April 20, 2008
Duo targets yoga community with new magazine
Yoga in the Rockies launches in Boulder
By Chris Taylor-Shaut, For the Camera
September 23, 2002
Two aspiring yogis realized their dream this month with the first publication of Yoga in the Rockies.
Travis Robinson, publisher, and Waylon Lewis, editor, are the partners behind this new, free Boulder-based bimonthly magazine. Despite maxing out their credit cards and cashing out their savings to put out the first issue, they are enthusiastic about increasing yoga consciousness in the community and optimistic about their magazine’s success.
“We look at profitability a little differently than most American business models,” Robinson said. “We’re incorporating a care-first business model rather than money first. You care, you share, you give. And you will receive.”
This Eastern-influenced business philosophy helps the partners transcend the currently dwindling print media economy, Robinson said.
Magazine advertising revenue rose only 2.7 percent in August 2002 and saw losses for nearly two years prior, according to Reuters. Robinson and Lewis’ publication pulled in an estimated $5,000 in advertising revenues while the two paid roughly $10,000 in production costs for the first issue. These figures don’t include salary or overhead. Their eight-person staff is working for free.
There is also an abundance of alternative media outlets in the United States and Boulder media markets, leaving little room for a new magazine. Lewis cited Yoga Journal, Nexus and the Mountain Gazette as Yoga in the Rockies’ primary competition.
Ravi Dyhema, publisher of Nexus magazine and a yoga teacher of 18 years, said he is not sure the yoga market is big enough to support a magazine.
“Many magazines in this area have tried to extend the market and gone under,” he said.
He said he doesn’t feel threatened by the magazine and considers Robinson and Lewis as colleagues rather than competitors.
Lewis said he thinks their publication will fill an untouched niche in the market. They printed 25,000 copies of the first issue.
“The print media market is bad, but the yoga market is booming,” he said. “We’re grassroots. And our magazine will connect yoga students with all of the word-of-mouth organizations, classes and studios people wouldn’t otherwise know about.”
The partners have created a database of more than 700 studios, many of which can’t be found in the phone book, they said. Lewis added that other yoga and new age journals are trying to sell spirituality, while Yoga in the Rockies is appealing to a way of life.
Lewis and Robinson said they are also optimistic because of the response they have received from the community.
“People want to be a part of this,” Lewis said. “Companies and studios want to know how they can get involved. The next issue will probably be about 25 percent bigger.”
February 7, 2008
Daily Camera article from June, 2007
www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/jun/21/making-a-scene-mindful-talk/
February 5, 2008If you’ve spent much time on Zaadz, you might have run across Tommy Rosen. This weekend, he’ll be launching the Eco Gift Expo, the first large-scale eco-conscious gift show ever, in Santa Monica.
You can watch a compelling (and hugely entertaining) interview with Tommy about green economics, conscious capitalism, and the ethics and energy that inspired him to pull together this event here . (Seriously. Have a look. Waylon Lewis, of Elephant Magazine, isn’t afraid to ask hard questions… and both of them are funny, besides.
One of the things I learned from the video? Santa Monica banned styrofoam in the city. And their conversation around the holidays and connection and consumption and what it all means, really, is wonderful.
Obviously, those of you in the LA area will be lucky enough to check out the event in person. Just head over to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium (click here for directions!) on Saturday, December 15th from 9am to 8pm and Sunday, December 16th from 9am to 5pm. There you’ll find, in one placeover 150 different socially and environmentally responsible businesses
organic foods and drinks
a live music pavilion
all manner of performers and magicians
and an eco gift-wrapping station.Tickets are no longer available online, but you can get them at the door.(Oh. And 10% of all revenue will go to Global Green USA and The Whole Planet Foundation.)If you’re not in LA, it’s still worth checking out EcoGift.com. Tommy’s been working for a long time on pulling this tremendous event together and his explanation of how to put together a ‘zero waste’ tradeshow is both inspiring and educational.
So. If you’re celebrating the holidays this year, keep saving up those paper bags to reuse as wrapping paper… and if you’re not, keep holding to that spirit of mindfulness in giving.To intention and sharing and making things matter,
Siona
and the rest of the Zaadz Team .
