Arrestingly Beautiful

Coming back into town from a client meeting yesterday I slowed to pull into the market to drop off a whole bunch of plastic bags for recycling.  Because I knew my client visit was going to be mostly a lot of driving with a fairly short time on-site, I had Lucy with me.  She loves to ride.  I tilt my driver's side mirror so that I can watch her muzzle flap in the wind when she sticks her head out the window.  She slays me.

I wait for a local police vehicle traveling west on Route 1, signal my intention to turn, and pull into the parking lot.

The police vehicle pulls behind me into the lot.

I proceed to troll the lot for a parking space - which are much fewer than is normally the case because (1) it's blueberry raking season and (2) it's August on the coast of Maine.

The police vehicle stays right behind me.

I finally find a parking space and pull in.  The police vehicle pulls adjacent and stops.  OMG.  A light out?  No seat belt?  That adventure in Alaska finally, after 35 years, results in charges? 

I get out of the car and the officer walks around in back of my Honda.  "Hello there, officer!" I say, smiling broadly, a huge very full plastic bag full of other plastic bags in my hand.  "How are you doing today?"

"Great!" he says.  "Hey I don't mean to hold you up or anything but I absolutely HAD to ask:  Is that a Griffon you have there?  I used to have one and they are THE BEST dogs!  Well, actually, it was my wife's dog.  It came with my wife.  They are just the best.  Is that a Griffon?  I don't mean to hold you up..."

Ignoring my impulse to snicker at his insistent use of the words 'hold up' I explain Lucy's Labradoodle heritage while she decides if she is  going to stick her head out the window and deign to let someone in uniform pet her.  She decides to growl.

"Now honey," I say.  "Don't be mean to the nice policeman."  She changes her mind, sniffs his hand, and pants while he pets her.  "She sure is pretty," he says.

"People often take her for a small Newfoundland or a Portuguese Water Dog," I say.  "She's almost five years old and she gets more wonderful everyday." 

"Well she sure is pretty," the policeman opines.  "I just had to ask.  Don't mean to hold you up.  You have a good day, now."

I'm in the market for three seconds with the bags and I remember I need olive oil and it would be nice to get some Maine Ginger Root Brew.  In the aisles I see a friend, a new lesbian in a new relationship. We talk.  She's trying to understand the mind bending / heartrending turmoil she went through with her very first lover a beautiful trophy girlfriend who was probably also a borderline personality.  Yeah, I say.  Been there got that t-shirt.  We trade stories which mostly boils down to 'no, you're not crazy'.  I suggest that, since she and the trophy have been broken up for over a year, she might program her phone to reject this woman's daily calls.  That and other stuff.   Ninety minutes later I still haven't started looking for Goya olive oil.  We move to that aisle and happen upon another friend, a dog person, who has recently found a little lost collie.  We're all dog people.  The new lesbian and her new partner, with whom she moved in after four months, have eight dogs between them.  We commiserate.

The market in my town carries neither Goya olive oil nor Maine Root Ginger soda.

I go out to my car empty-handed to find the battery dead.  Apparently I'd been so freaked about the policeman that I'd neglected to entirely turn off the car.

Open the hood.  Within seconds there's a woman pulling into the next parking space says hey what's the problem I have jumper cables.  We hook them up.  Nothing.  I'm visualizing  many many many dollars flying away to repair alternator trouble.  A few more seconds and some guy comes over and says sometimes you have to wiggle them.  He reaches in and does the wiggling with the jumper cables.  My car starts.  Everyone cheers.

On the drive home I explain to Lucy about how I'm so deeply grateful that I'm past the place in my life where I'd be prey to another trophy girlfriend and that if she, herself, wasn't so beautiful none of that in the parking lot would have happened. 

She sticks her head out the driver's side window.  I watch her muzzle flap.

Dressing Palin's Caribou

It's been interesting to observe the story elements the Red folks trot out to prop up the credibility of Their Sarah as The Genuine Article.

Like: They want everyone to know that she hunts and fishes and that she shot a caribou. This is to encourage the inference that, because she did these and other outdoorsy things (while simultaneously believing in Jesus a lot), she's "just like you and me, by golly. Praise God and pass the ammunition."

I lived in Alaska for 18 years. EVERYONE who has lived in Alaska for any length of time has several common stories.

We each have our "bear story": The one about how we had a terrifying run-in with a black bear / brown bear / Kodiak grizzly / sow bear with cubs. These have several common endings: You survived; you almost died; someone you know died; the bear survived; you shot the bear, bled the bear, gutted and dressed the bear, and now it's in your freezer.

