To celebrate being a vegan (I do think it helps to be cooler in the summer and it always helps to feel better!), I’m posting this book review that is on Book Tube. I was excited to hear about this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it! You can view the review below or read it below that. I hope you enjoy it.
Badass Vegan
Fuel Your Body,
Ph*ck The System,
And Live Your Life Right
By John Lewis
When I heard John Lewis (who also goes by BADASS VEGAN, the title of his recent book) say in an interview that all vegans are badasses, I was jazzed. Or maybe I should say I was juiced.
I’ve long been a badass in many ways (it was required to live my life) and I love the idea of being in my sixties and being a badass again. As a lesbian who came out in the bad old days of the early eighties, I consider it a radical act to stay healthy. After I went to a healthy plant-based diet nearly four years ago, I became aware of John Lewis (a.k.a. Badass Vegan) who shares a name with the late Civil Rights leader, and immediately connected to his compelling story and watched the movie that he co-directed titled “They’re Trying To Kill Us,” which tells the story of veganism through a hip hop lens.
Even though I’ve been plant-based for more than a few years (my partner and I have had amazing health results) and this book is written as a how-to guide for people who are new to the lifestyle, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and had a few aha moments (even muttering “Oh my God” a few times).
As a book person, I loved the feel of the big hardback in my hands, the sheen of the glossy pages, and the look of the four-color photographs. But most of all I love the title, BADASS VEGAN, splashed in large and very noticeable letters on the cover.
BADASS VEGAN is a book that will change lives. I was particularly moved by the following passage:
“As I like to think of it: I am the ordinary guy here to tell you that the extraordinary can be done. You can change your life and leave behind heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, digestive issues, joint pain and all the other health issues that bring you down every single day. You can have the body, hair, and skin that you’ve always wanted. And while you’re at it, you can give a big Fuck You to the system that keeps you fat, sick, and tired while draining your bank account and making this planet an increasingly dangerous place to live. If that’s not badass, I don’t know what is.”
BADASS VEGAN by John Lewis from Avery Press (an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC) is a beautiful book and a helluva good read. It reminded me how amazing and radical being a vegan is. This is Janet Mason with reviews for Book Tube.
For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:
I still wonder – why would anyone want to capture me? Why didn’t they just leave me alone? Was I that important?
I have been revising my novel TheUnicorn, The Mystery — so I thought I would do this new blog post about it.
In The Unicorn, The Mystery, we meet a unicorn who tells us the story of the seven tapestries, called “The Hunt of the Unicorn” from the 1500s on display in “the unicorn room” in the Cloisters (at the westernmost tip of Manhattan), now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tapestries tell the story of what is still called an “unsolved mystery.” The story is set in an abbey in France not far from the barn in the countryside where the tapestries were discovered. Pursued by a band of hunters, the unicorn is led along by observing birds (some of them chirp in a language that the unicorn understands), smelling and eating the abbey flowers and fruits (including imbibing in fermented pomegranates), pursuing chaste maidens (there is one in the tapestry) and at times speaks to other animals such as the majestic stag.
In The Unicorn, The Mystery, we also meet a young monk named Apolo who tells us his story. Once pure of heart, so much so that he saw the unicorn several times (most notably as a lad and then as a young monk), but when he comes to live in the abbey, he gets swept up in the politics going on around him. His betrayal starts when he tells the Priest he meets with regularly that he saw the unicorn. The priest scoffs and says that the unicorn is both a mythical and pagan animal. But then he suggests that if Apolo can prove the unicorn does indeed exists, that it would be worth his while. Apolo subsequently plots with the sundial wrist-band wearing Bishop who is eager to trap the unicorn to please the King. Realizing his error in betraying the unicorn, Apolo leads us through a labyrinth of the Middle Ages, including story, myth, philosophy, numerology and alchemy. Can he regain his purity and at the same time get ahead?
Three short fiction excerpts of the The Unicorn, The Mystery were shortlisted for the Adelaide Literary Award 2018 (short stories, Vol. One). To read the flip version of the 2018 anthology, click here.
I also included two excerpts of The Unicorn, The Mystery in my talks at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia. You can watch the YouTube videos of these talks below, or read the text below that.
By the way. unicorns did exist according to the bestiaries passed down from ancient Greece and unicorns are mentioned by name in The Hebrew Bible. They can be seen depicted in images of collections from the Middle Ages when people commonly believed in the existence of unicorns. As my monk narrator says to a skeptical priest, also his Latin teacher, “God believed in the unicorn.”
From the talk in the first YouTube video:
For me, forgiveness is a thorny issue. I suspect I’m not alone. I may forgive – but I do it on my own terms and this means taking the time that I need to understand the deeper reasons of why I was offended by someone’s actions. So, for me, learning to be more forgiving is wrapped up with protecting myself and having good boundaries.
