A Flying Purse, A Corner Table

The power to be invisible is a tricky thing.  When you desperately want someone, anyone, to notice you, and they just plain DON’T, you can feel painfully evaporative.  It is a toss-up which thing is worse:  neglectful invisibility or open derision, teasing and shaming.  It would seem to me the sad fact of being a human being means, at one time or another, we may experience any of the above.  On the other hand, when you want the ground to open up a swallow you, it never does.  Cruel fact:  we are not in charge and we just have to roll with it.

When I was teaching junior high school I had the opportunity –and I took it – to tell this personal story to help the kids work with the whole business of letting stuff go mentally (not that I am an expert; I am not) … among other things that are basic life lessons.  I saw it happen so innocently in class.  The boy lost control of his pencil and it flipped forward into the open back pack of the girl sitting in front of him.  He reached in to take the pencil back out and she went off on him like fourth of July.  Her reaction was not anywhere appropriate for a classroom environment, but it provided me an opportunity to educate that I wouldn’t miss for the world:  I stopped them -  “Okay People.  Let me tell you what just happened here.”  The young man just wanted his pencil back and was clueless as to why this girl had yelled at him.

“Guys.  This may seem like it is going to be embarrassing for a minute but just stick with me.  Do you want to know why girls go crazy when you go in their purse?”  YES, WE DO! Someone shouted. 

I continued as follows: 

“As a general rule, Gentlemen do not go into women’s purses.  That is a no-fly zone.  Even if you are asked to fish something out of there to help her out, it’s best just to hand the purse over and let her do it herself.  Chances are, you can’t find anything in it anyways.  Mine is like a bottomless pit of miscellaneous stuff, but I digress.  Let me tell you a story.

When I was in junior high school, I had Math class with Miss Bradley.  I would ordinarily not carry a purse to class except for the times during the month when I needed to if you catch my drift.  <insert one kid groaning here; and another girl telling a boy WHY that would be; a few shades of pink later.> 

So in my purse was one thing.  And my purse was held closed with a little snap thing.  When I entered the class, sometimes I would put the purse on my desk for a minute and The Mean Girl would snatch it and throw it across the room like Joe Namath sending a football to the end zone.  I was MORTIFIED.  If the floor could open up and swallow me alive, it would not have been too soon.  Guys, you have to understand this.  In a girl’s brain, if that pad fell out of the purse onto the floor it would not just be one thing.  It would be hundreds of them, falling continuously until they stacked all the way up to the ceiling with my name written on every one of them.  And THAT is why you shouldn’t go into girls’ purses if you can avoid it.  Because we are just weird like that – nothing in that department is a small deal:  it’s a BIG DEAL to us.” 

The girls did not cheer for me telling the story but instead they looked a bit relieved.  Somehow I had spoken our gender-wide portion of fear to the Other Side and it had been understood.  Why?  Because humiliation is a common piece of our human existence.  What humiliates girls is not necessarily the same thing that humiliates guys, but we all understand – and want to avoid – humiliation.  It is the better specimens of humanity among us that want to avoid humiliating others. 

Our desire for invisibility is not that far from what happens in the animal kingdom.  Invisibility is a subtle form of defense from predators.  Chameleons change to reflect the colors that they are near so they seem to blend-in.  It keeps predators from seeing them.  Some animals’ coats are colors that blend with their environment so they can hide.  With people, we have no such luck. 

I think of the elderly lady sitting alone in the corner booth of the restaurant.   I loved this particular restaurant because it had a woodsy-theme to the inside (clue:  moose head hanging outside the restaurant) and there wasn’t a bad view in the place.  Mostly my friends and I would sit against the window to look out to the agricultural land that surrounded us.  They made a mean steak, too, but I sidetrack to food topics too easily.   Anyways.  This woman was most likely in her late 70’s and she always sat in the same booth every time I was at the restaurant.  She had a sort of beehive hairdo colored a light reddish orange.  I don’t know how tall she was because I never saw her stand up and leave.  For all I know, she could have lived there. 

One Friday night, my dinner companion and I sat two tables away from her.  In the middle of the meal, the waitress greeted her and visited.  Then she waved another waitress to the table and they sang “Happy Birthday” to her.  How sweet.  She smiled politely, the kind of smile you make when you are trying to make the other person feel good but you don’t feel so good yourself.  It is a social-courtesy-smile.  At the end of our meal, I walked over to say Happy Birthday to her as well.  After all, some day that may be ME sitting in the corner.  She thanked my friend and I for our well wishes but barely retained eye-contact with us.  Her eyes traveled out the big picture window beyond the rolling lands to somewhere I could not fathom.  Then she said the unthinkable.  “My husband was trying to hang on to make it to my birthday.  He just couldn’t do it anymore.  He died two weeks ago.”  And just what do you respond to that?!

Her whole world had flipped upside down, inside out two weeks before her birthday.  Here strangers and waitresses were wishing her well and the only voice she really wanted to hear WAS HIS.  Her ability to be gracious under this strain and not burst into tears was astounding to me.  I can barely write about it or remember it without getting something in my eye. 