We each have our "moose story": The one about how we had a terrifying run-in with a bull moose / yearling moose / momma moose with yearlings. These have several common endings: You survived; the moose (same word for singular or plural) survived; you hid in a safe place while you watched the moose demolish your car / garage / pick-up truck / 18-wheeler and afterward you watched the moose shake it off and lope away; you spent several days in the hospital; you shot the moose, bled the moose, gutted and dressed the moose, and now it's in your freezer.

We each have our "almost lost a (fill-in-the-blank) from frostbite when I got stranded for three hours because of (fill-in-the-blank) between (fill-in-the-name-of-the-town) and (fill-in-the-name-of-the-town) story". These have several common endings: You survived; you have a permanent numb spot on your (fill-in-the-blank); you don't have a (fill-in-the-blank) anymore; you'll never go outside again when it's 60 below wearing only a mad bomber hat, a flannel shirt, a wool sweater, a down jacket, mittens, long johns, pants, insulated socks, and mukluks.

We all know people who died in small plane accidents, who fell off mountains / glaciers / fishing boats / snowmobiles and were never seen alive again. Most of us know people who simply disappeared. We all know people who live so far out in the Bush that they can come into town only by walking miles through the woods to the nearest track and flagging down the train. Some of us know people living really far out in the Bush who never come into town.

We give a wry and knowing nod to secessionists who want Alaska to pile up all its oil money in its own sandbox and quit the rest of the United States and who have formed political action committees to make it happen.

Every one of us know wingnuts who have risen to places of responsibility beyond their aptitude simply because of the church they go to, the people they know, and the ear marks they channel. Alaska is just like anywhere else in that regard. Except that the population is so much smaller there that you tend to know these wingnuts personally.

The truth is that in Alaska, Palin's life experience and homespun yarns are entirely conventional. But people in the Lower 48 don't know that. And you can bet the Reds know that they don't know that. So they're playing it. And she's playing along. Sounds like she's "just like you and me" - only, due to the caribou she makes sure we know that she shot, bled, and gutted, they ask us to award her extra credit for displaying Classic American Rugged Individual Toughness about which most of us have only nostalgic reference.

Try this recipe at home: Start with with the Republican Party. Pound for eight years with George W. Bush til tender. (You'll know when it has reached the right consistency because it will appear wide but it won't be very deep.) Chop until dicey. Add one Sarah Palin. Add 6 oz of Miss Alaska and fluff carefully. To this mixture add a few jiggers of melting glacier water and several chunks of receding ice cap. Shake and pour. Sprinkle with nostalgia to taste. Serve immediately with an accompaniment of chilled barracuda ceviche, et viola! Whaddaya got? Fox news! And anecdotes instead of issues.

I could go on. That's probably apparent.

Suffice to say: I suspect the Reds want us all to bite down HARD on how much in common Palin appears to have with the hockey mom next door - and masticate long enough to really savor the flavors in the class and gender appetizers they've laid before us. And then they want us to start eating our young while we earnestly discuss amongst ourselves the exquisitely politically correct ways we must acknowledge Sarah Palin.

Don't be distracted by those tender nuggets!

Instead, ask yourself: "Who benefits?"

Then get back to work on the boring stuff: Economic parity, energy sufficiency, poverty, health care, education, infrastructure, the environment. Put out your yard sign. Volunteer at the phone bank. Knock on some doors. Donate it if you got it. Let's win this thing.

The Continuing Chronicles of a Lesbian and Her Dog

Last night the Lady of the House came home with her dog, Lucy, who had spent the previous several hours running at top speed with her sister, Peggy, in and out of semi-dry clay puddles left in the yard on family land, about 15 miles from where I live, by the well drillers working to put in running water there.

When I got home I checked my email, as I always do I hate to admit, and, as always, Lucy flung herself down at the foot of my chair while I was at the keyboard.

It having been near dark when I corralled her into the back seat of my car I hadn't seen the extent nor the density of the clay which was clinging to nearly every inch of Lucy's body and I continued to be oblivious until she got up from near my chair and left a measurable oval of clay dust and grit in the spot she had been dozing. Then she shook herself. A veritable cloud came off of her six feet in every direction. Nothing to do but give her a bath.

So into the tub we both go, one of us more instinctually than the other. I turn on the water which, if I was a dog, might sound like Niagara Falls what with the sound bouncing off the closed bath stall doors. Lucy's shaking like a leaf and panting up a storm and I'm telling her that she's going to be just fine and the grit is pouring off of her and she's trying to keep her feet dry which, given the circumstances, is of course impossible and anyway why the hell didn't she think of keeping her feet dry when she was barreling through those puddles earlier?

If only I had had some Poop-freeze I might have sprayed the puddles of mud and hair, waited a moment for the liquid to turn to solid slab, simply lifted the chunks into a dustpan, tossed, and wiped my hands on my apron.

