Bowser the Bulldog

Bowser

We are owned by an English Bulldog.  I used to think it was the reverse, but I was wrong.  As a farm dog, he’s useless; as a source of amusement, he keeps us highly entertained.  All he has to do is smile.

His name is Dozer, but I call him Bowser.  Lito named him Dozer, as in bulldozer, of course, and after getting to know him, Dozer seemed more appropriate than ever, because he naps a lot.  The bulldog’s trademark sour expression is balanced by his repertoire of engaging facial expressions.  This breed features an overbite, which spotlights the two long teeth which frame the lower jaw, creating the appearance of a smile.  He does it when he wants a tidbit, which makes him a jolly fellow indeed.

If the smile were not enough, when he really wants your attention, or if you are a newcomer to his world, he flashes the half-smile, where only one of those two lower teeth are visible.  If we weren’t aware of his tactic, it would work every time.

The folds of skin on a bulldog’s face, help create the impression that he has a sour disposition, but nothing could be further from the truth.  He is people friendly and requires a great deal of human interaction to keep him contented.  If he is not happy, he will start to amp.  He buries that massive head his, face first in the dirt, and hunts for rocks to gnaw.

That’s a sure sign that it’s time for a walk up to the top of the road.  If he is not invited along, he pouts by dipping his head, straightening quickly with huge “doe eyes,” then dipping it again.   Burying his face in the dirt also is a sure sign that we need to clean those folds of skin.  Bulldog faces require constant attention to keep that fat, happy smile.

He first came to us, about twelve hours after Lito acquired him, because his arrival coincided with that of The Mendocino County Lightning Complex of 2008.  That was the June onslaught of fires caused by an impressive display of Mother Nature, in the form of lightning strikes to the dry grass and timber.  That also meant that Bowser came to stay with his grandparents.  The timing should have alerted us to the fact that this was not an average dog, but he blindsided us with his personality.

After all, when I was growing up, critters were not allowed into our Southern California home at any time, it being perennially pleasant outdoors.  It was nothing personal; there were simply too many kids.

When the boys were growing up, dogs were allowed in at the kitchen door, but were relegated to that little nook of the house.  Hazel, our Golden Retriever, spent each of her thirteen winters, comfortably entrenched in the house, without ever venturing any farther into the house than the entryway to the kitchen.

Clancy, our Aussie, broke that barrier, and Bowser cracked the hardest nut: he sleeps on our bed, on top of the covers, using his fifty-two pounds of solid bulldog to effectively limit our use of covers to whatever we had the foresight to claim before he arrived.  Otherwise, forget it.

It’s hard to get a word in anyway, with the sound of his snoring breaking its own barriers in our eardrums.  When he isn’t snoring, he’s snorting, belching, moaning, snuffling, sniffing, grunting, groaning, panting, quaffing, burping, licking, and slurping.

  Dozer is a wimp when it comes to heat.  I know people who struggle, but they don’t usually go to quite the extremes that Dozer does.  He plants his solid body in the most inopportune location, and pants.  His water bowl is filled with fresh water, he has been banned from the outdoors, and I occasionally take a washcloth and dampen him with cool water, to help with the heat.  Nothing replaces that dazed expression on his face, until the thermometer starts to relent, and the cool of the evening breeze brings relief.

Back comes the smile as the scent of dinner being prepared makes everything just fine in the world of a bulldog.  That and a good ear-scratching, with a belly rub tossed in for good measure.  I want to stay on Dozer’s good side, the one which allows me a chance at a share of the sheets tonight.  It’s too hot for blankets. 

 

A Name by Any Other Name...

A Name by Any Other Name

I have been blessed, if that is the best word, with a number of nick-names during my life.  These names generally reflect what people see in me.  My earliest monikers were derived from my perky (pesky?) personality, and included that of Babe.  I do not think there was any connection to my baseball prowess, so much as my tendency to behave in a manner more congruent with an immature, annoying kid.

