Sunday Song Day: Words of Wisdom by David Barber (and how knowing him betters your whole dang life) + "Won't Back Down"

There are people in your life that fill you up with so much love that you can’t help but feel happy-hearted and light-of-soul when you’re around them. It’s rare enough finding such treasures, but what brings it to a whole other level is when that soul also has a grounded sense of wisdom that betters your whole life.

If you knew the sheer radiance of David Barber’s enthusiasm, knew the swell and scope of his heart, you’d know why we can’t praise and hark him enough. I truly believe this whole world would be bettered if we all had a David in our orbits. I could write a full tome filled with the depth of love and appreciation I have for him, how grateful I feel to have stumbled into his orbit, how three generations of Cappellos cherish him with every ounce of their being (<— he’s one of those souls where Q says, “I love him with every cell in my body, right on down to the quarks, and down to the bits so small we don’t even know they exist yet! That’s how much I love him!"), and how anyone else lucky enough to know him has been bettered by the experience (case in point: that pic above is an old favorite from his retirement party…where dozens of souls all came dressed like him and showered him with love); but I’m going to focus on how he got into my head with advice so profound that it altered my whole worldview and propelled me forward in a way I had never imagined.

Continue for: Sunday Song Day (more Tom Petty, this time the song Q says is all about me); Words of Wisdom by David Barber and how he helped me find my inner strength, which then lead to this passionate klaxon howl; why this broadcast will NOT be changing, so please stop wasting your time with requests for me to tamper my tone (Spoiler: this frequency wakes more-and-more souls each week and we have no time left for standstill; and AGAIN: my Midwestern sweetness didn’t wake a dang soul and several-decades-of-scientific-urging didn’t make y’all change your ways, so why keep status quo? SOMEONE needs to be hollering and I’ve reluctantly taken up that yoke); more life-bettering information from Dr. Will Bulsiewicz about how that whole “Apple a day” adage is actually quite apt; plus 4 whole days of this family leading-by-example and showing you how to thrive on the healthiest/cheapest/kindest diet there is.

Live Kindly, Feast Kindly, Grow Forward. We have no time left for you to refuse to make steps forward, and every little bit helps!

Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: black raspberries, cherries, peach, and “Cappello Cereal” (<— something Ian came up with. It’s oats, chia, flax seeds, oatmilk, and juice from fresh fruit.)

Snippet of Wednesday’s Sci-Fi Enthusiast Homeschooling.

Lunch: quinoa stir fry with peas, garlic scapes, green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, sauteed mushrooms, and furikake.

While I wrapped up writing, this one talked his Papa’s ears off while Ian worked on scraping. First thing he said to me when I came out was, “Don’t get nervous, Mama. I’m safe up here with Papa. He’s got it under control. And look! A Monarch!”

Dinner: black bean pasta, marinara (with hidden Swiss chard and kale thrown in and pureed so you couldn’t even tell), plus yellow squash. Grated brazil nut and nutritional yeast on top.

Dessert: Peanut Butter Nice Cream

Nightly Reading

Are you looking for ways to lessen your environmental footprint in the plastic realm? First, stop using single-use plastic items like straws, cutlery, throw-away cups, etc and get the plastic out of your bathroom as well.

We shifted to shampoo and conditioner bars over 2 years ago and we’re never going back. Not only are there sooooo many options available these days, they work AMAZING. Every soul in this house has a different type of hair and they work well on all of us. Added bonus: bar shampoo/conditioner lasts longer than whatever you’re buying in that bottle. We only need to buy shampoo twice a year now (!!) and the conditioner bars last more than a year. Lush is a great brand, as is Ethique. There are many more, but those two we have tried and loved.
You can even get bubble bath in bar form (that’s the multi-colored cloud thing, and that came from Lush).

What Q’s plastic-bottle-free hair is looking like these days. <3

And remember, your biggest environmental impact comes from your dietary choices and begins at breakfast. :-)

Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: cherries, and a bowl with a layer of oats and chia, topped with apple sauce, peaches, and a dollop of peanut butter.

Thursday’s Sci-Fi Enthusiast Homeschooling. (Tremors Sandworm, Beetlejuice Sandworm, and a Shai-Hulud).

He works out of that reading and writing workbook each day, and also does a few pages from a Highlights Kindergarten Workbook (above), and then moves on to the math book below.
One of the any things I love about Quillan is that he’s always adding his own artistic flare. He’s an unconventional cub through and through.

