Elisa's Green Scene

Here's a fashion show I'd like to attend

Courtesy of Hippy Shopper: Check out the Faux Rocks Cruelty-Free Fashion Show in Las Vegas on November 18th. Featuring all manner of cruelty-free fashions, this is my kind of show! And it benefits several local Nevada animal welfare organizations. Not too much information on their site yet, and certainly no pictures of the fashions that will walk the runway.

Hmmm, do I have a good reason to be in Vegas in mid-November? Road trip anyone?

Getting in on the Black Kate Moss debate

Have you seen this? To try to raise awareness and money the The Independent, a British magazine, did an "Africa" issue. And they featured a "black" Kate Moss on their cover.

Laina Dawes wrote a post about it on BlogHer (you can see I chimed in.) Most of the comments there were definitely of the "yeah, offensive" variety, including mine.

HippyShopper's readers seem to have a different perspective when asked "Yay or Nay", i.e. "Thought-proving and for a good cause."

I particularly liked these two comments on the BlogHer post:

African American and Enraged - Goodness gracious, I'm offended. I'm appalled. But mostly, I just really hope these folks raised a lot of money for Aids in Africa.

and

It seems to me that there is a shift in the boundaries of racism whereby it is acceptable for whiteness to appropriate and act out blackness in these ways. African and Blackness has always been consumed through art, dress, music and so on but now it has gone beyond that to our identities. I would not be surprised if painting yourself black becomes a fashion trend among white people like dread locs.

What do you think?

Chronicling Vegan Attempt #xx

In case you're interested I decided to kill two birds with one stone:

First, I wanted to give SixApart's newest blog tool, Vox, a real college try...instead of leaving it at the single post I published back in June and calling it a day.

Second, I wanted to chronicle my 30-day trial of going Vegan in some detail.

The added consideration: I didn't actually think either my hip & zen readers, nor my Personal Blog readers would be fascinated by such daily journaling of the attempt.

Meanwhile, there's that nice Vox blog sitting lonely and without a reader to bore!

So, incase you wouldn't find it boring, you may now follow me from Day One (that would be today) over at my new (10th) blog: Veggie Going Vegan. Don't say I didn't warn you :)

Carnival of the Green is up at Karavans

Karavans is the host of this week's Carnival of the Green, and it looks like it was so big he split it into two posts!

Karavans kindly links to my post about making another attempt to go vegan.

What's interesting abut this two-part approach is that he says it is because Typepad has a post limitation size. I am pretty sure that's not true, as I've hosted extremely lengthy Carnivals at a couple of my Typepad blogs. Seriously, check out this edition of Grand Rounds that I hosted over at HealthyConcerns. It is waaaay long.

So, I find myself more intrigued with what problem Karavans must have run into than in the Carnival posts. Does that mean my evolution into a blogging geek is now complete?

Cornstartch Peanuts and Catholicized Fashion

I recently got another shipment from hip & zen, and it made two seemingly unrelated thoughts cross my mind.

One item in the package was the "Guadalupe Tank" pictured here. Yes, that's a picture of the Virgin Mary on it (hence the reference to Guadalupe.) Now, I'm not a Catholic, but this made me think about the fashionization (not a word, I know) of religious iconography (actually a word.) Probably the Catholics win here, in no small part due to Madonna's constant support. Hinduism has a strong following with pictures of Shiva and Ganesh gracing various accessories for body and home. On the other hand, some religions don't seem to generate much fashion interest at all. But what is this phenomenon about? And do devout followers of said religions feel comfortable wearing such fashions, or is it just we who are not religious who have co-opted religious symbology when it's aesthetically pleasing? Thoughts? Anyone?

The second unrelated thought was about cornstarch packing peanuts. I was pleased when hip & zen started shipping with these. You pour them in your sink and watch them dissolve in water and run down the drain. So much better than trying to corral all those static-y, though recyclable, regular packing peanuts. Except for this: this week I started to actually notice how long it took to dissolve all those peanuts and wash them down. The water was running for a long time. Back in the California drought days this would have been totally unacceptable. Even these days it felt a little extravagant. There's always something, isn't there? Am I over-thinking this?

