Elizabeth’s guilty pleasure

This month marks my half-year anniversary of turning vegetarian. So far, I delight in having a narrower (but often healthier and more environmentally-friendly) palate.

But even thought tofu and beans and soy have entirely supplanted meat in my life I’m not missing out on the culinary scene about town. No restaurant or food truck I’ve encountered has failed to produce a good vegetarian option. And, I’ve unearthed a whole trove of meatless and wholesome places to dine — from the Eritrean cuisine at Dahlak in West Philly to the Cherry Street Chinese Vegetarian Kosher Restaurant. It also doesn’t hurt that these options are easy on the pocketbook.

Less meat also means more room for desert. As an insatiable carb-lover, I’ve replaced meat with chocolate chip cookies and frozen dairy treats. And, by paying more attention to my diet, I’ve become more wary of artificial additives in processed foods. I was horrified to learn that even Special K — that paragon of breakfast health food—contains high fructose fruit syrup (a sugar additive usually derived from genetically modified corn and, therefore, virtually unfound in Europe). And you know something shouldn’t be good for us when it isn’t even good enough for the French.

For me, turning vegetarian marks a shift in thinking about organic, local, non-processed foods. Scrutinizing ingredient labels has increased my paranoia of prepackaged goodies like Twinkies. My rule of thumb is not to eat much of what my grandmother would not have recognized. Beware the unnatural horrors of calcium sulfate, partially unhydrogenated soybean oil, or polysorbate 60. Having said that, I usually cave in and buy a package of those nifty new Rainbow Twizzlers for kicks.

While I’m still attached to my eggs and dairy, it’s also a lot easier than you might think to be vegan in Philadelphia. Vegan cupcakes are all the rage at Whole Foods — the chocolate frosting is absolutely to die for. Gianna’s Grill even markets a vegan cheesesteak. And Fuh-wah’s in West Philly makes a mean tofu hoagie.

Philadelphia’s culinary treasures aren’t just for the omnivores among us. Options abound — explore!

Members of the Penn community:

As we all watch the tragic events at Virginia Tech unfold, we are all joined in the common feelings of shock and sadness. Our thoughts are with all those who are directly and indirectly affected by this tragedy. Here at Penn, we are connected to Virginia Tech through the common bond of being a university community. Some of us have family and friends there; others may have studied or worked there in the past.

Traumatic events like these impact people all over in many different ways. It is very common to experience a range of stress reactions like shock, difficulties concentrating, sleeping problems, disbelief, or fear. These reactions are normal reactions to an abnormal event and usually abate with time. We urge everybody to take care of themselves in the upcoming days, weeks and months. More specifically,

• Talk openly about your feelings and symptoms with others;
  

• Reach out to family and friends and maintain a good support system;
  

• Pay attention to basics like healthy diet, adequate sleep and exercise;
  

• Limit the amount of media coverage to avoid getting overwhelmed;
  

• Recognize that the reactions are normal and will pass with time.

Support is available in the form of individual counseling and phone consultations at the Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). Counselors are available to meet with groups of students anywhere on campus to discuss/debrief their concerns as and when needed. Counseling can be especially helpful to process one’s feelings and develop strategies to cope adequately. All the services at CAPS are free and confidential. Call (215) 898-7021 for more information.

Senators Clinton and Obama add spice to the 2008 presidential election.(Elizabeth Lim/DP, Julie Siegel/DP)

There are 20 months before Election 2008, but the campaigns are already in full swing. $26 million raised here, $25 million there and the candidates just started slinging their mud.

Penn Leads the Vote tripled voter turnout during last year’s midterm election and the Penn Democrats are throwing their weight into next month’s mayoral race. Active political participation can be felt pulsing through this campus.

There is so much on students’ minds and with so long until the election, I wonder if Penn can sustain this energy and activism.

David Helfenbein, a junior political science major knows he maintain his enthusiam. David is the co-chair of Penn for Hillary and said the choice to work on Hillary Clinton’s campaign came naturally. “I got involved with the senator when I was 13 in New York,” David told me. “I’ve always believed in active participation. I always get excited for this. It was a natural progression.”

It’s loyalty to the Senator that has David, and other Clinton supporters, running so hard, so early. “When I’ve met her, I’ve found her to be the most caring, energetic, intelligent person that I know,” David said. “She has been very caring to the staffers and interns. The sense of loyalty, of thanks — people just want to give back to her.”

