We’ve made this change mostly for economic reasons. We were each paying $25 a month to host two blogs each at LW — for Jen, that was Last Night’s Dinner and jenblossom.com, and for me, that was A Dash of Bitters and this blog. (This does not count the money we pay Dotster to provide the four domain names.)

Now, WP is hosting each blog for free. For $13/year, WP will provide domain-mapping services for each blog. Additionally, I pay $30/year for the Custom Design upgrade for ADOB, since I’m hoping to actively blog there again, and the custom design allows me greater flexibility.

So, $25 x 2 x 12 = $600/year to host four blogs at Liquid Web. Despite the ads I ran on ADOB, I never got much revenue, so very little of that money came back to us.

By contrast, ($13 x 4) + 30 = $82/year to host four blogs at WP.com, map the domains, and add custom design options for ADOB. (Remember, the hosting is free.)

On top of the savings, I now no longer have to upgrade WP every time new versions come out, nor do I have to upgrade plugins, themes, etc. Twice, WP has issued upgrades that required me to ask Liquid Web to move our hosting to servers that support the latest version of PHP. That? Is kind of a hassle.

I’ve always been satisfied with LW’s level of support and its uptime. This move isn’t about Liquid Web. It’s about our bank account and the fact that we have a kid now and need the $518 we’ll save.

Incidentally, if you’re not following along, Jen and I each now have a third blog, each of which is also hosted and domain-mapped by WP. I think each blog, hosted at LW, would have meant an additional $5/month, or $60/year (times two, of course, which means $120/year). Here, it’s the same $13/year for domain-mapping, so an additional $26.

So the bill at LW for three blogs each would have run to $720/year. At WP, it’s $108/year. I think $720/year is a lot to pay for hobbies that don’t bring in much income. But $108/year? That sounds reasonable to me.

Oh, those new blogs? Mine is Daddy’s Whiskey, and Jen’s is Feeding Julian. If you read this blog (and I think there are exactly two of you now, both named Chris) and you don’t read those, please do. Mine is a daddy blog, updated sporadically, and Jen’s is all about our food choices for Julian, our seven-month-old son.

Jen will probably update jenblossom.com at the rare times she feels the need to opine about personal matters, as she’s done there for a couple of years now. Her LND blog will live on as an archive. She may from time to time update it with new content, but her focus right now is no longer on creatively cooking each night, but just keeping the three of us nourished. (That’s not to say we aren’t creatively cooking, it’s just to say there’s no time to write about it.)

I want to get michaeldietsch.com active again — probably on the same topics that have held my interest throughout its lifespan: books, word geekery, and writing; BBQ and grilling; the science of evolution; filthy godlessness; NYC; and science.

I’ve held this blog down for nearly 12 years now, and I’d like to keep it going. But right now, everything else is more important. And once we move, I hope to have more time to pursue outside writing opportunities, so this place may suffer even more. But I want it to stay alive.

Of course, no one is agnostic behaviorally. When we act in the world, we act as if there is a God or as if there is no God, so by default we must make a choice, if not intellectually then at least behaviorally. To this extent, I assume that there is no God and I live my life accordingly, which makes me an atheist. In other words, agnosticism is an intellectual position, a statement about the existence or nonexistence of the deity and our ability to know it with certainty, whereas atheism is a behavioral position, a statement about what assumptions we make about the world in which we behave.

When I left Christianity, I still considered myself a believer for a long time. I believed in some sort of god; I knew I didn’t believe in a Christian god or any sort of personal god, but I believed in the same vague, indescribable Something that so many seem to believe in. Then a day came when I realized I didn’t act like I believed. I realized I didn’t pray to God, and I didn’t ask God to guide my decisions, and I didn’t even think about God all that much anymore.

When we act in the world, we act as if there is a God or as if there is no God,

The day I realized that was the day I realized I no longer truly believed in God. I was acting as if there was no God, despite what I thought I believed. And once I realized I acted as an atheist, I became an atheist.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are still confused by the word atheist. They think that when I call myself an atheist, I’m in some way asserting that I know that God doesn’t exist. It’s not like that. Here’s my position. First, I do not believe in any sort of personal God, including the Judeo-Christian conception. I don’t believe in the Father, I don’t believe in the Son, and I don’t believe in the Holy Spirit.

