I was interested in “CTL’s” whole “animal-cruelty-and-eating issue”as I’ve been eating less and less meat since my late 20s. It started when Mr. Tingle and I were living in Atlanta, and driving back & forth to Asheville a lot. It seemed I was always flying down I-85 behind a truck filled with chickens — you could see their huddled white forms through the slots, they were packed together like bread loaves — and feathers would whip from the truck onto my windshield. That’s my memory of hitting Atlanta from the mountains: Flat lands, grey skies, the packed forms in the truck, the feathers and rain spattering the windshield, billboards, highway, on and on. I still don’t like chicken.

When you work at a place a long time, you get a “defining moment”, the story about you that your coworkers like to repeat. This is mine: It was the holidays, and because of some misbehavior the year before, our company’s holiday party was being held in a restaurant. The planning committee was in the boss’s office, working out the fixed menu. And they wondered about having a vegetarian option, remembering vaguely that I might not eat meat. So the boss buzzed me on speaker phone to confirm, “Carrie, are you a vegetarian?” And over the speaker they heard me say, “Yeah, I am. … Except once in a while I really like a nice steak.”

That’s my state. Troubled by chicken. Hungry for steak.