But loyalty isn’t the only ingredient in the recipe for activism. Dorna Mohaghegh, a sophomore political science major, is the communications director with Penn for Obama. After becoming “jaded with the political process,” Dorna recognized that negativity drove people away from becoming involved. That’s why she joined the Obama campaign. “Barack Obama is the only one who offers good, clean optimism,” she said. “He’s not naïve, but he inspires faith.”

And she thinks Senator Obama can inspire more student involvement, too. “He doesn’t seem distant from us,” she explained. “He’s someone to latch on to.”

Pennsylvania’s primary won’t be held until April 22 — relatively late in the process — but both David and Dorna believe that more student involvement will follow with victories from their respective candidates.

As David told me, everyone must “take the election one step at a time” with the final goal firmly in sight. To take the cake, loyalty and optimism are good first steps. But the cooks can’t abandon the original recipe, and the kitchen has gotta’ get messy. The electorate is a picky eater.

It’s another brisk, gray morning at the North Wales train station as I join the ranks of fellow commuters headed into the city. We await the train in silence, in observance of some unspoken law, unwilling to disrupt these precious moments of early morning calm.

I’m always struck by the unnaturalness of the scene. In virtually any other situation, people constantly chatter. Words are perpetually in motion in the classroom, in the workplace, on the street, at mealtimes, through cell phones, on the television, from the radio, etc.

And, as a result, talk is cheap. In economic terms, the explanation is simple: By nature of its availability and accessibility, talk has become seriously devalued. We take our speech far too lightly. We fail to see the tremendous impact of our words, whose value, in part, lies in their very ubiquitousness.

In this fast-paced world, where everyone is competing for the mic, we rarely take time to think before we speak, often saying the first thing that comes to mind. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem if all of our thoughts were always right and true. But, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert points out, in response to the Don Imus fiasco, “The language, of course, is just a symptom,” an external manifestation of the disease within. As long as we remain imperfect people in an imperfect society, where, in the words of Herbert, “loathsome, soul-destroying disease[s]” such as racism and sexism still prevail, we need to examine our words and wield them with caution.

Words not only reflect reality but also have considerable power to shape reality. And misguided words in particular have a way of staying with us–as evidenced by the actions of one Penn student who believed himself to be the victim of a 34th Street shoutout. Sure, Street’s shoutouts are supposed to be “all in good fun,” but you have to admit, some of them are over the top. And when, to borrow Herbert’s words, “the coarsest, most socially destructive images and language are an integral part of the everyday discourse,” we’ve got to expect some negative consequences.

When we were kids, saying the wrong thing got us sent to bed without dessert — or a spanking, as the case may be. In high school, “offensive” language landed us in detention. In college, for the first time, we have ample opportunity to exercise our right to free speech. Let’s not abuse it.

It’s now 7:38, and the R5 Express arrives in a whirl of dead leaves and debris. In the bustle toward the doors, the verbal silence is broken by a series of “Excuse mes” and “Thank yous”. As I make my way to an open seat, I think of my day’s script that is yet to be written.

A silent memorial at Auschwitz. (Julie Siegel/DP)

Yesterday was Yom HaShoah, the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising established by the Israeli government as Holocaust Remembrance Day in the late 1950s. This year it passed rather uneventfully for me. I took some time to think about the seemingly endless train tracks, the heaps of shoes and human hair stolen from the Nazis’s victims, and the haunting piles of human ashes, all of which I witnessed during a trip to Poland with United Synagogue Youth as a high school junior. But another powerful memory that came to mind was of my Yom HaShoah spent in Israel last year.

Each year the centerpiece of the commemoration in Israel is a two-minute siren at 10 a.m audible all over the country. My apartment was near one of the busiest streets in Jerusalem and I could easily see the traffic come to a standstill as people got out of their cars to bow their heads in respect and silence. For two minutes, life completely stopped. It was eery, but moving.

When tragedy strikes, as it did yesterday at Virginia Tech, the inclination is often to find words to describe what happened or what can be done next. Just hours after the shooting with details still hazy and a community still reeling MSNBC was already advertising a special report on “how it happened–and why?”