Next came Clown, Clownie, or Bozo, of course all subtle indications that my manner may have been a little less serious than what might otherwise have been desired.  Eric was the one who had the least tolerance for my behavior, and I am sure that it was because, as the oldest, he was ultimately the one who was dragged onto the carpet when the stuff hit the fan.  “Go ahead; laugh, Clown, laugh,” he’d say, as I danced out of the way of any errant fists coming my way.

On the other hand, I used to go work with him on neighborhood projects like cutting grass and clipping the hedges for Mrs Farrel, or pouring a cement sidewalk for Mrs. Ousterhowt.  She was elderly and her home had existed since the twenties, without anything but grass or dirt between her front door and the street.  So we hooked her up.

I was forever Marky Maypo, Mark Oatmeal, or OH-Neill, and of course, Mark the Park.  I was Wallamorado, or Wally for short, and I later became “Park-N-Tak-it.”

As I hit the high school scene, my mouth again got in the way, with me being very vocal about the process of the annexation of our chunk of  La Puente by Valinda.  I made it seem as though we were being overtaken by the Visigoths, thus incurring the derision of my classmates, who envisioned Spanky and Our Gang against the might of the establishment.  The result is thatI I became Alfalfa until I finally figured out that what would make it all go away, was for me to once and for all shut my mouth.

I remember a conversation with my peers in high school, in which we talked about whether or not we liked our names.  I heard myself saying that I disliked my first name, but loved my last name.  I don’t remember anyone being perfectly contented with the name given him at birth.

At Cal Poly, prior to going into the service, I was Smokey or Shark, or Sharky, whichever applied.  I did occasionally indulge in that which produced smoke, and I did play a mean hand of Hearts, in the Cal Poly cafeteria, where we regularly convened to socialize, and avoid going to class.

When I arrived in Korea, I was instantly dubbed Rookie, or Newbie, and whereas others seem to grow out of their introductory nick-ames, Rookie stayed with me until the red-necks in the hooch finally exited the building.  After that I was mostly just Oh.

When I went to work at United Auto Stores, after getting out of the service, I was a hotbed of nomenclature, the most socially acceptable of which was Markington Poopie.  Of course it was bestowed on me by Andy (Booker Anderson) though it could have been Ziggy, (Steve Zigan) Pescalone (John Molinari) or Doog-Bois (Doug Young).  We were big into nick-names.  Jaime Saldivar was the biggest culprit, instilling all of the following and selecting a different one every time he ever addressed me, for the three years we worked together:  Hippie, Dirty Hippie, Dirty Stinking Hippie, and Dirty Commie Hippie.  He never got tired of asking me when I was going to get a haircut.  He never got tired of commenting on my fiery red beard.  Jaimie's goal in life was to become a police officer, which he did.  I still shudder.

My brother Noel always calls me Marcus Aurelius, and I can only guess what my students called me, besides Dragon-breath the first year, a result I am sure of the fact that I drank more coffee than any man alive those early years.  I then developed a career-long habit of carrying sugar-free breath mints, so as to make close encounters of a teacher/student nature, as comfortable as possible.

Now I am Papa-san, Papa, or just plain Pops.  As I have said many times in the past, call me what you want, just call me in time for dinner.

The Vine Street Library *

The Vine Street Library

We used to walk to the Vine Street Library every week during the long summers of my childhood, growing up in Southern California, in the San Gabriel Valley.  My sister JT and I made the journey early in the week, because reading was a huge part of our lives and the library was closed on weekends.  I don’t know how many books JT could cart home, but for me it was always the maximum of eight.  I knew I wouldn’t read them all, but that wasn’t because I couldn’t, only because I figured out of eight, I could find six that would be palatable.

There was no one to drive us to the library.  There were still four younger kids than JT, so Mama was not able to help us out.  First of all, we had to be old enough to be able to walk by ourselves, without one of the big boys, so that would probably have been about third grade or so, maybe eight or nine years old.  Secondly, walking to the Vine Street Library was no cakewalk.

