Welcome to the summer issue of The Grapevine. We're delighted to be hosting Neal Barnard, M.D., of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine for a talk, and that is the topic for the main cover story, as well as one of the book reviews. We are very lucky to have three TVS nutrition consultants, including Chip Law who addresses the standard "where do you get your protein" question all vegetarians face.

Our series on religion and vegetarianism continues with an exploration of Hinduism written by member Kishor Trivedi and his daughters, Kavita and Smita. We're lucky to have author Rynn Berry visiting us this fall, and his just-released book, Food for the Gods, promises to become a definitive work in the area of religion and vegetarianism. (Do come to his talks and the special dhosa dinner we have planned for him in September.) Also, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has launched a campaign of contacting churches and arguing in favor of compassionate religious interpretations supporting vegetarianism.

New member Anne Wolfley interviewed Tony Kleese about the controversy about national organic standards. Our focus area group in this issue is the Triangle Land Conservancy, and we're lucky to have our member Kevin Brice, on the TLC staff, to write the article and invite us on a hike and lecture. Speaking of land, I read an excellent article in the Toronto Vegetarian Association's newsletter on the sustainability of land use vis-a-vis our dietary choices, and with permission have reprinted an edited version here; I hope you will find it thought-provoking and share it with your friends. Warm weather finds many of us in the garden, and I hope my short article on "vegetarian" gardening is useful. Ellen Bring updates us on the status of the proposed slaughterhouse in Raleigh. Shelli Fein presents reviews of a Vietnamese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and a diner.

It was great having Erik Marcus visit us during our Meatout celebration, and I hope that many of you will buy his excellent book, reviewed in this issue. The "McLibel" case has been in the news quite a bit, and the book that we reviewed was one of the best books I've read in a long time. I hope that you will also enjoy our review of the first vegetarian western, a delight to read!

What makes TVS such a great group is all of its members and our wonderful and frequent events that, I hope, is helping to build a strong sense of community. I don't believe that there is another vegetarian group in North America that has more events than we do, and it's all because of our members who sponsor and attend them. This year from late January through early May, we had an event just about every week - and sometimes several a week! June was a bit slower but we're starting back into a more active time again. I hope to see many of you at the upcoming exciting events! (By the way, some of our newsletter articles have been translated to other languages and the high quality of the newsletter has recently attracted new members from as far away as Louisiana, Connecticut, and California!)

Looking back to Thanksgiving, always our biggest event, we had about 100 people at the Irregardless Cafe. The food was great (the apple dessert was the best apple dessert I've ever had!!), people had a good time, and we had a relaxing reception afterward at the home of Jim Miller, where we saw the McLibel video. We were on both channel 5 and FOX-TV news that evening. Channel 5 had nice interview segments with Joy Anandi, Jeremy Horne, and Pam Young. FOX showed two segments with me and chatted with Orion Pozo. Thanks to all who helped put the event together, particularly Audrey Nickel and Lauren Bednarcyk-Bond for taking reservations, Shelli Fein and Ben Bristol for arranging literature, and Arthur Gordon and his staff at the Irregardless.

In addition to the Thanksgiving coverage, we have been in the media several other times recently. The Durham Herald-Sun did an excellent cover story in the food section on April 15. I did a story for national television news on irradiated foods (thanks to Chip Law and Tony Kleese for helping to prepare me for that) in March. Several of Audrey Nickel's press releases about some of our events have generated stories and calendar entries in many of the area newspapers.

We met with many sister area organizations over the past few months - NC Peace Action, Kadampa Tibetan Buddhist Center, Jain Study Group of NC, NC Network for the Animals, the Wayne County Vegetarian Society, and, in Greensboro, the Very Vegetarian Society of Winston-Salem. We had a great holiday party at the home of Barbara Green and Brian Paren and many excellent potlucks. Chip Law gave a convincing talk on vegetarian nutrition at Barnes and Noble in February, educating the public and gaining us several new members.

We also are lucky to have had many exciting visitors. Just before Thanksgiving, Bill Sribney, past newsletter editor, came from Binghamton, followed a few weeks later with a group from Binghamton: Amie Hamlin, past TVS president, Bob LeRoy, North American Vegetarian Society Nutrition Advisor, and Ben Bristol. Early this year, Amy Adler, TVS member and board member of the Veg. Soc. of Wash., D.C., spent several days with us; it was an experience for me to host a raw foodist whom I couldn't cook for! We had two very special visitors who came and settled in our community - Joelle Hendrick, a nutritionist from Florida, and Brian Donlon, founder of the Pensacola, FL vegetarian society. Finally, author Erik Marcus spent several days with us and joined us in our Meatout celebration.

The biggest event so far this year, besides our well-attended (I counted 47 people) 4^th of July picnic at the lovely home of Eva and Dietrich von Haugwitz (thanks, Dietrich and Eva, for hosting it again!), was our Meatout celebration. The Great American Meatout is held the first day of spring each year, and I believe TVS had the biggest Meatout celebration in the country. Thanks to Tonya Adams, Lila Chung, and Bernard & Sabrina Obie for donating and catering food for our planning session. Thanks to all of the area mayors except Raleigh (which has refused to help for years) for issuing proclamations declaring March 20 to be the Great American Meatout.