Second, I do not believe it’s possible to disprove the existence of God, or, to put it another way, I believe it’s impossible to prove the nonexistence of God. You can’t prove a negative. God might exist, but then again, so might Zeus and the rest of the Greek pantheon. Which leads to point three …

Third, I believe the burden of proof is on those who make claims. I don’t claim that God doesn’t exist, therefore it’s not up to me to prove he doesn’t. Those who claim God does exist and that he manifests himself in the world — the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate this is true. Thus far, no one’s presented compelling evidence to make me believe it. And since the God question has existed in some form for thousands of years, without anyone presenting demonstrable proof of its claims, I have a strong suspicion it’s unprovable. If anyone could have proved it by now, someone would have. I think that if God does exist, we can never prove it.

So in sum, I think God’s existence is an unprovable question, which makes me an agnostic. But I also personally don’t believe in God, which makes me an atheist. There’s a term for this, and it won’t surprise you: agnostic atheist.

Dr. Lund brought Kali in to us, wrapped in a blanket, and handed her tenderly to Jen. I snuggled in close, and Jen cradled Kali in her arms, like a newborn baby. Dr. Lund quietly backed out of the room, and we sat with Kali, scratching her head, petting her whiskers, and singing softly to her. She began to unclench; her brow unfurrowed and she went limp all over as the sedative lured her down into Dreamland.

We hadn’t seen her look so peaceful and calm in weeks. Even in sleep recently, she’d been tense and furrowed.

We continued to sing to her and pet her pretty little face, even after she was completely unconscious, taking solace in the knowledge that her last sensations were of how deeply we treasured and adored her. Dr. Lund came and retrieved her for the final shot, and Kali was gone.

April 2008

We were back in New York City after a couple of days in Providence and Boston. We had booked a Zipcar to drive some belongings up to our new Providence apartment, and Jen had job interviews lined up in Boston. With these new opportunities on the horizon, though, we were still worried. Kali’s brother, Dubby, had taken a bad turn just before we left, and we wound up having to take him to Cat Practice in Manhattan, on our way out of the city. We thought it was somewhat routine, but he had chronic health issues, so we took no chances with him.

The morning we got back, we thought we’d be able to pick him up that afternoon and bring him home. We were excited for him to meet the new apartment, with its staircase for him to run on, and skylights facing up to tall trees with their birds and squirrels. We knew he’d love his new home.

I got to my desk, and within minutes had a call from the vet’s office. He was having trouble breathing, and they suspected he was having heart problems. They wanted to know whether I could get him and take him to a cardiac vet specialist. I said I’d work on it and get back to them. Alarmed, I tried to call Jen. She was apparently in a tube somewhere on her way to work, because I couldn’t reach her cell. When I got off the phone, there was already a message from Cat Practice. Before I could listen to the message, the phone rang again.

“Mr. Dietsch, this is Dr. Shaheri. Can you get here immediately? Dubya’s in cardiac arrest.” I grabbed my coat and ran. Luckily, Cat Practice was very close to my office. I called Jen en route; she had just reached her desk and several unheard messages from Cat Practice. I told her she needed to come immediately.

I got there in about 5 minutes. They led me to the exam room. Dubby was having a seizure, breathing rapidly and shallowly, wild-eyed, in deep pain, and terrified. The doc was going to tap fluid from his chest to relieve the pressure on his heart. Bereft and afraid, I retreated to the waiting area. One of their in-house cats, Miss Kitty, approached. She climbed in my lap and stayed with me a while, keeping me company while I waited for Jen and further news.

A while later, the doctor came back out. Dubby’s heart had stopped and she wanted permission to resuscitate and intubate him. I knew Jen was underground again, so I consented. Around 10:20, she returned, teary-eyed. Dubby was dead. I went back to see him and spent some time with him, crying over him and petting him. Telling him how much I’d miss him. I returned to the waiting area and Miss Kitty came back into my lap. Other kitty parents were sympathetic but uncomfortable, wouldn’t meet my eyes.

The elevator opened and Jen stepped off. She only needed to see my face to know.

September 2010

I thought this would be much harder, killing my loved one. I knew it was time, and the right thing to do. When Dr. Lund examined her, she told us that Kali’s abdominal cavity was full of fluid, indicating that her organs were failing. This would explain the rapid decline in Kali in the days before her death.

