Bear

Bear and Little Boy Darling on the Green Trail of Bliss

I woke up this morning thinking of Bear, Daughter Dear’s perfect dog.

It occurred to me that while there was drama around Bear, he was unruffled.  A more steady peaceful and calm dog would be hard to find, maybe never. He was one of a kind, all 200 pounds of him.

Remember Bear? He was the one my husband stretched a kennel for so he could be transported to Hawaii with more comfort than the largest airline approved commercial kennel provided. From Oregon Continental Airlines took the modified kennel. In Hawaii Aloha airlines took it, but then upon leaving the Island, United Airlines would not take it. The kennel had been modified. It was not acceptable. They wouldn’t budge.

That was nine o’clock in the morning after we had white-knuckled it up and over the mountain because a tanker had turned over blocking the regular route from Hilo to Kona. We rushed into town, and there purchased the largest kennel we could find—lucky they had one. It was a tight fit, but Bear accepted it graciously. We missed the first plane. “Have him here at noon,” they said, “the plane will leave at two.”

The plane was delayed.  Bear was in lockup until 6 o’clock that evening in a kennel that fit him like a wet suit. He made it to L.A. by nine the next morning seemingly none the worse for wear. We were.

One day on the Island as we were walking in our back forty—really, it was the back five, a Doberman dog furiously barking rushed at us. Bear stood, a protective shield between the dog and one-year-old Baby Darling.  Dogs bowed to his calm demeanor. The neighbor rescued us from her dog and we never saw it again.

Newfoundlands are considered natural baby sitters. Nana in Peter Pan was a Newfoundland. But Newfoundlands are big, as was Bear, and people renting houses think a dog ought to be 30 pounds or less. (Little dogs can do far more damage—you figure.) We were rejected from a place we thought we had rented, and thus arrived in Eugene with no house. It turned out perfect, a property manager trusted us, accepted us, took our big dog, we love our house, and Bear has not harmed one square inch of it. He never chewed, scratched, and always asked to go outside. I said the main risk was tripping over him.

Six years ago Daughter Darling commuted from Eugene Oregon to Medford, a five hour drive. There she worked 40 hours in three days at a Domestic Violence shelter,  I didn’t worry because she had Bear with her.

Bear even died perfectly. He had gotten down, and with his weight we couldn’t lift him. He could no longer maneuver the two steps into the house, and so he spent the last few days in the yard. Daughter languished over whether to have him put to sleep. The appointment was for Tuesday, the Vet said she would come to the house. Bear died on Friday, peacefully in the yard—protecting Daughter Darling to the end.

And this morning he gave me the message that while drama, chaos, whatever is happening all around, it is not your’s. You can remain calm, like Bear. I probably won’t, but you get the idea.

Do You Hate Piñatas too?

You are blindfolded.

You swipe and hit nothing.

You figure out where the Piñata is, and give a mighty swing. The trouble is the game is rigged. Just when you swing, some sadistic person pulls the rope holding the Piñata. It jerks up out of your reach, and you hit air—again.

Finally some smart or macho or small child they feel sorry for is allowed to hit the Piñata.

It breaks—they are so tough they take quite a beating--there is a mad scramble for the candy. The aggressive kids grab the most, the timid ones get a measly amount. Sharks and guppies--again.

Wow. Isn’t this fun?

Is this to teach kids about life?

And what might those lessons be?

When my kids were young, and being in San Diego where Piñatas were abundant, we would often get one for a birthday. Usually I chose a cute animal, and my first born child wouldn’t let us break it. Instead, we performed a cesarean section. We would open a small hole in the belly, the candy would pour forth, the kids got the candy, and Viola' the Piñata lived to see another day.

It lived out its life as a bedroom decoration.

Well, see, there is a solution.

We can make our own rules.

Isn’t it about time?!

P.S. Okay okay, I love Piñatas, I just don't like hitting/breaking them. Look at that cute donkey face.

This is for The People Who Haven’t Given Up

This is for the people who still believe that the Universe conspires to do them good.

You are the ones who know we have problems, but as John Kennedy said, "Man's problems were created by man, and can therefore be solved by man." Did I quote him correctly? You get the gist.

You are the people who are not numbed by naysayers, by the doomsday ones, the media, television, periodicals, books on horrors. We have heard so many horrors they doesn’t shock us anymore. We can have endless hours of brain-numbing television. Do you watch some of those commercials? Cars that turn color, fly, suggest that they will improve your sex life, and your family life, yet, cars these days are boring, with few exceptions they all look alike. Talk about sizzle and no steak.

