Oscar's Interpretation Services open for business

We’ve only had Charlie a couple of months, so although he’s settled in quite well, we still have the occasional misunderstanding. Yesterday evening Charlie began barking at me. I’d just taken them out for their early evening business, so I wasn’t sure what was up, although Charlie was more interested in playing footsie with the neighbor’s cat than getting down to business. He normally only barks when he can’t get Oscar to play with him – but he barks at Oscar about it, not me. I asked him what he wanted – another walk? play?- and never seemed to hit on it. He finally gave up and ran off to get Oscar. They had a brief conference nose to nose then they came over and sat down in front of me. Charlie barked once. I started the list again and when I said "poo" Oscar wagged his tail. Charlie looked over at him and tried to wag the same way, looking at me like “Finally. Duh!” Back out we went again, and sure enough… How sweet that Oscar agreed to be interpreter and how smart Charlie was to ask. I’m going to have to stop calling him a natural blonde…

Angles and Other Stories by Orson Scott Card

An excellent collection of short stories by the prolific and talented Mr. Card. Stories include tales detailing the following:

God becomes complicit with St Nick to make a heaven of hell
Nixon finds forgiveness
The horrific birth of a starship
Juvenile stupidity gets its just reward
A suicide who writes his final note AFTER committing the dread deed
Humanity as virus
The best of wishes (among my favorites)
Parenting aspiring authors
Life and death and death and death in the United Soviet Socialist Republic of America
The angels at the end of the world

Meet Charlie, aka His Dudeness

This is Charlie (formerly Charleston, formerly ???). We got him from the marvelous Homeless Pet Placement League yesterday  via the Petsmart location in Webster. He's a Lhasa Apso mix (probably with some Shih Tzu). A more gentle-hearted, laid back individual you'll never meet. In fact, he spends a good bit of time almost comatose, just collapsing, all fours akimbo, in the floor with a sigh of relief and a gently wiggle of his bushy tail. I call him "His Dudeness." He doesn't like to walk very far, but just lays down when you stop and gets up again when you resume. Verrrry laid back. His Dudeness, indeed.

He loves to be brushed and we even gave him a little grooming (just a little "off the top") and a little trim around the eyes. He loves belly rubs and has already chosen one toy as his own. He's taken to all of us.

He and Oscar (our Shih Tzu) are still adjusting. He's at least three times Oscar's size, but it's mostly fur. He and Oscar had a little dust-up this morning and each grabbed a bite of hair, but no fur flew and they just as quickly stepped back to allow the Alpha pack members (us!) to clear the air. Five minutes later, they were touring the front yard together like old war buddies swapping tall tails (ah...) tales. Charlie has a lot to adjust to: three people, a new house, front and back yards, and another young male dog. Considering how well they are handling it after even one day and night, I think things are going to be just fine in no time. We have a large, very open-barred kennel, and had Charlie sleep in it last night just to ensure him some downtime while we slept. His new pal Oscar slept just outside the door, giving Charlie a little wag of his tail each time we heard him stirring. Incidentally, this photo is not of Charlie and Oscar but Charlie and a toy.

The HPPL are a great organization of caring folks. Charlie came bathed, neutered, dewormed, vaccinated, and micro-chipped. The staff told me a great deal of his history and personality and is was obvious their care for each of their fuzzy charges is genuine. If you need a new furry friend, or just want to help, please visit their website at http://www.hppl.org/. Any number of great dogs and cats will appreciate it.

Squeaky toys and gentle reminders

We've been blessed with a Shih Tzu named Oscar for about two years now. I was bringing him in from his walk early this morning, had gotten us into the studio and was leaning over to unhook the leash from his harness. My ear was near the door into the living room and I distinctly heard Oscar's little fuzzy donut toy squeak three times rapidly. I assumed Mom or Dad was up, had heard us at the door and was encouraging Oscar to come in. 

I opened the door quickly since Oscar was jumping to play with the toy as soon as he heard it. We saw the toy lying where it had been when we left out: in front of the piano, next to his bed, about four feet from the door. The room was still and dark, with no one standing anywhere. Oscar danced in, looking for Mom or Dad, stared at the toy without touching it and ran to the hall. He was disappointed to find their door shut and no lights on. 

He stepped back into the living room, eyeing the toy and then me, then the toy, warily. He's smart enough to know that the thing couldn't squeak itself! I told him it was okay. Maybe Kissie Bear was keeping it company for him while he went on his walk. Kissie is my dear little Maltese who died back in June. The toy had originally been hers, but she had graciously surrendered it to him on his first day with us and it has remained his favorite. 

I think, maybe, Kissie was letting us know she's still thinking about us. Sweet baby. I think of her every day and probably always will. She taught me a lot of precious things I never want to forget.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

Seriously, I can't recall why I bought this book. Zombies, and horror generally, just aren't my thing. Everytime it came up on my To Be Read list, I shoved it back down. Maybe the fact that this is Mel Brooks' son, kept it on the list to begin with. Recently, however, I caught the premiere of The Walking Dead and was quite impressed. Lo, a few weeks later, Brooks' book popped back to the top of the TBR list and I thought, what the hey. Much to my surprise, it is an excellent read. A zombie plague may not be -- thank God! -- a probability, but this book certainly will have you acknowledging it could be a possibility. The politics, policies and plot ring true, making it as much a tale of human nature as it is a fantasy about a horrific invasion of our own dearly dead. This one stays on my To Be Re-read shelf. Recommended.

