Tag Archives: Always buy cruelty-free cosmetics and personal care products

Did you know Trader Joe’s (in Shrewsbury) sells its own line of personal care products that contain ZERO animal ingredients and ARE NEVER tested on animals?💗💗💗 …

June 1, 2017 admin

… Check ’em out! They’re located on Rt 9, just over the bridge. … I WISH WORCESTER HAD ONE OF THESE COOL GROCERY STORES! Lots of organic veggies and fruits, cheeses, crackers, yogurt, vegan options, breads, pies, sauces and spreads, pasta, jams and jellies, international yum yums, dips and chips of all sorts, coffees and teas, cookies, desserts, cut flowers, potted plants … ALL SELLING FOR SUPER LOW PRICES! I 🌻😊 this place!

I picked up a few items yesterday and snapped some pics of their CRUELTY-FREE moisturizers, creams, soaps, shampoo, sun block, etc: – R.T.

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Cece!💗💗💗💗💗

They also sell cat food and …

Jett!❤❤❤❤❤

… dog kibble.

Animal Issues

FYI 🌷🌷🌷🌷…

April 11, 2017 admin

At the Mustard Seed kitchen, on Piedmont Street: every eve, free dinner to the community. Pictured here: Central Mass Kibble Kitchen super volunteer Dorrie Maynard checks in with super Mustard Seed volunteer “AUTUMN”💗💗💗 (in red apron, behind the counter) before dinner. Besides serving food to the needy, Autumn helps Mustard Seed diners connect with social service programs or Dorrie/Central Mass Kibble Kitchen, if they are pet owners and need help feeding their dogs and kitties. Go, Autumn, go!! pic: R.T.

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8th Annual Asian American Mental Health Forum

Spinning Threads of Hope:
Preventing Suicide in Asian Communities

Opening Remarks by:
MA Dept. of Mental Health Commissioner Joan Mikula

Keynote Speech by:
MA Dept. of Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel

Wednesday, May 10, 2017 – 9 AM to 3 PM

Higgins University Center, Clark University

Hosted by Southeast Asian Coalition of Central Massachusetts

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Roberto G. Gonzales

April 14 at Clark U: Leading expert to present ‘Lives in limbo: undocumented and coming of age in America’

Clark University will host Roberto G. Gonzales for “Lives in limbo: undocumented and coming of age in America,” at NOON, on Friday, April 14, in Jefferson 320, Clark University campus.

This free, public event will highlight the disastrous effects immigration policies have had on more than two million children coming of age in the United States.

Gonzales, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has conducted the most comprehensive study of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

His book, “Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America” (University of California Press 2015), is based on an in-depth study that followed 150 undocumented young adults in Los Angeles for 12 years and exposed the failures of a system that integrates children into K-12 schools but ultimately denies them the rewards of their labor.

Gonzales’ National UnDACAmented Research Project has surveyed nearly 2,700 undocumented young adults and carried out 500 in-depth interviews on their experiences following President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

His work has been has been featured in top social science journals as well as in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME magazine, U.S. News & World Report, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Gonzales has received support for his work by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the James Irvine Foundation. He has received the American Sociological Association Award for Public Sociology in International Migration and the AERA Scholars of Color Early Career Award.

This event is co-sponsored by the Sociology Department, the Center for Gender, Race and Area Studies, the History Department, and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

The first 50 guests will receive a free copy of Gonzales’ book.

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As you do your spring cleaning, add these products to your ‘toss’ pile

By Amanda Nordstrom

This spring, as you dust cobwebs out of corners and pack up unwanted clothes for the charity thrift store, there’s an important task that you may not have thought of: tossing cruelly produced items from your bathroom. If your soap, shampoo, toothpaste or deodorant were made by companies that still test on animals, it’s time for a fresh start.

It’s hard to believe that in this day and age — when more than 2,400 responsible companies have gone cruelty-free — some manufacturers are still needlessly poisoning and killing animals in order to test their products. Rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits and others are forced to swallow or inhale massive quantities of a test substance or endure immense pain as a chemical eats away at their eyes or skin. Some tests, such as the now-infamous lethal dose test, continue until a predetermined percentage of the animals dies.

No law in the U.S. requires companies to test personal-care products on animals — and such tests have been banned in the European Union, India, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand. Not only is using animals as test tubes cruel, it often produces inaccurate or misleading results. Even if a product has blinded an animal, it can still be sold to consumers.

