Tue 20211228

You speak for yourself, I'll do the same: I don't know about you, but in my opinion humans are not naturally vegetarians. We are meat eaters from ancient Time, tired of a diet of roots and berries, we started chasing down or sneaking up on animals with a club, a rock, then a spear, then bow and arrows. Dragging it home for the homemaker team to skin or pluck, cut it up and, in Time, roast it over the fire in front of the cave.

Over more Time, still stealthily, patiently, in the blind or in bushes or bullrushes, rifle or shotgun loaded and ready. My grandfather Gentry used to arrive home at one o'clock in the morning, dump out sacks of quail and dove, waken and roust out the women of the household to pick and clean through the wee hours into dawn.

Anymore, animals are farmed for eating just as beans, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, squash are for the casseroles. Though I don't want to give up meat, my wish as I finish my fourth turkey sandwich since the Xmas Feast would be that the animals we kill and eat could lack sentience, fear, pain. Maybe over Time there will be farmed insentient meat, unless people go the way of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a dark world of chaos and paralyzing fear where there is neither ethical standard, nor civility, nor conscience.

Which, the way earth is turning and civilization is sliding, seems increasingly inevitable.

Thank God for aging, nomesane?

At any event, my favorite parts of Christmas are Family, Holy Commotion, the roast turkey feast, and plenty of leftovers for turkey sandwiches. This year we had two roast turkeys to make sure I'd have turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day and a few more days of +Time.

Tuesday. About one o'clock we head for the airport to drop Joe for his flights to Charlotte, thence home to Louisville. Traveling mercies.

RSF&PTL