Amahd (Pt. II): Trixie

A man and his dogs: Pondering the relationship between humans and dogs.

Read Part I, Match made in heaven, here.

A mournful look

My family adopted our beagle, Trixie, from a breeder who ran a place outside Medford, Oregon. The five of us, Dad, Mom, Eric, Paige, and I made the mid-winter drive over the pass from Klamath Falls in our VW bug.  We set out to find a new member for our little family.  A dog.  I was eight years old.  The year was 1970.  Although Mom and Dad may have suspected, we kids had no inkling that the event would be one of the last for that incarnation of our family.  Mom and Dad divorced shortly thereafter.

We drove to the place, as I recall it was a farm, with horse stables, and Mom went with the breeder to choose our dog while Dad waited with the kids in the car.  The first time I laid eyes on Trixie, it was from the back seat of the Volkswagen.  Mom and the breeder were picking their way through the snow toward us.  Mom held a tan and black puppy with long, floppy ears.  She was Trixie, our beagle puppy.  Trixie, our little princess.  She was the runt of her litter which I suspect is what endeared her to Mom.  Eric, Paige and I instantly adored her.

In those early days, Trixie was the object of all the love and kindness we kids could muster.  Our world was coming apart and I believe Trixie gave us something --someone --to care for and console.  In our childish minds, we consoled and protected her in the way we may have wished we would be consoled and protected. Those were troubled times for us.

Clowin' around while Trixie snoozes on the couch in Klamath Falls

Trixie was a beagle, alright.  Beagles are bred to be hunters.  They have extraordinary noses and enormous baleful voices.  They are strong-willed and determined.  And they're adept at making their way through tangled, dense terrain.  Chasing foxes across the countryside requires all of that.

Well, Trixie had it in spades.  When she got to baying, she put up a caterwaul that could be heard up and down the street.  There never was a fenced yard that she couldn't find her way out of.  She leaped off high walls; scrambled under wire fences; climbed, burrowed, and wriggled. 

Mom contends that Trixie had some phobia, some canine neurosis, that caused her to panic at confinement.  But I'm of the opinion that Trixie was being a beagle.  That's what beagles do.  If she went missing for a day, which she occasionally did, we were sick with worry.  But she always came back and when she did, we were flooded with relief and joy.

She was mostly a gentle dog.  But there were a few occasions when she nipped someone.  And there was a particularly traumatic instance with a squirrel.  

Rollin' in the grass

It was Trixie's fate, I'm afraid, to have become a part of a family in transition.  When Mom, Eric, Paige, and I moved to Salem so that Mom could return to school, Trixie came with us.  From there, she went with us to Redmond when Mom graduated college in 1975.  When our family split up again, in 1976, she went back to Salem to stay with my grandparents for a while before finally going to live with Paige, Mom, and Mom's husband Doug in Gig Harbor, Washington.

In all that time, though, she never lacked for love.  Mom, Eric, Paige, and I had our squabbles, our tearful, angry dramas, like all families do.  But there was never an angry thought or a harsh word for Trixie.  She was our little princess.

She died on November 15, 1977.  It was the day before Mom's birthday.  Trixie strangled herself trying to escape from confinement at Mom's house in Gig Harbor.  I got the news when I called the next day to wish Mom a happy birthday.  (Eric and I were living in Klamath Falls at that time.)

I was grief-stricken, of course.  But I'd been through so many transitions by that time that I suppose I was ready for it.  Or rather, I knew how to adapt.  Yeah.  Go with that.  I knew how to adjust to terrible news.  Just one of those things you learn.

But I still miss my little beagle sometimes.

To be continued...

Movie review: The Woman in Black

Word is that Daniel Radcliffe, in an effort to avoid being forever known as "Harry Potter," is selecting his roles carefully.  Understandable and admirable. How many actors, once they hit it big, are content to ride the gravy train all the way to the end of the line? (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone, and Julia Roberts are three names that come to the fore when considering such matters.)  Nonetheless, Mister Radcliffe should perhaps have been a bit more selective when considering the lead role for James Watkins new supernatural flick, The Woman in Black.  

Set in the 19th century,  the story is straight-forward haunted house fare.  Recently-widowed London lawyer Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) must leave his young son, Joseph, in the care of his governess so that Arthur can travel to the Oxford village of Crythin Gifford, there to sort through the papers of a recently-deceased woman.  Said papers are, of course, scattered about in an isolated and dilapidated manor which the local villagers fear to approach.  Undaunted Kipps goes about his work and quickly learns why.  The ghost of a mournful mother lurks about the place, exacting a vengeful toll on the nearby village whenever she is disturbed.