Though there were only two turns long the way, there were at least six intersections to navigate, and the whole trip was probably at least two miles.  It took us between forty-five minutes and an hour each way, depending on how much time we spent looking for empty soda pop bottles.

Empty soda or beer bottles were veritable gold mines of financial revenue, so we used to search along the route to the library so that we could redeem them.  The nice thing was that you could search the same patch of ivy a hundred times, and still hit pay-dirt because it was too easy to miss them one time and hit the next.  Of course, we never could figure out why people would dump perfectly good redeemable bottles.

Other ventures aside, the weekly trip to the library was essential to our summer success.  Though our own library shelves at home were stuffed with The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louisa May Alcott, the Bronte Sisters, Mark Twain and a huge selection of the classics, I was always after mysteries and historical fiction.

My three favorite books growing up were The Swiss Family Robinson(Johann Wyss), Little Men (Louisa May Alcott) and Hans Brinker (Mary Mapes Dodge), and I read them over and over.  Another was Beau Geste, a 1924 P.C. Wren novel about the French Foreign Legion.  This book contained all of the elements that made it perfect for a small boy, including the fact that I only obtained it from Mama, after whining that there “was nothing to read,” a lament that she always tried to treat seriously, as she conducted the ongoing debate in her head of whether or not I was old enough to read this piece of literature or that.

She hit serious pay dirt with Beau Geste, after a not-so-sterling effort with Gergiana of the Rainbow.  You can’t win them all, but I’ll give her credit for trying.  I guess it’s easy to say that times were different back then, because they were.  Just the absence of electronic gadgetry made our world ten times more elementary.  I thought of reading back then the way I think of baseball on the radio today: free entertainment.

It didn’t cost us a dime to go to the library, because it was unthinkable that we would be late in returning our books.  After all, we had two full weeks to read them, and only needed one.  Mama relied on the library, because it was customary in the summer that she would lock the screen door after lunch, with us on the outside.  That way she could lie down for a nap to try and keep one step ahead of us as the dinner hour approached.  It did not bode well for Mama, if she got out of step, because there were too many of us and Papa did not get home until quarter to four.  “Either go in and read your library book, or grab a potato peeler,” she’d say.  It worked every time and still would today.  

It seems inconceivable to me that we, as a culture, could possibly jeopardize the future of such a civilized and gentle past time.  We need libraries desperately, if not for the sake of the adults, then for the sake of the kids.

Who Switched the Channel?

Who Switched the Channel?

I don’t know what to make of the federal government’s recent crackdown on medical marijuana here in California.  It seems that we are taking a huge step backward, as we witness the battle between the governing mechanism in Washington DC, and each of the individual governments representing the states.

When I taught U.S. History to eighth graders, and we got to the part about states’ rights, there was always a lively dialogue.  Back in the 1780’s, when the government was being formed, this was a huge concern to each and every state, and each had its own reasons.

Things have not changed much today, though that fact brings little comfort.  What bothers me the most, is that a lot of good people, hard-working, regulation-following folks, have their necks in a noose because the Obama Administration has decided to abruptly change tactics.  As a presidential candidate he stated, "The basic concept of using medical marijuana ... (is) entirely appropriate," and pledged, "I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try and circumvent state laws on this issue."  Well, gosh, I think that’s exactly what’s going on here, and I didn’t even have to say it, because he already did.  

If President Obama is not trying to interfere with decisions made by individual states, then why did the Department of Justice send letters this past spring, to state lawmakers who were debating legislation to allow for the licensed distribution of medical cannabis? Why did these letters threaten prosecution of those involved with said efforts if the measures went forward?

Why has the IRS assessed crippling penalties on tax-paying medical cannabis facilities in California, by denying these operations the right to file standard expense deductions?

Why has The Department of the Treasury strong-armed local banks and other financial institutions into closing their accounts with medicinal cannabis operators?

Why has The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms sternly warned firearms dealers not to sell guns to medical marijuana consumers, and stated that patients who otherwise legally possess firearms are in violation of federal law and may face criminal prosecution?

