Category Archives: Activism

Day 75: 9/8/13: On Animals and the “N” Word

by in Activism, Animal Rights, Animal Welfare, Vegetarianism/Veganism, Writing and tagged | Leave a comment

Performed a hodge-podge of shark chores today: signed this petition to ban shark fin soup in Australia, stuffed more envelopes in my endless restaurant letter campaign, did miscellaneous shark-related schoolwork. But what really kicked my ass today is this post from the Vegangster blog  that extends the argument of John Lennon’s 1972  song “Woman is the Nigger of the World” to animals. (John Lennon is pretty much my favorite person ever, but more on that later).

I have been a “sloppy” vegan for quite some time, eating bits of goat cheese here and there, and once every few months an egg or two and I never feel good about it.  I’m also tired of whining about how hard it is go completely vegan. Feeling guilty and lame about my half-assed veganism is even more difficult.

Woman Is the Nigger of the World

Woman Is the Nigger of the World (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Day 74: 9/7/13: Save The Turtles (Feed the Sharks!)

by in Activism, Environment, Marine Conservation, Shark Charities | 2 Comments

A lovely day at Zuma Beach volunteering for Oceana at the Malibu triathlon. Last summer, I asked surprisingly willing triathlon swimmers to sign a petition to protect California’s great white shark population (ultimately the National Marine Fisheries declined despite the dwindling numbers). This year: loggerhead turtles. I had that same squishy uniquely human whose-side-am-I-on-anyway? feeling as I talked about the increased need for habitat for sea turtles, knowing that tiger sharks particularly love to feast on them.

Ultimately I realized that my position as a human isn’t necessarily  to root for one side, but to attempt to restore some part of the balance that humankind with its plastic, its miles of nets and hooks and acidified seas has destroyed. Nature, of course, is often brutal and so I’m moved when people fashion artificial flippers for a sea turtle crippled by sharks.

I know that human belief in our separateness from nature is the root of most of our problems. But my humanness will always make me feel like a distant admirer of animals, an apologist for my species, a loving outsider. As a kid, I wanted to be like Fern in “Charlotte’s Web,”–so much a part of the animal world that they “forgot” I was there and gossiped freely. Now, I don’t know if I seek a window into animals’ secret world  so much as I need an alternative to the crowded, relentlessly human one I inhabit.  Maybe it’s as simple as the epiphany I had a few weeks ago when admiring the crazed smile of a moray eel: “I like the other.”

A baby Loggerhead Sea Turtle

A baby Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Day 69: 9/2/13: A Woman of Letters

by in Activism, Education, Marine Conservation, Shark Charities and tagged | Leave a comment
Shark fin soup

Shark fin soup (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had this bright idea to try to send a letter to every restaurant in the U.S. that serves shark fin soup. So far I’m half way through Massachusetts with a few scattered throughout the South and West.

While a restaurant manager will probably just toss a single, random but polite request in the garbage, if I enlist my student army to help me, maybe we can start making an impact. I imagine truckloads of letters being delivered into steaming kitchens all over the map. Letters are becoming rare things–they have a material weight that e-mails with their digital ephemerality (is that a word?) lack.

Perhaps this accounts for the lack of drudgery I feel stuffing envelopes, buying stamps, depositing messages into the dark unknown of the mailbox.

To access Sharksavers’ resources for restaurant letter writing, click here.

Day 68: 9/1/13: SeaWorld Protest

by in Activism, Animal Welfare, Humor, Pop Culture and tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Driving down to the Seaworld, I stopped just south of the weird double-breasted San Onofre nuke plant to take in an ocean view.  As I pulled into the rest area, I saw what looked like the Partridge Family’s multi-colored bus dominating the tiny beachside lot.  Unlike the Partridge’s squeaky clean pattern, each of this bus’s colored squares contained a crazy religious messages:

WHO HAS NOT MOLESTED THEIR SELF PRIVATELY? DON’T LIE TOO.

RICH PEOPLE HIDE THEIR SINS JUST LIKE HOBOS

The prophet/ driver soon appeared at the driver’s side window, shirtless under his overalls and sporting a long, slightly stained white beard. He thrust a Ritz cracker box toward me.

“Donations fer picture-takin!”

I threw a dollar in. “Thanks PJESUSBULBrecious!” he exclaimed, withdrawing into his mobile temple. I have to admit, it’s been a long time since anyone called me “precious” and perhaps the subsequent warmth I felt wasn’t simply the blinding California sun.