The film, based on an eponymous novel by Susan Hill, has it charms.  Like any good ghost flick, it succeeds in creating an unsettling ambiance.  Lots of mist and shadow; a delightfully eerie house with creepy toys (glass-eyed wind-up monkeys, Victorian dolls, and the like), baleful, horror-stricken expressions from the cast, and a few cheap gotchas to cause viewers to jump in their seats.  In fact, through the first two-thirds of the viewing, I was convinced that I was watching a really good flick.  But, ultimately, I'm afraid the story fails. 

The best ghost flicks leave viewers wrestling with questions.  Might the portrayed events be explained by a combination of unlikely circumstances?  Or is there something more to it?  Another approach is to introduce a twist in the ending that re-frames the entire story.  (Alejandro Amenábar's The Others, is a great example.)  The Woman in Black, alas, eschews both these approaches in favor of a disappointing ending that seems both condescending and half-baked.  I don't want to let slip any spoilers, so I'll say no more about it. But the ending didn't work for me.

Daniel Radcliffe does well enough in the lead.  The role primarily requires him to do a lot of terrified gaping --a skill he undoubtedly mastered in his Harry Potter roles.  But the best acting came from veteran Ciarán Hinds and from Janet McTeer as Mr. and Mrs. Dailey, a wealthy couple with a dark tragedy in their past. 

All in all, The Woman in Black isn't a complete waste of time.  An adequate Saturday afternoon diversion.  Mildly entertaining and soon forgotten.

Amahd (Pt. I): Match made in heaven

A man and his dogs:  Pondering the relationship between humans and dogs.

In 1998, Professor John Allman, Hixon Professor of Psychobiology and professor of biology, published a theory.  According to Allman, Homo sapiens sapiens and Canis lupis formed an alliance far earlier than the 30-some thousand years most anthropologists speculated.  Professor Allman speculates that the partnership was formed almost as soon as the two species came into contact, roughly 140,000 years ago.  That was when modern humans migrated out of Africa to encounter wolves in Europe and southwestern Asia.  The symbiosis was so perfectly attuned that Canis lupis quickly evolved into Canis familiaris, modern-day dogs.   Professor Allman further suggests that this partnership may have played a pivotal role in the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens sapiens over his bigger, stronger, but dog-less cousin, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

While the timeline may be unclear, what is perfectly clear is that it has been a profitable relationship for both species.  Human beings and dogs conquered 5 continents together.  Imagine all the occasions in humanity's chronicle in which humans and dogs have relied on each other for survival.  Even today, it seems doubtful that either species would be as successful without the other.

My beagle, Trixie

In addition to serving as sentinels, soldiers, shepherds, guides, and rescuers, dogs are loved and revered companions of unimpeachable loyalty.  They are an integral part of our civilization as well as members of our families.  Wherever there are humans, there are dogs sharing their homes and their hearts.

If we adhere to the Catholic creed, dogs, lacking souls, become non-beings upon death.  Doesn't make sense to me.  I prefer to go with the Hindu view of the matter.  In that way of thinking, dogs, like all beings, are manifestations of God, traversing the cycle.  The dogs we know in this life will be with us in our next, albeit transmogrified.  (I recently read a mediocre book that touched on this philosophy.)

Pippin, livin' the dream at the house on Klamath Lake

I've had two dogs in my life.  One was a pure-breed beagle.  Trixie.  The other was a dingo-sheltie crossbreed.  Pippin.  Two dogs. Two cherished and irreplaceable family members. Trixie and Pippin.

Good dogs.

To be continued...

Santorum's big night

Looking for an appropriate image to head up today's blog post, I did a quick google of "santorum."  Boy, was that a mistake!

The three February 7th primary elections that occurred in Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota, provide yet more evidence that the GOP is a party at war with itself.  Gaff-prone Mitt Romney, the nominal front-runner, got swept by big margins in all three contests.  His vanquisher?  Senator Rick Santorum. 

Romney's got a problem.  An Evangelical problem.  Right-wing Evangelicals don't trust him, can never trust him.  Because he is a Mormon and the former governor of a very blue state.  Because, despite his rhetorical attempts to seem so, he is not a frothing xenophobe, an authoritarian, nor a moralizing prig.  And right-wing Evangelicals know it.  He is not one of them.

