**Edit: Two late additions for Tuesday, June 16**

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Events are free unless otherwise noted.

Now until June 14

Watch new documentary HOME free on YouTube. More info in our recent blog post.

Saturday, June 13

National Pigeon Day: Praise the pigeon at Central Park and all over the country. Our very own Patrick Kwan will be speaking.
12-4pm
Central Park, Pilgrim Hill

Get friendly with a neeeeighbor at A Horse of Course!, a walk and discussion with Kathy Stevens at Catskill Animal Sanctuary.
1-4pm
$15, or $5 for members. Register in advance by calling Julie at (845) 336-8447.

Woodstock FAS hosts its family-friendly Jamboree. Games, face-painting, animals, and food by Isa Moskowitz. That's right--another chance to dose on Isa before she heads back to Oregon.
11am-5pm
$10. Register in advance at the website.

Tuesday, June 15

Protest against the netting and gassing to death of at least 2,000 NYC geese
12-2pm
Port Authority Headquarters, 225 Park Ave. South

Ingrid Newkirk's book-signing for The PETA Practical Guide to Animals Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble
7pm
Borders, Columbus Circle

Thursday, June 18

Mercy for Animals celebrates the opening of its New York office with vegan appetizers and drinks at MooShoes. And wait, it gets better than vegan food and booze: MooShoes will be donating 10% of that day's in-store and online sales to MFA, so you finally have a scale-tipping reason to get that pair of Simples.
6:30-9:30pm
MooShoes, 78 Orchard St.

Friday, June 19

Join Mary and Peter Max for the kick-off party for the production of Standardized Testing. The film "follows PATH founder Kelly Overton...as he attempts to return his diplomas and get his tuition refunded in an effort to bring attention to the dangerous and wasteful biomedical research being done at the universities." Food will be provided by 4 Course Vegan, BabyCakes NYC, Blackwell's Organic Gelato, Candle Cafe, Frey Vineyards, The Power of Food, Tuthilltown Spirits, Vegan Treats Bakery, and others.
6:30-8:30pm
The Max Studio
37 W. 65th St., 7th floor
$100 and up. Purchase tickets here.

Find these and more events in our calendar.

Monday, 6/1

Vegan Brunch release party: Celebrate the release of Isa Chandra Moskowitz's latest and brunchiest cookbook with vegan sausage and pink grapefruit mimosas made by the lovely lady herself. Free.
MooShoes, 7 p.m.
78 Orchard St., between Grand and Broome streets

Two vegan cookbooks released today: The Vegan Table, by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, author of The Joy of Vegan Baking, and The Vegan Scoop, by Wheeler Del Toro of Wheeler's Black Label Vegan Ice Cream

Tuesday, 6/2

Brooklyn Botanic Garden free admission Tuesdays (recurring event)

Wednesday, 6/3

The New York City Bar offers a free program on puppy mills and puppy mill legislation in New York. Register before hopping over. Free.
6-9 p.m., New York City Bar
42 W. 44th St., between 5th and 6th avenues

The second episode of The Goode Family airs at 9 p.m. on ABC. I didn't find the first episode to be overwhelmingly hilarious, but as a friend of mine said, "Considering this is a Mike Judge cartoon, it will get better if it manages to survive, because it will stop laying on the obvious. King of the Hill, for example, was never meant to be a laughing-out-loud affair, and it eventually managed to amusingly reconcile certain aspects of that particular culture war."

Thursday, 6/4

Edible landscaping workshop at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Learn to grow things in your tiny Brooklyn apartment that you can eat! Free. Register in advance.
6-8 p.m., Brooklyn Botanic Garden
1000 Washington Ave.

Food, Inc. premiers in NYC at the Museum of the Moving Image
35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria

Saturday, 6/6

Rally for Worldwide Day of Protest Against Horse-Drawn Carriages at Columbus Circle with Friends of Animals, the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages, HEART and mayoral candidate and current council member Tony Avella.
12 p.m., Columbus Circle

Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary's Spring benefit dinner for the NY Vegetarian Expo. $65.
5:30 p.m., The Women's Club of Albany
725 Madison Ave., Albany, NY

Catskill Animal Sanctuary's Shindig 2009 features six speakers, including Brian Shapiro of the Ulster County SPCA and Amie Hamlin of the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food. $10.
12-6 p.m., Catskill Animal Sanctuary
316 Old Stage Rd., Saugerties, NY

