Meatless March

As a child, I yearned for the romantic prom dresses I saw in teen magazine ads. I pictured my future self as someone along the lines of the woman in Roxy Music's 1982 music video, "Avalon."  And sure enough, I have spent most of my adulthood twirling in a metallic, poufed pink dress through an elegant mansion that is stalked by falcons, and giving icy looks to men wearing eyeliner and white tuxedo jackets. Ha ha. But the dream persists! About a year ago, it dawned on me that even though I was too young to go to prom in the 80s, I COULD STILL GET AN 80s PROM DRESS. Like a falcon scouring the grounds of an English manor house for prey, I began hunting on eBay for my long-ago fantasy dresses. There are THOUSANDS of them! The ones that are in great shape and most quintessentially 80s, with tulle and exaggerated sleeves and lamé and a Jessica McClintock label, can easily run you well over $100, but I thrill to find the bargains. This pink Zum Zum dress, which I wore at a party...

"Don't forget to take your violin to school," I'll sometimes say to my small backup dancer, or "Take 15 minutes and practice your violin." She meets these reminders with a smirk, because she does not have a violin. She plays the trumpet. I'm the one who took violin lessons when I was a kid, and my brain is still stuck on that.  Backup dancer last year with her "violin" This is the same slow brain that I had to train to eat less meat and dairy when I learned about the disproportionately bad environmental impacts of animal agriculture. This blog is a record of how hard that change has sometimes been, but I got there! I adapted to the point where I was eating meat only as a treat, and observing Vegan Vednesdays. There have been a couple setbacks. At the start of the pandemic, when I honestly wondered whether humanity was on the verge of decimation, I let my resolve slide a little, but I got back on track. Then there was another setback when one of...

Last week was a terrifically literary one for me. I attended book launch events for two author friends.  Pat, Andy, me First up was Andy Martino at Words Bookstore. His new book, The Yankee Way , is a history of the Yankees baseball team during the era of general manager Brian Cashman.  My backup dancers are longtime Yankees fans Next was Marcia LeBeau at the South Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC). Marcia's A Curious Hunger is her first book of poems, which are moving and funny and thought-provoking.  Forgive the fuzzy focus of this shot of Marcia reading her poems Me and my friend Ellen. Photo courtesy of Marcia LeBeau and @rowandean_photography I'm very proud to count published authors among my friends, and I love hearing writers read and talk about their work. Every week should be so wordy! I had my own curious hunger for " Mushroom Smash Burgers " (NYT Cooking), which I cooked in the spirit of eating less meat to help save our planet from catastrophic globa...