Conscious Choice Seattle: Victorious Vegetarians

February 2006 | Choice News

Victorious Vegetarians

Not that we are competitive or anything, at least not in matters of fruits, vegetables, dried beans, nuts, seeds and all thing plants, but while we munched on our meatless meals and snacks, Seattle has become host to the largest vegetarian event in North America.

Planning alert: Vegfest 2006 will be March 11 and 12 at Seattle Center, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both weekend days.

“We care to measure the numbers rightly [compared to other cities]” says Stewart Rose, the driving force behind the event. “We have now surpassed places like Toronto and Boston.”

Note, of course, that both are much bigger towns. Yet the 12,000 or so visitors to Vegfest will put us first in plant eating.
Bravo, and pass the curried cauliflower. Oh, and maybe some of that veggie chili with just the right spice.

There are all sorts of reasons why Vegfest continues to grow at about 30 to 35 percent in attendance each year. Just less than 10,000 folks, (9,942) showed up last March, including more than 1,000 kids who went through the children’s programs, which incorporated taste-testing and cooking demonstrations.

Food sampling certainly is the biggest draw.

“We will have at least 300,000 samples this year, up from 207,000 last year,” reports Rose. “More than 500 different types of foods will be represented. We are proud of those statistics.”

Another big attraction are the lectures by MDs, naturopathic physicians and registered dietitians. Ten talks are scheduled; including the valuable feature of Vegfest officials set up at special post-talk consultation booths for every practitioner in the exhibit hall.

“People can get one-on-one advice from the speakers,” says Rose. “That’s been very popular. I am amazed at how many people flock to those talks and the booths.”

Nonetheless, attendees say that Vegfest does a superb job with traffic flow so no one feels overcrowded. That feat is thanks to more than 700 volunteers who help operate the event.

Cooking demonstrations are another big plus, drawing what Rose calls the “semi-vegetarians and the veg-curious” along with a healthy number of local vegetarians and vegans.

“A Harris Poll reports that 3.5 percent of our population are vegetarians,” says Rose. “That is reflected in the retail market too. Just look at the PCC and Whole Foods stores being added in the city and places like Redmond.”
—Bob Condor

God’s ‘Left Hand’

If you’re Left, you’re not spiritual. If you’re Right, you are.

Isn’t that what people believe was the main message from the 2004 election?

This magazine refutes that position regularly. Conscious Choice focuses on the spiritual dimensions of the “liberal” lifestyle here in Seattle. Some examples: how to have a smaller “footprint,” living more conservationally (avoiding “conservative” here), exercising with meditation, eating in a healthy, perhaps spiritually aware way.

Rabbi Michael Lerner, peace activist and spiritual advisor, says he feels our country needs a makeover and so does the “Left” and the Democratic Party. Lerner will be in town Feb. 26 and 27 to talk about his new book, “The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right.”

How did the Religious Right get so successful at attracting ordinary Americans, even when it seemed that they were cutting off their noses to spite their own faces? Lerner answers: “Human beings need to be validated for who they are; the hunger is to be recognized not for what they accomplish, but for being a loving, caring, sensitive person, a person connected to a spiritual awareness.”

Lerner says the marketplace only rewards people for their contributions of money and power.

“The Religious Right told them‘you are valuable because you’re a believer,’ says Lerner. “Just for that. Not for anything you do to‘win’ in the world. The price for that acceptance was‘just buy into our world view and you will be accepted as fundamentally good and all the others will be fundamentally bad.’ That [message] attracted people who have not done so well in the competitive marketplace, or maybe have done well enough, but don’t feel that is enough. They have deeper human needs."

Lerner explained that what people heard from Democrats was elitism. Ordinary Americans were too stupid to understand what‘we’ understand.

"The example is nominating John Kerry for President,” Lerner says. “Ninety percent of Democrats were against the war, but the whole convention was based on support for war so John Kerry could‘run the war better.’ But deep in our hearts, we hoped Kerry would flip-flop and end the war. When Republicans said‘Kerry’s a flip-flopper,’ the Democrats had no argument, because that’s really what they wanted."

In his book, Lerner encourages new assessments of success, where corporate contribution to the world is evaluated on social responsibility rather than monetary productivity, plus where schools are judged on how many read and write and are ethically sensitive and caring of humans. This is the conversation Lerner hopes will become a central task of people in building new spiritual politics in the coming decades.
—Miryam Gordon

Love, Marriage and a Stress Carriage

Fighting and bickering can be negative for most any relationship. Now it appears you can say the same for your immune system.

Ohio State researchers Jan Kiecolt-Glaser and Ronald Glaser (yes, married themselves) studied the effect of stress on husbands and wives who argue.

Here’s what the Glasers found in a recently published study. High levels of hostility between spouses can slow the ability to heal by 60 percent compared to couples who seldom argue. Even couples who fight for a half-hour per day, on average, compromise healing. A rule of thumb is healing time is reduced about a day for each half hour.

The Glasers looked at 42 couples married for at least 12 years. When the spouses visited the Ohio State lab, they participated in simulated prolonged arguments (frequently enough producing true hostility and feelings) and pricked in the arm to produce eight small blisters that could be monitored for healing time.

Stress intervention is becoming more than, ahem, a intriguing touchpoint for media or psychology researchers like Kiecolt-Glaser (her husband studies immunology). Some hospitals have begun stress-intervention for patients before they undergo surgery. The idea is to strengthen the body by cutting down on stress.
—Andrew Mulholland

Cleaning Up the Puget Sound

Not to be the rah-rah types, but the Conscious News Admiration Index for Gov. Chris Gregoire continues to trend upward. Gregoire has proposed another $42 million to clean up toxin dumpsites in the Puget Sound area and prevent future oil spills.

Gregoire proposed assigning a 10-member committee to form the Puget Sound Partnership, including elected and public officials, businesspeople, tribal leaders and environmentalists.

Perhaps as importantly, Gregoire has positioned the Puget Sound cleanup as a project that national leaders should consider important too. That might seem like a reach or insignificant or both, but sometimes building momentum is highly effective. It’s a matter of putting Puget Sound in the mindset of national leaders and activists.

“The governor is really stepping out boldly on Puget Sound,” said Naki Stevens, programs director with People for Puget Sound, a non-profit group during an interview with the Post-Intelligencer. “(Gregoire’s) commitment in this has really brought the environmental communities together in a big way behind this.”

Wisely, Gregoire is working to elevate the Puget Sound plan to become a national priority. There is precedent in efforts to save Chesapeake Bay, the Great Lakes and the Florida Everglades.
—A.M.

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