She seemed bad on Monday, when I took her in. But at the same time, she was eating and getting around somewhat. By Thursday, she had stopped eating and drinking water, and she remained on the bed in the same spot all day, shifting position every so often. She was wetting herself and unable to shit. Although she was calm, she was obviously suffering. But brave little girl that she was, she seemed not to want to show us.

Although I knew it was the right thing to do, it still felt like killing. Intellectually, I knew it was right, but emotionally, I was conflicted. In the end, though, it felt like a beautiful moment. We were honoring her life by giving her a graceful, peaceful death. It may have been the most loving moment we’ve ever given her, and in a bizarre way, one of the most loving moments Jen and I have ever shared together.

I expected we’d get shit-faced drunk afterward. And although we had more cocktails and wine than most people put away in a week, we actually drank less than we had each previous night over Kali’s final two weeks, when her decline became so rapid. I think after the end, we were relieved. Relieved for her, that her suffering had finally ended, and relieved for us, that we wouldn’t have to watch her in such misery. We had all been so upset–Kali, too–that she couldn’t get around, and that her quality of life had gone so quickly downhill.

She had an anemia diagnosis about a year ago, and she nearly died then, before we could find the right way to deliver meds to her. (She always refused to take anything by mouth, unless you hid it very well in food. We settled on shots.) The cancer scare arrived on Thanksgiving, when we noticed the lump in her mammary tissue. That was virtually untreatable; we’d have had to remove the entire chain of mammary tissue, along with the lymph node, from one side of her body. This would be invasive surgery with no guarantees the cancer wouldn’t return. Her doctors understood when we said we’d just continue to monitor it to make sure it didn’t worsen or spread.

The anemia and cancer were treatable, possibly for years. It wasn’t until her blood sugar spiked that her condition went downhill. That particular bit of nasty news arrived in July. On Monday, Dr. Lund was so alarmed by it that she suggested we could try insulin. But the prognosis still wasn’t good, even with insulin, and she suggested we might not have any real options other than euthanasia. In retrospect, I think even by Monday it was too late for Kali–that organ failure was inevitable and would happen soon. I know we made the right choice for her at the right time.

When I reflect on the differences between her death and Dub’s, I know whose was more peaceful and less painful and terrifying, and I’m very grateful we had the chance to give our graceful little princess a tranquil death.

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
But when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and I cried.

All photos by Jennifer Hess; all rights reserved.

You might know that tomorrow is the birthday of Charles Darwin (and, incidentally, Abraham Lincoln), and if you know that, you probably also know it’s his 200th birthday. Old geezer.

Later this year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, so there’s a lot of churn in the media right now regarding evolution. I’m going to spend a few days pointing out some of this material, and then this blog will probably fall silent again until November, when more stuff comes online.

First, though, a couple of events worth mentioning. If you live in or near my current stomping grounds, Providence, Rhode Island, Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller will be speaking tonight, February 11, on the topic God, Darwin, and Design: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul, at Beneficent Congregational Church, at 7:30 p.m. Visit the church site for more information.

If you live in or near my hometown–Evansville, Indiana–Dr. Miller will be speaking there, as well, on February 17, at the University of Southern Indiana. Event details are here.

Both lectures are free and open to the public.

Miller’s an interesting fellow, as this piece from the Brown alumni magazine attests–a practicing Roman Catholic, a staunch defender of evolution, and a committed opponent of the proposition that creationism or intelligent design be taught in schools. He has several books, which I haven’t read. I’m an atheist, and since his books discuss reconciling religion and evolution, they’re not quite at the top of my reading list. I don’t mean to be dismissive of his work; it’s just that when I want to read about evolution, which is all the time these days, there are many other books that appeal to me more.

(I respect the guy for responding to these questionnaires, and others, in a thoughtful, forthright, and open manner. Such transparency is altogether uncommon in today’s politics. As a voter with a blank slate in Rhode Island politics, I was hoping to find some reason to split my ticket this year. But I saw little on his web site that I could support.)

However, Mr. Anderson has lost any chance of earning my vote with an e-mail message he sent to fellow members of the GOP, in which he said (emphasis added):

For the past three Presidential elections, I have been able to take an active role in the campaigns, but this year is different.

I want to help John McCain, but my own candidacy requires that I stay here where I have a small chance of unseating the Democrat Majority Leader of the House of Representatives.