Finally, why has The Department of Justice sent cease-and-desist letters to the landlords of California dispensaries, whose tenants are operating in accordance with state and local regulations, and threatened them with civil forfeiture, criminal prosecution, and imprisonment?

These actions do not seem to represent the President’s campaign promise to “...not use Justice Department resources to circumvent state laws.”  

President Obama also promised, "Science and the scientific process must inform and guide (the) decisions of my Administration."  Therefore, I am baffled as to why The Drug Enforcement Administration has rejected a nine-year-old administrative petition that called for hearings regarding the federal rescheduling of cannabis for medical use, ignoring extensive scientific evidence of its medical value.

Additionally, The National Institute on Drug Abuse rejected an FDA-approved protocol to allow for clinical research assessing the use of cannabis to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, stating, "We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”

Most recently, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, along with the four US Attorneys from California, announced plans for a coordinated effort against operations in California that provide safe access to cannabis for those patients qualified to use it, in accordance with state law. 

If the Obama Administration wants to best serve its constituents, it will allow the local legislators to continue listening to the input of the voters, to establish guidelines for regulating safe access to medicine.  This will also allow states to continue providing ongoing jobs and tax revenue.

Legislating medical marijuana operations and prosecuting those who choose to violate the state-mandated regulations should be a responsibility left to the state, not the federal government. It is time for President Obama to fulfill the promises he made to the medical cannabis community and to respect the decisions of voters and lawmakers in states that recognize its therapeutic value.

President Obama made promises he is not keeping.  The current policies being employed do not represent an administration which is attempting to work with local governments, with input from local voters, and to allow science to dictate an appropriate course of action.  What happened?

Is it possible that the corporate drug companies and the liquor industry make larger contributions to the President’s coffers than the medical marijuana industry?

It’s just a clarifying question, but it does not have to be considered rhetorical.  President Obama?

Poor Tulip

Poor Tulip

What do you do with a dog, a family pet, who turns out to be a chicken killer?  Savannah Mae is a Catahoula hound, and is about as harmful as a butterfly, unless you happen to be a chicken.  She was named after the grassy, rolling hills up her on the ridge and she is sweet.  She likes to be around people, is energetic and has been a part of our community for more than three years.  Everyone loves her.

Savannah Mae belongs to Casey, and Casey runs a farm.  Everything about a farm must contribute to forward progress, or be discontinued.  There is too much work to be done every day, to allow detractions to remain.  Thus it was that one day last week, when I heard the sound of Erin screaming out in the orchard, I was taken by surprise.

“BAD DOG,” she was screaming, as Casey and I looked up from the kitchen table, where we had convened to continue hashing out the next step of the plan.  He galloped out to see what was up, but I knew from the direction that the voice came, what the problem was.  I just didn’t know the degree of severity.  Savannah Mae had dug under the gate, and was romping amongst the terrified chickens, doing what some primal urge directed her to do.

The chickens were a big deal on the farm, with Casey and Amber having raised another brood over the course of the summer up in his garden space, and Annie having introduced them into the main chicken coop.  I don’t have much connection with the noisy cluckers, but I heard enough to know that Tulip was the only one of the original hens, who would take advantage of the new opportunity to get out of the hen house, and into the orchard. 

The fence had been meticulously staked to the ground so that no varmints could get into the orchard, and the new set of hens had been introduced to both the hen house and the orchard at the same time.  All had gone smoothly, except that the original hens, except Tulip, all stuck to the inside of the coop, and only the new hens ventured outside.  That had proven fortunate for those older ones, as the carnage which descended on the orchard that day, impacted only those out in the orchard.  Poor Tulip.

What was done was over.  There was no turning back the hands of inexorable time.  Savannah Mae had done the unthinkable, the unacceptable, and had to be removed.  “Removed” has such a clinical sound to it, a cold and detached word that implies a solution, but which poses quite a dilemma.  I can remove a sliver with a tweezers.  I can remove an unsightly blemish with any number of methods.  How do I remove a family pet, especially one who appreciates a walk up to the top of the road, as much as I appreciate settling into my chair for a baseball game on Comcast?

