some things never change

pass me the tofu

I've been making a slow approach to vegetarianism for a long, long time and the train is finally pulling all the way into the station.

A cocktail of circumstances has guided me here, but at the top of the list is the simple fact that I can no longer keep myself divided up like a side of beef so I can remain asleep to the reality of the lives of the animals destined for my plate.

I am now weeping my way through the books I was always too afraid to open:
- Matthew Scully's Dominion; the Power of Woman, the Suffering of Animals, and the call to Mercy

- The Pig Who Sang to the Moon; the Emotional World of Farm Animals by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

- and 101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian by Pamela Rice.

If one of the titles sounds a little off, it's because I gave Matthew Scully's "Man" a sex change; because of course when we use one gender, we mean both, but that's another blog entry altogether.

I've had Rice's book for over five years but it has sat on a shelf keeping time. As Matthew Scully puts it "...consciousness of the infamy won't go away: most people have it ticking away inside them somewhere" (p. 85). The last time I heard banging this loud was when my biological clock went off in 1988.

It's funny because for years, people have assumed I was vegetarian. It's the one 'mistake' that people consistently make when attempting to locate me on the political/social/environmental spectrum. Maybe they knew something I didn't.

Today, one of my wild turkeys (they're not really mine, they just grace me with their presence) hopped right up onto the chopping block and set out to preen herself.

Maybe she knows something too.

Pillbox saves the day

Here I am, plugged in and ready to go at the recent BOLDfest conference in Vancouver, a conference for the older, bolder lesbian set. Well, you don't actually have to be old, bold OR lesbian to be there. It's not like they checked our ID for date of birth, or interviewed us about our social orientation. It's a self-screening sort of thing.
But since I am relatively old, and getting bolder by the minute, and all the while, a card-carrying second-wave, pre-post, feminist lesbian, I more than qualified to attend. I performed my Charm, Beauty and Poise show for the girls and a decidedly raucous and inappropriately ebullient time was had by all.
It is a little known fact that as much as 87% of all good breeding escapes through the top of the head.
Hence the pillbox.

Photo by Carole Finnegan.