Months later, the restaurant closed.  I wonder where she spends her birthdays now.  I hope she found the resilience to make the most of the time she has been given as a unique gift to her.  But if it was me, I’d probably be looking for a corner table in a restaurant with a view, just trying to be invisible.

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My 2018 Special Project

For a while, they were popping up everywhere like dandelions on a summer lawn.  Except we make quick-work of pulling out dandelions where I come from – and these other things should definitely stay.  I am referring to “Little Libraries.”  A Little Library is like a crate mounted on its side to the top of a post.  The front part of the crate faces, not up, but out toward you and typically has a plexi-glass panel that hangs down to protect the books inside.  Private citizens put them up, obviously to encourage reading.

Where would you see them?

I believe the first one I noticed was in front of the house near the ice cream stand down on the south side of the city.  What a perfect place!  It looks like it needs some attention at present, with books askew a few different directions, visible from the street and the plexi glass looks like it may not be hinged level… but that’s just me a Type A looking at these things.

The second one was in a residential neighborhood with a bench next to it.  That particular Little Library, and its bench & house, has a quaint white church situated across from it.  I imagine that if the Diocese hadn’t closed the church due to, not lack of funds, but lack of imagination, people would still be there every weekend.  And as they strolled to their homes on pleasant mornings after leaving church, they could peek at the Little Library and perhaps borrow a book for inspiration that week.

There is yet another Little Library packed with romance novels that sits in a cove at one of our nearby State Parks.  The perfect place to grab a read if you are out there camping with no Barnes & Noble for miles away!  Maybe the best part of camping – aside from the fires at night – is just sitting there in your lawnchair pretending to read a book while listening to the neighbors banter at the next campsite (voice of experience).

Lastly, I remember noticing one on a small side-street in Ocean City, Maryland.  As my vacation companions and I walked toward the boardwalk I said out loud, “Oh, there’s one!” as if I saw an old friend.  I always check to see what books are inside.  I am curious and I wonder if people leave their favorite books, or ones they are okay to never see again.  Hmmmm….

Meanwhile back at my workplace, one of the ladies started piling books on the counter near my desk.  It was becoming messy and I began thinking of a solution.  It was kind of fun – I went to the store and bought a crate and painted the outside of it, decorated it with stickers of books and hot air balloons, and clever sayings.  The finished pieces are not on a post or stand – just placed on a counter or end table.  They require no flip down plexi-glass to guard the books (in most cases).  Thus, the Indoor Little Library-making phase began for me. 

One of our long time staff physical therapists walked by my desk, caught a glimpse of the Little Library, and stopped on a dime.  He said to me, “I have been on the board for the library in my town for years.  I take photos of Little Libraries when I see them on vacation.”  That weekend my creative spirit began to stir – I made him his own Library and wrapped it into a large gift bag.  I brought it to his department’s office.  Later when he came down to thank me he said:  “In all the years I’ve worked here, that is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”  He had tears in his eyes.  So did I. 

I made one for my favorite Latin scholar.  I made one for my guy who fixes the machinery that I break at my house.  I made one for each of my two nephews, Michael and Gabriel.  Most recently, I made one for the chapel at church.  This project has been a creative outlet for me.  I love choosing the colors and slogans and stick-on’s for each Library.  No two is the same:  compasses, race cars, Biblical phrases, and small book stickers abound. I believe I even have a cute little monster on one of them. 

I think reading is the key to success in any career or life path you choose.  When you read different genres, you ingrain the use of good English (unless you are reading something written in dialect:  think of the difference between Professor Higgins and the flower girl in My Fair Lady and you get the idea).  I myself am a voracious reader and book hoarder.  There.  I admitted it.  I hoard books.  But I know where they all are – on my shelves at home, tucked in a box in my car, or on the coffee table Little Library in my kitchen – there is order.   You won’t trip over them.  They are not a mess.  But when I die, whomever cleans out my house is going to be mad as a wet hornet at me.

I taught high school in the early 1990’s and always pushed teens to read.  It does wonders for your SAT scores.  It opens doorways to understanding a broad variety of philosophies and peoples to you from the comfort of your own dwelling.  A good book is a good friend when you are in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. A boring book is a great cover if you are eaves-dropping on people at the beach.  LOL.  Books are so useful in so many ways that I pity people who hate to read for whatever reason. 

I guess I would say that I write because I read; but also, I read because I write.  It is a happy circle that I wish everyone could share!  So if you run into me at Walmart or Michael’s looking at wooden crates you’ll know someone is about to be proselytized into the amazing world of Literacy!

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My Dream of Excellence – Part 3.

The only person who seemed visibly missing from the equation of dog breeding this latest round was Charleton Heston dressed as Moses.  At one point, I remarked to a friend, “So many hard things have happened this year that I’m kind of waiting for the plague of locusts.”  A week later, the dogs found a stink bug in the bathroom.  That’ll do.

Last winter I took Madeline Grace eastbound on the thruway to a stud dog.  I can’t explain fully what place you have to be in within your brain to do this.  Consider taking your dog to the home of a person you don’t know, introducing your dogs to each other and then watching them copulate in the kitchen.  There is an attempt at normal conversation, the getting-to-know-you piece, and then it stalls out.  The woman was standing leaning on her kitchen counter, I was sitting at the kitchen table holding my dog’s head so she wouldn’t snap at her suitor.  The woman and I both began laughing:  Yeah, it’s kind of awkward holding pleasant conversation in the middle of this.

