Asheville Pizza and Brewing sponsored the Super Hero 5-K Race as a funder for Asheville’s emergency services, Nov. 10. The runners flying up Montford Avenue seemed to be having a good time. Thanks are due to the Brew’n'View for their public-spirited generosity. (No word yet on how much money was collected.)

Asheville got a bit of real rain overnight. Combined with a handful of thunderstorms in recent days this is enough to give a body hope. Also to bump the river level up a bit (see link at right), and also to drive a pigeon outside my office window into its own little shelter from the storm.

Smart pigeon.

Back in the 1980s and into the 90s, I attempted to be a vegan—for the uninitiated, the term refers to those who eschew animal products. I was more or less successful at removing meat and dairy products from my diet. Successful at home, but less so when visiting friends or family. It is difficult to be a jerk about one’s own preferences when someone who loves you forgets and puts an egg in your birthday cake, for example.

I eventually relaxed about my diet, principally due to medical advice. And I gave up trying to find non-leather work boots or belts that were worth a damn. But along the way it became clear to me that veganism is one part good intentions and five parts pretense. Endless quibbling by letter writers to periodicals across the U.S. has led me to frame “the vegan challenge.”

Here ’tis:
Okay, you’re a vegan.
Have you found substitutes for the following goods which contain meat or dairy products?
Cellophane tape, insulin, paint, photographic film, sheetrock, tires.

Have you vetted your home for the following goods which may contain such products?
Floor wax, crayons, shoe polish, pocket combs, textiles, antifreeze, wallpaper, linoleum.

Do you eat food grown by farmers with tractors? Farming with hoe and shovel kills a lot of earthworms, insects, arthropods and smaller soil creatures, but machine farming also kills birds, mammals and reptiles.

Do you use paper? Loggers are more destructive of biota than farmers.

Do you use electricity? Don’t look too closely at whatever fuels your generating station.

If you can’t satisfactorily answer those few questions, how can you possibly dare to publicly criticize people who differ from you on one tiny piece of your lifestyle? A modern American by definition cannot live a truly vegan life. But some uber-righteous people pitch a fit about what others put in their stomachs without thinking twice about the impact of their own lives on the rest of the living world.

Camus suggested that suicide was the only philosophical question worthy of consideration.
In regard to veganism, he is surely right.
The only true vegan is a dead one.

This spring I have a woodchuck living under my back porch.

Talk about conflicted! I’m about to launch this season’s vegetable garden and now I find out there is a four-legged appetite beneath the boards. He couldn’t have picked a better place—the porch is only inches from the ground and no predator large enough to consider ground hog a menu item can possibly join him there.

My heartless neighbors have two pit bulls but they live behind a chain link fence, connected to their tiny dog houses by short chains. (Don’t get me started …) My cats are indoor denizens—and in any event are smaller than my new buddy.

The plump little critter is cute, waddling around the yard in the early morning, nibbling on wild things. Of course I know there’s nearly nothing a ground hog won’t eat or at least sample.

What to do? Electric fence? Only plant that which woodchucks detest? (onions, garlic and …?) Drag out the Hav-A-Hart trap and relocate him?

Stay tuned.

*The title of this post is also that of Terry Tempest Williams’ little book of brilliant essays. Not to be missed.