Alas. Life is more complex now than it was when Ladies Of The House wore aprons. This is true even in the speck of a town where I live, never mind the mere nanosecond of a place where the well drillers were working. Nothing is simple anymore. This is lavishly illustrated by the fact that when someone sends you a joke email about Poop-freeze, and you Google the product, you get 22,300 returns.

Lucy lost about 70% of the grit in the tub. Another 10% came off on the three white towels I used in my feeble attempt to dry her off. (I only own white towels which, in most circumstances, fulfill my every need.) An additional 5%, + or - 2%, is on the bathroom floor, the dining room floor, the kitchen floor, the rug in the living room, and the two spots on the carpet where she slept in my bedroom. The rest is still on her and will need to be gotten off by, perhaps, a swim in a lake. Or perhaps, if there was such a thing, the rinse and spin cycles of a doggie washing machine. Now THERE'S an invention that's waiting for American ingenuity.

Since Lucy wouldn't have any of my ideas about using a blow-dryer, she went to bed damp. The well drillers, on the other hand, were successful. So, eventually, one will be able to turn a lever and have water come out from a faucet, automatically, where now one applies muscle power at an ancient hand pump. Miracles.

Terrorists and Angels

I bought the Weekly World News today for $1.89 just so I could own the picture.

Plus I get to learn how blowing your nose makes you stupid (page 21) and whether the Vatican will make the three stooges saints (page 47).

Rome better work fast because on page 10 there's a story - dateline Washington - about how angels have been declared an endangered species - so it sounds like they have vacancies to fill.

The feds arrested Ted Sargo, a duck hunter who allegedly lives in Jackson County Alabama, for shooting an angel - one of the over 200 cases reported to authorities so far this year.

They think that another 1000 such accidents have gone unreported because people keep mistaking angels for ducks, deer, and wild pigs. Some angels have even been killed by lawnmowers and trash compactors.

An insider has been quoted as stating, "You better believe President George W. Bush is going to get personally involved."

I sure hope so. Or better still, maybe they could add him to that saints list, too.

Haying

You stand in a field where there's been hay mowed and bailed and tied with a machine that has not had to be improved upon since it was invented during the Industrial Revolution. Most people have shown up to the field at about 4:00 p.m. not because it's a job or anything but because they're just helping the hay provider because he's helped them in the past or they know him or some reason like that.

Hopefully you have gloves. (I had forgotten mine but no one else was wearing them either so even if I'da had them I wouldn'ta worn them. This is just a point of toughness on my part - seeing as I'm a city kid returned to the village I feel like I should take every opportunity to show that I still can take the pain just like all the folks who live there all the time. In that neck of the proverbial woods, for example, no one wears sunglasses. They just squint. It's like umbrellas - they're a sure sign you're a tourist - people who have lived here for generation just get wet and figure the weather will change in a while....)

So you're in the field. Some guy drives a big flat bed up and you throw the bales (which weigh about 30 pounds each when you start but by the time you're done they weigh at least 50) head-high onto the bed where some other guy stacks them according to a method only he knows about. The point is to do it in such a way as to prevent to hay from falling off the truck when it's on the road in traffic and there's about a mile of cars behind it and everyone in each car in hoping that the truck will pull off into the next driveway.

After the flat bed is loaded you stand around for about 45 minutes telling
stories about each other and horses and the weather and other fields you've hayed and fishing until finally, on some invisible signal, everyone just stops talking and heads to the assorted cars and trucks and you pull off onto the highway behind the flat bed and head to the destination barn.

Once you're at the destination barn some guys set up the conveyor belt from the ground near the flatbed to the loft in the barn while more stories are told. Then you throw the bales down from the flat bed and up waist-high onto the conveyor which takes the bales up to the loft where four or five people stack them according to a plan only they know which allows as many bales as possible to get tucked in there while still leaving room for the owner to get at them throughout the winter efficiently. This is done simultaneously with still more stories offered about each other interspersed with discussions about the design of the barn loft and praise or derision for the guy who built it.

When the loft is about as full as it can get some guy who's been keeping track of the total number of bales supplied (on this night it was 748 - a rather small load) calls out to stop, the number of bales is yelled down to the provider who strolls over to the livestock owner and works out payment.

Now the job is considered done and the only thing to do is to break down the conveyor and while offering some guesses about what tomorrow's weather may be so that everyone can gauge about showing up if it's going to be a dry day. No one is asked directly whether they'll show and no one makes any commitments but since no one says they won't be there, it's assumed that everyone will be.

By now it's about 11:00 or midnight or 2:00 a.m. so everyone's out of stories and besides, most of these people also have their own jobs to go to in the morning so everyone calls it quits and piles into the various cars and trucks and leaves down the road home.

