Category Archives: vegetarian

New Housemates

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From Eric and Mitcho’s land, Covelo, Mendocino County, CA:

A couple named Marc and Christine came by to meet Storm and I and to have a look at the room for rent and the rest of the house. Storm and I needed time to ponder their moving in, but I called them later the night before going on this camping trip to let them know they could move in if they want. They are both vegan, most recently from Philadelphia and New Jersey respectively. They seem happy and excited about our place. Marc is a bit geeky, a programmer for a startup he is founding with Randy, a dog-like guy who previously interviewed at our place. He wants a longer-term place to live, whereas Christine is just around for the summer before returning to school at Rutgers where she is studying chemical engineering.

Goodbye to Guille, Hello to Brazil

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The next morning when we woke up, I got all the money Guille would need for his journey and gave it to him. Then I told him that morning was our last chance to be intimate with each other for a long time and I wanted to be intimate with him, but I would understand if he wasn’t interested. He went for the intimacy! 🙂

After we got cleaned up, packed, ate breakfast, and checked out of the Hotel El Sol, we bought Guille’s bus ticket and brought my laundry to a lavaderia where they agreed to have it ready within a few hours. We walked through town, had a drink after sitting for awhile on a park bench, then picked up the laundry and headed back to an Internet cafe where I called in a hotel reservation, and emailed my uncle about not being able to cover him on grandparent duty during his trip to South Africa because it would start a day before I return from this trip and because things are crazy at home in San Francisco — I heard from my housemates Kat and Joannes that they will move out and the contractor working on the roof of the rear bay window has apparently really screwed things up. I told my uncle that I would of course be available on an emergency basis to fly to Rockville and help my mother take care of the grandparents if necessary. I haven’t heard back from him in almost two weeks — he didn’t even reply to email from Pierrette, our relative who I visited in SĂŁo Paolo (more about that later).

It was rough hanging out in the Puerto Iguazu bus station waiting to say goodbye to Guille — as I write this tears are springing from my eyes. I think I really fell for him. I heard from him later, after calling him, that he made it back home just fine, then went to his hometown to visit his sick mother. He asked when we will meet again. I asked if he’d like to come study English in San Francisco. I haven’t heard back from him yet — it might be a bit much for him.

The bus ride to Foz do Iguaçu, the town on the Brazilian side of the border, was uneventful. I had to get off at the border, go through the formailities, then board the following bus. I walked from the bus stop at a supermarket to the Posada Evelina. Evelina’s adopted son let me in with the minimum hospitality required. Later, Evelina returned to the hotel and gave me an orientation with a bit of motherly advice. I met an Israeli woman named Elizabeth who, aside from her recovery from bad weather in Rio where she had brought some friends, was friendly and fun to converse with in French. We decided to go for dinner at the soup bar restaurant she had found with lots of vegetarian options — the first since Buenos Aires in my meaty travels.

After dinner, we walked to a restaurant in the center where a charming fellow was singing and playing guitar. We delighted in sample the creme mamĂŁo (papya) with cassis dessert and each had a different flavor of caipirinha. Elizabeth danced a bit and even dragged me to the floor for a reggae tune at the end of the evening. We went off in search of more fun in town, convincing ourselves that it really wasn’t as dangerous as the guidebooks and mother Evelina had warned us. But the town was dead, so we just walked back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Laundry Day

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Today I did my laundry at Edgardo’s place, which was really nice of him. We left the laundry to dry on the roof of his apartment building. While he was at work, I met another guy from the Internet and we had a good talk at a restaurant. I met Edgardo at work and we went to my favorite restaurant in Buenos Aires called Bio in Palermo Viejo. I think it was the first time he had eaten at a vegetarian restaurant. We met two sweet women there who had recently returned from a trip to Paris. We all went for a drink after dinner at another bar in Palermo Viejo, then I went back to Edgardo’s place with him.

Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo

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Jim e and I got up reasonably early and after a quick breakfast we headed to the Cafe de las Madres near the Plaza de Mayo.