She looked at the clock and said, “my gosh, I have to pick up my daughter!”  And I replied, “well the dogs seem kind of done, so I will just go home.”  I took my dog out to potty on the front lawn before we drove away.  Now I wonder if she pottied-out the donation because 8 weeks later when I took her to the vet to see why I saw no signs of labor … their x-ray said she wasn’t pregnant.  I had taken the day off for a delivery that was not going to happen.  I sat in the car in the vet’s parking lot and had myself a good cry. 

My dog had just gotten 8 weeks of pampering (French toast for breakfast) and special treatment for no good reason other than I’m easily conned by dogs.  We were past the fertility window and I had to hunker down and wait for the next bi-annual heat period to come.  ARGH!!!

So in late summer, I drove out to Western Massachusetts to a different stud dog.  This time, the stud owner was a man my age.  Talk about ramping-up the awkwardness.  I will skip all the details.  He gave me directions:  don’t let her out to potty before you get home (2.5 hours drive!).  And he kept re-iterating that he thought the timing was too early.  Darn it all to heck.  Last time I was too late; this time I was too early.  We got five weeks into the gestational period and I declared, “I think you are right; we missed the window.”  Again, my bad, had I left the dog for the weekend it could have happened – I just wasn’t comfortable with leaving her in a stranger’s place without me.  He was kind enough to mail back the half of the stud fee that I put down. 

A week later, the dog was passing through my kitchen and turned away from me and I realized:  “Holy smoke.  She is getting ready to nurse puppies” – she looked like a dairy cow from the back end!  I said nothing to him and just waited out the next 2 weeks of gestational period. She could be fooling me. 

I took off the calculated delivery date from work. <62 days from mating.> I waited all week and although she was large and panting, no puppies came.  I brought her into the vet’s office after that week of waiting.  They took an x-ray and saw one single puppy inside, making no moves to come down the canal.  Long story short, the vet did an emergency c-section on that Saturday morning in late September.  She was doing surgery, while I was in the other room burying my face in my sweatshirt and crying my heart out again:  I hate surgery and I am always afraid that I will lose my dog or her puppies.

The little guy came out at something crazy like 11 ounces and change.  That is quite big for a cocker spaniel puppy – they are typically 7 or 8 ounces.  Having dealt with the c-section after care with Bethany Pearl in a prior litter, I was ready to help Madeline Grace do her recovery simultaneous to nursing the new little guy. 

We settled the new momma and her pup into the well-equipped pen in my finished half of the basement.  For people who think dog raising is no big deal, here’s the scoop.  Sanitation and safety become my two main concerns.  My hands and fingers are very dry from washing the floor of the pen, and the tray in the kennel a million times.  I slept down there in the adjacent room for around 2 weeks just listening to the sounds of the night, making sure it was all good.  Whomever invented pipe frame futons needs to be put in jail.  That’s all I’m sayin’ about that.  There is a heating pad I place under the pups that clicks off every 20 minutes so I am repeatedly clicking that back on to keep them comfortable.  The dog experts say the room needs to be in the high 70’s for that first week, as their little bodies aren’t that adept at maintaining heat.  A cooled puppy is an at-risk puppy.  So it was September and October outside, and my house inside felt like I lived in Bermuda.

The momma dog’s appetite soars.  I am feeding her dry puppy food, some canned dog food to keep her interested, and cottage cheese as we near the week when he begins to wean.  The other two dogs don’t want to lose my attention so there are other shenanigans that unfold.  Week one or two, the whole house went on strike for French toast.  Bethany Pearl wandered into the pen at week two, to grab some dry dog food and Madeline mistook her intentions and roared out at her.  It was not play-fighting.  No sirree, Bob.  But I didn’t think it was anything other than corrective on Madeline’s part.

A week later, Bethany could barely put weight on her front paw and her chest and collar bone area became mysteriously swollen.  I panicked, and thought it was cancer that struck out of nowhere.  I ran her into the vet’s office and they found actual bite marks that had infected on her chest.   So a new addition to my daily dog duties was wound cleaning.  And then I had to organize myself to give her the antibiotics consistently for over two weeks. 

Just a few nights later, I stepped into the unfinished laundry area of the basement and noticed something on the open cat box.  The cat box that my cat doesn’t use.  Ever.  I stepped closer and identified a little mouse sitting there looking freaked out.  I took him outside and tossed him into the snow.  He crawled up to the top of the green snow fence and sat there looking cold.  I went inside.  Have I mentioned the increased population of hawks in my area?  Somewhere I could hear Elton John singing, “The Circle of Life.” I had a word with the cat:  “Whatever you do, do not drop these things on my futon or upstairs.”  The next morning, I woke up to see the cat lying opposite the futon on a carpet…. And two feet to her left was another freaked-out looking mouse.  My battle ensued to ensure sanitary living space.