“Look Mama, I put various shai-hulud in the margins!”

Q’s favorite part of the day, is when he’s finished with the workbooks and he gets to draw whatever he wants: “So, it’s Val and Earl (from Tremors). And Earl climbed up on a rock in the first frame up top, and Val looked down at the sand and felt a rumbling that got louder. And then the sand went WOOSH WOOSH WOOSH, and then something rose from the sand! And it had FIVE double Mouths! And Val ran over to the rock, and Earl is holding a stick to help him up, and there is a rattlesnake watching Val run. And here’s the sun shining down on the sand.”

Q would draw these all day every day, but what gives him inspiration and an extra drive to create? David Barber. He draws at least one drawing a day for David (I don’t put them all up here because y’all already have enough to scroll through) and he does so because he and David are on the same spooktacular wavelength and David has long been encouraging Q’s artistic passions. The daily send-offs are a way for Q to feel connected to someone outside of this house (which is especially important in these rather secluded times), and are a bit of love-light sent out to equally secluded David.

How did we all come to know David? Tara (my mother-outlaw <—we both like that better than “in-law”) worked alongside David for several decades (<—they were both Medicaid Service Coordinators for folks with developmental disabilities) and they were friends-like-family from the start. David has known Ian since he was a baby, and I started hearing hearing about this wondrous soul as soon as I entered the Cappello realm.

I wasn’t lucky enough to meet David myself until I started work as a Medicaid Service Coordinator back in 2014. I was freshly pregnant with Q (as in: I was offered the job on a Friday and found out I was pregnant with Q that Sunday) and was launched into a realm where I felt more than bit over my head.

When we lived in NYC, I had been the first female project manager in the NYC solar industry. It should have been exhilarating and empowering, but it was a 2 years of sexual harassment, financial discrimination (<—getting paid 15k less than male coworkers), and it ended in small claims court when I resigned (because the company wanted to illegally install solar installations on roofs that could not support the weight of them) and my boss thought he could just not give me my last month’s pay as retribution (SHOCKER: I didn’t even win that case because they pulled a man in to say I didn’t even work there within the month, and apparently men’s voices were worth more than all of my paper evidence). I then worked as an energy auditor (going around every dark corner of the boroughs —often by myself— as a subcontractor for Con Edison, enduring far more gender inequality and uncomfortable situations) for a company that went out of business and laid me off on the day back from my honeymoon. So by the time we relocated to Central New York, I was DEFLATED and ready for a complete career shift.

I started working as a direct service professional for folks with disabilities because I wanted to work in a realm more person-centered, and I transitioned to Service Coordination because I wanted something more stable (we’d been trying to conceive for a long spell at this point), and found myself in a WHOA EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING ALL AT THE SAME TIME whirl.

Lucky for me, David was chosen to be my guide and we shared an office together. It was love-at-first-meeting. It is impossible to not love David. He is kindness, enthusiasm, wisdom, coupled with a beautiful sense of humor.

What I had not expected about Service Coordination was the staggering amount of discrimination and apathy in relation to this incredibly vulnerable population. Not only did we have an insurmountable amount of paperwork-and-bureaucracy involved with that job, you needed to be a warrior-like advocate.

I could hear David through the divider daily battling it out for his folks, and I approached him one day for advice on how to be a better advocate. I was not at all comfortable being confrontational (and was still hollowed out by the NYC experience) and David has a fiery strength that is most impressive.

David said to me, “Not everyone is comfortable being a pushy advocate. If you can’t be pushy: be a stone. Don’t give in. When people are trying to bull you over, just picture yourself as a stone. At the very least you won’t give in to them…and eventually you may find that you can push back.”

That sounds so simple, I’m sure, but that mental image lit up my whole mind and it served me well for many years. I was not (and am STILL not) comfortable with confrontation, but I learned to fix the mental imagine of an immovable stone in my mind, I grew comfortable letting people rage all around me while I held my ground, and eventually I sprouted a spine of stone so strong that I grew beyond my comfort zone and started pushing back.

You can thank my beloved David for this klaxon this is likely driving you crazy. As I said before, it was the voice I used on MYSELF as I started waking up to the imperative facts (<—nutritionally best, environmentally best, cheapest, MOST COMPASSIONATE) pushing me toward a plant-based diet, and then turned that howl toward Ian, and then on and on as it continues to wake up more folks.

