Back to normal

As you can tell from my blog, I've spent a week hyperventilating about the tragic injustice to journalism that The New York Times perpetuated when it printed the recent slurs about veganism by Nina Planck. I could easily slip back into ranting because it upsets me so much, but I know I have to move on. Over the Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I drove to Uvalde, which is about six to seven hours from here. My parents own some property there along the Nueces River. I hadn't been there since the mid-80s, and we couldn't find it despite the directions we got. We called the person my mother bought the property from to help. He is in his 80s now. Despite his help, we couldn't locate the property. It was getting dark, so I asked him if he could drive out there to show us where it was in the morning. He said he would have his son show us, and we bid good night. We checked into a hotel since we couldn't camp on the property. Right after I had check in, the nice old man called and invited us to stay over at his place for the night. I told him about the hotel and declined and thanked him. It occurred to me that if we had taken the old man up on his offer to sleep over, we would have had one of those uncomfortable vegan moments. He probably would have offered us some food at one point. How rude it would have felt to decline after he was so generous. We would have declined any food, of course, but it would have been really uncomfortable. These old-time Texans can be insistent and can take insult when their niceties are rebuffed. Anyway, the property was truly gorgeous. My parents hadn't been there in 14 years, and the neglect did wanders for this land. I'll write more on that in my other blog.