The Mindful Carnivore Book Tour

You know those blogs where the writer raises some question about food, animals, or human relationships with nature, and engages readers in an interesting conversation? Well, our pal Tovar Cerulli has started a lot of these conversations, and written the excellent book "The Mindful Carnivore" which I have read, thoroughly enjoyed, and shamefully not yet reviewed yet, is takin'it 'on-da-road'. Yep you can meet the blogosphere's hunter/philosopher for yourself! If I had the cash I'd fly out to join in the fun, every event promises to be one of lively debate, and inspirational mindfulness. With your chance to pick up a signed copy

• Denver, CO: Thursday, May 10, 7:00 pm at West Side Books
• Berkeley, CA: Monday, May 14, 7:30 pm at Pegasus Books Downtown
• San Francisco, CA: Tuesday, May 15, 7:30 pm at The Green Arcade
• Seattle, WA: Thursday, May 17, 7:00 pm at Elliott Bay Book Company
• Omaha, NE: Wednesday, June 13, 5:45 pm at Soul Desires

Hopefully he'll get down to Texas and we can arrange a side-by-side picture of him and the LSP.

More Soon

SBW

Meet Tovar Cerulli

Always a pleasure to big-up a fellow blogger - writing for the love of reading and writing.  Bloggers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some of us are silly, some investigative, some great at evoking wild spaces with sparse prose. The blogosphere has some amazing voices and some of them make it into traditional print. Tovar is a fascinating voice, the first person to diagnose adult onset hunting [read this one it's very funny], and my favorite 'foodie philosopher'  who has grasped the nettle of food bullshit, writing about the unintended consequences to food choices.

Have a watch of this, then have a read of his blog.

At twenty, moved by the compassionate words of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and concerned about the ecological impacts of meat, I became a vegetarian. Soon I went vegan.

Almost a decade later, having moved back to a rural community from New York City, I realized that all food has its costs. From habitat destruction to grain combines that inadvertently mince rabbits to the shooting of deer in soybean and lettuce fields, crop production is far from harmless. Even in our own organic garden, my wife and I were battling ravenous insects and fence-defying woodchucks. I began to see that the question wasn’t what we ate but how that food came to our plates.

A few years later, my wife—who was studying holistic health and nutrition— suggested that we shift our diet. My health improved when we started eating dairy and eggs. It improved still more when we started eating chicken and fish.

Searching for ethical, ecologically responsible ways to come to terms with my food, I began to contemplate the unthinkable: hunting. Two years later, I took up a deer rifle.

More soon, your pal

SBW