There is not a week that passes without me hearing from at least one soul saying something akin to, “I just want you to know that I hear your voice in my head all the time, and it is swaying me away from bad decisions. Just want you to know that I’m making changes and I appreciate what you’re doing.” Those light up my heart just as much as the folks who have completely transitioned. All steps forward are important! <3

Yet I also still get souls reaching out with barbs of, “You know you should really change your tone. It doesn’t work.”

You couldn’t be more wrong. It’s working weekly, not everyone responds to quiet lead-by-example, most of us need nudging (<—I WAS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE), and the folks who fire back at me are always the folks who need to hear it the most.

I FULLY understand that you’d like me to remain quiet/sweet/less-harpy, or to just lead-by-example with a hope that y’all will follow when you’re ready. The fact of the matter is that everyone likes being comfortable and no one likes growing forward, so everyone likes it when you aren’t reminding them of the imperatives of forward movement; but we no longer have the luxury of you taking your sweet time.

Compassionate and nutritional imperatives aside: you need to start stepping forward now because we have ever-increasing global temperatures, acidified oceans, increasingly intense storms, famines, water shortages, and mass extinctions on our way (some already here!) and they are all directly caused by humanity’s harmful impacts!

We’ve known for years that our animal-product dense diet was perpetuating these disasters, and have we changed course? Did any sweet, informational voice sway you then? Did my voice sway you 2 years ago? Did the plant-based pioneers sway you decades ago when they started howling?

NO!

You just put your head in the sand and “aim to be ignorant”. If that hurts your feelings, GOOD.

WAKE UP!

You’re feeding yourself and your children cancerous poison and ruining our environmental future, yet you want ME to be the one to quietly demure?

WAKE UP!

I still see people posting celebratory bacon/BBQ/steak/burger/etc posts and pics of the kids with hot dogs (even bragging about how their kids downed a pound of bacon themselves), despite that multiple, multiple, multiple times I’ve illuminated that the World Health Organization (through ***800*** studies and with vast scientific consensus) pointed out that all processed meat and red meat is carcinogenic! [And this is on top of the cardiovascular disease, diabetes, microbiome destruction, and autoimmune disorders tied to those animal products, and on top of their vast environmental harm <—-which affects those kids gobbling up their own futures.]

Yet you want me to tone down this howl and sweet talk you?

GUYS! We need action, we need advocacy, and if there’s anything in this world worth getting fighting mad about: it’s our children, the future of the only home we have, and the future of every species and soul on this planet. Because as much as I love Quill (and will protectively fight for him until the day I die), he is one small blip in a much larger scheme.

I howl because David Barber (and Ian) taught me how to speak up for myself, and I’m now wailing to save ALL OF YOU AND YOUR KIN. I’ll sadly be gone before everything truly falls apart, but it would be a terrible waste of my life to be sitting quietly (just so I could be “liked” and you could be comfortable) while y’all continued to ruin the future for every other species on this fragile earth.

Your feelings are infinitesimal specks compared to path of souls slaughtered by your destructive diet. And as much as it rankles me to have to be the howling voice shaking you awake (because it is 100% out of my comfort zone): someone needs to.

WAKE UP!

Tangentially, we were driving the other day and Tom Petty’s “Won’t Back Down” came on and Q said, “Wow, this song really reminds me of you, Mama. You’re always working so hard and you don’t let anyone pushing you around.” <3 Good gravy! If he only knew how much of a pushover I once was. Thankfully, I found some strength and woke the heck up:

Well I know what's right, I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin' me around
But I'll stand my ground and I won't back down

Hey baby there ain't no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
And I won't back down
No, I won't back down

There is no easy way out of the facts, folks. You need to wake up and start making steps forward. For you, for your children, for all the species and souls beyond you. Luckily for you: switching to a Plant-Based diet is both environmentally life-saving and nutritionally imperative. It's a win-win that’s delicious, and it’s affordable (<—cheapest diet) to boot.

It starts with stepping forward, and ends in compassion, better health, more energy, strength, and participation in saving the only planet we have.

And thank you dearly to my beloved David Barber for teaching me how to advocate for what is right. <3

Lunch: Quinoa stiryfry leftovers for me (with squash, avocado, fresh greens, kraut, peas, and garlic scapes), and black bean tacos for Q (with purple romaine, kale, green onions, avocado, kraut, and queso).

