Dog Days Potpourri

Throat Clearing

First of all, I'd like to apologize for leaving you hanging last Monday. We had company over the weekend--two weekends in a row, really--and writing was just hard to get to. In general, this is a busy summer of visits, more so I think, than usual. We live in a bit of a summer paradise, and it is wonderful to share it with friends and relatives.

This is one of the special weeks in the town I live in, as our annual “Plein Air” art festival is well underway. Year after year, this weekend is some version of a biblical weather horror story, mostly featuring ridiculously high temperatures but this year, the prospect of flash flooding.

Catherine and I made our way into town for the festival, and it was unbelievably hot. It was obvious however, that the biblical downpour was on the way, and we wound up getting it later in the day.

There are two big festivals a year in this town where my sweet inamorata finds it difficult not to buy art. Plein Air is the first, and the Waterfowl Festival in November is the second. She’s partial to landscapes, and within this category, waterscapes. We simply have no room left on the walls in our house, so she has latterly become expert at propping new acquisitions up wherever they might be accommodated. We have a large screen TV in one of the bedrooms over the front of which hangs a large, angry night-time coastline scene. She has hung a painting using the faceplate of an electrical outlet on the backside of our kitchen island.

To update those of you who were left hanging, I put in the paperwork for the local country-club, so we’ll see if they lower their standards and let me in. I may have committed a great act of violence against friendships I have with fellows down in St. Michaels, as they lobbied hard for me to join their club. The money’s about the same, but there isn’t yet a clubhouse and I didn’t want to be on the hook for some massive capital campaign in the future. I will work to mend these fences.

The Dog Question

My acupuncturist was often accompanied to work by her dog Gus. Gus was a good boy, but it was obvious he’d lost a step or two and was not long for our world. News travels fast in this town, and when I heard of Gus’ demise, I reached out with condolences. While walking around town the other day viewing the art, Catherine and I ran into said acupuncturist who said she was driving to Ohio this weekend to adopt Rusty, a four-month old version of the dog Gus once was (some sort of herding dog, largish, long hair, etc.). I was genuinely happy for her, because it was clear that the dog sized hole in her heart was giving her trouble.

We have a two-dog sized hole in our collective heart, but for us, getting back into dog ownership will take some time. Catherine’s heart was well and truly broken by Zuzu’s death, coming quick on the heels as it did after Baloo’s demise. She is simply not ready to love another dog yet.

I could love another dog, but the logistics and practicalities of dog ownership are keeping me from being on “Team Dog” just yet. Even as the dogs aged, we were pretty open about holding off on getting new ones as we moved into our “active senior” years of travel. But those conversations were always in the future, so hypothetical. It is sad now to be facing those circumstances, but I think holding off for a few years will be the right thing to do. Right, but no only, because if Catherine wakes up one day and decides on a dog, we’ll be right back in the canine business. As it should be.

Homeless, and Loving It

I am politically homeless. Not ideologically, mind you. Politically. I remain a rock-ribbed, traditional, American conservative, but neither party is particularly conservative these days. One preens at it, but is at best a personality cult to a populist demagogue. The other seems to be headed toward actual socialism. So our choices are increasingly, socialism or crypto-fascism.

If you had told me that one day I would be politically adrift but that it would not raise an existential crisis, I’d have have taken issue. But that’s how it is. The last ten years of American politics and my decision to retire at the ripe old age of 60, has landed me in a position of not NOT caring, but caring a good deal less about politics. I listen to friends and acquaintances cheer for their team, and I am profoundly disappointed in them. Their judgment, their humanity, their grasp of basic arithmetic. I get it—I’m judgmental. I think I’m better than they are. I am disappointed in them. Sue me. I think we are in this incredibly bad and unstable period politically in no small measure because more Americans than ever…just suck. That’s it. They suck. They don’t use their brains, they don’t use their hearts, they’re convinced that feelings and impulses they possess that we once suppressed as hateful or anti-social are now acceptable and laudable. Want an example? How’s this?

I had to drive to Washington the other day, and along the way I had a long conversation with an old friend, a friendship forged when I was at the height of my interest and activity in national security circles. He still is, and as we talked, I heard the familiar words and themes, but I could not be moved. Not only was I considerably less familiar with the actual state of play, but I honestly didn’t care.

I suppose that’s how it ought to be. I’m not a productive member of society anymore, I don’t take the time to be informed like I used to, and I don’t have any real desire to change any of these circumstances. Unf***ing this world is someone else’s job now. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not pulling up the ladder. I’m not going to actively make the world a worse place. But the chuds who think Tylenol causes autism, that rent control solves problems, that Donald Trump is a Christian, or that everything else is caused by “THE JEEEEEWWWWWWSSSSS”—-they’re in charge. This is their circus, these are their monkeys.