Fortunately, the number of forward-thinking companies grows every day, as more and more manufacturers reject cruel and crude tests on animals — relics of the 1920s — and opt instead for modern, sophisticated techniques to evaluate the safety of their products. The results of non-animal tests are quick and accurate, and no one gets hurt.

If you don’t spend your days working on this issue, as I do, you may not realize that there are a surprising number of pioneering non-animal tests now in use and more in development, including cell and tissue cultures, reconstructed skin grown from human cells and computer models that allow extrapolation of existing data to predict the activity of a chemical.

For example, the fluorescein leakage test method uses a fluorescent dye to measure a chemical’s ability to break through a solid layer of cells, thereby mimicking the damage that the substance would cause to the eye. This spares rabbits the pain that they endure when chemicals are dripped into their sensitive eyes. EpiDermTM — a 3-D, human cell–derived skin model that replicates key traits of normal human skin — is more accurate at predicting allergic responses than cruel tests on guinea pigs and mice, which involve injecting them with chemicals or smearing substances onto their shaved skin.

Even China, a country not known for its progressive stance on animal welfare, is moving forward on this issue. Late last year, the Chinese government, which currently requires cosmetics companies to pay for inhumane tests on animals, announced that it is accepting findings from the completely animal-free 3T3 Neutral Red Uptake Phototoxicity Assay, which tests chemicals for their potential toxicity when they come into contact with sunlight.

As these and other sophisticated tests show, we don’t have to choose between protecting animals and keeping humans safe. It’s really a choice between effective and ineffective science.

So this year, as you go about your spring cleaning, why not clear your conscience as well as your clutter? It’s as simple as making the decision to support companies that are committed to animal-friendly principles by always buying cruelty-free. PETA has a searchable online database that makes finding cruelty-free products a breeze.

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IN CELEBRATION OF NATIONAL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT WEEK

THE FITCHBURG COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT INVITES YOU TO:

A Community Development Celebration

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26, 2017: 4 PM – 6 PM

GARDEN ROOM — FITCHBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY

610 MAIN STREET, FITCHBURG

• View the programs funded by the Community Development Block Grant

• Learn about current Community Development projects

All are welcome to attend.

For more information please call: (978) 829-1899

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Animal Issues

What will you give the Easter Bunny this year?

April 7, 2017 admin

Lilac, 4-6-2017 pic: R.T.

Reposting for Easter …

By Kendall Bryant

Easter is almost upon us, or as we in the sheltering world say, “Brace yourselves — it’s rabbit season.” I’ve rescued rabbits for 10 years, and I volunteer in the small-animal room at my local shelter. And every spring, it seems as though, for many cast-off Peter Cottontails, the bunny trail leads straight to our door.

While most of us consider cute, scampering rabbits to be one of the quintessential signs of spring, it can be a tough time for many of them. The ways in which we inadvertently cause them to suffer — for everything from fur to floor cleaner — would make any bunny hopping mad.

Let’s start with the Easter Bunny. Every year, breeders and bunny mills churn out irresistible baby rabbits for parents to put in their children’s Easter baskets. And every year, for several weeks after Easter, shelter workers take in a deluge of these same rabbits — after they have chewed through electrical wires, books, baseboards, doorjambs and all the Easter lilies.

What breeders and pet stores often fail to mention as they’re ringing up those fluffy little bundles of Easter joy is that rabbits, like all animals, have some particular needs. They chew incessantly (their teeth never stop growing), and they have special dietary needs (think less lettuce, more hay). They require constant mental stimulation and space to run around in, and they get depressed when confined to a cage. They can live for up to 12 years.

So, when Bugs turns out to be more work than parents bargained for, he usually finds himself tossed out like a stale Peep. He might be dropped off at an animal shelter, relegated to a cage outside or simply turned loose in the wild, where he won’t stand a chance against starvation, harsh weather and predators.

But buying bunnies on a whim and then abandoning them once reality sets in is just one way that we cause them to suffer.

Many of the fur accessories, trim and jackets that you see in stores are made from rabbit fur because it’s often cheaper than other animals’ skins. Rabbits on fur farms spend their entire lives confined to tiny, filthy metal cages and often have their necks broken while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain. On angora farms, rabbits scream and writhe in pain as workers tear the fur out of their skin. I couldn’t wear a coat made of rabbits any more than I could wear one made of golden retrievers.