What blows my mind (and swells my heart) about Q? His self-determined delayed gratification. I was about to put queso on both tacos and he said, “No no! I want one really special one, please. Keep the queso off the other.” I asked him if he was sure, reminded him that I would happily put it on both, and he said he liked it better this way.

Q is only 5 and yet he does this all the time: he finds pleasure in making things special and not gluttonously going after every treat in sight.

Man, wouldn’t it be nice if we all had such control? (<—as a former junkfood Hobbit, I can tell you that I do not find it easy to have the control my 5 year old has.)

Thursday’s Solo Dinner (because I was perched behind my standing desk and participating in our Onondaga Board of Education Zoom meeting to unleash the multiple options for re-opening schools). Our August meeting will be in-person because it is absurd to meet remotely while we are forced to set up in-person classes. (<—However, I’m one of the parents opting for the remote-option for Q, because I do NOT think it is safe to send our teachers and students back; yet we are forced to open our schools and most parents are pleading for the possibility. We all have to make our own decisions and I respect whatever yours is.)

I stress ate the heck out of this meal. I’m comfortable with my own decision, but we had sooo many comments and the parents in our district (just like the parents in all districts) are stuck between incredibly hard decisions, they are worried as heck, and it breaks my heart.

Nightly Reading

The night had involved multiple pushbacks regarding my tone on the Queso post and it wasn’t lost on me that it was coming from a vegetarian with a love for cheese (<—just like I once RAGED because I loved cheese too).

There’s no doubt about it, folks. I’ve covered the dangers of dairy multiple times. It’s cruel to the cow, environmentally harmful, and it isn’t even good for your body. Why continue on when you know all of the above? Because it’s addictive.

As someone who was once eating more than a brick of cheese a week, having ice cream every night, dipping chocolate chip cookies in half-and-half (for breakfast!!), and gobbling down whole bars of milk chocolate: I get it.

I just also had the strength and courage to move forward. I challenge you to do the same.

If not for your body (and/or your child’s), maybe think beyond yourself for all the species you’re harming purely for taste.

Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: apple, black raspberries, peanut butter, cashew cream, and some oats hiding under those dippers.

He took apart the scorpion and re-made it into this dragon.

Legos play a key part in homeschooling of this will-be-a-kindergartner kiddo. They teach him how to follow directions and build. <3

These days it’s sandworms all day, every day.

Hey, so he’s going to get a send-up at a future date too (it’s been delayed because he’s a hide-your-light-under-a-bushel sort of soul and I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about these posts, until I spoke about it last night), but my sweet father took this photo.

Why a send up? My plant-based whole-food path is soooo foreign to my family, and my father has been rolling through these changes with a I’ll-meet-you-half-way approach. I got my love of ice cream from him, and he’s been eating plant-based ice cream in solidarity every time we meet him out now.

When I said that Quill and I would no longer attend meals with folks eating meat: that rankled a lot of kin. My father respectfully urged me to change my mind, but listened when I explained why I would be holding firm. What’s the compromise? Well, he’s always liked what I cook for him, so feasting here is still a possibility (as is gifting him food we cook), but he’s also adventurous enough to try out a plant-based restaurant.

He met Q and me out to Strong Hearts for a lunch date. It was the first time we have eaten in a restaurant since sometime back in January, and I wanted to make sure if we were going to give a business our patronage that it would be to a place that was promoting planetary health and compassion.

Q was in heaven and it was good for the heart to eat with my father and know we were being kind to his heart… and the earth, and the animals :-)

Dinner: berbere black rice with cashew, summer squash, quick pickled cabbage over fresh greens (kale, swiss chard, romaine), green beans, green onions.

Nightly Reading

Plant-Based Kiddo Breakfast: apple, black raspberries, peanut butter, cashew cream, and topped with golden flax.

CSA Morning with Crystal <3

Crystal over there plucking some fresh dill.

Weekly CSA array.

Lunch: fresh greens (romaine, swiss chard), cucumber, summer squash, quick pickled cabbage, green onion, and Q’s Sesame Dressing.

Dessert: Cappello Brownies, banana, cherries, almond butter, and cashew cream.

See how you can still thoroughly enjoy your food even in the plant-based realm? We could eat a whole trough of this and be happy as clams. You could too. You’d be feasting joyfully and feasting kindly. <3

His artistic skills increase with each passing day. <3 Earlier in this post Val and Earl didn’t have delineated clothing, and here we have Seymour with glasses and a well-decorated shirt. <3

Dinner: Cappello Chili (recipe coming up Wednesday), summer squash, quick pickled cabbage, green onions, and queso.

