Stupid, Smiling Clyde

I hate to admit this, but a message in a dream from a talking dog has changed the way I live.

On New Years Eve, full of filet mignon, champagne, and 2010 optimism, I went to bed unaware that a crazy dream was about to cause trouble. It was about Clyde, a smiling oaf of a dog at the animal control shelter. I adored this dog so much when I volunteered there that I returned to visit him. Just something about his smile. Shortly after, a no-kill shelter rescued Clyde from death row and placed him in foster care. Clyde lives!

In my dream, I chewed on Clyde’s leg like it was a turkey leg. He was delicious. I asked Clyde if this hurt him, and he smiled and replied not to worry, people do it all the time, please enjoy. I took a bite out of his side but began to feel guilty. No worries, Clyde told me, he was just an animal and everyone does it, please enjoy. I tried to take another bite, but couldn’t bring myself to do so. Clyde smiled and encouraged me to keep going, but I knew that if I ate any more, Clyde would die.

I woke up horrified. I didn’t eat meat that day. Or the next.

Since then, I’ve had meat twice. Once a relative made a chicken dinner, and I didn’t want to explain my talking dog dream to my meat-loving family. Another time, I began daydreaming about red meat and assumed my body wanted some. So last Sunday, two months since I had eaten red meat, I ordered a juicy burger. Turns out, my body didn’t want that at all.

But -- I insist in my best temper tantrum voice -- I like meat! I like Italian beefs in Chicago, pulled pork in Carolina, pastrami-on-rye in New York! I like to finish a day of yard work with Jimmy's grilled steaks, to celebrate summer with burgers or New Years with a filet. Meat is delicious! Since that dream, though, I’ve lost the taste for it -- it brought a long-simmering moral dilemma to a boil. When I look at meat, I see Clyde. Stupid, smiling Clyde. Whether I’m vegetarian, flexitarian, or whatever now, I don’t know. I only know that I didn’t have meat yesterday, I don’t want it today, and I’m not shopping to buy any for tomorrow. I harbor hope, however, that this is a passing fad that’ll have me eating corned beef by St. Paddy‘s Day.

Recently Jimmy and I went to a fantastic Indian restaurant in New York and asked the server to choose something great for us to eat. He asked for our parameters, and I asked for something spicy and without meat. “Oh, are you vegetarian?” he asked innocently.

I don’t know, I wanted to tell him, but what I do know is that there’s a trouble-maker of a dog available for adoption in Charlotte if you want him.

Can Beauty Transcend the Ordinary? - Pt. 2

I flipped a coin this morning over how to spend my lunch hour: writing at a coffeehouse or running at the gym. My head beat my tail. Writing won.

My favorite coffeehouse can make my day with a good batch of snickerdoodle joe, so imagine my glee when they offered a better surprise: an impromtu performance by two violinists. The music was beautiful! I’d love to share the name of the song I swooned over as I walked in, but I only know it wasn’t included in my early study of classical music (the Tom & Jerry School of Music). When they finished to applause, they asked their quiet, coffee-sipping audience, “Does anyone here like AC/DC?” Um, yeah! These two violinists proceeded to rock out “Back in Black.” Rocked it.

I settled into a table and began my usual struggle to write (one page! why is one page so hard to write one damn page?), but my words provided weak competition against the music, which segued from the “Love Story“ theme to Guns N Roses. I remembered the Washington Post article about a renowned classical violinist playing one of the world’s most valuable violins in a Metro station while most people only scurried past. The Post’s experiment: Can beauty transcend the ordinary? It didn’t. I shamefully recognized myself in the story -- the person sometimes too distracted to notice pretty things -- and vowed to reform. So while sitting in Dilworth Coffee amid beautiful music, I set my work aside to listen and enjoy. Despite my less-than-sophisticated palette for classical music, I recognized this as amazing work. All guilt about skipping the workout and the writing disappeared.

During a break, one of the violinists approached me with the line, “So I’m happily married and not looking for anything like that, but you seem into music, and we’d like to talk to you.” Have a seat, fellas! These were classically trained musicians who went to conservatory together then toured internationally for fifteen years. As their careers sucked the joy out of music, they each broke out on their own. One traded downtown Chicago for a West Virginian farm, then bought a bus and took his family on the road as he performed smaller shows. Now that they’ve partnered, these two musicians perform everywhere from concert halls to dinner parties and play the music they like (“for some reason, our conductor frowned upon performing AC/DC”). We exchanged information, and I promised to see them play when they returned to town. They asked if I found it weird to come across two violinists randomly playing in a coffeehouse. I shook my head and asked if they read the Post article about a famous violinist playing in a Metro station. The guys laughed and said, “Yeah, Josh Bell is a friend of ours.”

Ever the skeptic, I hit Google. The name of the violinist in the 2007 WaPo story? Joshua Bell. The story about a famous musician leaving Chicago to move to a farm in West Virginia? Recounted in news articles. The instrument played by this musician? A rare Bernardus Calcanius violin made in 1750. Check him out yourself. I’d be lucky to hear these guys play Carnegie, much less a tiny coffeehouse in Charlotte.

Three years ago, I tortured myself with the question posed by the Post: would I stop my routine to appreciate a classically trained musician playing a rare violin during an ordinary moment? It seemed an experiment impossible to replicate, but today I got my reassuring answer. And the bonus? Unexpected moments of beauty do wonders against writer’s block. I finally had something to fill my one page. You just read it.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Bother

"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are."
President Obama, State of the Union, January 2010

Because of WHO THEY ARE. Obama recognizes homosexuality as an inherent part of WHO THEY ARE. Sexual orientation is not a choice, but it's as natural to gay people as it is to straight. Yet this recognition makes his other views seem unthinkable -- that while being gay is just part of who people are, it's still a part that prevents their right to marry and have families and equal rights under American law.

Obama's "Don't Ask" reversal is not even for full integration, but for the military to stop aggressively pursuing disciplinary action against gay servicemembers who are outed by third parties. This is being discussed today on Capitol Hill, as if there's anything here that needs discussion. Integration of openly gay servicemembers is still years away and requires -- you guessed it -- further discussion. To call this equal rights for homosexual Americans is like calling an end to the Salem Witch Trials a final victory for feminism.

The arguments against allowing gay servicemembers to serve openly are similar to the fights against racial or gender integration of the armed forces. What is the new fear? That openly gay servicemembers will introduce sexual harrassment into the ranks? As someone who interned at the Pentagon and wrote for a military-related company, I'll attest that sexual harrassment IS prevalent in the ranks. Cat calls and propositioning during professional situations were commonplace. Why weren't these offenses of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"? Too many see sexual harrassment against women by men as nothing serious (even flattering!), while sexual harrassment against men by men is an abomination of nature. Let's have a military that allows the best and brightest to serve in a professional environment, shall we?

Obama started his gay rights fight with the military. Why would a gay person volunteer to fight and die for a country that doesn't grant equal rights? A country that sees a gay person as too morally unfit for the human experience of marrying, having children, and being recognized as a legal family with all rights therein? A country where most states make it legal to fire someone due to sexual orientation? At least when gay people get fired for being gay they can join the Marines, provided they hide a sexual orientation that straight people can flaunt, and when they get assigned to a base they'll go alone because the government doesn't recognize their families as legal spouses or dependents. This is the Obama version of gay rights.

This country doesn't treat gay Americans as full American citizens with equal rights. Instead of a gesture that plays lip service to gay rights but only adds retention numbers to a military struggling with enlistment, Obama should start treating gay Americans as the real Americans WHO THEY ARE.