Hi!
I'm a newbie since February 14. I'm 35 years old and pretty obsessed with food--its history, culture, preparation, taste, literature, economic impact, ecological impact, the works. I don't know why this is the case, but as MFK Fisher said, "When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one."
I was born in Oregon, went to college in Indiana (Go Wabash!), lived in Oregon some more, lived in New York City for 5 years (4 years in a commune of 100 people), and most recently moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan which I believe will be my home for the next couple of decades at least.
I have an incredible fiancee who I will marry in July (it's been a two year engagement).
I have a very closeknit group of friends for the last ten years who I am now away from and have to connect with only over long distance communications. A picture cell phone helps that a lot. I miss them.
As for my veg*n story... About eleven years ago I made a friend who became my best friend and she was vegetarian. We had many discussions and soul-searching about the reasons and I thought about it a lot. After a year, I stopped eating mammals and a few months later stopped eating anything with a nervous system. I've found that my initial reasons for becoming veg*n have aged like a good wine, many of the initial harsher reasons have mellowed and now there's a panoply of much more subtle reasons that play upon my tongue for why I'm vegetarian, which deal as much with humans, culture, gastronomy, and economy as animals themselves. About three and a half years ago I became vegan and was vegan until about three weeks ago. Now I don't even have a label for what I am... although schmegetarian is looking more and more appealing.
I was in advertising for five years, but then I left that because it was ethically unappealing to me to encourage the level of capitalism and consumption that exists. I became a bartender for awhile--that was pretty great--mainly to stretch my ability to small talk and learn to care more about a variety of people with different interests than my own. When I lived in the commune I worked as part of the community. The last four years of my life have been preschool age child related. I was a nanny for two years and a preschool teacher for autistic children for a year and now I'm a substitute preschool teacher. I want my own business soon, related to food somehow though, maybe food writer or coffee shop owner or some such... I want to explore this obsession as a career.
My favorite poet is Nikki Giovanni. My favorite authors are Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. I adore cooking. I want to learn to hunt wild mushrooms. I want to become a Master Gardener.
I like to analze things. I care about humans and non-humans, but I probably care about the health of the earth and of the soil more. If you look at all my beliefs, I'm certainly inconsistent--and quite at peace with that.
Jim