After a drink and a look at the pictures and the list of disappeared persons at the cafe, we walked over to the Plaza de Mayo and watched the mothers and grandmothers as the walked around the plaza. I even walked a bit with them.

I felt moved by their courage in standing up against the abusive Argentinian dictatorship in support of their family members who were “disappeared.”

We met Frank, a French-speaker from Montreal there after earlier meeting him at the hotel.

After searching unsuccessfully for a vegetarian restaurant, we ended up eating at a mediocre restaurant with mate (the ubiquitous tea-like beverage served warm in cured pumpkin gourds), bruschetta, and empanadas (which weren’t as delicious as the one I had near the plastic surgery clinic).

That evening, we went to a vegetarian restaurant called Bio in Palermo Viejo, which was hands down my favorite restaurant in all of Buenos Aires.

Faerie Gathering at Breitenbush Hot Springs

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The faerie gathering I attended at the Breitenbush Hot Springs Community in the Cascade foothills of rural Oregon was fabulous! I feel so relaxed.

I met about 175 faeries some of whom I’ve seen there for years. I think it’s my 16th or 17th visit as I’ve only missed one winter gathering there since 1986 or 1987.

Dean (Fister) was kind enough to pick me up from the airport and give me a place to stay the night before heading to the gathering. He introduced me to his friend Bam Bam. We went out for a couple of drinks at the queer bars on Stark Street, one of the two gay districts in Portland, Oregon. I saw some really goodlooking young longhair guys, some of whom were probably hustlers and none of whom seemed interested in me. So I hung out with Bam Bam until Dean joined us later in the evening. I did meet one nice fellow named Dustin. We played 20 Questions to see if we could figure out what each of us does for a living. I finally figured out that he is a diver. He figured out that I’m an Internet activist.

The next morning, Jim and Lars arrived at Dean’s place and we went to buy some boots at a butch camping store called G.I. Joe’s. I got some great pics of those guys in front of the store, then in the rifle section. Jim and I both bought the same size of women’s boots, called Bog Boots, perfect for Breitenbush weather. Then, we drove over to Three Friends, a fabulous cafe where the faeries meet on weekends. Lars and I played a very close game of pool while waiting for our food. We were famished and ate quickly. Then, we stopped at the car rental office to get me signed up as a driver.

We drove in a few hours to Breitenbush. Damien and another faerie greeted us at the parking lot and a lovely camouflaged nun pointed us to our parking spot.

I unpacked my stuff into geothermally heated cabin D8 which I shared with Viking Diva, Elephant’s Child, and another faerie whose name I can’t remember. My faerie name is Stardust.

The gathering was perhaps the mellowest one I have ever attended. I really relaxed, avoiding doing any of the organizational stuff since I got so sick last winter as co-Queen Registrar with Rosemary for Remembrance from trying to take care of everything about the gathering.

I just ate excellent vegetarian food, did yoga, exchanged massage, soaked in the tubs, went into the sauna, danced the Dances of Universal Peace (“sufi dancing”), attended Scotty Dog’s workshop on faerie intentional communities, and made love with a couple of really sweet faeries named Jacob (Cob) and Rodney.

The fashion show and the talent/no-talent shows were wonderfully entertaining and not as long as at most gatherings.

I met and connected with so many wonderful people that it would be impossible to list them all here.

I hitched a ride back to Portland with Rodney and his roommate James. We went to a re-entry potluck event at Walowa’s place. I ended up spending a wonderful night with Rodney at a Portland hotel.

Rio Wow! Paul My Hero

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I was sleeping much of the time and the weather was overcast the first couple of days in Rio. That turned out to be a blessing because it was cool. Once the weather cleared, the temperatures soared to more than 35 degrees Celsius every day. Even just walking outside one day for less than an hour without suntan lotion gave me a nasty sunburn.

I met some Americans also staying at the Vermont Hotel in Ipanema: Paul, Dale, and ? (Indian heritage, who I had met through Daniel Bao at the first Life After Capitalism dinner at the World Social Forum). My favorite place to eat is the New Natural Restaurant, just on the opposite side of the same block where the hotel is located. The restaurant has a really wide variety of vegetarian dishes at really reasonable prices. The juice place on the corner of the hotel street and the next street toward Copacabana was a favorite with more than 80 choices of juices!