I got a huge blister on my right ring finger, chaff cuts all up and down my arms, and hay dust in my nose, hair, and clothing but l loved every minute of it.

When I Lived in The City

It's summer in Chicago.

Driving out of the neighborhood where I'm staying and where I never see another white person (other than my house mates - urban 'pioneers' - and the occasional bevy of parents in Dockers and cargo shorts, and their peewee softball kids in their uniforms, carrying picnic baskets behind the fence at the high school), I see a guy and his two friends hanging on the corner outside of the liquor and grocery. He's shimmying to something I can't hear but the python around his shoulders doesn't seem to mind. It's an affordable model that's only about four and a half feet long and he has to shift it around several times while I wait for the light. Maybe he's new at owning a snake. His friends are all looking directly into his face as they talk, way too cool to acknowledge about the python or even look at it.

Traffic starts to move again and I continue down to this cafe to work and be on the WIFI and on the way I spy a woman and this guy who's pushing her against a car, his forearm at her throat, and she's crying so I drive around the block and by the time I get back to where they were she's there by herself still crying. I pull over: her former boyfriend...she called him lots of times today so he stomped his phone, tried to strangle her, took money from her to get a new phone, and took her car. She's worried about her dog. I tell her to get some phone numbers from the police when they arrive for some battered women's hotlines. She acts like it's the first time anyone's suggested "battered woman" to her. She says, "I'm a graduate student and I work hard for my money."

It's the driest summer here since the Dust Bowl - really. Lawns are burning up and probably the Lakes are thirsty but the humidity is lower than usual. The Saturday NY Times says that Sunday's NY Times will have an article in the Travel section about how the glaciers are melting in Alaska and tourists are flocking there in huge numbers to see them because maybe this is the last time. Bet only a few of them took public transit to the airports. This is what it's come to.

Went out to my car on Monday morning to find that I'd been hit-and-runned. Driver's door wouldn't open. There was a note on my windshield: "License plate that hit your car .... grey mercury villager." Called my ins company, the police, and Enterprise. The cop arrived and within fifteen minutes had determined that the plate number belonged to someone up the street - who left the van with paint from my car still on it parked outside their house. The tow truck didn't arrive until 3:00. Enterprise didn't arrive until 4:30 but in the end they did pick me up. At first it sounded like these geniuses weren't insured but now they've come up with they are insured with Allstate. Not for long, though, because when Allstate gets done with them - shunting them off to their high risk secondary market - they'll be paying so much for car insurance they'll have to get three jobs just to handle it. And when Allstate found out that I work at home office - well.... not so much push back on reimbursing for lost wages. So it'll be about $2K in insurance money to repair my car which I will have back, I hope, sometime next week.

Drove in the red Dodge Neon rental car to see a doc on Tuesday - a referral from my physical therapist. The doc, after about a half hour, says she's thinking that I'll need a right hip replacement and is referring me to another doc in her practice. I see him on Wednesday. Perhaps I don't need to indicate that this wasn't in The Plan. I'm practicing saying it just in case it really happens.

But let's look on the sunny side: (1) Chicago is the best place to have these things done; (2) the technology is such that perhaps I can have minimally invasive surgery; (3) my friend Rob says that all the defective hip replacement parts have already been removed from the market per this malpractice suit he's working on - so the parts are off the market re new surgeries but are already in 6 million people. (4) The chances of septic infection are only 1:100 - perhaps not a ratio that one could call part of the sunny side. (5) I'm likely too young and mentally active to have major side effects from general anesthesia that have been found in Alzheimer patients.

Opera

I am an untutored listener to opera. I enjoy it very loud.

Two opera memories:

(1) Splitting wood on a cool autumn day, before Ipods, the CD playing on my car stereo next to where I was set up with the ax and the woodpile.

(2) The day after Thanksgiving years ago, driving through flurries, leftovers on the back seat, with a close friend who lived in a log house on the lake to my village by the ocean where we'd met years before, We planned to have lunch overlooking a spot where my friend and I had spent, years earlier, memorable summer days and evenings. She was in her mid-60's then and evidencing early onset Alzheimer's Disease. No one but she knew that I was in the area for Thanksgiving week to see her. Three Tenors playing over the tape deck as I drove. My first exposure to opera. I'd known her all those years and had not been aware that she loved this music. It was still flurrying when we got to the village but the weather cleared a little while we ate our turkey and stuffing sandwiches. Suddenly my younger brother walked up the dirt road. We gave him a sandwich and a ride to where he was keeping his motorcycle. Music again on the drive back to the lake. Within ten years the Alzheimer's would ravage her and my brother would be dead.

That's opera.