Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Monday, June 20, 2016
Mega-Mart Shuffle
If I take just a couple minutes to look up how a company manufactures what I may purchase I have just taken back the power. When I find out they import a bulk or all of the materials while they claim to be ethical it will most definitely sway my decision. Come on, what part of "ethical" is maximize profits at the cost of the environment?
I've witnessed companies adhering to ethical principles at the outset and then without any notice the label reads "china" where it once listed USA. What that doesn't directly list out are laid off workers, the huge burden of transportation, pollution, lack of regulation and oversight. When a company outsources it is never simply moving it is virtually always going from cleaner less polluting methods to filthier more damaging. That stuff doesn't spring to mind in that moment, not very fun to consider voluntarily. Everything on the product looked the same but flip back the tiny little logo where it looks like nothing could even fit on the back of it and there it is "china."
I'm okay with others pursuing excessive wealth, hey go for it man, if that's what you're into great, knock yourself out. Where it starts to bother me and should get us all fuming mad is when the environment, the people, and the animals pay a silent "greed tax" for one more illusion of security. The quick and simple example of needless outsourcing is Captain Obvious over there; big corporations thinning the herd, reducing overhead to raise that bottom line.Well it isn't big corporations any more, it's everyone. Watch out for those companies that used to be little and became popular. We all gripe about the state of things, the economy, politics, but we can take back some of the power right now. We each have a say in this.You cave a tiny computer in your pocket or hand right now how much more simple is it to just search for info on that product? More simple, lighter than the alternative- the norm.
Buy local. Buy compassionate. Pretty simple but is it really that easy? Practice, practice, practice.
Thank you for reading my rant. I was motivated by yet again another competitor going for the quick buck. I want to tell them in the larger picture the harm outweighs the immediate reward. It looks like you're doing the right thing but that is the subjectivity of attachment, our personal stake narrows vision. Everybody thinks it's greed but it's really just fear. We are from birth pounded with the false narrative of Scarcity vs Abundance and the entire economy is driven by it. This is why it is not as easy as just informing each other of the reality. Deeply ingrained paradigms have to be uprooted regularly, what a pain in the ass! Shocker: the Scarcity model is untrue. We have plenty of everything and we always have. Management and allocation of resources has always been at the crux of the perceived problem. I'll leave it at that. Choir practice is now over.
I've witnessed companies adhering to ethical principles at the outset and then without any notice the label reads "china" where it once listed USA. What that doesn't directly list out are laid off workers, the huge burden of transportation, pollution, lack of regulation and oversight. When a company outsources it is never simply moving it is virtually always going from cleaner less polluting methods to filthier more damaging. That stuff doesn't spring to mind in that moment, not very fun to consider voluntarily. Everything on the product looked the same but flip back the tiny little logo where it looks like nothing could even fit on the back of it and there it is "china."
I'm okay with others pursuing excessive wealth, hey go for it man, if that's what you're into great, knock yourself out. Where it starts to bother me and should get us all fuming mad is when the environment, the people, and the animals pay a silent "greed tax" for one more illusion of security. The quick and simple example of needless outsourcing is Captain Obvious over there; big corporations thinning the herd, reducing overhead to raise that bottom line.Well it isn't big corporations any more, it's everyone. Watch out for those companies that used to be little and became popular. We all gripe about the state of things, the economy, politics, but we can take back some of the power right now. We each have a say in this.You cave a tiny computer in your pocket or hand right now how much more simple is it to just search for info on that product? More simple, lighter than the alternative- the norm.
Buy local. Buy compassionate. Pretty simple but is it really that easy? Practice, practice, practice.
Thank you for reading my rant. I was motivated by yet again another competitor going for the quick buck. I want to tell them in the larger picture the harm outweighs the immediate reward. It looks like you're doing the right thing but that is the subjectivity of attachment, our personal stake narrows vision. Everybody thinks it's greed but it's really just fear. We are from birth pounded with the false narrative of Scarcity vs Abundance and the entire economy is driven by it. This is why it is not as easy as just informing each other of the reality. Deeply ingrained paradigms have to be uprooted regularly, what a pain in the ass! Shocker: the Scarcity model is untrue. We have plenty of everything and we always have. Management and allocation of resources has always been at the crux of the perceived problem. I'll leave it at that. Choir practice is now over.
