The facts are appalling: two-thirds of American adults and one-third of children are currently overweight or obese, with childhood obesity having tripled since 1980. Large farms provide the majority of food that Americans eat, using mass production methods that inevitably lead to pollution, not to mention unacceptable conditions for both animals and farm workers. Luckily, more and more Americans are becoming conscious of the situation and feel that it is time for a big change.

October 24 is Food Day, an occasion to bring Americans together and transform our relationship with food. This implies not only a change of individual behavior, but also a change in policies and the way food is produced. People all over the country will gather on this day to participate in events that promote healthy and sustainable nutrition, be it a potluck lunch, a film screening, a lecture, a forum, a food donation — and anything related to healthy eating you can think of! The day is sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit group that has been fighting for better nutrition and safer food since 1971.

The 6 Food Day Principles:

1. Change your diet

2. Support sustainable farms

3. Expand access to high-quality food

4. Protect the environment and farm animals

5. Promote healthy nutrition to kids

6. Create fair conditions for food and farm workers

Want to get involved? Here are 3 delightfully delicious ways to celebrate:

1. Start an organic food swap.

Organic food swaps have begun to pop up all over the country in growing numbers in the last few years, and the amount of money participants save as they fill and diversify their pantries make them a wholly worthwhile event. Bring fresh, organic produce from your own garden (maybe your tomato plants produced more fruit than you really want to eat or can?), or bring something you prepared from organic foods, such as preserves, juices, dried herbs, or sauces — even bread or yogurt, if you’d like, as long as you made it yourself or it came from your own back yard! Gather a group of people together who will do the same,  swap the foods you bring for what they have, and watch as something that was relatively cheap to do in the first place suddenly becomes an easy way to fill your cupboards with healthy, organic food for pennies on the dollar for what you’d spend at the grocery store.

2. Host a pumpkin carving — and eating — party!

This time of year, many people are picking out the perfect pumpkins to carve and light on their front porches for Halloween, but what about all of those perfectly good pumpkin parts that end up in the garbage? Break out the patio chairs, card tables, and carving knives, and gather your neighbors and friends together for a pumpkin-carving-and-eating party! Simply collect the “guts” of your pumpkin in large bowls to use for tasty treats — carvers will be particularly appreciative of a good snack after putting some muscle into carving out fun faces and images. Add the seeds to a yummy trail mix, or roast them for a crunchy pumpkin seed salad dressing. Or, instead of paying $4 for a pumpkin spice latte to satisfy your sweet tooth, try this surprisingly healthy pumpkin cheesecake recipe from Maximum Healing by Robert Silverstein.

3. Take the Meatless Mondays pledge

Did you know that the average American eats 30 chickens, half a pig, and a tenth of a cow each year? That’s twice the meat Americans ate 50 years ago. Because most of the meat that is consumed in the US comes from mass-produced meat factories, there’s a good chance that most of the meat the average American consumes came from animals that were raised inhumanely, not to mention that the workers themselves often face intolerable working conditions. Add to that the massive amounts of water (approx. 25 gallons of water per lb. of beef!) used in raising livestock, and you have a major eco-unfriendly problem. Enter Meatless Monday, where once a week, you pledge to go meat-free. Everybody’s doing it, too; famous Meatless Monday participants include celebrity chef Mario Batali, pop star Jessica Simpson, bestselling author and Hope Beneath Our Feet contributor Michael Pollan — even media tycoons Rupert and Wendi Murdoch are practicing Meatless Monday in their home! Make the pledge, and get your friends and family to join in, too!

To learn more about Food Day and find events in your area, go to:

http://foodday.org/

Also on NABCommunities:

NOURISH | 3 Kid-Friendly Earth Day Activities

CULTURE | Darrin Drda Goes on Tour + Earth Day Intensive

WISDOM | Envisioning Earth as a Work of Art

CULTURE | 5 Ways to Save Time and Money Going Green

With a name like The Creepy Crawlies, we really didn’t expect something as soft and fluffy as the band’s first LP, Get Buried!. Los Angeles/San Francisco shoegaze-garage band, The Creepy Crawlies, is sort of like those candy bugs of yore, creepy crawlers — the first one was ok, the rest turned out legless and parbaked, and then you got bored and left to go watch cartoons.