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Day 65 8/29/13: Ron Burgundy & The Politics of Captivity

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Ron's SportsCenter audition.

Ron’s SportsCenter audition. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While editing my shark syllabus,  I realized I ordered a textbook for my class penned by OCEARCH supporter Greg Skomal. Ugh. The only positive is that the  chapter on shark tagging, replete with pictures of sharks being landed on decks with no running water over their gills, and assorted disturbing “research” shots–one of which shows a a live sandbar shark being held upside down with a pipe down its throat–gives me a perfect way to explain the “fishermen posing as scientist” mission of OCEARCH and hopefully encourage  some student action. Sigh.

Signed a petition asking the producers of “Anchorman 2” to nix footage of Seaworld from their new movie. Apparently in the sequel, Ron Burgundy’s career has sunk to such an abysmal low that he’s become an announcer at Seaworld.

I loved “Anchorman,” and appreciate that at least that stupid hellhole is the butt of a joke, but why give it any publicity at all?

In related news, I RSVP’d to a protest at SeaWorld San Diego this Sunday. Can’t wait!

Day 58: 8/22/13: Tern! Tern! Tern!

by in Activism, Environment, Memory, Pop Culture and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Picking up trash can be downright addictive when conducted in a scenic location with a simpatico companion. Today Connie and I scoured Santa Monica beach, north of the Pier. As I approached the water, a dolphin surfaced and disappeared in the surf. Birds abounded—flying, floating, hovering. Connie knows birds and informed me that the white specimens expertly dive-bombing into the water were terns. The terns spun and fell out of the sky like nature’s kamikaze pilots.  When has basic survival ever been so fun? Do they ever get dizzy? 

We stood transfixed clutching our trash bags as several generations of wet, coffee-colored pelicans flew just overhead. I once possessed  a toy pelican eraser as a child. He stood about two inches high and dressed like a general with those fringey shoulder decorations, a smart cap and vague circles meant to suggest medals. I traded him to my friend Ria in exchange for a 1964 mint condition Beatles pencil-case and never looked back. But pelicans have always retained a certain absurd authority to me. Watching them land on the green waves, I almost felt like saluting.

Day 57 8/21/13: Shark Bloopers

by in Activism, Cage Diving, Shark Attack | Leave a comment

Writing to OCEARCH’s sponsors asking them to dump the bastards.

Please sign this petition asking Caterpillar to dump OCEARCH. Only three days left!

I am also asking myself to stop watching shark cage disaster videos.

Maybe if I start calling these great white mishaps  “bloopers” it will make me feel better.

Day 55 8/19/13: 10 Things I Did Instead of Studying My Dive Manual

by in Activism, Diving, Environment, God, Humor, Marine Conservation, Meditation, Shark Attack, Shark Conservation, Writing | Leave a comment
Shark!

Shark! (Photo credit: guitarfish)

1. Read about the swift but gruesome death of abalone diver Randy Frye in the waters of Northern California.

2. Watched a mini-documentary on technical diver David Shaw who died trying to retrieve the remains of another diver from the depths of a dangerous cave.

3. Meditated for 20 blissful minutes that were occasionally invaded by thoughts of decompression chambers.

4. Felt less alone after reading several articles criticizing OCEARCH’s machismo and brutality.

5. Marveled at Denise Levertov’s briskly paced poem The Sharks. 

6. Tried to do the dishes mindfully, but spaced out and started worrying about August almost being over, a reverie broken occasionally by hummingbirds.

7. Ate fruit

8. Thought again about Thom Knoles–of the failure of the stressed out intellect and how the expansive silence of meditation feels so nurturing, so full of presence.

9. Wondered for the trillionth time about the basic goodness or evil of mankind.

10. Marveled at the ability of writing to redeem boredom and to reveal the miraculous within the ordinary.

Day 54: 8/18/13: Everyone Should Read This (and I don’t mean that as arrogantly as it sounds)

by in Activism, Education, God, Humor, Inner Turmoil, Marine Conservation and tagged , , , , | 6 Comments
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Beatles and their c...

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Beatles and their companions posed on a dais, image by Paul Saltzman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thom Knoles is a funny, grounded and warm meditation teacher who studied with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the late 1960s, I think he may have overlapped with the Beatles’ tenure in Rishikesh. I felt like too much of a Beatles nerd to ask when I learned Vedic meditation from him last year.