One of the first nights in town, some of us went to Bofatida Bar on the Rua Farme Amoedo, which is where the guys go to cruise in the evening after hanging out on the rainbow-flag waving gay part of the Ipanema Beach. During Carnival, the gay folks apparently sometimes get into fist fights with rough locals hanging at another choppo, or draft beer bar, on that street. After drinking some rot-gut caparinhos at Bofatida, we headed onward to Le Boy Club. At first, we almost didn’t go in because they tried to charge the woman who was with us twice the entry charge of the guys, but when we went next door to the empty La Girl Club, an employee or perhaps the manager from there convinced the Le Boy folks to let her in for the same price as the rest of us.

That’s when I met Paul… I saw this gorgeous long-haired guy standing in the club watching the drag and hunky guy strip show. I decided “what the hell!” and went over and just started talking with him. We both felt an instant attraction which built as we talked and realized that we have quite a bit in common. We talked and made out for hours. Finally, it was time to go… he for work the next morning and I because I was dead tired. We went by taxi and dropped him off at his place after we exchanged numbers.

I called him the next morning while he was at work and we arranged a date that day and every day for the rest of the time I was in Rio. Often, we snuck him into the hotel room for the night since it wasn’t too cool for me to stay at his place. While he was at work, I checked out sites such as Corcovado, the large statue of Christ atop one of the hills of Rio, and the Botanical Garden, which has nice houses of orchids and bromeliads. We spent almost an entire weekend together walking on the beach, exercising, swimming, sharing dinner and conversation, and making love.

Paul is an architect from Cordoba, where his family lives. He’s the oldest of three sons. His father is of Ukrainian-Italian heritage, works a lot, is very rational, and likes to plant gardens on the land that the family owns in the hills near Cordoba. Paul also has a piece of land there and wants to build a house on it. His mother, who is entirely of Italian heritage, and his father had split up for a year but are back together again now.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been with someone who was willing to really take time to get to know me. Most people in San Francisco are so busy trying to work to pay the rent that it’s hard to find quality time to share. I’d have to say that I enjoyed every moment we spent together, even when we were doing something that both of us thought was boring, like visiting the museum at the fort between Ipanema and Copacabana beaches.

I think Paul is totally gorgeous, sexy, and smart. He’s kind and took good care of me when I wasn’t feeling well. He could make an excellent boyfriend. Of course, there is the slight problem of the distance between San Francisco and Cordoba!

Anyway, I hope that he and I will have more chances to spend time together soon.

Cyberspace After Capitalism at the World Social Forum

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Well, the trip has gone very quickly and I haven’t had any time to write blog entries.

I’m in Rio de Janeiro now, waiting to meet a new friend named Paul one more time, hopefully, before heading to the airport for the flight back to San Francisco via Miami.

So, flashback to Porto Alegre… the World Social Forum was amazing! About a hundred thousand people from all over the world all gathered to improve the world. Well, most people attended from Brazil. The newly elected Brazilian President Da Silva, affectionately known as “Lula”, spoke at the conference, as did Venezuelan President Chavez, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky (whose lectures I attended during university), and Arundhati Roy, representing Indian social movements. These were the stars. And how Chomsky managed to draw a standing room only, nearly rioting crowd filling the Gigantiniu Stadium is beyond me. The content of his speech was excellent, yet he droned in his delivery. That didn’t stop the crowd from singing their “Lula” song to the soccer tune of “Ole” when Chomsky happened to mention the President the people of Brazil are so fond of. I guess it’s understandable since he is a disabled man who rose from the ranks of manual labor in the PT (Socialist Party) in Brazil, running for many many years before his eventual election. Now, he faces the challenge of keeping his principles from his labor activist days in the face of IMF pressures on the Brazilian economy among myriad other problems. Yet, the people of Brazil are almost universally hopeful and supportive.

