Second-hand Rose

Rose is the sweetest dog you'll ever meet. She is full of love and curiosity and empathy greater than any human animal I've ever met, not to mention she has a sixth sense with people that is magical. She's also a nut. Her favorite thing to do is to wedge herself into the tightest spaces she can find. It's like she finds safety in being squished by two book-ends.

She came to M and her ex's lives after a kind worker at a kill-shelter (which holds a no-adopt rule for any pit bulls) noticed how sweet she was and snuck her out of her deadly fate. Rose had been found chained to a tree for days on end, left abandoned. I look at her now, a big sweet potato sitting on the ottoman, and I wonder how any person could do such a horrible thing to an animal like this--or to any animal at all. That kind of severance from compassion is what literally gives me nightmares. Is that the stuff America is made of?

Sometimes I think that being a "radical vegan lesbian feminist" gives me a bad rep. But that's nothing next to the rep that follows pit bulls, who are, in my experience, the kindest most loving dogs around. Or maybe I'm spoiled because I know the best one.

Now I'm off to DC for a few days of work. The day I get back, I will be giving a bird workshop with my BFF. If you're into animal rights, most of what you are speaking about is the right of birds--as they make up 98% of factory farmed animals.

Depressing fact of the day (from our outline): For every egg-laying hen confined in a battery cage, there is a male chick who was killed at the hatchery. Did everyone understand why the male egg-type baby chicks are killed? Because egg-laying chicken breeds have been selected exclusively for maximum egg production, they don’t grow fast enough or large enough to be raised profitably for meat. Male chicks of egg-laying breeds are therefore considered a waste product by the hatchery, and like garbage, are usually disposed of by the least expensive and most convenient means available. They may be thrown into trashcans where they are suffocated or crushed under the weight of others. A common method is to toss live chicks directly into a macerator—essentially, a high-speed meat grinder.

But here's the good news: "Soul chicken" at Red Bamboo is the best fake-chicken dish I've ever had--and it's the best one any of my meat-eating friends have had.

And here's the article of the day: Dog bucks the stereotype.

P.S. Can anyone figure out how to subscribe to this blog? I'm trying to figure out how to tell someone to do it and I can't for the life of me...