Santorum, on the other hand, is all of those things.  And, unlike Newt Gingrich, Santorum is so out of conviction.  When Santorum complains that contraception is "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be," when he declares that he doesn't "want to give black people someone else's money," Republican Evangelicals swoon.  That's what they want in a presidential candidate. A guy who says it from the heart.

Romney must be exasperated at this point.  Despite shoving his foot into his mouth with the "I'm not concerned about the very poor" remark, he had just won Florida, the biggest primary to date, by a convincing margin, and destroyed Newt Gingrich in the process.  But, hydra-like, another right-wing trog springs up in Gingrich's place. 

This is all another manifestation of the fragmentation between the various factions within the GOP.  Anything can happen from here.  Sit back and enjoy the show, progressives.

Evangelical pastors laying hands on Santorum, praying for victory.   Nothing scarier than a bunch of freaky right-wing Evangelicals hopped up on the Holy Spook...

Raging wind

Yesterday, the wind came howling down out of the Columbia Gorge.  Not cold, but fierce, angry.  Last night's repose was disturbed by rattling windows, flexing jambs.

This morning, I emerged to find chaos.  The ranks of recycling, yard debris, and garbage containers my neighbors and I had deployed along the curb last night were in disarray.  Here and there lay a casualty, where the assailant's full force had fallen.  One neighbor's yard debris container lay full length on the asphalt, lid flung wide, contents spilled out like brain matter.

The scene brought to mind a time back in 1993 or 1994.  My (ex-)wife and I lived in southwest Portland, in a cold little house on 52nd Street, with four giant Douglas-firs in the back yard. 

We were considering a remodel of the interior of our house.  Our marriage was not going well.   

On the day that the contractor came to assess the job, an east wind had been raging for days.  The Dougs bent and swayed with the force of it.  They sighed endlessly, as if grief-stricken.  Occasionally, a loud crack signaled a broken bough.  Already our yard was carpeted with blue-green needles and limbs.

The contractor was a jolly fellow, broad-shouldered and hale.  He had long curly hair, pulled back in a ponytail and an open face and a booming laugh that defied the wind.  His stride was bold, his smile unafraid.  His presence echoed in the house, like an opera singer in an empty auditorium.  It was strange for us to have so much noise --happy, carefree noise --after having become used to the noise of the wind.  In later days, we would recall his laugh. 

During the consultation, he posed questions that we had trouble answering.  What was it that we were looking for?  How much did we want to invest?  When did we want to make a decision?  As he spoke, my wife and I kept our eyes on him.  We didn't look at each other.

The consultation ended and the contractor left.  The house fell back into cold silence.  But outside, the incessant roar of the wind threatened, as if it were seeking us out for some evil purpose.

It raged on for days.  We couldn't decide what to do about the house.

At some point in that time, it occurred to me that human endeavor is frail and pointless. A few days of raging wind could destroy everything.

Then, one morning, I awoke to find that the wind had stopped and I was left with dead, cold certainty. 

And so I got up, went outside, and set about cleaning up the yard.

St. Christopher talisman

St. Christopher carrying the Christ Child --Hieronymus Bosch

"Take this, son."

So said Dad as he handed me the St. Christopher medallion, strung on a thin silver chain.  The image of St. Christopher fording a river, a mysterious child on his back, was molded into the metal.  It was 1977.  Football season. The Klamath Union Pelicans varsity football team was riding north up the entirety of the state of Oregon's y-axis, to Portland that Friday to play the Beaverton Beavers. It was an overnight trip. 

"Someone gave this to me when I was a boy," he said.  I could feel his eyes watching my reaction as I took the talisman.  It was a delicate moment.  It might have gone any number of directions.  But after long years of practice, I had a good poker face.  He couldn't tell what I was thinking.  Not that time.

Who knew if it was true?  Dad liked to attach significance to everything he did.  Sometimes that meant he had to make shit up.  It was as easy to believe he found the St. Christopher in a lost-and-found box at the OIT gym.  With Dad, you never knew.  But his tone suggested that I should respect the gift.  So I did.  And I have. 