Among all this other hoo-hah, include the Day 2 vet visit with the Little Puppy to get his tail docked and dew claws removed. In the puppy pen area, I have a small digital scale and a notebook where I weigh the puppy twice a day until ounces turn into pounds.  Then there’s a well-puppy visit at about 6 weeks that good breeders do so the new owners and I all know that the little guy has been vet-checked and is good-to-go. And the 4 doses of puppy wormer that gets fed to all the dogs at weeks 2, 4, 6, 8 to make sure everyone is well. 

All of the activities it takes to produce a healthy, well-adjusted litter are like a Dog Symphony.  I tell my friends any time I approach the delivery date of a litter that I will be mostly off-the-grid, and now on Dog-Time.  The needs of the litter and my dogs have to come first.  I get tired.  I also get nostalgic and teary about a week before the going home-day, but I am determined to conduct this orchestra.  Not everyone can manage being an Arthur Fiedler, but then again, not everyone has the opportunity to conduct the Boston Pops.

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My Dream of Excellence - Part 2

My heart pounded within as I walked briskly through our tiny airport.  It was a beautiful spring day and I was on a mission.  I reached for the first airport security guard striding across the concourse: “Excuse me sir, I’m here to pick up a puppy.  Where would that be?”  The hugeness of my new commitment seemed to solidify in my brain as I said it out loud.  Part of me got really, really nervous as I walked closer toward the cove to get my new little girl dog.  
Two small dog kennels sat next to each other.  A French bull dog puppy that looked curiously like a fawn-colored frog sitting on a lily pad sat quietly.  The tri-color cocker spaniel puppy next to the bull dog seemed so much smaller.  I reached down for her while simultaneously making myself brave from my gut to my heart as I said, “There’s my baby!” in a cheerful voice I did not know I had.  The puppy leapt upward to my chest and snuggled her head right up to my shoulder.  It felt like there should have been angels singing or something.

When I took her into my car and drove to the house, I pondered again with some nervousness that, despite all my reading, I did not really have any CLUE of how to take care of a puppy this small.  My earlier cocker spaniel had passed away months before at the age of about 17 years.  I had a medium-sized beautiful liver-colored lab mix that I had rescued from the pound waiting at home.  (I wrote extensively about adopting Timbyr in an earlier post.) 

Entering into my home with the new puppy did not begin ideally.  Timbyr began to drool profusely and pace all around the house very anxiously.  I think she may have feared she was getting evicted, which was certainly not the case.  But for this story, I want to focus on the new puppy and how that unfolded because everything about that first week was what I want to spare new puppy owners.

You will read in my posts of puppies for sale: “I don’t fly puppies.  I will not ship.”  I think that it is hard for puppies – I don’t care how “posh” the flight kennel is; I just won’t do it.  Earlier plane regulations put dogs in an area near the luggage that was not climate controlled.  Translation:  it could get too warm or too cold and there’s not a bleeping thing that can be done about that.  When you are a passenger in the plane, you know to swallow or drink to keep your ears from popping.  Dogs don’t know that.  You know that when the plane has turbulence, the captain is going to come on board and tell you to buckle your lap belts and that you’re just going through a rough patch.  Who is in the belly of the plane to re-assure the dogs?  You get my point.  I’m just not good with it.

The other thing is:  if you cannot go to the home that birthed the puppy and raised it for the first 8 weeks of life, you have no idea of what the environment is.  That matters.  A lot.  People who operate “puppy mills” – where they over-breed dogs strictly for the purpose of money making – don’t post signs on their websites that say:   “Yeah, we don’t have a large enough staff to care for our dogs so they howl a lot in kennels in the back.  And we can’t keep up with cleaning the pens either.” 

One young woman that visited my home to look at puppies remarked:  “I just got back from Pennsylvania.  I went to an Amish farm …. It was so sad.  The puppy didn’t look me in the eye when I picked it up.  It seemed uninterested.  There was another puppy (a littermate) that had some problem with its eye.  I told the farmer he needed veterinary attention and he just kind of shrugged it off.  I asked to see the mother dog and when he brought her out, she stood between his legs shuddering.”  It was a stark contrast to the two puppies that were bopping around her feet on my backyard, that’s for sure.  It brought tears to my eyes.  The Amish certainly have my respect for being hard working farmers and people of faith; however, it’d be a cold day in hell before I buy a dog from them for just this reason:  they are stereotyped for being notorious puppy mills.  Not unlike people who hoard animals they start off “rescuing,” I want to give the Amish dog breeders the benefit of the doubt that they don’t plan on over-taxing their dogs.  I think it starts off innocently, and then when they think they can make more puppies and more money faster, they over-breed the dogs and have issues.  Unfortunately, culturally, they tend to view dogs less as family members than we do … and that contributes to a lower standard of care for the dogs than I would agree with… at least that is how the mills work.

My puppy came from the south.  Her original name was “Darlin’ Pearl.”  That was a little too much syrup for me so I changed it to “Bethany Pearl.”  I took her to her first veterinary visit – a practice I no longer go to – and the examining vet shouted at me:  “WHERE did you get this dog from?!  She has 2 types of intestinal worms and yeast infections in her ears!”  I said:  “Online from out of state.”  And didn’t know if I was going to faint or throw up.  We left the clinic that afternoon with a hefty veterinary bill and doggie medications. 

