Sidetracked Charley

I provide a doggie vacay service at my home, and lately I have encountered barrier frustration and aggression at the gate. Dogs develop frustration when something holds them back from interacting with a certain stimuli in the environment like the dog on the other side of the gate. Or a leash, a fence, a tether, a baby gate, being in a car. . . really any type of barrier or restraint. The frustration shows itself in a whole range of "inappropriate" behavior. Surely this is not just a thing with are canine friends. Other animals in cages like at zoos? Or humans in cages like at our southern border? Or prisons? I googled. And if you are to look at the results you would assume it is just dogs. And just real and solid barriers like gates. Not willing to let it go because I could see equivalent human responses if not what they were perceiving as a barrier. Maybe in humans it is called something else like cabin fever? Living in the mountains I am aware of cabin fever which...

The last couple of days seem to be all about words. Reminding my yet again one needs to choose your words wisely. In a community post about an electrical outage I used fast instead of quick. Not the same thing. And as regards Pence's visit to the detention centers, his words, I use the words concentration camps. And that he had no sympathy - feelings of pity or sorrow, when he in fact had no empathy - the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. At the risk of sounding like a grammar Nazi words do matter. Take for instance the matter of Big Blue, the GMC pickup not starting. You get taken a lot seriously by a mechanic if you use the right words. The truck won't start is actually a symptom not the problem. It takes a key, the ignition, a battery, a starter, and a starter cable to start the GMC. It has a new battery and the starter is just a couple years old. But I have been having a starter cable issue or more specifically the connection of the starter cabl...

This whole Trumpian age of Evangelicalism has put an entirely new perspective on the New Testament of the Bible for me. And I see Christians totally differently. If true believers can be so easily deceived and mislead to the point of abandoning their basic Christian tenets, the ten commandments, and the very evidence before their eyes how are we to believe anything written by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John?  It is now easy to see how Mary got away with that whole virgin birth hoax. As to the he has risen story? Well, I have always had questions about that one. But as Judas sings in Jesus Christ Superstar it was in the era before mass communication. There was no Google to check sources then or in the age when Mormon's met with their white salamander, or Jones was urging his followers to drink the poisoned KoolAid. But Vice President Pence standing before an overcrowded cage of humans who have not bathed for 40 days and nights and declaring they are being treated...

I have one of those minds which seems to remember everything but where I put my keys or reading glasses. I can chimp back through visual images and recall exactly who I was with and what the joke was just before or after the shot was taken. Or remember word for word the song playing on the car stereo as I pulled over to capture that particular column of clouds. It's a gift or a curse. This morning driving south to feed two kitties there was a dead dog beside the highway. And images of the family dogs through the years clicked through my brain like a slide show. Then I identified this particular dog. I called her Ghost. A neighbor owned her and mistreated her. And another neighbor and I would feed her because she often looked close to starving. Not that he wouldn't or didn't feed her but that she was afraid to go near enough to him to be fed. One of the first things I did for Ghost was remove a choke chain from around her neck. It was way too tight and too small and ...

As the family saga goes it was all about a small pox vaccination. My mother thought the resultant scars were ugly so appealed to the family doctor to put mine on the underside of my arm. I was a lot less than a year old at the time Mother was scheduled to be flying with me on a military plane to join Dad in Rome. Eager to get away from all the relatives she planned well ahead for the vaccination so it I got sick it would not delay her departure. Two weeks later I had not shown any sign the vaccination hat taken. The site looked like an insect bite and Mother carried a certificate from the doctor that I had indeed been given all shots necessary for international travel. Sometime mid Atlantic I became seriously ill. And by the time we touched down in Rome, at the civil and not military airport I was running a fever of 104 and covered with welts, and very dehydrated. I had what custom officials believed was a full blown case of Small Pox. Which was confirmed by not having the stand...