Rabbits’ mild manner and the ease with which they breed also make them a favorite victim of experimenters, who use them to test chemical products, burning their skin with noxious chemicals and dripping substances into their eyes, even though superior non-animal testing methods are readily available.

And it should go without saying, but anyone who cares at all about rabbits shouldn’t eat them. The House Rabbit Society and other rabbit advocates have been fervently protesting outside stores that sell rabbit meat.

We humans have long had a hard time thinking straight about other animals — we keep some as “pets” while serving up others on our plates — and our treatment of rabbits shows just how schizophrenic our relationship with other species can be.

So this Easter, let’s give rabbits a break by vowing not to wear them, eat them or buy cosmetics or household products that were tested on them. (You can check to see if a company is cruelty-free by using PETA’s Beauty Without Bunnies searchable database.) And if you’re really ready to give a rabbit a lifetime of care, hop on down to your local humane society or rabbit rescue group to adopt one — preferably right after Easter.

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These companies don’t test their products on bunnies … Support them!

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A kind of Easter Parade!

InCity Voices

Worcester news you can use!🌸🌻🌺💐🌼

March 3, 2017 admin

Chris Edwards

Clark University
950 Main St.

March 16 at Clark University: regional transgender author to discuss new memoir, ‘BALLS: It Takes Some To Get Some’

Boston-area author and transgender advocate Chris Edwards will talk about his life-changing journey and read from his memoir, “BALLS: It Takes Some to Get Some,” at Clark University at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 16, in the Higgins Lounge, Dana Commons, 2nd Floor.

The event is part of the Higgins School of Humanities’ spring dialogue symposium, “What’s so funny?” which includes lectures, community conversations and exhibits on humor.

Edwards grew up in the Boston suburbs and started the process of transitioning from female to male at the age of 26 when he was a copywriter at a high profile ad agency in Boston.

Edwards, who came out at a company board meeting before his white, middle-aged colleagues, endured 28 painful and extensive surgeries to become the man he is today.

He’ll reveal how humor helped him negotiate his gender transition and gain acceptance from his family, friends, and colleagues at a time when the word “transgender” was almost non-existent.

Edwards has been interviewed by O Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Refinery29, Vice.com, the Improper Bostonian, New York Post and NECN about his book, and about being young and transgender in the workplace. He was recently interviewed by The Boston Globe about his decision to attend his 10-year high school reunion while transitioning from Kristin to Chris.

“That’s when it hit me … everyone was going to assume I didn’t show up because I didn’t have the, well, balls,” Edwards told the Boston Globe. “And while technically that might have been true (that surgery was years away), after publicly transitioning in front of 500 coworkers I’d developed quite a set of cojones. I was not about to let my former classmates think I was ashamed. I was going.”

Books will be on sale and a signing will follow Edwards’ talk. This free, public event is sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.

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EB3KP2 Flintlock pistol display at Culzean Castle, South Ayrshire, Scotland — Flintlock pistol display at Culzean Castle, South Ayrshire, Scotland

March 16 at Clark University: historian to give talk, ‘Controlling Guns, Then and Now’

Historian Lois Schwoerer will present, “Controlling Guns, Then and Now,” at Clark University at 4:30 p.m., Thursday, March 16, in the Higgins Lounge, Dana Commons, 2nd Floor.

This lecture offered as part of the Roots of Everything Series.

Currently in the U.S. much of the debate around gun control focuses on the second amendment, however, struggles between government effects to regulate gun ownership and public gun culture date back to the 16th and 17th century England. When the English government tried to limit possession and use of gun to wealthy subjects, the policy was met with outrage and willful disobedience.

In this timely talk, Professor Schwoerer will examine the impact of gun ownership and regulation on both the government and private subjects of early modern England. Mark Miller, professor of political science and director of Clark’s Law and Society concentration, will offer commentary.

Schwoerer is Elmer Louis Kayser Professor Emerita of History at George Washington University and Scholar in Residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library; she was a member of GWU’s History Department for 32 years. Professor Schwoerer’s recent book “Gun Culture in Early Modern England” identifies and analyzes England’s domestic gun culture from 1500 to 1740, uncovering how guns became available, what effects they had on society, and how different sectors of the population contributed to gun culture.