Learning to meditate  was one of the greatest decisions I ever made.

Thom opened the lecture with this anecdote about speaking at the G8 summit. “I was the only one there wearing beads,” he laughed.  “Everyone here is suffering from chronic brain failure,” he said to the assembled leaders of the world. “Nothing’s going to come of this summit. Any questions?”

I don’t know how the G8 leaders reacted to that, but the crowd at the Santa Monica Marriott really dug it.

In a metaphor I remembered from the meditation class, Thom compared the human brain to an overloaded iphone that can barely process any new information. Decisions made using 2% of the stressed out overtaxed human brain are never going to solve terrorism, global warming, etc.

That’s where meditation comes in. And dharma. And karma.

Dharma is our personal role in the evolution of the universe. When we are living in dharma, doing what we’re meant to be doing at any particular moment, living is effortless and expansive.

To understand what we need to do, to know our dharma, Thom says we must learn to recognize and be receptive “in our least excited state”(meditative) to what “charms us” and to recognize what we have an aversion to.

Karma, on the other hand, is not the word plastered on tip jars in coffee shops. Karma is, according to Thom, “an action that binds.”

“The universe is not angry with us,” he explained. “It’s not punitive. It’s just hoping we figure things out.”

Unlike dharma, karma is restrictive. It is what we experience when we base our decisions purely on intellect and inaccurate assumptions. For example, “If I just keep doing this work (that I don’t really love) it will become something I love.” Or “I will repeat  the familiar even though the familiar makes me unhappy.” Karma is that corrective suffering that happens when we refuse to take risks, when we cling to the known world, when we are not courageous.

And like Thom’s brief address at the G8 summit, today’s talk at the Marriott was ultimately about courage:

“Find out what you should be doing. Embrace potential. Is it enough for you to continue eating, sleeping, pooping, taking up space on the earth? We must make our existence relevant. Urgently examine what you’re capable of giving to the world. Be courageous.”

Day 54: 8/18/13: Weird Karma

by in Activism, God, Inner Turmoil | 2 Comments

I find myself cursing L.A.’s traffic and skin-killing sun until a day like today happens—full of sublime weirdness that could have happened nowhere else and I feel grateful I’m still knocking around this whacky place.

After attending Thom Knoles’ invigorating lecture on the true meaning of karma, I witnessed a scary fist fight in the middle of Santa Monica’s swanky Montana Avenue between a furious pedestrian and a guy in a Mercedes. The driver apparently nearly hit the pedestrian’s family when they rushed into the street. The men kicked, punched, swung at each other and generally behaved like idiots. The wife fueled the drama by nearly rushing into the street while her poor little children clutched her hands, wailing and utterly terrified. Onlookers dialed 911 and one kind gray-bearded man cautiously tried to intervene in the madness  “C’mon you guys, there are children here…”

Harrison Ford at the Pacific Design Center in ...

Harrison Ford at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood (Photo credit: Wikipedia)g

When the guy in the Mercedes started to drive off,  the apoplectic pedestrian jumped on the hood like a deranged stunt man, tumbling to the street when the driver stopped short, no doubt rehearsing for a later lawsuit.

My friend Brandy and I felt disoriented—this abrupt immersion in human melodrama, after such a transcendent meditation talk made us both queasy. We  found a delicious Indian food restaurant a few blocks north that was empty except for us and Harrison Ford who, as Brandy said, “looks fantastic for his age.”

Later I picked up beach trash for two hours while watching a woman walk a black rabbit on a leash and chatting with a French man who had very interesting teeth. When I told him of my major star sighting (the first in a long while), the tourist looked puzzled and said that he thought that Harrison Ford was already dead. While I untangled the shriveled navels of abandoned balloons from clumps of kelp, the wayward traveler spoke about the wisdom of weather, how lucky I was to live in the land of sunshine, (despite today’s rare overcast skies) and how he’d seen dolphins while paddleboarding near the pier “that was my reward for being daring” (true), and how happy he felt when he realized that the merry fins surrounding the surfboard did not belong to sharks. He then asked me to confirm a rumor he’d heard that it is impossible to sleep in Las Vegas because of the relentless nocturnal campaigns of its hookers.