Sun today and lovely. I will mow the lawn as soon as the tall grass dries out, There is a warm wind blowing from the northwest here and it is doing a good job but high clouds are also coming in so there might not be much time before the next rain. The small flowers in the meadow of our yard love the climate here, We should be raising goats, but the yard is to small for Dot to herd them, and the goats would all end up in the house or on top of our car.
Our yard this morning. Chairs still in storm mode.
It was another day for Jan’s physical therapy, and after we dropped her off there Dot and I went to the Dog park for our second visit. Our first visit we met Tom and Tesla. Tom is a nice human who says he reads this blog and is the friend of Tesla who is a very beautiful combination of golden retriever and border collie. When I say beautiful, I really mean it. She is black and fine featuered, has the coat of a retriever, and super watchful eyes. Tesla seems to be the most experienced dog park dog. She seems to get along with everybody.
Dot and I had been listening to the news on the way into town. Jan was doing something else on her phone as she always seems to be doing: emails to colleagues or texts to far off institutions. Travel in the car used to be good time for us to converse but iPhones took care of that, so Dot and I listen to NPR now and digest the news of the day before butt sniffing at the dog park.
Of course the big news is Joe Biden’s pick of Kamala Harris as his VP candidate. Of course the internet is alive with opinions and the amateur punditry class, which it seems I am a part of now, is alive with discussion of her qualities and the wisdom of Biden’s choice and of her abilities.
Back at the dog park when we arrived we were the first couple on scene. We wandered around the outfield. I was happy because I wasn’t sure how Dot was feeling after her operation. She looked good and she was not draining any more bloody discharge from the drain the doctors left in her head. She had taken her one pain pill in the morning but she was lively. She pooped and I picked it up in the provided bags and we chased brown moths around just past the third base line. Then after about then minutes three other couples showed up. All pretty pure breeds two spanial looking dogs, one other boarder collie retriever mix (who knew they were such a thing?) and a really sporty looking dog with a hot dog looking tail that had a beautiful red coat. Each of their owners told me the name of the breed but I can’t remember them now because they were complicated words that I had never heard before.
Each owner talked nervously about their dogs… it seemed to me like they talked a lot about their dogs as if they them selves were being judged. Was I judging them? Probably….but not harshly, they all seemed lovely to me, and happy. If not a little hyped up. Dot had played well with Tesla and the other dogs the first day we came. This day Dot stood right by my leg like a little kid on her first day at a new school. Then she run out and chase around with the other dogs and back right to me. I thought it was all adorable.
I like Kamala Harris. I think she is a forceful speaker and I like how she questioned people who came before the Intelligence committee. She seems tough, smart, and experienced in the workings of the government. I’m not sure what she will really do as a Vice President because Vice Presidents rarely have a lot of influence. But with an old guy like Joe Biden it seems like a good idea to have someone who is ready to be President from Jump Street some one like Kamala Harris is a good idea.
I was happy and oblivious at the dog park too. Even when the pretty red dog with the hot dog tail started barking and freaking out at Dot. Dot barked back and lunged out at the much smaller dog but then right back to me. Dot looked like she would be happy to wrestle or mix it up with the red dog but the red dog was more upset than that, and that scared Dot and she hid behind me. I thought, “Just let them work it out,” as long as they don’t start fighting and Dot doesn’t rip her incision open which didn’t seem likely the way she was acting. But soon the red dogs owners were leaving the park and they seemed a bit shaken, disappointed.
But here is the deal. In these early moments almost all of the couples, human and canine were scared shitless of Dot. Here I was loving my dog and thinking she’s adorable, and others are perceiving her as some kind of “FrankenDot” who looks like a slobbering killer Rottweiler put together in a lab. She is by far the largest dog there, she was slobbery, with a horrible scar across her face and she looks like a Rottweiler dancing around on drugs. Which, is kind of fair.
The point is this: political opinions are like our dogs on a leash. They are projections of ourselves, the problem with this is that we all have an image of what we are projecting and then we have the reality of what we are actually projecting to some people who are not “us.” Take me for instance, I think Dot is a sweet and slobbery goofball and I would swear out an affidavit to attest to that certainty. But the red dog with the hot dog tail saw her as an existential threat and he communicated that to his owners and my caviler demeanor must have seemed like indifference to their very survival. No body is to blame. We just needed more time to play nice and get along.
Reading the internet about the different opinions about Ms. Harris, why do I feel that in America today there are active forces at work that do not want us to take the time to play nice and get along.
My political opinion is not going to kill your dog.
Dot thinks she is Michael Jordan, sticking her tongue out like this.
The Fireweed blossoms
are going to seed today,
and I still love you.
Here is a recording of me reading from the beginning of a fine book by Bonnie Sue Hitchcock: The Smell Of Other People’s Houses.