The Roots of Everything is a lecture series sponsored by the Early Modernists Unite (EMU) — a faculty collaborative bringing together scholars of medieval and early modern Europe and America—in conjunction with the Higgins School of Humanities. The series highlights various aspects of modern existence originating in the early modern world and teases out connections between past and present.

This free, public event is co-sponsored by the Higgins School of Humanities, the Early Modernists Unite, and the Department of History.

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Purchase these NOT-TESTED-ON-BUNNIES cosmetics and personal care products at Walgreens, CVS, Target and your local super-market. Go cruelty-free!!

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Rose’s fave saint – ST. FRANCIS XAVIER – Patron Saint of Animals. This little St. Francis sits by Rose’s back door, blessing Lilac and Jett as they enter and leave the apartment. pic: R.T.

St. John’s Church
Temple Street, Worcester

ST. FRANCIS NOVENA

THE 94th ANNUAL NOVENA OF GRACE IN HONOR OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER will begin Saturday, March 4 and run through Sunday, March 12.

Mass and Novena prayers will be held on the weekdays at 9:15 AM, 12:15 and 6:15 PM and on the regular weekend schedule (Saturday 4:15 and 7:15 PM, Sunday 8 and 10:15 AM, 12:15 and 7:15 PM).

Benediction and Novena prayers will be celebrated at 2:15 PM on March 4th and March 11th.

This year’s theme is “The Love of Christ Impels.”

All are welcome and encouraged to participate in this great Lenten tradition!

Fashion

Brush up on blush this spring! Purchase cruelty-free brands!

February 23, 2017 admin

From PETA.ORG:

Makeup artists consider blush the secret to looking healthy, but many blushes hide an ugly secret that might make you feel sick.

This Might Bug You … To give blush its rosy hue, a pigment made from crushed female cochineal insects is sometimes used. This bright red coloring is called Carmine but might be disguised in the ingredient list with nicknames like Cochineal, Carminic Acid, Natural Red 4, or C.L 75470. In addition to this creepy-crawly secret, some cosmetic companies use other animal-derived ingredients and test makeup products on animals, causing them to suffer in unimaginable ways.

Thankfully, you can easily add blush to your makeup wardrobe without harming animals!

There are dozens of cruelty-free and vegan blushes available, but we’ve hand-picked five favorites just for you!

Touted by beauty bloggers as a “universally flattering” blush that’s gorgeous on any skin tone, Pacifica’s Blushious blush in Camellia provides a peachy-pink glow.

Pacifica is a cruelty-free and vegan company that uses natural ingredients like coconut and rose in their affordable and luxurious cosmetics. At just $12, this blush is a steal and a total must-have.

Before blush was powdered and packaged, women used red fruits to color their cheeks. Cruelty-Free brand 100% Pure offers fruit pigmented vegan blushes that are suited for sensitive skin and available in a wide array of shades to suit any skin tone. The classic pink shade “Cherry” offers a satin finish and a flush of color in adorable packaging. At $35, this blush is less expensive than some better known “luxury” brands that favor cruelty over quality.

If your lifestyle is a little more active, you might prefer the ease of a blush that you can throw in your bag and apply without brushes. Tarte cheek stain comes in 6 vegan-friendly sheer shades that can be applied on the go and blended with fingers for that “I just worked out” look.

Try the shade True Love, a sheer watermelon hue that looks like you’re naturally blushing. Since not all shades are vegan, be sure to select one of the six shades that bear the “Vegan Friendly” stamp on the product photo.

While many blushes have a bit of shimmer, some prefer the natural look of a matte formula. Cruelty-free brand Modern Minerals offers a neutral shade called Love, a matte warm pink with mauve undertones that perfectly suits a minimal “no makeup” look. This vegan blush is ideal for those who aren’t comfortable with brighter hues, but want to give blush a try. At just $20, it’s a low-risk option that adds just a little pink to your cheeks without taking much green from your wallet.

If you like pretty packaging and an equally lovely product, you’ll love Too Faced Long Lasting Blush. While the whole brand is Cruelty-free, only the shades How Deep is Your Love and Your Love is King are vegan so far. The first is described as a watermelon pink and the second is a plum toned rose- and both will flatter both light and dark skin tones.

You don’t need makeup to be pretty, but when you choose to use a cruelty-free and vegan blush, you’re making life just a little more beautiful for the animals.

15 Great Cruelty-Free Companies