Without trying to draw too close a parallel between genocide and homicide, I think it is important to remember the power of silence in times of sorrow. Sometimes there aren’t words that can or should express what’s being felt. Sometimes silence is the best way to respect a loss too profound to explain.

Virginia Tech’s rural campus may feel a world away but really only 500 miles, and two interstates separate our schools. (Julie Siegel/DP)

This is the piece I didn’t want to write. I was all geared up for my second to last entry –controversial, lyrical, and lighthearted. But my heart is anything but light today. I was going to write about the culture of promiscuity — but now even sex seems trite.

Instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you reflections from a student deeply touched by the tragedy. I want this campus to feel, to stop, to be shocked like so many others are. And not to forget. I want this campus to wake up — this is not 24 or Halo, this is real-life, real-time, and real-person horror. I come from under 300 miles from VA Tech — these were my friends. The aviation buff from my neighborhood, now a senior there, is fine, but I can only imagine the beginning of his nightmare.

Shootings on an urban campus will never amount to the mass carnage that occurred on Monday. Many debates will surely follow about Virginia Tech’s preparedness, but for now, we sympathize with those who could not have predicted the country’s worst massacre occurring on their campus.

We must take the time to identify with these kids-and not to let their heartbreak, their life-changing Monday fall into our backdrop. 33 dreams snuffed out, 33 families receiving a phone call, 33 more reasons why we ask the tough questions of life. How could something like this have happened on a pristine college campus? Are we immune to it? What made the shooter break? Why couldn’t they stop the second rampage? Why does suffering of this magnitude happen to innocent people? We just celebrated Easter and Passover, but where is God in all of this? What is important in life if things like this can happen?

More than the bitter weather, more than our pet issues we fight, and more than even our graduation woes, we must impress these questions in our hearts. And say a little something for those who won’t ever see their last week of classes. Penn stands behind the Virginia Tech victims, as this is our highest and most noble incarnation of our shared humanity.

Pileup on Spruce Street (Ryan Townsend/DP)

A: Their job…finally.

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or off campus…under a rock), you have heard about yesterday’s incident in which the Penn Police shot and killed a suspected carjacker who had wielded a gun.

Meanwhile, in the comments-land of the DP website (which you can find by starting in reality and veering sharply left), in between the choruses of cheering students and parents was a contingent of whiny grad students (who apparently moonlight as expert criminologists) are already engaging in Monday-morning quarterbacking of the Penn Police, wagging their fingers at the officers who had the temerity to — horror of horrors — use a gun against a gun-wielding criminal..

Unlike the peanut gallery of malcontents in the DP comments section, the Penn Police had neither the benefit of perfect information, clear hindsight, or limitless time in which to make a judgment call. They made their decision, and as a result one less criminal is roaming the streets of University City — and others may be thinking twice about wreaking havoc on campus. Successful police work is by its very a nature a difficult business full of decisions that are neither easy nor simple.

Dramatization

It is really too bad we can’t separate University City into two districts — one district for people who are concerned over whether police action is “appropriate” and sufficiently “sensitive” to their own moral vanities, and the other district for people whose only concern over the police is whether they are busting enough criminals to keep the rest of us safe. Like most Penn students, I’d rather live in the latter.

In light of the tragedy in Virginia and Philadelphias own skyrocketing homicide rate, Penn’s police deserve all the more praise for their quick and decisive response. For the sake of our own future safety, the Penn Police deserve our support — unless we want them so afraid to go after criminals that they simply will retreat to Dunkin’ Donuts and leave the rest of us out there with nothing but our own indulgent self-righteousness (and some SpectaGuards) to defend us.

It’s no secret that Philadelphia’s tourism industry has focused largely on attracting would-be settlers from New York City. The hipster side of Philly is a lure for artists who want to settle in an edgy area, but can’t afford exorbitant rents.

Ray King

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation has embarked upon a $5 million, two-year campaign to appeal to scrimping artists in New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C.

So where can these artists relocate to emulate the coolness factor of Greenwich Village? The tourism bureau is fervently hoping that Northern Liberties will become the obvious choice.

But the artists’ trek to Northern Liberties isn’t new, said Deborah Scoblionkov, a spokesman for local Philly artist and Northern Liberties resident Ray King.

“Artists have been coming to Philadelphia, and Northern Liberties in particular, for years,” Scoblionkov said.