Oh yes and movie previews are so gross I forget what movie I came to see. “Can you amp it up a bit I ask sarcastically after I have endured ear-splitting sound, computer generated monsters, mechanical gear, space ships so complex you know that the special effects people are trying to out-do each other, and shootings, poundings. Amp it up. Be bigger, bolder, more shocking.

We can spend hours on video games that keep us addicted to movement and challenges that are not solving the situations outside our doors. A great amount of brain power here, but people feel stymied—they try to find jobs, they try to be entrepreneurs, they try to sell, to market, to create the life they want, and after awhile give up in frustration.

Are we supporting our arts? Are we supporting the scientists that are giving us a better day? Have you heard that with 3-D printing they can take a 3-D printer to third-world countries, and fabricate an artificial limb especially suited for that individual? Whoa. Let’s not sit around with our fingers up our noses.

We hear of space aliens, solar flares, vampires, chem-trails, and any number of conspiracies—don’t get me wrong I believe some of the conspiracies, we just can’t let them demoralize us into zombies, needing constant influx of food, drink, sodas, medications, anything to sooth the savage beast that threatens to take us over. You have heard the old joke, “Died at 35, buried at 85.” Don’t do that.

And stop dinking with our food! Turn your genetic engineering brilliance someplace else—like curing cancer. You are making us fat.

Okay, okay, I know I am preaching to the choir—no, I’m venting, and yes, I am motivated by the movie Tomorrowland. See it and decide that you are the ones that have not given up.

“Homo sapiens,” said Dr Who in The Ark in Space, “what an inventive, invincible species. It’s only a few million years since they crawled up out of the mud and learned to walk. Puny, defenseless bipeds. They’ve survived flood, famine and plague. They’ve survived cosmic wars and holocausts. And now, here they are, out among the stars, waiting to begin a new life. Ready to out sit eternity. They’re indomitable.”

"But I Make Excellent Rembrandts."

Title could be: “We See What We Want to See”

Two days after I ranted on my writer’s blog*about how much data was on the Internet, and that books were dying faster than bugs on a sheep’s back after a good dipping—no  I didn’t use that analogy, just thought of it. Have you ever seen sheep swimming though a trough of sheep dip? Anyway I wondered why the government, the banks, anyone with personal critical data trusted it to the Internet. And then yesterday I heard on the radio that the IRS had been hacked.

Brother.

It appears that the hackers gathered personal information, but haven’t yet used it. “Authorities” figure they are waiting until next year to intercept any refunds entitled to certain taxpayers. And to add insult to injury, the burden of monitoring falls on the one who was hacked. These poor people need to keep checking to make sure their data is clean.

And then this morning I checked in on #Craig’s list, as I had placed an ad there, and they informed me that their site had been “compromised.” They assured me, however, that it had been fixed.

This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

We might as well laugh at it I suppose—I wouldn’t laugh, though, if my refund went to someone else. And I’m mad as hell that people aren’t buying books, but are reading on the Internet or Digital devices, or not reading.

Fahrenheit 451?

There was a funny post on #Craigs’s list—see we do love the Internet, just don’t trust it to keep our culture alive. (Book were once burned—remember? How easy would it be for a Hacker, or an on purpose “Authority” to erase us, our culture, our literature, our personal data. Think about old scrolls, good old papyrus, or leather, or clay tablets, or engraved rocks that have been found buried—that’s how much some wanted to preserve old writings and sacred texts.)

About the Craig’s list story: Someone bartered up from a cell phone to a Porsche.

How?

Beats me.

The topper, though, was that someone bartered up from a red paperclip to a house.

Yesterday I was sharing with my friend June who is an artist and would appreciate the movie we had seen the night before. It was Arts and Crafts, a documentary about Mark Landis, one of the most prolific art forgers in US history. This eccentric man copied the masters, didn’t sell them, but donated them to museums and galleries. The museums were happy, and greedy, to get their hands on such “valuable” works, and even their “experts” couldn’t tell they weren’t authentic. Landis was using gels and acrylic and colored pencils, and instant coffee to age them—modern day materials, imagine, on such artists as Monet. Because he didn’t receive any money from them it was not a crime.

June told me about Uncle Buds. I had heard about this eccentric old man she knew many years ago, but not this story: Uncle Buds was a master engraver, and he could also copy Rembrandt to a T.  The FBI often investigated him, for with his skill he could easily be a counterfeiter.  One day the FBI visited, inspected his work, found that no money was being created, and paid no attention to the many Rembrandt engravings scattered about over this table.

 “You always seem to have money,” June once asked him. “Do you make it?”

“Oh no,” he said, “never. But I make excellent Rembrandts.”

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