November 15, 2007We’re huge in Japan!Read all about it—if you can.Major hip slick eco Japanese magazine ‘Soto Koto’ does Boulder—and features
elephant–thanks to LOHAS warrior Kei Ozawa, who was introduced to us by DK,
co-founder of Prana and Steve Hoffman of Compass Natural Marketingsotokoto.net
November 15, 2007elephant featured in Westword
Click here to read
Rethinking meat: Eating humanely raised animals goes more mainstream
By Cindy Sutter Camera Food Editor
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/sep/04/no-headline—05fhum/Waylon Lewis became a vegetarian about five years ago. It made the household run a little easier, since his girlfriend didn’t eat meat.”We were splitting up pots, so I could cook my bacon and sausage,” he says of the time before he made the switch. Lewis, editor of Elephant magazine, admits he had a few periods in his life when his eating habits were less than mindful — chain restaurant pizza and college went together all too well — but he even as a child he was conscious of where his food came from. Growing up in a Buddhist family in Boulder, his mother got eggs from a nearby house on Mapleton that had a chicken coop, for example.Lewis calls his transition to vegetarianism “seamless.” He has considered becoming a vegan, because he worries about what terms such as “free range” and “cage free” really mean when he’s buying eggs. Or how dairy cattle, even those raised on organic farms, are treated.The treatment of farm animals is an issue that’s no longer on the fringe. Burger King announced this year that it would begin a transition to cage-free eggs and chicken. Celebrity Chef Wolfgang Puck announced he would serve humanely raised meats and poultry. Several local restaurants such as the Kitchen and Frasca Food and Wine list the farms that produce their pork and eggs, giving customers the chance to check out the farms on their individual Web sites. Earlier this month at Frasca, Chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson served meat from a calf raised by his wife’s parents on their ranch in Oklahoma.Options for home cooks have also expanded here with the availability of grass-fed beef, and Colorado-raised pork and chickens at the Boulder County Farmers’ Market and Longmont Farmers’ Market, as well as meats labeled “Certified Humane Raised and Handled” at natural foods stores, mainstream grocers and even warehouse clubs.
Ethical questions
These converging trends have led to what some see as a third way in the once sharp divide between meat eaters and vegetarians: eating animals that have lived a good life up until slaughter on a farm that uses sustainable practices. It’s an approach popularized by Michael Pollan in the widely read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” No less a culinary personage than Mollie Katzen, author of the iconic “Moosewood” cookbook, which helped usher in accessible vegetarianism when it was first published in 1977, says she now sometimes eats sustainably raised meat, although she still writes vegetarian cookbooks and respects vegetarians.
It’s a path many vegetarians would still find abhorrent, since even a content farm animal must still be killed to put meat on the table. Lewis, for example, says he doesn’t plan to eat meat again. But for those who do eat meat, the opportunity to be aware of the way in which their food was once treated offers a way out of the don’t ask, don’t tell approach to consuming an animal.
Humane standards
It was this different way of eating that was favored by Adele Douglass, when she founded Humane Farm Animal Care in Virginia. The organization inspects farms and lists them as “Certified Humane Raised and Handled,” a term which the group trademarked, if the farming practices meet the group’s criteria, which are based on input from animal behaviorists and scientific studies.
Douglass explains it like this:
“I would like to see that the animals are allowed to express normal behaviors like walking, turning around, flapping wings — that’s what birds do — rooting around in the ground — that’s what pigs do,” she says. “I started this group, because I’m not a vegetarian. A lot of people like meat, but they don’t like to think their animals are tortured for the short time they’re alive.”
The number of animals covered by the program has grown from 143,000 in 2003 when the group started with five farms to about 18 million animals today.
But what does humane treatment mean?
For farms receiving certification from Douglass’ group, the criteria are very specific as outlined on the group’s Web site, www.certifiedhumane.com. Only one farm in Colorado, Denver-based Maverick Ranch Natural Meats has received certification. Mark Menagh, manager of the Boulder County Farmers’ Market, says many smaller farms have not sought humane certification, because their customers haven’t demanded it. He says the personal relationship that market buyers have with farmers makes certification less necessary.
“A consumer can go and look a farmer in the eye and ask how (the animal) is raised,” he says. “When (farmers) sell consumer packaged goods … once or twice removed from the farmer, that’s when you need labeling, to make consumers know that it’s been handled humanely when they go in grocery store.”