I am a decent human being (mostly) so I made the phone call to the southern dog breeder gentle:  “I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you did not intentionally send me a sick puppy.  She has giardia and coccidia and ear infections.  I will be sending you the vet bill to reimburse me.”  The dog breeder was mortified.  She said she had the whole litter into the vet’s only three days prior, and as a result of my report, she was taking the whole litter back for a recheck (and to yell at the doctor).  It’s curious how it starts with one vet yelling at a client and ends with another client yelling at a different vet?!

The initial start with this puppy was a challenge; however, after a couple of weeks, things smoothed out, her health returned, and I calmed down.  My commitment to doing something “right” or “well-done” sometimes comes out as me being edgy or emotional.  At this point I think that is just because I have prioritized this and it would just kill me if someone accused me of ever being a puppy mill. 

So with this sweet new dog with the perfect Type-B personality, two years later I began to search for an appropriate stud dog.  Another wild journey.  How do you write an ad for the newspaper that you are looking for a stud dog?  Even if you go online and reach out to other dog breeders, often times you get the following answers:

                “I only breed my dogs to each other.  I do not put him up for stud.”

                “No, the males here are all neutered.”

                “I think people should not breed; they should adopt.”

I stopped one lady who was handling cocker spaniels at a dog show and told her I had a beautiful young tri-color pup and wanted to breed her.  She responded, “Yes I have tri-color males.”  I said, “Well, I’m looking to diversify the colors in the litter.   Do you have others besides tri-colors?”  She snapped back:  “I don’t believe in that!” and walked away in a huff.  I’m still not sure what belief of hers I offended.  (???)

I met with one woman up in the north country who was so uncomfortable when I visited her that she sat with her back turned to me in her own kitchen, texting her husband who was somewhere in an airport waiting to catch a plane.  The dogs did NOTHING and my trip was wasted.  I returned to her a week later and the dogs STILL did nothing.  She subsequently offered to come to my home in a few days and I laid out corn muffins and tea for her while we waited on the dogs who …. Still did NOTHING.  Months later when I called to try again, she said her dog was living elsewhere and was neutered. 

I find that people in the breeding business are as varied as any other sector in life.  Some want to portray an aura that they are a higher life form than you because they have more dogs, or show them, or whatever.  Others are not interested in helping educate a new dog breeder.  Then there are some really great people who walk you through and put you at ease and really befriend you in the process.  I raise my proverbial glass here to the last two ladies who have helped me with the breeding process from start to finish.  I have learned so much from them. 

In the process of puppy care immediately after they are born, I am so blessed to have some great support people. One of them has been with me during the first three litters’ laboring and helped tremendously when I was up too late and too tired to think straight.  We’ve had the funniest experiences.  “Chris, did you put that black and white dog back in with Madeline?”  “No.  It’s here in the willow basket.”  “Are you sure?”  I peeled up the blanket to reveal an almost exact replica of the dog she was asking about.  Madeline had birthed a puppy without even letting us know it.  Five puppies later, I went upstairs to toast a frozen waffle for myself and stood at the kitchen island, very, very tired.  Madeline came up the cellar stairway, stood next to me, and without ceremony pushed a puppy right out onto the kitchen floor.  Madeline recognizes that I am her doggy midwife, and we are in this together.

Two teenagers have helped with the litters under the label of: “Puppy Socialization Specialists.”  That means they stop by after school and do the clean-up, mid-day feeding, and play with puppies.  Man, I wish I had a job like THAT growing up!!!  When people remark at how well socialized the pups from our litters are, I don’t hesitate to give credit to these wonderful young women whom help make our dogs great.        

To be continued ….

My Dream of Excellence - Part 1

When a starry-eyed foodie says, “I love your pierogi’s!  How do you make them? Can you teach me?”  The Polish grandmothers and aunts always answer this question the same way:  “It’s a lot of work.”   And they are correct.  Not everyone is meant to soar with the eagles when it comes to preparing Ethnic food.  But I have come to believe that when the circumstances permit, and your zeal runs high, it may be your turn to attempt the thing others run from:  Hard work for the sake of excellence.

I used to think I might have the “food gene” and be the Chosen One to cook special dishes that people rave about.  But frankly, in a household of one, it is tiring to go through all the hoo-hah of making a complicated meal.  For now, I have given-up.  I eat regularly with the three families I know the best:  The King’s, The McDonald’s and the Dunkins.  I don’t complicate my life by going to work out at a gym; that would send my body conflicting messages.  I work hard at my country life and put in 40+ hours a week in my Real Job, and pray that I live the struggle just long enough to hit the lottery.

A few dreams floated through my head over the years and finally dissipated, mostly due to the need for cash flow to start up.  I thought perhaps I could marry into money and everything would just flow from there.  As it turned out, I never even dated into money, so marrying into the money just wasn’t in the cards.  One dream isn’t dead yet:  to start a small alpaca farm.