Shelters were called in the hope of finding one which had a no-kill policy, but there was none to be found in this vicinity.  There were two other avenues being pursued, one of which involved a call back to the kennel that had produced Savannah Mae, in the hope that there was a method of letting others know, who might want a good family dog.  As long as there were no chickens around, Savannah Mae was a real sweetie.

The other possibility was that there was an organization that Erin located on-line, which tried to orchestrate these situations so as to resolve them by relocating the dog to an appropriate environment.  I do not know what caused Savannah Mae to revert to an earlier time inside her head, but I do know that her actions have no place on a farm. 

In a world of disposable products, from diapers to computers, it seems terribly sad to have to put a warm, vivacious, friendly dog down, because there is no alternative.  However, we live in a farming community, and we must weigh the consequences of attempting to circumvent the problem.

Of course we could revisit the gate issue, pour a bed of concrete to prevent Savannah Mae from committing dastardly deeds again, and pretend that the problem was solved.  But what if it happened again?  What if she found another way into the orchard?  We can’t bring Tulip back, but we can prevent another disaster.  Anyone want a Catahoula Hound?

Shall We Walk?

Shall We Walk?

Ann and I like to take a daily walk, and have been doing so together since the mid-eighties.  We walk on Bell Springs Road, from our driveway up to Blue Rock, and back.  It’s a forty-five minute round trip, and allows us to accomplish a number of objectives simultaneously, those objectives varying greatly from season to season. 

Early on we were in survival-mode, an escape for Ann, from the demands of three small boys.  In the infancy of our technological evolution, we had a VHS recorder, and enough kid-fare to be able to keep the boys mesmerized in front of the TV while we walked.  After admonishing them to eat nothing while we were gone, and to stay glued to the sofa, we would spring loose to get a walk in, and some time to assess how we were holding up, and whether we would survive the day.  These walks would have been late in the afternoon, when I had returned from work.

When I began to teach and Ann was working on campus, we began to walk in the wee hours of the morning, with me bringing her coffee at 3:45, and the two of us walking out the door at 4:30AM.  This still allowed us to leave the house at six-thirty, arriving at school by seven.  All of the years we spent on campus, we always got this little burst of energy after lunch, which we attributed to the brisk walk up on the ridge, before there was any hint of light in the eastern sky.

There are a number of reasons to walk which have nothing to do with the rigors of child-raising.  I maintain that we never walk, without seeing something truly splendid, presented to us through nature.  This is likely to include any of the following wildlife:  bald eagles; red-tails, Cooper’s Hawks, kites, ospreys, kestrels, six varieties of snakes, foxes, skunks, possums, bobcats/lynxes, one juvenile mountain lion, raccoons, coyotes, and bears.

We have picked up and removed hundreds of nails, bolts, washers, nuts, and every conceivable part of a mountain vehicle, which rattles loose on the graveled road.  We have found more than a hundred square nails of all sizes, a reminder that there were those who traveled this road when vehicles were wooden, and  before air conditioning meant anything other than opening a window. 

The experts say that if you get out and exercise three times a week for a half-hour, that you can increase your chances of avoiding all sorts of nasty health issues.  Some people feel as though “exercising” must include a health club or gym experience, in order to qualify as legitimate exercise.  By not being able to afford either the time or the money, they condition themselves to say that exercise really isn’t an option.

On the other hand, people who simply get out and walk are able to stay ahead of the game.  Again, jogging seems so much more productive, sort of along the lines of “no pain, no gain,”  but walking regularly, especially if there are hills involved, serves the same purpose, at no cost, to either pocketbook or knees. 

The most important element of walking has always been that part which created the space for communication to occur between Ann and me, allowing us to carve out a little chunk of time from our busy lives to check in with one another to see how the other half was doing.  I think this habit of spending time together every day has been critically important from the standpoint of not allowing ourselves to get too immersed in our particular daily rituals, that we failed to see the importance of mutual support and respect.