So my thoughts go to those of you who are near PA and might be able to spend a day or two in PA to help John McCain there.

…

I have never been so worried about a candidate’s experience, honesty, and intentions as I am about Mr. Obama. I think he might win, not based on his platform and record, but on the generosity of voters who think it is time to give a “minority guy a break.” It’s an affirmative action impulse taken too far.

Please pass this along to others as you see fit.

I would like to urge Mr. Anderson to spend some time driving through the district he hopes to represent. I want him to count up all the Obama lawn signs he sees and all the McCain lawn signs he sees. I know from my own experience of getting to know my neighborhood/district, I see far more Obama signs.

And I want Mr. Anderson to ask himself one important question: why does he want to represent a district that he thinks is as naive as this?

And I want Mr. Anderson to know that I am asking myself an important question: why should I vote for a man who thinks his hoped-for constituents are as naive as this?

The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations has made this particularly easy for me this time; the Secretary of State’s office posts to its website a sample ballot for each district, so you know in advance what offices and ballot measures are up for the vote.

In a nutshell, there’s not much going on this election cycle. Besides the elephant in the room, senior senator Jack Reed is up for re-election, Patrick Kennedy is seeking another House term, and we have two elections for the state assembly. Rounding out the pack are two ballot measures.

So, here we go. Candidates are listed in the order in which they appear on the sample ballot. Candidate links go to Project Vote Smart; party links are to the official website of the political party.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORS FOR:

Barack Obama / Joe Biden (Democrat)
John McCain / Sarah Palin (Republican)
Bob Barr / Wayne A. Root (Libertarian)
Gloria La Riva / Robert Moses (Socialism & Liberation)
Ralph Nader / Matt Gonzalez (Independent; link is to Nader’s campaign site)
Chuck Baldwin / Darrell L. Castle (Constitution)
Cynthia McKinney / Rosa Clemente (Green)

SENATOR IN CONGRESS:

John F. Reed (Democrat; incumbent)
Robert G. Tingle (Republican)

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS DISTRICT 1:

Patrick J. Kennedy (Democrat; incumbent)
Jonathan P. Scott (Republican)
Kenneth A. Capalbo (Independent)

SENATOR IN GENERAL ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 3:

Rhoda E. Perry (Democrat; incumbent; running unopposed)

REPRESENTATIVE IN GENERAL ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 4:

Gordon D. Fox (Democrat; incumbent)
David V. Anderson (Republican)

BALLOT MEASURES:

Question 1 is a transportation bond question that would allow the state to borrow money to fund transportation improvements in RI–$80 million for roads, highways, and bridges; $3.5 million for commuter rail; and $3.6 million for bus service.

(Tom Sgouros, a policy writer who blogs at RIFuture.org, has a piece there analyzing this bond measure.)

Question 2 is an open-spaces bond question, authorizing the state to borrow $2.5 million to purchase and preserve open lands and parks.

NOTES: The Rhode Island ballot lists, as La Riva’s running mate, one Robert Moses. The party’s website, however, says the running mate is Eugene Puryear. At 22 years old, Puryear would be disqualified by law from serving as Vice President, because he doesn’t meet the 35-year-old age threshold set out in the Constitution. Finally, a VP candidate even less qualified for the office than Sarah Palin.

Rhode Island, you may be amused to learn, has exactly two House districts. The first district is repped by Patrick J. Kennedy, and yes, Patrick is one of the Kennedys–Ted’s third child with his first wife, Joan Bennett Kennedy. This is the first election I’ll vote in, in which a member of the Kennedy family has been on my ballot. Ted’s presidential run was six years before I was old enough to vote.

“Not bad at all, but this topic is rather little of interest. Please do not disappoint your readership.”

Yes, I’m redesigning four sites at, basically, once. I’m a little ambitious. Has to be done, though. Jenblossom.com is still in MT, and something broke in Jen’s installation a while back, and she hasn’t been able to post in months. So it gets migrated to WordPress and gets a spiffy new design.

Jen’s bored with the current LND design, and it’s also not flexible enough for some of the things she wants on that blog, so its time has come, too.

With this site, I want to kick myself in the pants to start posting again, and since it’s so lightly trafficked, I can use this as my testbed. Finally, A Dash of Bitters perhaps doesn’t need much of a redesign, but if I’m doing all the others, I might as well do Bitters, too.