As a practicing Buddhist, I understand that forgiving others is a way of forgiving yourself. But as I did research on forgiveness, there were so many conflicting theories, that really the only thing that ultimately made coherent sense to me was this quote from Oscar Wilde:
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
A few years ago, I was leafing through a slim book on Christianity and was surprised to read that forgiveness is expected in the Christian tradition. As a tenet, this one is not so bad. But it did occur to me that a reason why traditional religion has never appealed to me is that, on principal, I would never believe what someone tells me I should believe.
So when it comes to forgiveness, I process things the way that I usually do – in my writing. The novel I am currently writing The Unicorn, The Mystery, is set in the late Middle Ages and addresses some religious themes. I am going to read you a short excerpt of a monk talking with his Latin teacher, also a Priest:
“One of the things that Augustine is known for is his ‘doctrine of love.’ He wrote about forgiveness – which of course is related to love. In addition to forgiving others, it’s important to forgive ourselves. In fact, some argue that you cannot forgive another without first forgiving yourself,” said my teacher.
I smiled and nodded. This all made sense. No words were necessary from me.
“He also was the first to write about loving your neighbor as yourself. In saying this, he infers that it is first necessary to love yourself. When you truly love yourself, then you can love your neighbor and you can love God unconditionally,” he stated.
The Priest was silent – and so was I for a moment.
My curiosity got the best of me and I asked, “What if you are ashamed of yourself – how can you find it in your heart to forgive yourself? And if you can’t, how can you ever love your neighbor and how can you love God?”
The Priest looked at me oddly.
“That’s a good question,” he replied finally. “I do not know the answer. Perhaps I am not the best person to talk about love. I take the Christian writings seriously. I try to follow them. I follow my heart and each time it is a disaster. I love teaching and I love my students. But each term, things go too far, and I have my heart broken again,” he cried.
I looked at him with sadness. He had his reasons for hating himself. Perhaps that’s why he was snippy at times. How could he forgive himself, when the church told him he should be ashamed of himself?
This time I cleared my throat. I looked at him with tears in my eyes, and said, “Father – it is true that you know how to love and it is true that you are worthy of love – from others, from God. I came to your office that night after vespers a few months ago. I saw you bent over the desk with Gregory – I saw the love that surrounded you.”
The Priest looked at me as if he had seen a ghost.
I attended the Episcopal Church until I was about five — when my mother became a card-carrying atheist. It’s a long story. I remember reciting the Lord’s Prayer. When I think about forgiveness, I think about the lines:
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us;
As I did my research, I was fascinated to learn that in the “Book of Matthew,” chapter 6, of the New Testament, the line after the Lord’s Prayer says:
“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”
Of course, in my Unitarian Universalist interpretation, God the Father could be the Universe, the Great Spirit, or the Mother/ Father God or God the Father. It depends on what day it is.
If I’ve offended anyone, please forgive me.
From the talk in the second YouTube video:
There are many types of love. I explore the many types of love in the novel that I just completed The Unicorn, The Mystery which I am going to read from briefly:
“The point I was going to make is that romantic love is far from the most important type of love,” said the Priest with his usual authority. “Christians believe that pure love—the kind of love that is selfless and creates goodness—is the way that God loves us. This is why the saying, ‘love you neighbor’ is so important. There are numerous references to this in the Bible. But the most important is from the Gospel According to Mark in which he says ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than this.
“This kind of love is called ‘agape,’” continued the priest. “Agape is the highest form of pure, selfless love. It is the kind of love that God has for us—and the kind of love that we strive to have for our fellow man.”
“I recognize the word,” I replied. “It’s Ancient Greek, from the time of Homer.”
The Priest narrowed his eyes.
Of course, many of the great poets have been inspired by romantic love, especially the Greeks. But some may argue–and I do–that love (regardless of the kind of love) is the inspiration for all poetry.
One of the poets from antiquity who greatly inspired me was Sappho, who lived around 600 B.C.E. Of course, she lived before labels but many of Sappho’s love poems were written to women. And she was technically a Lesbian since she lived on the Isle of Lesbos, now called Lesvos. Most of what is left from Sappho is in fragments. One of the complete poems that survived is her “Hymn to Aphrodite” which I’ll read now:
On your dazzling throne. Aphrodite, Sly eternal daughter of Zeus, I beg you: do not crush me With grief
But come to me now – as once You heard my far cry, and yielded, slipping from your father’s house
to yoke the birds to your gold chariot, and came. Handsome sparrows brought you swiftly to the dark earth,
their wings whipping the middle sky Happy, with deathless lips, you smiled: “What is wrong, Sappho, why have You called me?
What does your mad heart desire? Whom shall I make love you, Who is turning her back on you?