• I know Mark Bittman’s “vegan until six” plan can help convince a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t to skip animal products for at least two meals a day. So then why does he follow up Food Matters with yet more recipes—for breakfast!—that are chockful of meat and dairy? Adding insult to injury, he now says, “It's beyond being a vegan; it's being a vegan-plus.” WTF?
• Farm Sanctuary is encouraging people to hold screenings of Our Daily Bread, a narrative-free succession of images illuminating the horrors of factory farming and agribusiness. (If you’re nearby, there will be a screening at the Indianapolis Museum of Art on March 20.) Sounds like a good idea; I still haven’t been able to bring myself to watch my DVD of Earthlings on my own.
• Also on March 20 but within subway distance, there will be a screening of Blinders, about the abuses of the horse-drawn carriage industry. The 7pm showing at Village East Cinemas will be followed by a Q&A with director Donny Moss. Buy advance tickets here.

• Want to see an end to dogs being sold in pet stores? Me too. Join the NYC Animal Advocacy Network for the kickoff of Best Friends Animal Society’s Puppy-Store-Free NYC campaign on Friday, Feb. 20, at 6:15pm.
• I was bummed when Pumpkin’s went under; I like giving my money to vegan places, and how often does a vegan market come along? On its heels, the V-Spot is having so much trouble staying afloat, they’ve closed for lunch and are three weeks overdue on the rent. Help add to their coffers by attending a “rent party” on Monday, Feb. 23, between 6 & 10pm, with full menu and $3 beers.
• Another worthy vendor: Above and Below Herbals creates handmade vegan (and often organic) body care free from synthetic materials and other unecessary crap. I’m allergic to pretty much everything, but my skin loves, loves, loves their Body Butter, Moisturizing Cream and Lip Balm. And there’s free shipping within the U.S.! Place your order now at info@aboveandbelowherbals.com.
• Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to the hearing on the carriage horse ban in January. But you can still help. Write to support Intro 658 and oppose Intros 652 and 653. And if you haven’t seen it yet, get to a screening or pick up a copy of Blinders.

• Okay, the Food Network would never turn Iron Chef veggie, but a live version with a vegetable as the secret ingredient is taking place this weekend in Billyburg. On Sunday, from 2 to 5, head to McGolrick Park for the 2nd annual Iron Chef Kohlrabi. Judging begins at 3, and the winner gets an Iron Chef prize pack, whatever that is. Brought to you by the Greenpoint-Williamsburg CSA
  and Garden of Eve farm.
• Two happy announcements this week about sellers going fur-free: the Home Shopping Network and Overstock.com. For info about other do-gooders in the biz, check out HSUS’s list of fur-free designers and retailers.
• Could it really be happening? After all the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages has done to get carriages banned in the city, it looks like Alec Baldwin might finally have legislators convinced to give it a go!

Some things that raise interesting questions have been collecting in my browser tabs bar. I thought I'd share them with you.

• There's a thorough post over at U.S. Food Policy about the scope of meat in rising food costs. It takes into account the rising cost of animal feed (and competition from the biofuels industry) and also the dramatic increases in meat consumption, especially in developing nations.
• A turtle named Myrtle, who was well known in the backyards of her block in Williamsburg was painted pink, presumably by some construction workers. It became quite a local "human interest" story. It seems like Myrtle will be OK, which is great, but I'm sure that most of those sympathizing with her story would have no moral qualms eating turtle soup.
• I've been noticing a similar disconnect in regards to Eight Belles, the racehorse who was driven to her death last week at the Kentucky Derby. The mainstream seems sort of upset about the abuse and effective murder of Eight Belles, but not really enough to realize that horse racing can be just as evil as their favorite bugaboo, dog fighting.
• And finally, Paola Antonelli, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art has "killed" a piece by artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr called Victimless Leather. The tiny jacket-shaped object/creature was made of mouse stem cells and was kept alive via a nutrient tube. It (I actually feel OK using an inanimate pronoun here) grew faster than expected and clogged its own life-support system. Says Antonelli:

  [It] started growing, growing, growing until it became too big. And [the artists] were back in Australia, so I had to make the decision to kill it. And you know what? I felt I could not make that decision. I've always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I'm here not sleeping at night about killing a coat...That thing was never alive before it was grown.