Read the rest of my review here: http://www.theowlmag.com/album-reviews/get-buried-by-the-creepy-crawlies/

Justin Timberlake may have brought sexy back in 2006, but Seattle-based THEESatisfaction’s new album, awE naturalE, spins the hip-bumping lady power grooves to bring that sexy back to your place. Hitting stores yesterday, thirteen tracks combine the unabashed sexuality of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Let’s Talk About Sex” with the poetic wisdom of Erykah Badu’s “On and On.”

Read my full review and check out a fresh track from the album here: http://www.theowlmag.com/album-reviews/awe-naturale-by-theesatisfaction/

This article was originally posted to Geek Girl on the Street this afternoon.

If you haven’t seen the video of the hateful beating of trans woman Chrissy Lee Polis by two teenage girls inside of a McDonald’s in Rosedale, Maryland — caught on a camera phone by one of the restaurant’s employees — I must warn you, it’s not for the faint of heart.

“Mean girls” doesn’t even begin to sum up the young women who viciously kicked and dragged Chrissy Lee Polis by her hair after she apparently tried to use the ladies room. One of the women accused her of “talking to her man” (apparently an employee who stopped Polis from using the restroom because she needed to buy something first), and the next thing Polis knows, she’s being attacked by a 14 year old and an 18 year old woman, eventually sending the victim into a seizure.

Employees of the restaurant stood around and watched as an older woman unsuccessfully tried to break up the attack (and got hit herself, in the process). The employee who recorded the whole thing on his camera phone is even heard warning the girls to run before the cops came as he closes in on the somewhat bloodied victim mid-seizure. Interesting customer service you’re offering there, Rosedale Mickey D’s.

The gravest part of Polis’ experience isn’t that she was so obviously the target of a hate crime, but that she’s not nearly alone. A recent study on 6,450 transgender and gender non-conformists by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that “those who expressed a transgender identity or gender non-conformity while in grades K-12 reported alarming rates of harassment (78%), physical assault (35%) and sexual violence (12%); harassment was so severe that it led almost one-sixth (15%) to leave a school in K-12 settings or in higher education.”

And I’ve witnessed this, too. About four years ago, I chased three teenage boys down University Avenue in Hillcrest — a “gay” neighborhood in San Diego — after witnessing them circle a black gay man like sharks before giving him a collective beating. They apparently wanted him to buy them alcohol at a nearby liquor store. When he refused, they called him names I won’t repeat (but you can imagine) and threw him, hard, against a glass window, before dropping him to the ground and shattering a bottle over his head.

Blood poured from his forehead like a faucet as I screamed down the block and ran towards them. He remained fairly quiet throughout the ordeal, never fighting back, never looking the kids in the eyes or provoking them further. The immediate adrenaline rush as the mix of fear and surprise that my yelling and charging had worked left me feeling pretty brazen as I yelled out one final “Yeah, you BETTER run, motherfuckers!” Minutes later, I nearly cried as I shakily dialed 911. I think I remember gathering paper towels or napkins from a shop nearby. It’s a little hazy after that, in truth.

When the ambulance pulled up, the victim said he needed to go to Balboa — a nearby military hospital. He was a marine; don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t get caught hanging out near gay bars on a Saturday night. His boyfriend, a complete stranger to me, cried in my arms as the ambulance pulled away. It became something that just happened, on an otherwise normal night in an otherwise gay-friendly neighborhood, just like all of the other hate crimes that just happened in the area that year.

Imagine how much harder it must be to be a transgender person who just wants to be beautiful the way that feels most comfortable; who just wants the outside to match the inside, the way the rest of us generally choose to express ourselves. Is it so hard to believe that one might find a key part of their identity wrapped in their gender? Nobody gets dressed in the morning with hopes of getting beaten up in a McDonald’s restroom and dragged out to the restaurant seating area by one’s hair.

After a 2009 hate crime in New York resulted in the death of a Hispanic man targeted for his race, the local ABC News station decided to set up a “What Would You Do?” scenario in which actors re-enacted a similar situation on the street and studied how passersby responded. A frightening 67 of 99 witnesses did absolutely nothing.

So what should you do if you witness a hate crime?

