Dylan's World

For years, I believed that honey was a natural and healthy option to other sweeteners. And I loved beeswax. I even rolled my own sheets to make candles in my late 20s. When I chose to live a vegan life, I dutifully gave up honey and beeswax but I wasn’t really sure why. I would answer: bee exploitation, when people asked, but my vague answer did little to convince me that I really knew why.

Stains, grime and fingerprints – a  detective’s best friends, my worst enemy. A clean house to me is a happy and healthy house. Pre-vegan, I depended on Windex and Tide. I never questioned the values of the companies who manufactured these products or the ingredients in the products themselves. I trusted these companies in my belief that clean was clean.

Flooring is the aesthetic foundation of our homes. From hardwood, to carpet, concrete or rug-filled, our floors define the look and style of our homes and even say a little about us. Floors reveal whether we prefer modern and clean, warm and colorful and, now, if we are compassionate. Can we keep our vegan values in mind when we think of our home’s floors? Absolutely.

What is really in velvet? Velvet is a mysterious fabric that eveyone wants to drape in but few know from what the material is woven. An article for La Fashionista Compassionista

Asked by the Huffington Post to summarize my best advice for female entrpreneurs, I consulted with a friend who teaches Networking classes at Tepper School of Business - Carnegie Mellon University.

Objects are instrumental accessories to our lives. They help us peel our fruit, brush our teeth, run our errands and wake us up. We need objecs but we also have an emotional response to objects. The questions is: Can they make us happy? Article for the Huffington Post

Woven into our aesthetic repsonses is the impulse to play. Arts-based aesthetic experiences provide us great emotional satisfaction and play is a key component of human development — one with limitless powers to influence and affect us. Article written for the Huffington Post.

A week ago Newsweek published “L.A. Residential,” an essay showcasing the work of three prominent architectural firms tasked with envisioning a Los Angeles of 2030. The three firms were asked to consider how the built environment would influence the way in which Los Angelenos would live, work, commute and play 20 years into the future. Article for the Huffington Post