Two well known folks in the animal rights / vegan community have launched new blogs – check them out and subscribe!

Erik Marcus of Vegan.com

First, Erik Marcus, who you likely know as the person behind Vegan.com, as well as the author of Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, Meat Market: Animals, Ethic, and Money, and The Ultimate Vegan Guide: Compassionate Living Without Sacrifice.

His new blog is An Activists Life. It’s a tumblr-based blog, so it is likely to be more microblog style, more conversational, and more focused on the personal than vegan.com. As Erik put it:

I’ve decided to start something new. I’m going to blog about my personal efforts for animals, and all the things in my life that I try to put in place to be as effective as I can be.

I could take the tried-and-true way out and do this as a book, and not publish a word until it’s fully baked. But that’s not what I want this time. I want to show you the process, the fear, the uncertainty, that comes with writing a shitload of words in real time.

There is no business model. There is no ultimate form I expect this work to take. Just the feeling that if I can give you some insight into the way I’ve structured my life, and the things I do day after day, some people might either be inspired to take action, or be able to act more effectively for animals.

So take a look. Everything’s in flux; everything’s not ready for prime time; this is my activist life. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Given that on some days I think this blog could become nothing but a giant pointer to the RSS feed at vegan.com, I look forward to riding along with Erik over at An Activists Life.

Karen Dawn and Paula

Second, Karen Dawn, who you like know from Thanking the Monkey and Dawnwatch.

Karen’s started blogging at Thanking the Monkey and will focus, one assumes, on many of the same topics and Thanking the Monkey and Dawnwatch, but with more personality. (It is really possible I just put “Karen Dawn” and “more personality” in the same sentence?). Here’s how she described it in an email to Dawnwatch subscribers:

While my blogs, like DawnWatch, will include animal news, they will be lighter and more personal. They will generally have embedded video, sometimes of what the animal friendly celebs are up to. In honor of the release of a new little flick called Star Trek, the first one includes an interview we did with Bruce Greenwood who plays the captain, Captain Pike, in the new movie. (The movie is a prequel so Kirk is not yet the captain.) Greenwood has some lovely comments on animal cruelty, and the state of the oceans. My first blog also includes a wonderful Onion news piece on Star Trek, just for laughs. We need those. I hope you will check out my new blog and forward the link to all of your Trekkie friends. They might figure that if Captain Pike cares about the animals, maybe they should too.

Glad to hear and see more from both of these voices.