For those negotiating the grocery aisles, terminology can be confusing.
Organic doesn’t necessarily mean humane, for example, although animals are treated considerably better than those raised on industrial farms. Regulations require that the animals not be confined and that they are able to move around, for example. Some groups have claimed, however, that regulations that require “access to the outdoors” for example, have been interpreted by some large operations in ways that may not mean that animals actually use pasture land.
Likewise, humane doesn’t mean organic, although the standards require that animals not be treated with hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics or fed food made from mammals.
The terms “cage free” and “free range” are somewhat analogous to the description “natural.” Although, people assume they know what the terms mean, they are not strictly regulated.
Cage-free chickens, for example, are often raised in barns, never living outdoors. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says free-range chickens must have more space to move than factory-raised poultry and “access to the outdoors.” Critics charge that some companies interpret that to mean there has to be a door on the chicken coop.
Even chickens that has been certified humane by Douglass’ group, have their beaks trimmed before they are 10 days old, which Douglass’ says research shows does not cause chronic pain like the debeaking practiced in industrial operations. The beak trimming prevents the chickens from injuring each other.
For consumers looking to transition to humanely raised animals, Douglass says it’s best to start with chicken, including eggs, and pork, since industrial farming practices have the greatest impact on those species. Both chickens and pigs are closely confined in industrial operations, chickens with as little space as an 11 by 8½ piece of paper. Pigs are often raised in crates, where they cannot turn around or walk. Cattle still live a good part of their lives on pasture land, although feed lots can be inhumane.
Knowing your farmer
At Frasca, the specially raised calf was served during one of the restaurant’s Monday night tasting dinners, where it was offered as the non-vegetarian option in the prix fixe dinner. Mackinnon-Patterson called the meat veal, although the cow’s life in no way resembled the factory conditions that led to a huge drop in U.S. veal consumption, after it was revealed that industrially raised veal spent their entire lives in confining crates being fed milk or formula.
Mackinnon-Patterson’s inlaws, David and Susie Koontz, came to Boulder for the serving of their animal. They plan to market their calves as pasture-fed veal. The animals stay with their mothers, nursing and also grazing occasionally if they’re interested.
“This calf never had a bad day,” David Koontz says.
Mackinnon-Patterson also made a commitment to use the whole animal, in a nod to sustainability.
“It takes a degree of creativity,” Mackinnon-Patterson said as he sweated shallots and garlic and ground some of the meat to be used in a bolognese sauce. Other cuts were braised and served with a vinaigrette. A light stew with prosciutto added was also on the menu.
Staff passed out a flier explaining the meat’s provenance.
“Everyone’s into a good story, and it’s a new trend in restaurants,” Mackinnon-Patterson says of explaining food’s origins to patrons. “Chefs could make a huge difference.”
While Lewis will not be eating a calf or any other meat, he says the growing awareness of consumers can eventually make a big difference in how animals are treated and lead to a regulatory tightening of terms such as free range.
“The good news is that consumers are driving the market. Free range hardly existed five or 10 years ago,” he says. “Whether the promises are being fulfilled or not, people have to keep pressing for that to be realized.”
elephant now has a regular blog at New West Network: “the Voice of the Rocky Mountains”“The Mindful Life with Waylon H. Lewis”
The Daily Camera ran two articles last week on elephant’s second ‘elephant:live’ benefit. Waylon H. Lewis, editor, and Anne Waldman were interviewed on Denver/Boulder radio station KGNU’s noon feature program.
Text of article in Boulder’s The Daily Camera on the founding of ‘Yoga in the Rockies,’ the first incarnation of elephant.
elephant editor Waylon H. Lewis’ recent review of
Chögyam Trungpa’s first biography, in Shambhala Sun magazine.
Click image on right to read review.
elephant has been asked to put together two 1-hour weekly shows on Boulder, Colorado’s local CATV,
which may be syndicated in other city’s local TV stations across the nation (we’re already huge in Europe).
We’re also in discussion with Oprah Winfrey to buy her magazine
(just one of them, it’s called a subscription).
elephant is also in talks with Boulder/Denver’s popular KGNU to broadcast elephant:live events.