I studied my brains out to learn more about this sweet animal.  But now I can’t think of how I would ever garner enough energy to care for one more enterprise by myself.  I am content to visit them at farms and reminisce about all I had learned of them in my exploratory phase.  For a while, the alpacas were being shipped into the country from various points in South America, which is where they are an indigenous species.  Then, when we got some really good farms established with quality stock, we closed our borders (yeah, imagine) and said to the American farmers:  “Go for it.  It’s your turn to develop the bloodlines of excellence.” 

The smaller farms found they couldn’t make it by just raising the alpacas to look at.  It was imperative to multi-task.  So they spun the alpaca wool, and sold it to consumers.  They began selling products like socks and scarves and mittens and sweaters at exhibition shows and at their home farm’s stores.  They branched out and sold crochet hooks, knitting needles, looms, and hobby products.  They intrigued new customers by explaining that alpaca wool is better than sheep’s wool in so many ways:  less oily, cleaner, softer, and initially worth its weight in silver.  If they could educate the potential consumer, they could then create the market.  The law of demand would kick in and the supply would be right there waiting for it.  That was the market 25 years ago.  Small farms popped up everywhere, and they were delightful.

The alpacas were brought to competitive shows and petting zoos and the like.  They could pull a small cart in a parade and thrill small children by their seeming smiling faces.  And, no, they don’t spit.  It is llamas that spit.  Alpacas hum.  And it is a happy sort of sound when they do.  Like I said, they seem to be smiling.  I spoke with one Vermont farmer once and asked him “Why alpacas?”  He answered:  “I was looking to get into developing my farm and went to visit a friend who was raising alpacas.  My child slipped under the railing and walked into the center of the herd.  The alpacas just graciously stepped aside and made room for the child.  Cows would have stepped on her.  I was sold.”  And he began his journey.  Twenty years later, his farm has developed into a lovely wedding venue and farm-stay as well.

My own dream that came true birthed from something deep inside my soul.  If you were to find my 9^th grade science notebook you would discover that I obsessively drew two things in the margins.  One was a small cartoon character I called “Squashbill.”  The other was a dog.  And every time I tried to draw the dog with a tail, somehow it looked off-balance.  So the tail-less dog reigned supreme in the notebook.

Ten years later, having just graduated from University, I wandered the halls of the Maricopa County Animal Shelter looking for a dog.  I picked one dog out, a red cocker spaniel, but had to wait until she was actually “up for adoption” the following Saturday.  When I arrived at “the pound” I found that two other people were there for the very same dog, and consequently the pound staff did a lottery system.  The dog went home with this immense man driving a junky pick-up truck, needing some Elmer’s glue for his back side where the shirt didn’t hang low enough to cover the pants that didn’t come up high enough, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  I was duly horrified at the cruelty of the little dog’s fate. 

Utterly crestfallen, I walked toward my car when the woman, the other competitor for this dog, stopped me.  She said, “Hey, take another walk through ….” I really just wanted to go home and cry as a sore loser and be mad at her for being another participant in the nasty, obviously-flawed lottery system.  I ended up walking through the dog-jail again and finding my perfect match:  a white cocker spaniel with red markings … no tail included.  The woman disappeared.  I have come to surmise she was an angel sent to get me in line with my destiny when I almost walked away from it.

That first dog, Serena, lived with me for over 17 years.  She taught me just about everything I needed to know about how to live with a dog and take care of them.  I believe she took good care of me too.  That dog was part of my life like a best friend would be:  we went camping, to sing-a-longs, to parks, and teen retreats together.  She was loved by a million-and-one people besides me.  She was instrumental in my understanding of how a good dog can make your life so much better.  And I came to the idea that I would like to get another dog whom I could breed puppies that would bring joy to people.

To be continued….

A Modest-y Proposal

A Modest-y Proposal

“Put some clothes on, dammit.”  That’s what I wanted to say. But I did not.  It has happened more than once in my interface with those I have come to think of as unthinking Millenials.  I will admit that I, as a mid-lifer, do not understand this deep-seated psychological need the 30 something’s have for showing their bare skin to all 284 of their closest friends on Facebook.  The other thing that I don’t understand is their absolute lack of humility when someone who actually knows them personally and loves them reaches out and says:  Maybe this isn’t the best idea.  Maybe you need to remember that there are Other Eyes on Facebook that are seeing this besides your husband, or your mother, or your very best friend since childhood.  (And, admittedly, all of the latter are obliged by their role to say, “You look mahh-velous darling” even if you, well, even if you just DON”T.) 

 

Look, my favorite sister-in-law (in fact, my ONLY sister-in-law) did not post baby pictures of my nephews online until they were old enough to run from creepy people.  Because, in this world of technology connected with internet, camera, and anonymity, people can troll into your life and cause you harm.  It’s like the Lifetime movie (yeah, I occasionally watch those so I can remember what it is to feel horrified) where the teenage girl is coaxed by her boyfriend to undress on camera and it goes viral on the internet.  We forget that this ruins lives.  Trust me when I tell you that there is NO JOB I could apply for that would hire me if my bare bum was exposed on Facebook.

