VegWeek Pledge!

This is from the Compassion Over Killing (COK) website. Check it out and make the pledge to put the animals, your health, and the environment first next week! It’s a great way to challenge what you thought you knew about food. And if you have any questions about what in the world you eat if you don’t eat meat, just post a question and we’ll answer it!

Welcome to VegWeek 2012: Take the 7-Day Veg Pledge!

April 23-29, 2012: There are 52 weeks in a year, so why not make at least one of them meat-free? VegWeek is seven-day celebration highlighting the many benefits of choosing vegetarian foods—for our health, the planet, and animals—and thousands of people nationwide are taking the 7-Day Veg Pledge as a fun way to discover new and delicious meat-free meals! Sign up today–and we’ll even send you a Starter Pack loaded with recipes and product coupons.

You’ll be in good company! Several elected representatives, including Md. Senator Jamie Raskin and Md. Delegate Tom Hucker, along with community leaders and media personalities, such as Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, are also pledging to go veg–in addition to thousands of others nationwide.

Be sure to check out the dozens of restaurants offering VegWeek specials as well as VegWeek events taking place across the country.

Join in on the fun: Sign up for the 7-Day Veg Pledge now!

What Is VegWeek?

Compassion Over Killing launched the first-ever VegWeek in 2009 in Takoma Park, Maryland (our hometown) thanks to the inspiration of MD Senator Jamie Raskin. Sen. Raskin eagerly signed up as the first person to take our 7-day Veg Pledge—a pledge he’s kept to this day—and VegWeek was officially recognized by our city through a Mayoral Proclamation.

Energized by his new vegetarian diet, which he refers to as “aligning my morals with my menu,” Sen. Raskin has since helped COK expand our VegWeek campaign, first to entire state of Maryland in 2010 then to Virginia, DC, and California in 2011—and now nationwide!

Want to volunteer for VegWeek or host an event in your town? Contact us today!

Winter on the Waketrail Road

January 15th, 2012

Winter on the Waketrail Road

A light snow falls, and the temperature too… from unseasonably mild to the bone-chiller more common here in the opens, away from the coast, away from the tall sentinel skyscrapers of the city, away from the protective foothills and the green-black against-white-background trees.

In Huron Township, when January takes a deep chill breath and then exhales, when the damp of the clouds lets loose with tiny flakes all individual frosty white and impeccably perfect as they land on the darkness of the navy wool pea coat, one moment the drive is nothing more than peaceful and pretty in a winter way, while a tenth of a mile on, there is no visibility as the open patch allows the flurry of snow to become a cloud, and I in the thick of it. And then once again, clarity and gently-landing tiny feathers of white.

Where the seasons bring perceptible change to our senses, winter can be a fickle lover ~ it  courts us with a taste of its offerings, then doesn’t come calling for a time, leaving us wondering if the romance could truly be that short-lived, and then reappears at our door with all sorts of gifts ~ ornaments and snowflakes as large as a thumbnail and red woolen mittens and eggnog and cold winds that make our noses red and spiced apple cider and auld lang syne. And we are wooed by the flurry of snowy kisses and by the tender touches of joy in our hearts, and we are starry-eyed in love with the season.

One morning, you wake and there is a harsh note on the door … the air is so frosty it stings … you have to turn your face from the one you so loved the day before. Now its temper, bitterness and chill bite your cheeks and ears, and you must make a choice to vulnerably take it or leave it to its rant. In the warmth of your family, in the light of a crackling fire, with robust homemade potato soup on the range, you now take comfort and wait for winter’s storm to calm…when you can make up and embrace its loveliness as you did in the early stages and offer your own playful spirit in return. Together, you and winter dance once again to the music of the season, you make angels in the snow, and a walk through the field along the draw is sweet and welcome rather than brusque and cold.

The yin and yang of the seasons, and especially of winter, is reality on this plot of land; it’s felt in the heart as much as on the skin. It forms the earth of this place, the very soil that will begin to wake in the spring. Even now, in the bitter chill of this January night, the seeds of new life are waiting there. Cold and winter socks give way to gentle warmth and the robin’s song; they give way to 90 degrees and blue flip-flops; they give way to a laughing baby standing amidst bright orange pumpkins; who in turn gives way once again to the unique romance with winter, that love that we always come back to, though we say we’ve had enough, because it still is beautiful and good and makes our human hearts flutter at that first caressing snow.