Food Guide, seeing as the dairy industry (among other industries I'm sure) actually puts pressure on the government to say you need more dairy then you really do (I mean think about it, cow milk is made for extremely fast growing calves, not fully grown or slowly growing humans. Plus, you know how you always hear about dairy being an excellent source of calcium? Well, the type of calcium found in dairy is very hard for your body to absorb. Other sources are much better.), but thanks to my mom I had the three important groups of foods I should always eat firmly in my head: Grains, vegetables, and protein. As long as I had those three categories at virtually every meal, I was good. Grains and vegetables are pretty self explanatory, and as for protein that could mean cheese, tofu, legumes (lentils, chickpeas etc.), or fake meat substitutes that were based on soybeans. As I got older, I got more sophisticated in my knowledge of dietary requirements, finding out which essential nutrients are found in which foods, which supplements I should probably take since I didn't get adequate amounts from my diet, and other such things. I hardly think about my diet anymore, since it's become such a habit. Still, for every single meal, I notice whether or not I've included the three major food groups of grains, vegetables, and protein!

Anyway, that went way off topic in the story of how I became vegetarian, bt back to the vegan thing. I went through a stage where I decided it "wasen't cool" to be vegetarian because of animal rights (yes, I'm embarassed about that stage. What can I say, it's past now), so said it was just health reasons and habit, which was parcially true. But the only way I could "not care" about animal rights was to deliberately not find out about the awful things that animals go through to become food for us humans. Now that period of time is behind me, and I'm proud to say I care very much about animal rights. I wouldn't want to be kept in a tiny cage that I couldn't even turn around in, neglected and tortured, and then killed so someone could eat me, so why the hell would I put another living creature through that? And in the last few months, I've been thinking about the rough time other animals go through to produce other animal products like dairy and eggs. I don't think I want to put animals through that either. I've thought of trying to go free range only, but cows, even when free range, are awful on the environment, and it's nearly impossible to find eggs from chickens that are kept organic and free range! I think perhaps the huge chicken industry in Quebec makes sure no small competitors can survive... So I decided to make a commitment to myself: To be completely vegan for one month. At that time, I can see what I've really missed, if I think I'm missing anything important in my diet, or other important considerations. Overall, vegetarians have a much lower rate of heart disease than meat eaters, and vegans have a much lower rate of heart disease than vegetarians! Veganisn is quite healthy, as long as you pay attention to what you're eating, and there's only one vitamin/nutrient you miss as a vegan so need to take a supplement for (I can't remember what it is... Which means I should take out a book on veganism from the library next time I'm there). So wish me luck with my vegan month. And I hope I don't miss pizza too much!

Here are some photo's I took of our cats yesterday. Minni ("officially" my cat) is the brown one and Henry is the black and white one, and both of them are marvelous, loving, and beautiful creatures.

Peace,
Idzie