June 2005
South India is a vegetarian paradise. With the world’s largest veg population, every street is crowded with restaurants that proclaim VEG (no meat) and PURE VEG (no meat or eggs). Even those places that do serve meat feel compelled to say so in veg terms: NON-VEG. It’s my kind of place. And at the core of the distinctive cuisines of South India is thali, the ubiquitous set lunch. (more…)
May 3, 2005
An interview with longtime anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott
By Gregory Dicum
In 1971, Helen Caldicott had an epiphany: all life on earth could end at any moment, simply because a few pig-headed people imagined they could “win” a nuclear war. A decade later, she had given up her promising medical career to devote her life to nothing short of saving the world.
Her urgent Australian twang became a sane voice in a world gone mad. In 1985, the Caldicott-inspired International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War won the Nobel Peace Prize. The organization beat out Caldicott herself, who had been nominated by Linus Pauling, the renowned chemist, anti-nuclear activist, and 1962 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
May 2005
West Oakland isn’t the kind of place you’d expect to find many vegetarians—or even vegetables for that matter. An economically depressed neighborhood of freeways, half-completed redevelopment projects, abandoned factories, and port facilities, the community here seems an afterthought: people living in a place not meant for people.
But in the middle of all this I found a bright orange and purple truck, happy beats pumping out from a solar music system on its roof, and a steady trickle of people walking in and out. This is the People’s Grocery Mobile Market. (more…)