Happy Birthday, Denis Leary

Happy birthday to my favorite standup comedian and dramatic actor, Denis Leary, born August 18, 1957. If you haven't seen The Job or The Ref, or a dozen other great films/TV he's starred in, all I can ask is:

1. what rock have you been hiding under?

2. what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?

Well then. Consider the invitation served.

Whoopin' hoopties big whoopy hoopty doo

::engaging rant mode:: What is up with the grown people (usually ::cough:: men) who drive through my neighborhood with their bass-enhanced stereos so loud my windows rattle and their lug nuts are vibrating loose? Is it possible they're just trying to fill up that empty space inside their head with the sonic boom?

Hum. Must be an X-File. Oh, Mulder!!!!!

::disengaging rant mode::

My Requiem Mass

The Requiem or Requiem Mass is a liturgical service of various Christian churches. It is commonly called the "mass for the departed." Generally it is a musical rendition of prayers for the souls of the departed. It is used at burial services and sometimes during memorials. Many of the more famous requiems were written to commemorate the national dead such as Berlioz' Grande Messe des Morts. Mozart's Requiem Mass in D Minor is a masterpiece, which would go without saying except when you realize that Mozart died well before it's completion. The mass was completed by Mozart's student, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, and yet it remains a breath-taking piece of music. I'd say he graduated with honors.

I'm not referring though, to such masterworks. I'm talking today about the "poor man's requiem," which is basically those songs that, as my mother says, "I love so much, they can play them at my funeral." So far, Mom's requiem includes James Blunt's "Beautiful" and Bill Doggett's "Honkey Tonk" (nope, she doesn't drink, she just really likes the song). I haven't asked Mom about any other songs. I don't want her getting any ideas about kicking off.

I've found that I've developed a rather lengthy requiem of my own through the years. It's hard to define some of my choices. Sometimes my favorite songs simply evoke a time or a place, like Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" which takes me back to high school in the late '70's when life was terrifying with hope and anticipation. That song, however, falls more in the category of a favorite rather than a requiem-worthy piece. To be requiem-worthy, the song must do more than evoke a feeling or bring a smile. It must evoke a longing. The longing may be simply a nostalgia for someone or someplace gone or missed. Better, it should be a longing for something I'm returning to: something, someplace, some One who remains in some indefinable "place" my soul recognizes as Home. When a song reminds me of that, it gets put on the requiem list.

Here then, in no particular order, and with no further explanation, is my Requiem Mass:

• "God Only Knows" - The Beach Boys
• "Sleepless Night" - Fernando Ortega
• "The Long and Winding Road" - The Beatles
• "The Swan" - Jean Sibelius
• "Hamburg Song" - Keane
• "God is Not Sleeping" - Mavis Staples
• "I Am a Pilgrim" - Duncan Sheik
• "The Whole of the Moon" - The Waterboys
• "Wonderful World" - Louie Armstrong
• "Shame" - Fernando Ortega
• "Joshua Fit the Battle" - Elvis Presley
• "The Letter" - Macy Gray
• "Give Me Jesus" - Fernando Ortega
• "Away Down the River" - Alison Krauss
• "Isn't It Love" - Andrew Peterson

"But as for me, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shalt stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." -Job 19:25

Dads. Real and Otherwise

My mom was raised by a Marine.

Bob wasn't her "real" dad, but he was as real a dad as my Mom could hope for. Her biological father had abandoned her before she was born; she would not meet him until she was grown with children of her own. As a child, she remembers a man coming to take her older brother to the movies and to the amusement park, a man her brother called their dad although this man never looked at her twice, never brought her gifts, or even spoke to her. She thought he looked a lot like "Slipper McGee" in the movies, Or maybe Jimmy Cagney. But he was as aloof a figure to her as the actors he resembled.

Mom's "step" dad arrived in her life when she was three. Three months later, he had shipped off with the Marines to Europe.

Like many during the years of WWII, my mom and her mom were movie-goers. Back then, pre-TV, radio was king and movies offered short reels of news, sports and celebrity highlights before showing their feature films. For a nickle or a dime, you could spend an entire day in air-conditioned comfort, watching the stars of Hollywood. My mom recalls once when she and her mom watched one of these newsreels. This one showed the storming of the beaches at Normandy during Operation Overlord. Her mother explained that her dad was one of those men jumping from the boats and running toward the bombs and bullets. He was a soldier. He had a helmet and a rifle and he was winning a war.

And he had his picture in her pocket.

Somewhere in my mother's young mind, her new dad became confused with the leading actor in the featured movie that followed the newsreel. She recalls being a bit amazed that her mother showed no spark of jealousy when he kissed the lead actress in the film. You can't blame her. Even today we can find ourselves confused by an on-screen reality that looms somehow larger than our own lives.

Bob returned home from the war in 1945. He was a steady provider and a constant presence in her life, unlike her "real" dad. Life wasn't perfect for Mom. There was illness and alcohol and hard work, as there so often is even in the best families. But she knew that she was loved and she knew that she mattered. And she knew her dad was proud of her.

Because on that day, far away at a beach at Normandy, my mother's dad really did have her picture in his pocket.

The image attached is my grandfather, Bob Baker, looking out over an historic Houston from a balcony of the Lamar Hotel where he worked for many years.

Murder is Easy - Agatha Christie

Murder is apparently so easy some people make a career of it. What DO the people in Christie's books do for a living? They're all, apparently, independently wealthy and none the better for it. I'd tried to read this one years before but had to return it to the library before finishing it. It was worth the wait. A frighteningly high body count, though, wasn't it? At least for Christie? Seems like this should have been some kind of record for an English "cozy." Caught the TV version the other night and thought they did a pretty good job of it.