  I wonder how Antonelli thinks other "things" become alive?

Last Thursday, protesters held a press conference and vigil for Smoothie, a NYC carriage horse who died on September 14.

Activists have been working for years to end the abusive carriage horse industry in NYC. The movement took a step forward at Thursday's vigil, when NYC Council Member Tony Avella announced that he will sponsor legislation to ban horse-drawn carriages. This is the first time a politician has introduced legislation for a ban in NYC; other cities such as London, Paris and Toronto already have bans.

The vigil, organized by the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages and Friends of Animals, also featured musician Nellie McKay. Go here to view footage. And tell your city council member to support the ban.

Breaking: disgraced radio host and sometime-racist Don Imus doesn't hate everyone! Vegan-friendly Imus and wife Deirdre run a free summer ranch camp for kids who have cancer or serious blood disorders. The kids stay in the main ranch house, and learn to ride and care for horses, and help feed cattle, sheep, buffalo, chickens, goats and donkeys. Not only that, but many of the kids who stay at the camp come from minority backgrounds. But this is the clincher: The menu of which the kids partake on Imus charity ranch is entirely vegan.

The whole thing seems to me like a contradiction in terms. The guy runs a popular children's charity ranch ("fully functional," by the way), serves vegan meals to the kids, and spouts racist humor on a nationally syndicated radio program. Strange, but absolutely true.

In "We Eat Horses, Don't We?" in The New York Times, Christa Weil explains that contrary to what most Americans believe, our history shows that we have indeed sporadically used horses as food. And as you may know, other cultures, such as the French and Canadians, consider it a delicacy. Like most vegans, when I heard about this bill passed last week in the House, which prohibits the commercial sale and slaughter of wild free-roaming horses and burros, I was ambivalent. Sure, it's great that this year another 130,000+ horses won't be slaughtered for human consumption. But what about the billions of farm animals who suffer each day of their lives and die hideous deaths? As Weil points out, "The ill treatment of slaughter-bound horses is bad, but it would be worse still if it made us pay less attention to the undue suffering of other food animals."

We don't eat horses because it's not part of our culture. But eating cows, chickens and fish is. Culture can be defined as: the word we use to explain something that is otherwise inexplicable or unjustifiable.

The League of Humane Voters of NYC just released its 2007 Humane Scorecard. Sadly, even in an almost exclusively Democratic City Council, compassion seems to be the minority viewpoint. While big congrats and thank-you’s go to Rosie Mendez, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Sara Gonzalez, and Michael Nelson, each of whom got straight A’s, 14 members flunked out spectacularly, with absolute 0’s. You can’t get much worse than that.

Scratch that. In what can be seen only as proof of multiple personality disorder, Speaker Christine Quinn, who according to LOHV-NYC recently dubbed herself “a staunch advocate for animal rights,” not only got a zero, she sealed her score with a bloody kiss when she officially came out against banning foie gras in NYC. Quinn probably should have described herself as “a staunch advocate for animal rights, as long as those rights don’t interfere with the bankrolls of the food and restaurant industries.”

At LOHV-NYC’s Winter 2007 Membership Meeting, on Tues., Jan. 16, executive director John Phillips will discuss the Scorecard as well as a proposed ban on the use of wild and exotic animals in NYC. Click here to download a PDF of the 2007 Humane Scorecard.

Also speaking at the meeting will be Larry Kopp, about LOHV-NYC, Farm Sanctuary, and HSUS’s efforts to ban the sale of foie gras in NYC; councilman Tony Avella, who’ll give an update on the Pets in Housing Bill; Valerie Sicignano, to present the 2007 In Defense of Animals Guardian Awards; George Bliss of the Pedicab Owners Association, to talk about the Horse & Carriage Association of NY's attempts to ban pedicabs from Central Park; and Peter Silvestri of Whole Earth Bakery & Kitchen, about what can be done to prevent the vegan eatery from losing its lease once and for all.

The LOHV-NYC Winter Membership Meeting will take place at 6:30pm at the LGBT Community Center, at 208 W. 13th St. in Rm. 101, with food provided by Whole Earth Bakery and Kitchen. To RSVP, e-mail info@humanenyc.org or call 212-889-0303.