The boys saw how important this was in the big picture, even though it allowed us to be on the same page as far as the kinds of issues that arise daily, but sometimes work against adults.  That’s because the kids have time to prepare an offensive, and the parents are caught unawares, and probably on opposite sides of the negotiating table.  Parenthood is tough enough with two parents united in their efforts, let alone with the two being on opposite sides of the kid-manufactured drama.

So whether you are interested in nature, exercise, communication, or just plain survival, put your walking shoes on, and grab your binoculars.  Get into the habit of taking baby steps to accomplish huge goals.  It’s fun.

"O'Neill's Roadside Cafe" *

“O’Neill’s Roadside Cafe”

I talked to my friend Mahlon Blue today.  He has been battling cancer for three years now, his “lounge warrior” days having caught up to him, the result of playing his music in night life venues for the past thirty-eight years.  Mahlon is a man of indomitable spirit; even though we were out of touch all these long years until about six months ago, he has always been a source of inspiration for me.

We served together in the U.S. Army, overseas in the Republic of Korea, in 1972-73.  We clerked in the 199th Personnel Service Company, and ran in the same circle outside the office.  Our crowd included those who preferred to find entertainment within the confines of the hooch (barracks), rather than amidst the night-life available in the clubs.

Blue, of course, perpetually had his guitar resting lightly on his lap; when he didn't, it was because he was eating or sleeping.  Born in Louisiana, his drawl was soft and warm, and his John Lennon spectacles always made it seem that he was laughing inwardly, at some joke that we were all welcome to share with him.  He was the same height as me, about five ten, and he looked out of place in a military setting.  He wore a blue work shirt, when he wasn't in fatigues, and he wasn't in fatigues any more than he had to be. 

Midway through my sixteen month tour of duty, I went home on leave, married, and returned to Korea with my wife, to reside off-post, in the capital city of Seoul.  Our apartment was open to my fellow brothers, who were able to escape hooch life and get a glimpse of normalcy for an evening.  We listened to music on technologically advanced systems, available in the PX, at ridiculously cheap prices, and recorded our own musical efforts, in an ongoing battle to forget that we were seven thousand miles from home.

After a particularly enjoyable occasion, when Mahlon and three of the guys had been out for dinner, and a relaxing evening, Mahlon composed a little musical ditty entitled “O’Neill’s Roadside Cafe.”  He and the other three played and recorded the song, and presented it to us the  next time they were out at the apartment.  I was overwhelmed by the gesture, not to mention that the ditty itself was quite enjoyable.

The song impacted me profoundly, helping me get through not only the rest of my tour of duty, but many hard times along the path since.  Inconceivable to me now, is the fact that I did not maintain contact with Mahlon when we went our separate directions, he to North Carolina, and I  to the San Gabriel Valley, twenty miles east of Los Angeles.

While writing a narrative of my military experiences last spring, I googled Mahlon’s name, and found a picture of him onstage, in a nightclub venue on Hatteras Island, North Carolina.  From this source I was able to get a phone number, and subsequently contact him.
  

With all of the rush of emotion that accompanied our reconnecting, came the knowledge that I had missed the passing of another military brother, Steve Addis, by a mere eight weeks.  I also found out that Mahlon had been battling the whole time alongside Steve.  There is nothing I can do to change the fact that i was not there when Steve passed, but I am here now, so I keep in close touch.

Mahlon told me on the phone a couple of weeks ago, that on his recent trip to Duke University, where he has been undergoing some very sophisticated treatment, he was being rolled out on a gurney, when he encountered another gurney, this one with a seven-year-old girl on it.  One glance told him that she had been undergoing chemo therapy, and he told himself, “You think you have it bad; you ain’t facing nothin’ like this little girl.”

Even in the midst of his own battle, he is able to see that others have it worse.  When I talk to him on the phone I want to tell him how much his words have meant to me all these years,  and how much his spirit still means to me today, but I can’t seem to find the right language.  How do I say something like this without sounding depressing or even maudlin?  I think I’ll use plain English, and I think I’ll do it today.