Friday, June 3, 2016
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Friday, May 20, 2016
Sailing Thee Sea Of Etsy
I must've been tripping on morphine after one of those surgeries when I shut down my Etsy store cause in my mind it had become this huge horribly complicated monster. I recently approached it again... huh, not so bad. Quite improved honestly but still Etsy like always. I'm very happy to be back on board hopefully I can detangle from Amazon and Jeff Bezos entirely. https://www.etsy.com/shop/HELD
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Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Activism vs. Volunteerism
I started volunteering over twenty years ago while studying psychology at university. In one of my classes we discussed studies showing that volunteers get a "helper's high" while they give of themselves without any intention of gaining reward. High? I was young and getting high sounded good so count me in! Coincidentally this was when I got clean and sober too, no, not at all a coincidence. Those studies though were dead on. Getting sober was really hard and my mind was very tormented in the first ten years and helping others induces a blissful zen state where none of my problems exist anymore and time itself ceases to exist. Many in the field say Gratitude is what happiness really is and that comes with helping others. I was hooked immediately.
Over the last 23 years I've built my entire life around giving back. I own a company that is rooted firmly in giving back and activism. I live where I do for the benefit of others and this affords me the opportunity to be with family. Every altruistic action comes with it's own reward and I used to think this negates selflessness but the longer you do it the less you tend to consider the rewards- I forgot about them till I wrote that last line. At the same time though if I wasn't happy and at peace I probably wouldn't do it.
When I was 15 I went vegetarian after slaughtering and eating a few of my friends on the farm. I fell in love with a calf named Sunny, a lamb named Howard, Rock Hudson the rooster, and even Silver Bridge the horse and we ate them all- oh and Charlotte the huge awesome pig. I felt the same for these buds and pals as I felt for the family dog and cat, what the psych community calls unconditional positive regard (love). I could no longer eat them without vomiting violently and just feeling so much shame and guilt that fit hand-in-glove with drug addiction. Activism has been giving me the same joy as volunteerism.
When the fur store closed after years of protests and demos the sense of accomplishment and peace for the saved critters was indescribable. Bringing together disparate individuals for a vegan potluck party results in long-term community and offshoots that couldn't be imagined. My current property is so huge but easily traversed willy-freakin-nilly so I've been building trails and converting it to protected wildlife area. Keeping on the trails allows the wildlife, which is a very dense population here, to have less imposed stress while also allowing us to view more of them as they are. I go out at night and walk the trail without any light by bright starlight. I visit the trail at dawn and dusk when everybody is chirping and hopping and stalking and I love it beyond words. What I get out of it is much better than a "helper's high" this high will go on and on. I don't even have to visit the trail to enjoy it.
Tomes can and have been written on the subject, I'm going for short form here.
In my thinking activism and volunteerism can be the same thing but we rarely join the two semantically. In the last ten years I can tell you never once had I considered helping the chimps from being tortured by the university as volunteerism. Never considered using my company to sponsor animal rights events as volunteerism. All those days spent in the freezing snow or burning sun to help inform the uninformed, that is activism. Now I know that it is also volunteerism. Never once did I think to list it on any form or resume that asked about "Volunteer Experience..." but now that veganism has gone mainstream perhaps we can lift the connotation of Animal Rights Activism, the connotation of the Animal Liberation Front can now be joined with words like "organic" and "natural" along with others. Oh yes animal liberation has most definitely gone mainstream but that does not mean ease up on the activism. Now is when we really need to shine the light on the path for these noobs. Populist voices will distract many into dull comfort and inaction and that just comes with popularity. Activism needs to remain a big component of what veganism is as long as injustice, violence against the voiceless continues.
Here's a mama hummingbird I found while maintaining the trail. Protecting her little jellybean of a baby, too cute!
Over the last 23 years I've built my entire life around giving back. I own a company that is rooted firmly in giving back and activism. I live where I do for the benefit of others and this affords me the opportunity to be with family. Every altruistic action comes with it's own reward and I used to think this negates selflessness but the longer you do it the less you tend to consider the rewards- I forgot about them till I wrote that last line. At the same time though if I wasn't happy and at peace I probably wouldn't do it.
When I was 15 I went vegetarian after slaughtering and eating a few of my friends on the farm. I fell in love with a calf named Sunny, a lamb named Howard, Rock Hudson the rooster, and even Silver Bridge the horse and we ate them all- oh and Charlotte the huge awesome pig. I felt the same for these buds and pals as I felt for the family dog and cat, what the psych community calls unconditional positive regard (love). I could no longer eat them without vomiting violently and just feeling so much shame and guilt that fit hand-in-glove with drug addiction. Activism has been giving me the same joy as volunteerism.