I don’t detest my body and I don’t detest anyone else’s.  I just think we have gone a bit off the rails – okay, A LOT off the rails – when it comes to this low-level exhibitionism we keep putting online.  If I lost two dress sizes, you don’t need to see my bare belly to figure that out.  Nor are you on the need-to-know basis if I GIVE A DAMN about ME losing two dress sizes.  It’s not that I’m a private person living behind walls.  It IS that I am a dignified person living IN a BODY that is glorious and not for common consumption.  The day I lose two dress sizes is the day I go out and buy a dress worthy of that figure.  And I won’t be shopping with Janet Jackson and the “oops” Wardrobe-Failure-Queens either.

Pope John Paul II the Great said once:  “The problem with pornography is not that it shows too much; it is that it shows too little.”  Ponder that.  What he was saying is that there is more to the human person than the wrapping that it comes in.  Our souls, our integrity, our dignity, our spirit cannot be captured on film media.  And all of that is what is truly amazing about each and every human being.  Exhibitionism flaunts only a partial product and ramps it up like it is The Only Product. 

This is one area that the Millenials forget when they are caterwauling for “diversity and inclusion and respect for other cultures.”  Here’s how:  we forget that even some of our typical North American summer-wear is absolutely scandalous to people from Middle Eastern countries.  I remember telling a co-worker once that I felt that because we work in a multi-cultural environment where, to some men, the showing of the bare upper arms was considered pornographic, that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to refrain from wearing sleeveless sundresses in the open hallway out of respect.  So … when you are sitting in your private office, rock on… but when you walk down the hallway, put on a little sport jacket or bolero.  It’s a win-win because you get to look a little more classy and professional; it doesn’t offend people from other more modest cultures; AND none of us have to see that hideous vaccination scar on your upper arm…. Unless of course you’ve had it tattooed recently as a small pond with birds flying around it.

In the most recent escapade, a COMPLETE STRANGER sent me a one liner on Messenger and asked what kind of person I was that I could be so hurtful to someone and be mean to “Katie.”  HUH?  I wondered to myself, now who is THIS person?! So I texted “Katie” and asked her who this person was and what she was talking about.  Katie said the person is a Life Coach and she is referencing “Kerry.”  She further went on to say that my comments to Kerry had been anti-feminist and body-shaming.  (Why didn’t I hear this from Kerry, instead of a total stranger?)  If this wasn’t such a serious charge against my character, I probably would have rolled on the floor laughing.  If I had the physique of a super-model, I might be in a place just by my mere existence, to body-shame someone by just walking into a room.  However, I do not.  I could not.  I would not.  I don’t have a mean bone in my body.  I find it exhausting to get angry at people who really need someone to tell them off.  It just isn’t my way. 

As far as being anti-feminist, that is a complicated issue.  Feminism means so many things to so many people and some of them are conflicting ideals.  I just think, like the writer Matthew Kelly, that everyone should, with God’s help, try to be their very best self.  Gender wars have never served any good purpose.  Because we are human, we should never let the dialogue get reduced to simplicities:  men vs. women; this race vs. that race; etc.  We are all one race:  the human race.  Maintaining unity and peace and balance requires hard work and much dialogue – not name-calling.  The other thing that was more hurtful, though, was for someone who was always the recipient of my kindness to presume that I would be anything other than kind to them.  That was hurtful to me and baffling.  

But this is the new Millennial technique:  They throw out labels to draw the lines.  They forget their personal history with a person and presume everyone who doesn’t agree with their ideas is an immediate enemy.  They are, frankly, not mature enough to realize that we can disagree with each other’s politics, preferences, lifestyles, etc., and voice those disagreements respectfully without becoming enemies.  Remember I mention the Talking Heads on TV in other articles I wrote?  This is the fruit of their labors.

Talking Heads presume they know what the guest on the talk show is going to say and respond to an imaginary dialogue instead of giving the other person the courtesy of a hearing.  It is so counter-productive to good conversation as well as healthy human relationships in general.  But now here we have a whole generation that interfaces with everyone like this.  It is painful to deal with this.  The other thing is these particular Millenials are immediate in declaring that THEY are the ones with hurt feelings.  This is narcissism at its finest.

Am I anti-millenial?  No.  If you have lost 20 pounds, will I celebrate your hard work?  Yes (with a peanut butter cup sundae in hand hoisted as a toast to your success).  Do I want to sign up with your life coach?  HAIL, NO.  And when I ask you to think twice before you put really personal photos up on Facebook, for your own safety, it is not because I don’t like how you LOOK.  It’s really that I LIKE how you LOOK ALIVE and NON-ABDUCTED by creepy people. I don’t dis-respect your personal choice as an adult to post what you want (although the rules of FB might have restrictions).  I am reminding you that there are Other Eyes out there.  I close this airing of my thoughts with a horrible, true story.

I know a young woman who in her early 20’s was conned into “making a movie” with someone.  Yes.  THAT kind of movie.  She was told it would be shipped over-seas.  Shortly before her conscience kicked in for any other reason, she was aware that when she went out to the mall, strange men would look at her in a way that made her feel creeped-out.  She went to a local outlet that sold “those kind” of movies and found her movie right there on the shelf.  She went out and dyed her hair and tried to change her appearance in order to get her privacy back.  I don’t know if she ever felt at home in her own city after that. 