The Hate Crime Project of Family Service of Greater New Orleans which offers a 24/7 support line and services to educate and prevent hate crimes offers this advice on their website:

• Be mindful of your own reactions to differences. If you hear or see another expressing a hateful stereotype, say something!
• Take responsibility by being the ears and eyes in your community and never have tolerance for hateful words or actions.
• If you witness a hate crime, report the incident. Be specific to the authorities why exactly you believe it to be a hate crime.
• Be aware that bias is not always obvious. Take the role as an advocate for diversity where you live!
• Show your desire to strengthen your community.

When I think back to that night in San Diego, I still get a lump in my throat at all of the “what-if’s.” We were all lucky that those three teenage boys were startled enough by my charging towards them and screaming that they ran off; what was I going to do if that didn’t work? It was a busy street and there were other witnesses further down the block who saw everything. Where the hell were they in all of this? My choice wasn’t the safest, but in my mind, doing nothing didn’t make any of the rest of us any safer from harm. You never know when something about you, something you cannot change, will make you the next target. Don’t you hope that someone will intervene?

If any good can come of Polis’ terrible experience, it’s that one otherwise passive spectator caught the whole thing on camera like it was a gloves-off Fight Night and he was bettin’ high. He may have had no intention of turning this video into a vehicle for discussion and rally among those of us who have had enough of the hate, but finally, here’s the frame-by-frame bloodied evidence that this is a horrifyingly real problem, and it’s happening without provocation. If you witness a hate crime and you do nothing, even if it’s just to call 911, or yell at the top of your lungs, you aren’t just giving hate permission to exist, you’re opening the door and welcoming it in.

For those of you in Maryland, a rally for Chrissy Lee Polis will take place tonight at the Rosedale McDonald’s where Polis was attacked tonight at 7 pm. Someone has even set up a Facebook event page for the rally, so spread the word.

This is an article Ethan Kaye and myself wrote for Geek Girl on the Street in response to an incredibly sexist list that ran on the Chicago Now blog, “Lists That Actually Matter.”

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Earlier this week, a “Lists That Actually Matter” blogger by the name of Dan Tello posted what might be the most arbitrary list to Chicago Now “5 Least Sexy Film Characters (Female).” Most of Tello’s choices confused us, but when we saw that Tank Girl was included in the unsexy five, we just had to respond. What do you think? Are we crazy, or is this list outlandish?

5. Renée Zellweger as Dorothy Boyd in “Jerry McGuire”

Dan Tello says:

“Nothing says sexy like loose fitting sweaters, a talkative toddler, and a bitchy, over-protective, man-hating older sister. Renée, are there boobs under there? Also, Renée, the rest of the Renees got together and decided you should ditch the accent mark over the ‘e’.”

Ethan: I’m really not sure what Dan’s criteria were for this list. Are these just women he doesn’t want to fuck? Because that’s probably more than five people. I’m going to stop referring to these women as “least sexy” or “not sexy” and just refer to them as “women Dan doesn’t want to fuck.” It could be for a number of reasons, and now we know that Dan doesn’t like kids, sisters, or sweaters. That’s a really arbitrary list of faults. Sweaters were stylish then; kids happen, and you can’t choose your in-laws. Those three things according to Dan Tello, however, make Miss Zellweger horribly un-sexy, less sexy than Anjelica Huston in “The Witches.” I didn’t want to fuck Anjelica Huston in “The Witches” because her face was melting and she was crusty and evil. That, to me, says “not sexy.” I can live with a woman in a sweater.

Kat: What throws me off completely about this choice is a much more obvious reason to find Zellweger’s character unsexy that has nothing to do with whether or not her baggy sweaters hide her boobs. Here’s something I think most well-adjusted men would list as a turn-off: desperation. It’s usually a bad sign if you find your new lady friend quitting her otherwise stable job to follow your unrequited love on a wild goose chase, especially when she has a kid to support. That’s called desperation, and no matter how you dress it up or down, it ain’t pretty.

4. Lori Petty as Tank Girl in “Tank Girl” (1995)

Dan Tello says:

“I don’t get it. Did she donate her hair to cancer patients? Why would you opt to do that? Gen X, I don’t get you. Maybe I need to watch “Reality Bites” again.”

Ethan: Short hair = icky! Say nothing of the fact that this was an established character, or that people with short hair can very easily be sexy. There’s a whole website called Suicide Girls and many of them look like Tank Girl. Many of them have also seen the movie, which I’m not positive can be said about Dan Tello.