When the fur store closed after years of protests and demos the sense of accomplishment and peace for the saved critters was indescribable. Bringing together disparate individuals for a vegan potluck party results in long-term community and offshoots that couldn't be imagined. My current property is so huge but easily traversed willy-freakin-nilly so I've been building trails and converting it to protected wildlife area. Keeping on the trails allows the wildlife, which is a very dense population here, to have less imposed stress while also allowing us to view more of them as they are. I go out at night and walk the trail without any light by bright starlight. I visit the trail at dawn and dusk when everybody is chirping and hopping and stalking and I love it beyond words. What I get out of it is much better than a "helper's high" this high will go on and on. I don't even have to visit the trail to enjoy it.
Tomes can and have been written on the subject, I'm going for short form here.
In my thinking activism and volunteerism can be the same thing but we rarely join the two semantically. In the last ten years I can tell you never once had I considered helping the chimps from being tortured by the university as volunteerism. Never considered using my company to sponsor animal rights events as volunteerism. All those days spent in the freezing snow or burning sun to help inform the uninformed, that is activism. Now I know that it is also volunteerism. Never once did I think to list it on any form or resume that asked about "Volunteer Experience..." but now that veganism has gone mainstream perhaps we can lift the connotation of Animal Rights Activism, the connotation of the Animal Liberation Front can now be joined with words like "organic" and "natural" along with others. Oh yes animal liberation has most definitely gone mainstream but that does not mean ease up on the activism. Now is when we really need to shine the light on the path for these noobs. Populist voices will distract many into dull comfort and inaction and that just comes with popularity. Activism needs to remain a big component of what veganism is as long as injustice, violence against the voiceless continues.
Here's a mama hummingbird I found while maintaining the trail. Protecting her little jellybean of a baby, too cute!
Friday, February 26, 2016
Nuffing But Warms
Only here for a few months so far and every day I love it a little more. More lizards. More heat. More wellness. Further away from cancer every day.
Sales are up, overhead is down. Still no running water in the house and that has proven to be a non-issue, amazingly. I've started converting the shipping container which has the best deck for viewing critters and sunsets. So dry. Dressing Burner-style more every day. Dusty. Dry. Hot. Love it.
I adopted Win10 early beta and it was okay but I like privacy too much so I have switched solely to Linux/Gnu for almost a year now and I don't see going back. My latest OS is called Solus and it's pretty damn rad. If you're new to open source free OS try Ubuntu or Linux Mint first to learn on then if you want you can try hundreds of other free OSes good for different people doing different things. here's a picture of my Solus:
Video of the OS shows what's what:
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Five Stars on Amazon
Because we recently moved to Amazon the reviews from the past 9 years do not transfer. So far some of the belts have 5 stars but to compete with the yucky belts we need more. When I say yucky belts I mean any non-HELD belt. Show me a more green, more vegan belt I'll do a backflip while eating my hat.
If you could click on over to our gear and rate or review your awesome belt it would really help a bunch. Our belts are still the most ethical, the most vegan, most happy so they should be in front otherwise yucky stuff gets out there.
https://amazon.com/shops/vegangear
Thanks a metric ton of non-gmo soybeans! Here's a pretty picture I took:
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
HELD Vegan New Year!
Aloha and a very happy new year to all!
We are nearing the one year mark of the HELD re-launch and things are going very well. Some of the changes we have made were the right ones like closing both of the stores, for now, adding Melinda to the management team has been a huge boost, and moving to Arizona... well it's January and I'm soaking up some warm rays right now! Some of the changes like the name change for example, wasn't so brilliant. Simplifying our product stream is still iffy and will likely change again once the new campaigns even out. I still want to ad the pro belt and a few other ideas but this has been a rough learning curve me- an artist, not a business or marketing person.
Over all the changes has been very good. Melinda is becoming quite the manager and her tireless work has been freeing me up more and more so in turn production is stabilizing nicely. I can put more work into innovating and streamlining the production process, which we really need. As the production becomes more smooth I can then turn my attention more to my new belt designs which I know you have been very patient about. I really thank you for all the feedback and it isn't forgotten in fact there is still room for more input so go ahead, we do listen very closely.
It looks like this will be our best year so far and the biggest part is being able to contribute more to help the animals. This doesn't mean we are done asking for your help, if you want to do something to support our aim please do. We still need help spreading the word and you can do that by liking the Facebook page, following and re-tweeting, posting our links and all that social media stuff. In addition to our amazing belts we'll be starting an AR campaign here at our new location. I'll announce more later for now here is a cute Bobcat on our front porch.
Okay I think that might be enough for now. I have a bunch more stuff to do so ttfn and thanks a gajillion!
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Keeping It Classy San Diego
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