There is an adage that says: “You reap what you sow.”  Why would we expect it to be otherwise?

Rediscovering the Beautiful American

Rediscovering the Beautiful American

Picture if you will a beautiful cabin in the Carpathian mountains of Poland.  It is surrounded by rolling hills and tiny yellow flowers blowing in the gentle breeze.  Sheep graze nearby like fluffy tufts of cotton on the green quilt-like landscape.  A happy dog lopes through the fields.  Perhaps he is the inspiration for the Polish song about why he is so happy: because he is not married. 

Inside the cabin is a late-in-life man who thought to himself he would have the best of both worlds:  he married a woman his own age, as well as a much younger woman.  Every evening his late-in-life wife would pat the top of his head before she began the ritual of plucking out all the darker hairs she could find.  She didn’t think it proper for him to be anything other than salt-and-pepper tresses like herself.  In desperate contrast, the younger wife would meet him in the sitting room in the morning and remove all of the grey hairs she could find.  She didn’t think it proper for him to be anything other than youthful as herself.  The end result is:  in short order, the man became completely bald and neither wife was pleased.  He was left to live out the opposite of the adage:  “Happy wife, happy life.”

This Polish folktale bears with it the message of the importance of compromise.  We can be surrounded by every blessing and every beauty and yet if our inner world is nit-picky and turmoil-ridden there can never be peace.  Can I read this story to the Senators and Congressmen of our country?

Someone at one point crafted the idea of the “Ugly American.”  I don’t know where it came from or who thought that idea was worth culturing, but it has been bad for our national self-esteem.  It is as if we keep looking at ourselves in the political mirror and saying:  we are ugly; we are ill-behaved, we are bad.  Anyone who lived through the 1970’s was exposed to all the self-help and proselytization of the “feel good” culture.  We would never, as individuals, allow our kids to look into the mirror at home and say, “I’m ugly.  I’m fat.  I’m selfish.”  We would cart them right off to a psychiatrist or counselor to straighten what was called “stinkin’ thinkin’.”  And yet as a nation we have allowed people who perhaps are THEMSELVES the ugly stereotype of selfish, boorish, and badgering to tell us that we are no good. 

I never hear of the Canadians bashing their own national identity.  I never hear of the Mexicans bashing their own national identity.  And the Brits of the U.K. have managed, despite their intrigue and marital catastrophes to shine up their own veneer as if they all are 100% classy.  They have projected an image of The Royals that they intend to culture.

In the States, we lived through 8 years of a President who did pseudo self-effacing of America as a nation and it hurt us.  We have tolerated two terms of a Governor in New York State who actually stammered out, “America was never that great.” 

Really?  I think that even though my experience is limited, my vision is not:  I SEE GREATNESS.  I have friends that have left the comfort and safety of their homes to travel with church groups to Third World countries and build houses and feed the poor.  I and countless others write checks to support the work of missionaries and organizations at home and overseas who try to raise the spiritual AND physical living standards of people who suffer greatly.  Our economic success, for the greater part of this Nation, isn’t just about personal prosperity:  it is about corporate prosperity – we get more, we give more.  We do spend more.  That is the fact.  But as the Good Book says:  “It is wrong to muzzle the ox that trods the grain to feed you.”

When I go to a baseball game and they play the national anthem, I have to choke back tears.  They are the same sort of tears I shed when I see veterans coming back from war-torn lands when they have tried to stabilize and bring peace to an area.  It is a good thing that I do not have teenagers or I would be a perpetual source of “embarrassment” to them as I also cry at parades. 

I see through the joy of the marching bands and Irish dancers to know that Freedom is not free. 

Someone had to pay for it, and others have to remain vigilant, lest we have it stolen from us.  Leisure comes to us as the fruit of a militant and productive society.  Countries led by tyrants of every stripe do not have leisure or self-determination on their minds for their peoples.  I am grateful for every day that I can pursue my dreams, and the hobbies that bring me joy.  Sometimes I even cross the border to a neighboring land to see how the others live.  But every time when I return, I have to fight the urge to kiss the ground as I return to a land where I have freedom and responsibility and identity.

Whomever the Ugly American was that was a stereotype of boorish self-centeredness, I do not know.  And frankly I don’t know anyone like this (and admittedly I know A LOT of people).  There are people I do not like as persons for whatever reason.  But very few of them are the completely obnoxious Ugly American stereotype that someone dreamed up to beat us over the head with.  Perhaps it is time to look at ourselves in the National Mirror and say:  we are imperfect, but we strive to be a good, generous nation.  We argue amongst ourselves, so that our decisions can be made in a way that advances us along a good path.  We are diverse and perhaps not always fair; but we do have the ability to come together and serve others side-by-side when the chips are down.  We have the ability to check our negative opinions at the door and collaborate for the greater good.   We long to be unified and resilient.  We long to radiate the purity reflected on the face of our Statue of Liberty in the New York City Harbor.

Maybe the fact that we want all these things says we are already, in some way, beautiful and great.

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