Kat: Does Dan Tello know who Lori Petty’s Tank Girl often gets compared to, and by often, I mean pretty much always? Gwen Stefani — the rocker who has made more “sexiest women” lists than you you probably care to Google. In fact, rumors have swirled for years about the possibility of Stefani herself taking on the role in a Tank Girl remake or sequel. So, let me get this straight; the character who indeed bares a strong resemblance to one of the worlds sexiest women is a Top 5 Least Sexy Film Character, according to Dan Tello. Right.

3. Elizabeth Taylor as Martha in, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966)

Dan Tello says:

“I am. I am very, very afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

Ethan: Elizabeth Taylor did not play Virginia Woolf in the movie “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” so I don’t get the joke. Did you see this movie, or did you pull the name out of a hat? No rationale, no backstory, no anything. Just a photo, a name, and a sentence that does not refer to the character or actress. Elizabeth Taylor plays a bitchy drunk, and yeah, some people don’t want to fuck that. But I think there would be many young men on college campuses who would be quite happy to bang a bitchy drunk, and do on a regular basis. I sure would have if I was invited to more parties in college.

Kat:  Elizabeth Taylor is/was not so old that this was a silent film, so why doesn’t Tello know that she wasn’t Virginia Woolf? This is the only one I concur with Tello on, even if he clearly has never seen the actual film he’s talking about.

2. Mini Driver as Skylar in “Good Will Hunting” (1997)

Dan Tello says:

“Will Hunting’s strengths: fighting, brains, lying, one-liners, and carpentry. Weaknesses: female basketball players.”

Ethan: What does this even mean? Being a female basketball player makes you unfuckable? In what universe? These women are fit and confident, which makes a dynamite combo. Say nothing of the fact that Minnie Driver is really sexy like, a lot, but just by playing a sport she becomes unfuckable. That’s it. Personality, looks, actions, those are irrelevant. Dear God, she plays a sport! Banish her to the spinster hut!

Kat: Tello’s right; there’s absolutely nothing sexy about a woman who stays in shape doing anything other than starving herself and eating diet pills by the mouthful to get Driver’s model physique. By the way, Tello, it’s “Minnie” Driver.

1. Geena Davis as Dottie Hinson in “A League of Their Own”

Dan Tello says:

“Geena Davis is easily the 2nd best looking guy in this picture. Call me narrow-minded, but it’s impossible for a woman to use chewing tobacco and be sexy in the same movie.”

Ethan: Narrow-minded. There, I called you it. Oh, and sexist, we’ll go with that one. Originally, I thought the article was just “Women Dan Tello Doesn’t Want to Fuck,” which in itself would be a fine article if it didn’t pretend to be something else, but now I think it’s just about how Dan Tello disapproves of women doing “man things.” Shaving your head, playing sports, drinking and speaking your mind, wearing comfortable clothes, and (god forbid) coaching sports are all the equivalent of throwing acid in your face and cutting your limbs off into bleeding stumps. You will be deemed LEAST SEXY for these things by Dan Tello.

Kat: This choice is particularly ironic, given Davis’ recent establishment of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media after she realized that there weren’t nearly enough strong female role models portrayed in film and television as there are male. Heaven forbid that she play anything other than the lead role in sequels to Earth Girls are Easy. Peach miniskirt and red lipstick? Hell naw, Dan Tello says! If her boobs aren’t busting out of a low-cut see-through wet t-shirt and she’s holding any kind of sporting equipment or even watching a game happen, he’s not even sure she’s a woman.

I’ve been listening to Le Tigre ever since my artsy friend Katie Langer and her friend Steph showed off the sweet dance routine they put together to the tune of “Who Took the Bomp” when we were like fifteen or sixteen years old. It amazes me that a song with lyrics like “I’m a gasoline gut with a vaseline mind” would still be relevant some ten years later, but “Who Took the Bomp” is still a mainstay on hightop-and-miniskirt dance mixes, and with good reason; it fucking rules.

Read the rest and check out a sweet video clip from Deceptacon on Geekgirlonthestreet.com!

You hanged yourself up there
tied yourself up in that tall tree
And yelled down a whisper
A rusty throat call of “help me”

I won’t look —
‘Cause you’ve been up to no good
And I know it
And you know it,

Oh don’t I know, you know it, too.