When you have two friends coming over for a fire, so you pack up some zero-waste containers with your tasty / earth-friendly / body-healthy meal for them to enjoy too.

Packed up mini parfait jars too: brownie, cherries, and cashew cream.

Fire, sketchbooks, friends, and sky gazing.

Discussing cinema surrounded by smoke and stars.

Nightly Reading.

Photo Ian caught of co-sleeping snuggles when he came up to join us. <3 Q had fallen asleep on my arm and I hadn’t wanted to disturb him by getting up to reach the light.

How y’all doing on that goal to get at least 30 plants in you within a week? The best nutritionally-focused docs recommend that you get at least 30 different plants into you within the week. Why? Your microbiome is bettered by plant diversity.

Is your diet a rotation of meat and grains? That’s what mine used to be, and then I grew forward.

You only make what you measure, and America is sadly known to be severely deficient in fiber. Gut health = whole health so it is worth focusing on and growing forward.

Speaking of gut-health, here’s some fresh info from Fiber Fueled by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz.

See also: all the brownie bowls me and Q eat. :-D

What’s the most impactful thing you can do as an individual to help your kin, community, millions of species, and planet? Transition as plant-based as possible.🌎♥️

Why? Plant-Based foods are environmentally imperative 🌎. They also promote ideal health💪 (which takes stress off our overburdened health care system), are inexpensive🙌, delicious🤤, & compassionate. 💕  

Why imperative, though? 🤔We’re approaching (& have crossed) climate tipping points that will doom our kin & millions of other species. 😱📣Reducing/eliminating animal products is the *most impactful thing an individual can do* to prevent worse. 🌎🔥

Why? Animal Agriculture creates more emissions than the entire transportation sector combined, it’s tied to water waste/loss/pollution (<-- freshwater is our most precious resource💧), land loss/deforestation (<-- exacerbates climate change by reducing our ability to sequester carbon🔥🌎), ocean acidification (<-- FYI 50-85% of earth’s oxygen originates from oceanic plankton🌊) & vast species loss/extinction/suffering💔📣🌎

Plus, consuming animal products is tied to increased risk of cardiovascular disease❤️‍🩹, diabetes👎, cancer👎, and chronic disease👎; whereas Plant-Based feasting is linked to preventing/reversing some of our most common diseases (<— like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer); plus it promotes ideal health & robust strength (ie Olympians, Weightlifters, Endurance Athletes are thriving via PBWFs too). 🎉🙌♥️

What organizations are promoting plant-based diets for best health and environmental stability? National Institutes of Health,  Mayo Clinic, Yale, the United Nations, Harvard School of Health,  American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, National Kidney Foundation, even the Parkinson’s Foundation.

We’re all overwhelmed in one way or another, but for the sake of our kin (and the millions of species we share this planet with) we need to start pivoting forward. As someone who once rarely ate green things & used to eat animal products at every meal, I can assure you that is possible, affordable, enjoyable, & purposeful to pivot Plant-Based. In fact, our whole family is now healthier/stronger than ever. 🙌♥️

Anecdotally, our son had failure-to-thrive, was also plagued with perpetual ear-infections/sinus-infections, and had an omnipresent runny nose. What was he eating? Grass-fed milk, organic/antibiotic-free/grass-fed/local meats, eggs from organic-fed/well-loved chickens from a neighbor, every meal came with vegetables, and we limited junkfood. He was healed via a plant-based diet: he’s launched out of that diagnosis and the last time he had a sinus-infection (or was sick at all) was in 2019 when he had some cheese at a school Christmas party. Before shifting to PBWF’s he was sick every month, and how he’s a robust, vital, thriving kiddo. 🙌🎉♥️

If you think any of the above sounds over-reached/absurd/impossible, please go read the links above. I understand the inclination to hackle-raise (<—because I was once totally there) but the science is clear: any step we make forward is imperative (<—and again “STEPS” is the focus. Don’t leap, just start making steps!). It’s as simple as starting with one meal a week and growing from there.💕

We have the ability (deliciously, healthfully, kindly, inexpensively) to *preserve/protect* the planet we share with millions of species & our kin. How are we going to use that power today?✌️🤟🖖