Let her run away, soon she’ll chase you; Refuse your gifts, soon she’ll give them. She will love you, though unwillingly.”
Then come to me now and free me From fearful agony. Labor for my mad heart, and be my ally.
Almost twenty years ago, when I took a pilgrimage to Greece, including a stay in Sappho’s birthplace of Skala Eressos, a beach town on the Isle of Lesvos, I wrote the following response to Sappho’s hymn to the goddess of love. The title is “Sapphics for Aphrodite” —
Aphrodite, in your blazing chariot, I do not ask to be loved by anyone against her will, to be fled from or to be pursued.
I do not ask for anything that will sever my breath with anguish; I do not wish to destroy or to be destroyed. I do not wish for
anything other than for the stars to blaze in my pulse until breaking, shattered, and incandescent, I am consumed: the moon’s rays intent upon me.
Aphrodite this is all I ask of you, you who hold the Fates in my hands, and you, of the golden winged chariot, in whose temple I burn.
The Priest in my novel has a point. Romantic love can have its limitations. But love is love – regardless of what it is called. And love can lead to goodness.
Namaste
From the talk in the third YouTube video:
This morning, I took part in a Unitarian Universalist summer service. In my talk, I reflected on The Egyptian Cat Goddess the Goddess Bastet (a part of my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery) and on the spiritual practice of gardening.
In the summer, I garden. This is a common hobby for many, especially writers. It teaches patience, attention, and relentless hope. Not everything that we plant comes back – especially after a long icy winter. Not every seed sprouts and not every sprout makes it. In this way it makes me focus on the positive – on what does come back and on what does sprout.
Being a Unitarian Universalist gives me a spiritual context in which to think about gardening. Many of our flowers attract bees – such as bee balm, lavender and the butterfly bush. And bees, of course, are good for the planet.
Every now and then, a plant from my writing appears in my garden – seemingly out of nowhere but probably from a seed dropped by a bird. Last year it was a tall flowering weed known as a “sow’s ear” which was also in the manuscript I just finished writing, titled The Unicorn, The Mystery which is set in the 1500s in France. I was amazed, of course, at the sow’s ear in my backyard.
Recently, I planted catnip. Cats love our backyard and often we see one sleeping there – most often in the shade of the young hazel nut tree that my partner’s sister sent us. Inside, my office looks out to the backyard where the garden is. Our old cat Felix has taken to sleeping on the inside back windowsill – no doubt protecting his territory.
I have long been fascinated by the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet. In my novel, The Unicorn, The Mystery, my monk character (who in many ways is a Unitarian Universalist at heart) prays to the Goddess Bastet.
I stepped slowly and softly as if the soles of my feet had ears. I took another step. A branch snapped under my foot. I winced. That would never do. If my beloved unicorn heard that she would assume there was a human nearby – big enough to snap a branch under foot – and hide. It seemed like I would never find her. I decided to pray. But I had prayed to the One God before and it hadn’t worked. Who would I pray to? Who would help me?
Immediately, the Goddess Bastet leapt to mind. Bastet was an Egyptian Goddess who was half woman and half cat. I knew about her because when I was a boy, my mother would tell me the stories that her father had told her. He had loved Greek mythology and found out that the Goddess Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, was related to the earlier Goddess Bastet from Egypt who came from the even earlier fierce lioness Goddess Bast, the warrior goddess of the sun.
The followers of Bastet ruled ancient Egypt for a time in the land where cats were sacred. I remember that my mother’s emerald green eyes gleamed as if she were a cat herself when she told me about the Goddess Bastet who kept away disease and was the protector of pregnant women. The stories she told me about the fierce, soft, cat Goddess Bastet were so vivid that she made me want a cat for my very own pet.
My mother cautioned me, however, not to mention cats to anyone but her. People with cats were looked on with suspicion, she warned me. For some reason cats were looked down on by the Church as wily creatures associated with Satan. Again, my mother told me that it was very important never to anger the Church.
Surely, the Goddess Bastet would help me find my beloved unicorn. She of all the gods and goddesses would understand why I had to find my beloved unicorn to save her.
I closed my eyes tightly until I saw a slim woman, standing tall. She had very good posture, with the head of a cat. I knew it was Goddess Bastet, just as my mother had described her.
And so, the Goddess Bastet and other worlds – real, imagined and both – is something for me to mull over as I tend the soil and do the spiritual work of gardening.
Namaste
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
One of the poets from antiquity who greatly inspired me was Sappho, who lived around 600 B.C.E. Of course, she lived before labels but many of Sappho’s love poems were written to women. And she was technically a Lesbian since she lived on the Isle of Lesbos, now called Lesvos. Most of what is left from Sappho is in fragments. One of the complete poems that survived is her “Hymn to Aphrodite” which I’ll read now: 
Janet Mason, author 