Besides the “stars”, many people participated on panels and spoke whether from the podium or the crowd. My panel presentation on Cyberspace After Capitalism went quite well, even after mixups by the World Social Forum organizers about room scheduling and publicizing of the Life After Capitalism series of events, organized by ZNet and particularly by Michael Albert. I’m very grateful for his efforts as well as to Peter Waterman for organizing and moderating the Cyberspace After Capitalism panel.

The Life After Capitalism events started with a welcome dinner the day I arrived in town and ended with a going-away dinner the last evening of the forum and evaluation meeting the day after the forum ended.

In between the events, there were many opportunities to meet interesting people from social movements all over the world. I met Marina (actually from the plane), Jeremy, and ? from the New York region, ? from England, Ezekiel, Paula, and Nikito from Argentina, Blicero from Italy, ? from Spain, and many, many others. Actually, I had already met Nikito and Blicero before through Indymedia and Tech Fed activities in the San Francisco Bay Area. And of course I ran into the omnipresent Indymedia maven Sheri Herndon, who is always a pleasure to chat with, even when she is frustrated with the latest Indymedia scandal.

Ezekiel’s accounts of the Assembleas, the piqueteros, and the occupied factories in and around Buenos Aires were fascinating. And his friend Paula’s project documenting the “disappeared” Argentinian film directors of the 1970’s inspired me.

Stories from an Intergalaktika workshop including representatives from Paraguayan, Uruguayan, Argentinian, and Spanish social movements, as well as the Zapatista movement in Mexico, were spellbinding. It was humbling to offer the free Internet services provided by the Online Policy Group to such an incredible variety of important activists.

That workshop took place at the “youth camp”, which was a “city within a city” housing 30,000 people in tents!

Even a workshop explaining the participatory budget process adopted for some time in Porto Alegre under the PT were fascinating. I’d like to try to bring some of that experience back to San Francisco.

I learned about many political theories and activists who I hadn’t heard of. Particularly pressing for me as a non-violent anarchist in favor of maximum decentralization of the decisionmaking process is to come up with viable mechanisms for handling decisionmaking for infrastructure such as telecommunications and mass transit. Interesting topics that people mentioned to me include:

– Eduardo Chaves discussion of self-education with computers in Brazil, available from chaves.com.br (couldn’t find anything good on his site)
– Union for Radical Political Economics (which can perhaps help with an economic analysis of a Free State of San Francisco), provided by Julie Mattaei, jmatthaei@wellesley.edu
– Chilean anarchist Pedro Gonzales
– Chilean socialist Oscar Schanake
– ParEcon, the book by Michael Albert on participatory economics, www.parecon.org
– Empire, by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
– The Great Transformation, by Karl Polyani
– Nickle and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
– Etcgroup.org
– ? anarchist recommended by Chilean guy on way back from Christo monument

In the Life After Capitalism evaluation session, as well as in an Intergalaktika evaluation session, the idea came up of not relying so heavily on the organizers of the World Social Forum for logistical support. Organizing some of the logistics independently might help to pull the events off with less aggravation… well, it’s a thought. The idea of renting a separate building nearby the event with space for Indymedia activities as well as Life After Capitalism and possibly Intergalaktika events also came up.

The food in Brazil is excellent, event for vegetarians, especially when one considers the fruit. I tried many new fruit juices that I have never tried before and got lots more experience with ones I didn’t know well. One of my favorites here is maracuja (passion fruit) as well as acai, which apparently has to be frozen immediately when found in the jungle so it can be transported and mixed with guarana to produce this dark brown very sweet thick juice. Banana and guava smoothies were great for a stomach that wasn’t always cooperating, hopefully not because I was eating and drinking so much fruit! Papayas and mangoes are everywhere here! I also tried things called caja, caju (which I think is the cashew plant’s fruit), fruta de caldo, and some others I don’t remember.

I was exhausted from waking up early each morning to take a shuttle from the hotel in a town outside Porto Alegre to the forum events for the day and not arriving back at the hotel until little sleep was possible each night. So, my plan on arriving in Rio de Janeiro was to relax, relax, relax!