St. Christopher (his Greek name was Reprobus) stood seven and a half feet tall and was strong as horse, according to legend.  (You can get all this from Wikipedia, here.)  While in the service of the King of Canaan, Christopher, no doubt in the full flower of his boastful youth, decided that he must only serve the greatest king of all.  When he saw the King of Canaan blanch and cross himself at mention of the devil, Christopher perceived that the devil was a greater king than Christopher's present master, and so left to seek out the devil.

In his travels Christopher encountered a band of cuthroat bandits, the leader of whom claimed to be the devil.  Christopher immediately entered into his service.  But when he saw the devil avoid a cross standing on the side of the road, Christopher perceived that Christ was greater than even the devil.  So Christopher left the bandits in search of Christ.

Eventually, Christopher fell in with a religious hermit, who taught him the (Christian) truth.  Christopher wondered how he might serve Christ.  The hermit suggested that Christopher use his great strength to help travelers ford a dangerous nearby river.  In that way, Christopher might please the Lord.

Christopher found this work agreeable, and was at it for a while.  One day, a child stood on the river bank and asked Christopher if he might help the child ford the river.  Christopher took the child on his back and started across.  But the child weighed heavily upon him, as if Christopher were carrying the entire world on his back.  Very nearly he was drowned, but he made it across the river with the child on his back.

"You have put me in the greatest danger. I do not think the whole world could have been as heavy on my shoulders as you were," Peter remarked.

"You had on your shoulders not only the whole world but Him who made it," replied the child. "I am Christ your king, whom you are serving by this work." The child then vanished.

Today, St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers.  Si en San Cristóbal confías, de accidente no morirás, as the Spaniards say.

When he gave it to me, I hung Dad's St. Christopher around my neck.  I nearly lost it that very weekend.  The eyelet that attached it to the chain broke while I was staying in Beaverton with the Pelican football team.  (We lost that game, 14-13.  It was ugly).  As we were boarding the bus to return to Klamath Falls the next morning, one of my teammates, Chip Garrett, asked me, "Did you lose a St. Christopher?"  I felt around my neck and, sure enough, the pendant was gone. I had no idea before Chip asked me.

For many years after, the medallion lay in a cedar box that I kept near my bed.  But for the last decade or so, St. Christopher has ridden in the console of my car.

In fact, St. Christopher is even now waiting in my car much as he may have waited on the riverbank, back in the day.  Or maybe that's just Catholic superstition.

Whatever works.

How's that shoe leather tasting, Mitt?

"I'm not concerned with the very poor in this country.  We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it."  --Mitt Romney, in an interview with Soledad O'Brien, February 1, 2012

Ouch, Mitt!  Bet you wish you could take that one back.

Here you are, fresh off a big victory in Florida, where you put a foot to Newt Gingrich's ass (and thank you for that), established yourself not just as the front-runner, but as the inevitable nominee, and had things looking nice and rosy... and then you go and do this.

It's like telling an obscene joke at a wedding banquet.  It can really take the air out of the room.

Now, not even two days after your big victory, you've got not only Democrats, but Newt and the Tea Party calling you an out-of-touch, blue-blooded patrician with no understanding of the common man.  (I know, Mitt.  I know.  The very nerve of it!)

I don't think you're a bad guy.  Sure, you threw a little mud down there in Florida, but you weren't eager about it.  And I don't blame you.  Newt Gingrich brings that out in people.

But now you go and say this, and it reinforces everything they've been saying.  Not that what they've been saying is wrong.  Of course you're out-of-touch!  You are a blue-blooded patrician!  But, at least up to now, you'd managed to cast a little doubt on the assumption.

A pity, old chum.  That bit of mummery is at an end.

To add to your misery, Newt exposed some very big weaknesses in your candidacy.  Your role in and ties to Bain Capital, for example.  Even now, no doubt, there are squadrons of snoopy reporters poring over those books.  Who knows what they might turn up?  Who knows what your enemies in the GOP might give them?

But, see, Mitt, here's the thing:  I really don't think you're a bad guy.  I don't think you're indifferent to poor people.  You're a Mormon, and the Mormons I've known are, by and large, first-rate people.

I suspect that you said what you did because you thought it was what Republican primary voters wanted to hear.  It came from your politician brain, not your human heart.  This isn't the first time that you've done it either.  You've changed your positions on so many issues that no one can keep track of them all.

And that's what bothers me most about it.  You'll say anything, but you won't ever say what is important to you.  Why would anyone trust a guy like that to be President?

Not that I was going to vote for you anyway.