Bruce Pollock

King, who was born in Philadelphia, works from his studio on north 3rd street. But his works haven’t been restricted to the local area – he has shown his light and glass sculptures all over the world, from museums in Tokyo to a winery in Italy.

King attempts to fuse fiber optics with technology to result in “an interaction of light and shadows.” He uses glass reflectors to create prisms of color that truly dazzle the eyes.

Too high-tech for you? Check out another local artist, Bruce Pollock. Pollock received his Masters of Fine Arts at Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art in 1978, and has shown his mathematically-scintillating paintings at galleries across the country.

Ray King

Pollock’s paintings, once described as “bracing as a shot of vodka,” are delightful in that they’re meticulously wrought according to various patterns, not unlike those explored in classes like Math 170: Ideas in Mathematics. No math lover myself, even I can appreciate the beauty of his works.

If the Golden Ratio isn’t your thing, look up the works of Huston Ripley , a talented drawer/painter who went to Penn. His works explore themes like terror, peace and death contained within haunting images that look like The Ring combined with ancient Mayans.

The gratifying aspect of checking into these works is that you can head down to the artists’ studios yourself — and talk with the artist face-to-face. And that makes it easier to track someone’s work over the years, especially if they’re only a SEPTA ride away.

“Nappy-headed hos?” What the hell was he thinking? You don’t have to be a worshipper of political correctness to be offended — Don Imus’s now infamous quote is clearly racist and cruel.

On April 4, this ex-host of CBS radio show “Imus in the Morning” referred to the Rutgers female basketball team on the air as

Public opinion turned against Imus and his bigotry. The Philadelphia Inquirer covered hoards of Rutgers students who rallied for the shock jock’s removal from the broadcasting network.

They succeeded.

Frank Rich, a columnist for The New York Times wrote that Imus quickly “took full responsibility for his own catastrophic remarks and didn’t try to blame the ensuing media lynching on the press.” However, one apology doesn’t cut it. Imus’s comments were horribly offensive, and both CBS and MSNBC were absolutely justified in removing him from the airwaves.

But reflecting on other recent scandals, there is quite a double-standard muddying American media, what the Rich calls “an astounding display of hypocrisy, sanctimony and self-congratulation from nearly every side of the debate.”

In January, the Times reported that “executives at ABC and its parent, Disney, [were] mulling the future of the actor Isaiah Washington (Dr. Preston Burke),” whose anti-gay slur against fellow actor T.R. Knight (Dr. George O’Malley) appalled the nationwide cult of Grey’s Anatomy. Shonda Rhimes, an executive producer and creator of Grey’s Anatomy, said that the show’s producers “applaud and encourage Isaiah’s realization that he needs help and his subsequent choice to seek immediate treatment for his behavioral issues.’”

Washington’s “realization” is analogous to Imus’s apology but in Imus’s case, it wasn’t enough. Here we find the glaring double-standard. Both CBS and MSNBC removed Imus for his remarks, but Washington continues to thrive on the ABC show.

I admit I love Dr. Burke, and Grey’s wouldn’t be the same without him. However, just as we shouldn’t ignore racial and sexist slurs, homophobic affronts should be equally unacceptable in America. I’m thinking that this thoracic cardiac surgeon needs at least some time off from Seattle Grace Hospital.

I’m usually too busy daydreaming about summer break or contemplating how I’ll survive finals to think about raising a family. Teething, potty training, and securing paid maternity leave are the farthest things from my mind.

A decade from now, however, it may matter to me that the United States remains the only nation in the developed world without paid maternity leave .

Not only do women sacrifice their earnings to spend time with their children, they also risk damaging their future careers. According to a Cornell study , moms (and especially single moms) make much less than fathers or unmarried women.

In addition, America’s daycare system is often poorly equipped to handle the needs of working mothers. Rising fees and crowded centers have made it harder for new mothers to leave their children in daycares. This pressure has been exacerbated by familial norms that load mothers with most of the childcare burden. As a result, working moms face fewer childcare options as well as stiffer penalties for leaving their jobs to care for families.

Fortunately, help is on the way. Pennsylvania lawmakers are working to protect women from disclosing their familial or marital status to potential employers ( House Bill 280 .) While the bill will not achieve perfect workplace parity, it takes a small step toward better working conditions for women.

For working moms out there, this bill might be the perfect Mother’s Day present.