Month: May 2012

My mother’s dog, Sister, died this morning. Sister had had a crippling knee condition that had gotten steadily worse. This morning, after repeated trips to the veterinarian, she was unable to take more than four or five steps before falling.

My mother donated her remaining dog food and treats to a local shelter and, it must be said, because I’m a sucker for cats, and want every cat to have a home, and because I wanted her to have some animal companionship (and because I just do not like dogs), we wound up bringing home a cat this afternoon.

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I was in Sonoma—a town east of Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, California—yesterday afternoon and evening for a talk by Sam Keen put on by the Praxis Peace Institute. The talk itself was a disappointment; while Keen offers the insight that we are very imaginative in love and not very imaginative at all in demonizing our enemies, he is insufficiently skeptical about the official narratives on such events as the 9/11 attacks and the John F. Kennedy assassination, events where it is probably wisest to acknowledge inadequacies in the official accounts and say we may never know the truth.

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So it’s my V-day. Four years ago today, I turned vegan. In retrospect, it seems odd that I did not attach any significance to the fact this happens to be Cinco De Mayo or that it, like this year, was a presidential election year. In truth, I did not attach any particular significance to the date at all. The way I know that my V-day is May 5 is by reconstruction from an email commemorating the anniversary of my joining HappyCow.net, a site where vegetarians and vegans can review vegan, vegetarian, and veg-friendly restaurants and retail outlets—and even more important, get them listed, so we can find them.

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