Organic Labels and what they mean

Just wanted to quickly post to this Worsted Witch post that defines what "Organic" means and how it may be used on food labels.

I can use all the help I can get keeping track of these things.

Help Veggie Go Vegan

I have a monthly column in the Metro, a local alternative weekly here in Silicon Valley. This month's column was about the fact that I'm steeling myself to make another attempt to shift from vegetarianism to veganism.

Since then a lot of readers have been forwarding me restaurant ideas, cookbook ideas, pruduct recommendations and web sites to check out. I thought I'd share a few here.

My friend and BlogHer colleague Maria Niles pointed me to this amazing post by Steve Pavlina (better known as a Getting Things Done (GTD) blogging guru) on why he's a vegan. Some of the surprising elements: he focuses a lot on mental clarity and energy. And he says that while empathy and compassion had nothing to do with going vegetarian and eventually vegan, he felt like he developed stronger feelings in that area after being a vegetarian and then vegan for a while.

A nice vegan named Lily pointed me to the site Fat Free Vegan, which looks like a treasure trove of recipes that are not only vegan, but, you guessed it, low fat. The site looks way cool with reader-submitted recipes, reader-rated recipes and common substitue questions answered...like what can you use in recipes for eggs or milk.

I haven't made the leap yet, but with all these fine folks helping out, I hope to turn the switch some time soon.

What would you recommend?

Number one questino: how do some of you vegans out there emulate cheese...it's been my nemesis every single time I've tried to go vegan. I just ordered the Uncheese Cookbook, on the recommendation of several readers, so i hope that will help. Any others?

One party-thrower and her socially conscious party

Mollie over at One Change outlines the choices she recently made to make a birthday party for her husband as socially conscious and environmentally responsible as possible.

Some of her choices are more obvious, like 100% recycled and compostable paper plates and napkins.

Some of the choices are definitely a little more cretive and thoughtful. My favorite:

Food: I am buying vegetables for the party from Erehwon Farm. I sent Tim an e-mail asking him what would be available this Friday and made my menu based on that. My very good friend Meredith is coming out for the party and we are going to drive out to the farm on Friday afternoon, harvest our vegetables and do a little work.

I don't know if everyone has a local farm they can go buy party foods from, but what a great idea!

But in the spirit of "baby steps" that I embrace, Mollie also confesses that once the planning is done and the party is on, she plans mostly to enjoy it:

I am not going to spend my evening eagle-eyeing whether everyone is recycling their soda cans. What I am going to spend my evening doing is having fun, relaxing, and celebrating the life of this truely amazing and wonderful man.

I say Right On!

Wanna feel guilty?

The visit EarthDay Network and discover your ecological footprint. By answering a short series of questions about your transportation, eating and living habits the quiz can tell you how much "acreage" your sucking up. Apparently if everyone lived like me we would need over 8 planets. Whatever that means.

And remember: Iwork at home, so it's not like I have a big commute. And I'm a vegetarian which helps. So I Must suck in several other ways...and one of them being that if I was more patient and less lazy I would have followed the quiz by much browsing around their site to find out how to improve my score.

Where's that Baby Steps post? I think I need to read it again. Ah, here it is.

Hat tip: Ideal Bite Blog.

Carnival of the Green is up at LA GreenLiving

Don't forget to check out this week's Carnival of the Green at LA Green Living.

There are tons of posts, including my own here musing about the bridesmaid traveling 10K miles to a wedding without air travel involved.

Other posts that caught my eye:

Don't end up in the long tail of the Long Tail at Eoin Purcell's blog. This post actually might be more relevant to my readers over at Worker Bees Blog, since it has to do with marketing more than anything. But its point is that the infamous Long Tail of the Internet has its own head and long tail. And you want to be in the head if you're really interested in getting your message out.

A glowing review for the site Ideal Bite over at Red Inked inspired me to give the site another look. It's a little more robust than when it initially launched, so I just may have to give it another try. At least I subscribed to their blog.

So that's it...just a couple of the many reasons to check out this week's Carnival of the Green.