dogs on leashes

If there were leashes on any of the neighborhood dogs circa 1960, I don't remember them. We lived on a lazy little one block long street, and I remember a dachsund (they were casually called 'weiner dogs' because of their long bodies and short legs) and a bassett hound. Dogs followed the kids in their families up and down the neighborhood - like they were 4-legged siblings. Puppies were a little in the way some times. They hadn't yet learned the rules of the street. Adult dogs, though, were bright and protective of the kids.

Well - I'm remembering an exception to this - our own dog! We got a collie named Zip around then. Collies were popular because there was one with her own television show - 'Lassie'. Everybody watched 'Lassie' - week after week she followed Timmy, the kid in her household, everywhere. She rescued him, or other animals or neighbors, from the calamity of the week. Zip - our dog - wasn't quite at that level of maturity. Our folks kept him on a rope attached to the clothesline post during the day. Even then, there was many an evening our mom rode slowly through the neighborhood calling Zip's name out of the car window. He was good at untying knots.

Soon after this, we moved to the country, and Zip got a big fenced yard, and a golden retriever named Duke to keep him company. We got Duke because he'd been owned by hunters and was expected to retrieve ducks from the water. He failed to get out into the water, much less fetch a duck, and the highly frustrated owners gave him to us. Duke ever after jumped into every puddle or pond he came across. He just didn't like hunting or the noise of the guns I guess.

I see the speed of the many cars on the streets, and I see lots of leashes, and dogs kept in crates indoors, and I know times are different now.

the slam of a car door
below my window
triggers a pinch of happiness
it's 1967 and our mother
is home from work -
she'll soon be inside
in the warm kitchen light

bobwhites

The first bird I learned by name was the bobwhite, a species of quail, when I was around age 4 in the late 1950s. We lived in south-central Louisiana near what was a field of varied grasses, and thistles close to five feet tall, I'd guess. Sometimes in the early morning, you could hear the bobwhites. Our mother occasionally would initiate the call from the open kitchen window, and wait to hear the response. I'm pretty sure her whistled call was only two notes: 'bob-white!'  But I also remember a call that was three notes: 'bob-bob-white!'

When I lived in rural central Texas - around 1980, there was a covey of bobwhites near our house. They nested near the ground and sometimes would walk in line, a parent with three or so juveniles trotting behind. The invasion of fire ants came a year or two later, and it wasn't until after 2000, after the fire ant population stabilized, that I heard another bobwhite.

scrambled books ...

I'm looking at a hardcover book that I recently picked out. The cover art is rather beautiful - a black and white background of trees and snow with a small red bird in the foreground (that somehow looks like part cardinal, part finch, and part hummingbird). The title, and a review quote on the back, are printed in black on what looks like a brass plate with elegant decorative etching. Simple, and appealing book design.

The contents however include much cruel material that seems intended to deliberately repel rather than appeal to the reader. There are lengthy redundancies, and places where the characters' names are jumbled. These appear to be errors or intentional offenses, not some sort of artistic device. I read about an eighth of it, got suspicious, and glanced through the rest only to find that it gets more persistently cruel the deeper you go.

I'd just let it go, except I've come to realize across the last fifteen years or so that a number of recommended books are broken reads, with the same issues as this one has. A formulaic wrecking of what was perhaps once an engaging work.

Some of my favorite authors came out with new books that were not readable, in the same way that this one is not. At first I thought well, maybe the writer lost his or her trusted editor. But then, I bought or borrowed books that I've read and reread in the past. Some of the new printings no longer contain the same material - and they have problems like those listed above that were not there in the past. A messed up children's classic, 'Anne of Green Gables', doctored books by John Irving and by Jean Auel, Bill Cosby and by Anne Tyler. I've seen altered Bibles, art books and reference books with greatly misleading material and phony illustrations. It is a grief, the undermining of our treasury of cultural and scientific knowledge. Others are aware of this situation, not just in literature, but in sciences, the arts, music and film. I don't know how the problems are being addressed. It might be helpful just to label damaged material as 'edited without permission of the author or publisher' - a kind of 'beware' for the readers and viewers, as a starting point. Over time, perhaps we shall gradually recover what has been lost.

gems and jewels

Crystals and jewels are something about which I know very little. Still, there is appeal in the words and appeal in the fairy tale illustration thoughts that come to mind. Children's books have images of pirate treasure chests brimming with gold and various crystals. Great green dragons with forked red tongues and fire and smoke issuing from their throats and nostrils can be seen guarding their stacks of jewels and gem bedecked crowns and ropes of pearls ... and more overflowing treasure chests.

When we were kids, we knew the stone for the month we were born. In our family, there were some well known birth month gems, but two of us had stones that you don't see mentioned in stories and movies: peridot and aquamarine. The colors are lovely - pale crystals of green and blue - but that's all I know. Across the decades of my life, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds have come up with some regularity in books and news articles and museums. Sapphires and opals and garnets are not as frequently mentioned, but still in the everyday vocabulary. Quartz has lots of applications - and is easily found in streambeds in the mountains. Pearls are not gem stones, but an animal product formed within some oysters. (Too bad for the oldest oysters - they have been collected by divers around the world hoping to strike it rich with the discovery of one gleaming, symmetrical pearl the size of a marble.)

Topaz comes up now and again. Topaz is familiar to me because of family with African ties who long ago collected specimans in creekbeds of Nigeria.

Beryl is a gem, and it's a word that fascinates me. But I wouldn't recognize it if it were placed in the palm of my hand.

today is with clouds
is a beautiful day
a sky no longer
pale and lonely
but one set in motion,
animated by odd characters
that bloom and shrink
with the capricious currents of air.

a dark strand
of prism colors
arcs across
a watery blur to the east.

the clouds just above
are bright and hobnobbing -
they toss a spray of droplets
down to my heated brow.

the sun is curtained
in grays and purples
limned with glory.

alligator encounters

When my sister was around age one, and some twenty years later when my son was around age one, we had the experience of encountering an alligator. Well, actually, an alligator appeared for each of them, and I happened to be a witness. The first encounter was with a young gator about two to three feet long that was making its way through our yard in Louisiana after a hurricane. I was wheeling my sister in a wheelbarrow and came to a halt, uncertain whether this was a living alligator ahead of us or a big piece of pine bark. Then it snapped and it was alrighty, time to fetch an adult - no - first I must take the baby away from this amazing scary wild creature. The second event - when my son was a baby in a stroller - we were near the edge of a lake at Avery Island near New Iberia, Louisiana when we noted a huge grandaddy-sized gator's head above the water's surface some ten feet away. The alligator wasn't moving - maybe even was gracing us with his peaceful appearance - but we very promptly pulled the carriage away from the pond.

I think about it now, though, and wonder if these events were dangerous, or if perhaps fellow creatures just briefly let us see them, be aware of their presence, when we arrived in their space.

Maybe six years ago, I took a tour with a friend on Lake Martin near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. We were in a small boat with an outboard motor. The guide would pause here and there, and among the many birds, fishes, snakes and insects we saw, there were several ancient gators who just floated in the water, peaceful as silent logs, only with resounding charisma. An egret was grooming his feathers, perched on an alligator's back. Another time at Lake Martin, I saw alligator babies about the size of a pencil in a shallow ditch-like area, with the mother not far away. None of these situations were threatening - they just called for respect for the animals' personal space. We were just visitors passing through their only home.