Anyway, don’t mind me if things look unusual here for a bit. I have to fit all this in around my work schedule.

Needless to say, the number of people who’ve viewed those pix has now gone through the roof.

Jason notes: “If you want to know where your bacon or ham-related food comes from, here’s your chance.” Lemme be honest, that’s exactly why I went.

When I was a child, my grandparents Dietsch raised pigs and, every year, everyone would turn out to help butcher those pigs–even to the extent of going out in the morning and shooting the pigs dead (as opposed to letting someone else slaughter the animals). My sister, cousins, and I never saw the slaughter, since we were all pretty wee, and we didn’t see much of the butchering, although I clearly remember watching the adults making sausage.

What sticks closest is how damn good that pork tasted. Every butchering, my grandmother would fry up tenderloin medallions for those who’d helped in the butchering. Only once or twice did the kids get them, but we certainly got to feast on fresh chops that night. I know how good, fresh pork should taste–pork that’s been raised on a small farm, given room to roam and root around, and fed good stuff.

I’ve seen live pigs, scratched their heads, watched them play and run, and fed them. I know where pork comes from–or at least where it should come from. Frankly, I don’t want to know where Smithfield pork comes from. I guess for that, I could read some Upton Sinclair and assume that things have only gotten worse since his day.

What I didn’t know, because I was never there, was what went on during the actual butchering. I didn’t know how the pig was carved up and taken apart. So when Jen offered to buy me a ticket to the demo at Brooklyn Kitchen, you can bet your hairy ass-crack I went.

I was heartbroken as an adult, when I could only get the factory-farmed shit from Smithfield and their ilk. The other white meat, indeed. It tasted like nothing and was tough and dry. I thought I had fucked things up by overcooking it, but my mother reported the same disappointments. Only later did we realize that it was the pork producers to blame, not the cooks.

I never had pork I liked again until one of our first meals at Marlow & Sons, in Brooklyn, when I had braised pork–Jen and I think it was belly, but we can’t remember for sure. I can’t say this without lapsing into cliche, but it honestly did bring me back to my childhood. I closed my eyes and remembered meals at my grandparents’ table. I finally had pork that tasted like pork, that tasted like what I remembered and loved as a kid.

As we were leaving that night, the chef, Caroline Fidanza, was chatting with one of Marlow’s owners. I gushed so much I embarrassed not only myself but also them. Luckily, my social skills are just good enough that I realized I was about to cross into stalker mode, so I faked a cough and ducked quickly out the door.

So it’s only appropriate that the butchering demo I photographed was led by Tom Mylan, butcher for Marlow, Diner, and two locations of Bonita. I’m going to get gushy again, but you gotta love people who can really help you remember your roots.

Before leaving for Providence Tuesday, we had to take Dubby to the vet because he hadn’t eaten or used the litter box since at least Monday evening. He had a slight fever and mild constipation, so we left him with Cat Practice overnight so they could monitor him.

By Wednesday, he was fine and ready to come home, but since we were coming back from Providence, late, we left him at CP overnight again.

This morning, I got a call at work at a little after 9. He was having serious breathing problems; the vet suspected heart failure. She asked me to be ready to get him to an emergency vet hospital to see a cardiologist. But then she called me back almost immediately to say the situation had turned more serious and I needed to get there immediately.

I called Jen as I ran up Fifth Ave from my office to Cat Practice and told her to get to Cat Practice as soon as she could. The vet took me back to see Dub. He was breathing quickly and shallowly and didn’t appear to acknowledge me at all. She said she was going to try to tap some fluid from his chest to lessen the pressure on his heart.

She also said that she had written on his discharge papers on Wednesday that she had detected a mild cardiac irregularity while examining him and recommended we get him to a heart doc for testing.

She had me sit back down while they worked on the fluid tap. A while later, she came out to say his heart had stopped and she asked permission to resuscitate and intubate him. I gave her permission.

Then, around 10:20, she came out to say that Dubby was dead. She asked me if I wanted to go see him, and I did. It may be one of the hardest things I’ve done, but it wasn’t as hard as telling Jen the news, when she arrived a few minutes later.

We love that sweet boy so much, and this happened so suddenly, that it’s just brutal to think he’s gone.