Friday of the Meatout, TVS spent the day at Guy Phillips Middle School showing 6^th through 8^th graders how to cook good vegan meals, and that evening Erik Marcus spoke at UNC. Ben Drasin, Chris Friedrich, Donna Allison, and I had a lot of fun with the cooking.

On Saturday, we worked at the Durham Rescue Mission and served 50-60 meals consisting of chili (Heidi Zehnal and Mike Schiller prepared this dish), salad and fruit salad (Karen McCollough and two of her friends, Chris Friedrich, and Pam Young), Rice (Lila Chung), Mixed Vegetables (Ben Drasin and Joan Lerner), Stew (Bernard and Sabrina Obie), and really yummy sorbet (Karalyn Replogle). The folks loved the food and piled their plates high. It was very rewarding to be able to contribute to the community and show off how healthy and inexpensive it can be to eat vegetarian. Again that evening, Erik spoke, this time at the Hindu Temple in Morrisville.

In addition to all the people already named, many other TVSers helped to make the weekend a success. Just to mention a few (and apologies to those I've left out!), David Erb and Alex Semilof for helping setup the facilities and picking up food donations, Ralph Scallion for arranging the bread donation, Suzy Carlson and Bart Wendel who helped with chili, Karen McCollough for designing the beautiful flyers about Erik's talks, Audrey Nickel for getting the word out through press releases (I think we were mentioned in newspapers in all three cities, as well as the UNC Daily Tar Heel), and Rondi Elliot for accepting the Durham proclamation. Many thanks to all those who participated.

In addition, thanks to our friends at Wellspring (each of the three Triangle stores made a donation), Weaver Street Market, Durham Food Coop, Great Harvest Bread Company, and Harris Teeter for their critical contributions for the food we used in cooking and prepared foods we had for Erik's receptions. Finally, thanks to our friends at UNC's Student Environmental Action Coalition and the Hindu Society of North Carolina for helping to sponsor Erik's talks.

You will immediately have noticed a dramatic new look to the newsletter, thanks to our new designer, Whit Gurley. It will be obvious to you that Whit is a professional, and TVS is lucky to have him as a new member who is able to contribute his graphic talents. Our previous designer, Vasu Muppalla, did a superb job, especially given his limited software availability, but he moved on to a new job. Thanks, Vasu, for your good work! It takes a tremendous amount of work to put out a newsletter, and this issue in particular felt to me like a mini-thesis (I don't know how many more of these I can survive :-) !)

The advertising that we accept helps to make the newsletter more affordable, and we will very much miss Serenity Dixon, who recently moved to South Carolina, and who for so long has done an exceptional job as the advertising coordinator. She kept careful and neat notes, and I am anxious to find a replacement; please contact me if you have an interest. Dave Connelly and Becky LeClair have helped in the past with the mailing (please contact me if you can spare a few hours during the daytime when the newsletter is mailed). Joy Anandi has for many years provided her phone number as TVS' contact, answering inquiries by mail and phone. Sarah Hoff does an excellent job with our internet presence at www.trianglevegsociety.org/tvs - do bookmark our web pages!

Besides Whit, we have several new people on the team. Somebody that deserves high praise is Karen McCollough who has become our Secretary. I work closely with her and it seems that she has something going on just about every week, be it writing to an organization for a potential event, making reprints of photographs, creating flyers, or many other important activities. Thank you very much, Karen!

We have a great team of nutrition advisors, including world-famous Suzanne Havala. Chip Law, as I mentioned, has done excellent outreach speaking, and Joelle Hendrick, in addition to helping with advising on nutrition, has picked up the job of School Lunch Liaison.

Brian Donlon has been active with literature tabling along with many others (David Erb, Kevin Brice, Theresa Allio, Shelli Fein, Karen McCollough, and Chris Friedrich come to mind immediately; apologies to anybody I neglected!). Brian is our new Festival Coordinator, and we hope to have more of an outreach presence.

Right now, we can use additional help in fund-raising. It would be great if we could issue membership cards and have a discount program with area stores like several other groups do; any takers to help get this rolling? We have a good contact in public access TV, and could use a few members who are willing to get trained, so we can broadcast some of our lectures, existing films, and perhaps some cooking demonstrations.

I have been travelling quite a bit. Just in the past two months or so, I have been in Connecticut three times, Toronto, Orlando, Atlanta (I enjoyed meeting with the Veg. Soc. of Georgia), Cape Cod (it was great bicycling with three members of the Boston Veg. Soc.), Pittsburgh (I had a great time with many of the Pittsburgh Veg. Soc. members), and Charlotte. I was very impressed with the time I spent with the Toronto Vegetarian Association. They have close to 2000 members and an office downtown which they open to the public as a resource center.

I have also become active with the Raleigh Rose Society. I would love to show off pictures of some of my prize-winning roses!

I'm looking forward to all of the exciting events that are upcoming on the TVS calendar. I hope that many of you will come to the many local events, as well as the two weekend trips we have planned, one to the Outer Banks and the other the Great Peanut Bike Ride in Southern Virginia.

Thank you for your support of TVS, whether by hosting an event, renewing your membership on time, and/or coming to our events! If you're not on the email list, drop us a note at tvs@ivu.org to be added; it's the best way to stay in touch in between newsletters. See you soon!