Vegan Library Display by Sally
Have you ever wondered who is typing the captions for live TV? I know I have. Well, meet Sally. I met Sally last year at the VegNews Yoga Retreat in Mexico, and now I’m happy to introduce this passionate activist to my readers. Be sure to read about her vegan library display below. It’s impressive!
Name: Sally Bennett
Where do you live? I divide my time between Cambridge, OH and Savannah, GA.
How long have you been vegan? Seven years
Wake up: I usually wake up at 5:15 AM. Sometimes it’s 3:30 AM., but only occasionally.
Breakfast: It’s always evolving. Usually I eat leftovers warmed in the toaster oven, or more recently since I purchased a high-powered blender, I’ll turn foods from my garden into a nice, warm soup. For a quick breakfast on the run, it might be a Tim Hortons bagel with Tofutti cream cheese and home-grown chives.
Activities/work: I get up early to start my job as a broadcast captioner. I provide real-time captions on live TV, so I usually start off with three hours of a morning show. I work from home.
Lunch: This is where I’m trying to turn my habits for lunch and dinner around. I’m trying to have a bigger lunch and a smaller dinner, so I have more time to burn calories. Sometimes I’ll eat out for lunch and enjoy some Indian Aloo Mutter or go to Loving Hut. I’ll almost always take some home to have for lunch another day. If I’m home, I’ll either warm up leftovers or just start tossing things together to make either a soup or stew of some kind. My son calls it my “Whatever’s-in-the-Fridge” soup. I have shelves full of onions, garlic, celery, carrots, kale, peppers, pomegranates, figs, mangos, kiwis, oranges, pears, tomatoes, eggplants, star fruits and cabbage. I either make a plate using a mixture of those foods, or I turn them into soup. Other times, I’ll enjoy some delicious home made Thai food made by my son who’s amazing in the kitchen.
Activities/work: More captioning work or perhaps hanging laundry on the line or walking around our orchards and woods to meditate (a valuable lesson I learned while at the vegan yoga retreat with VegNews last year) or reading or harvesting tomatoes or giving a dog a bath. It’s always different. I’ll usually make a blender drink and now I’m using organic aloe juice, celery, peanut butter and a banana. I might toss in a piece or two of kale.
Dinner: Usually a plateful of fruit and maybe a generous salad of spring greens, julienned beets, apple and carrots, a scoop of organic (canned) beans, avocado if I have it and a few walnuts, topped with some Bob Evans Colonial salad dressing. I know Bob Evans is not a very vegan-friendly restaurant, but I love its Colonial salad dressing. I buy it by the quart to take home. Since attending Summerfest this year, I picked up a tip to keep an open can of organic beans in the fridge and spoon some in all kinds of things. So if I make tomato soup, for example, I’ll toss a spoonful of beans in the VitaMix along with all the other ingredients. It makes it easy to get the health benefits of beans.
Activities: Catching up on the Young & the Restless (a habit I’ve had for 23 years) or watching reruns from TVLand or a movie with my family. I take yoga classes twice a week and really should do it daily, but it’s a challenge to do yoga in a house with cats. They like to get involved!
Lights out: Never early enough. I try to get to bed by 10 PM, but I’m happy if it’s before Midnight.
Sally’s a well-read vegan. She displayed her vegan books at her local library for one month.
Favorite Cause/Current Project: I support many groups which are working hard to protect animals. I only donate to groups which also promote veganism and whose members live the vegan lifestyle. I prefer to donate to smaller, grassroots groups which appreciate every dollar they get and take nothing for granted. On a personal level, I’ve participated in several informational protests including at an embassy, a fast-food giant and a department store that still sells fur. A few months ago I was able to put together a beautiful display of my collection of vegan and animal-rights books at my local library. It stayed there for a month, and they said that they had more compliments on that display than any other they’d had. I hope it caused people to rethink their eating habits and to start their journey to a compassionate lifestyle.
What else do you want people to know? I’ve never been happier than I am every day now that I’ve grown stronger as a vegan animal advocate. I came to the vegan lifestyle because I despised animal cruelty and was disgusted by the thought of eating animals. I’ve evolved as a vegan by learning that while it’s easy to be a lazy vegan and not care about nutrition, that there really is a better way, and it’s fun to learn how to be healthier.
What is the best part about being vegan? The peace of mind it gives me — knowing that I’m not responsible for the suffering or death of any animals. I appreciate the feeling I get from just being in close proximity to animals. I live in the country where there are many farms where animals will one day be killed. I see them as blessings to brighten my life as they go about theirs. And as a bonus, my health is good! I spend $0 on prescription medications.
If you would like to participate in the “Day in the Life” series, send an email to itseasybeingvegan@gmail.com. We’d love to get to know you too.
Want to Set Up Your Own Library Display
A library display is a great way to raise awareness for veganism and I wanted to know more about Sally’s efforts. So I asked her about it.
When you set up the library display, was it just a matter of approaching that particular branch and working with them? Yes, all I did was go to the library and ask if I could do a display of my collection of vegan and animal-rights books. The head librarian is who they told me to speak with. It’s a small town and he remembered me from when he started working at the library. I was taking my then-young children in for story hour. I described the kind of books I wanted to display and he said that would be fine. He told me what month was available and that was it. I added photos taken from an old Farm Sanctuary calendar to add color to the sidewalls, and I added some toy animals to attract even more attention hopefully from young visitors, and also included a big selection of decorative vegetables and fruits for even more color throughout the shelves of books. I categorize them, somewhat, with medical/scientific books on one end, vegan cookbooks in the middle, and animal-rights to vegan lifestyle books on the other end. But there’s plenty of overlap.
Read how to set up your own library display from Mercy For Animals.
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