Buckie with Valerie, my granddaughter

I've learned from past experience not to mention to most
people that my dog has died. Eight out of ten of them
would say, with little feeling, "Oh, that's too bad." And
then, inevitably, "I know where you can get another
dog.." Or, "Have you been to the shelter? They're
advertising all the time..."

And I feel like replying, "Say, that good friend of
yours that died? Not to worry. I'll help you find
another. Let's go to the mall. Lots of people walking
around there. We'll get one of them to be your friend."

Those who have had great relationships with dogs
know better. They know that dogs are not
interchangeable.

A former neighbor used to irritate me by saying she
was a dog lover and so was I.

I don't love all dogs anymore than I love all humans. I
care about their welfare, like being around most of
them, and have dearly loved two in my lifetime.

Yesterday I thought about planting something to cover
the bare ground where I dug Buckie's grave. I'd like a
blanket of roses, but they require sun and the grave is
shaded by trees near the creek where he splashed and
played, and where he went to drink first thing every
morning.

Paging through some catalogues, I found the perfect
plant: a kerria. This shrub, with its small fluffy
yellow blooms, has been around a long time. I've
heard it called a kitchen rose. It was described in
the catalogue as tolerating part sun but preferring shade.
Now I have to see if I can find one locally. The one in
the catalogue has double blooms, but I'd just as soon
have the old fashioned kind.

Not only do I want something to cover the bare ground,
but I keep thinking an attractive bush might ensure that his
grave remains undisturbed. I won't be here so very much
longer myself, and I don't want any subsequent owners
digging in that spot.

Writer's Block Road Block

The ordinary crises of daily life have kept me from
writing for this blog. And more. Getting a building
erected and moving about 8,000 books and pieces of
ephemera into it, a process still going on, along with
a winnowing of the books and bits because the building
from which they are being moved is about four times the
size of their destination. And more.

Three members of my family have died this year, most
recently the dog that has shared my life for a bit
more than thirteen years. And only those whose lives
have been as interdependent with that of a dog or cat
will understand when I say that my heart was pierced
more severely by his loss than by the loss of either
of my relatives. For I had contact with them only
occasionally, but Buckie was with me every day, greeted
me each morning and evening, rode along in the van with
me most of the time, and slept beside my bed each night.
I've had one other dog and one cat that I dearly loved,
and several that I liked a lot, but Buckie was the most
wonderful dog I have ever known. He leaves a big hole in
my life. All around me now are echoes of his absence.

Closet Southerners Tweeting Away

I'd barely gotten used to the cellphone tweeters when I
heard about twittering.

Getting used to them doesn't mean I've become more
tolerant, just that I don't look around when a stranger
barks out "Hello!" near me. I still wish I didn't have to
hear all the details of people's lives. Do they have to
talk so loud, are they afraid their phone won't actually
carry their words to the person on the other phone?

"Oh, nothing much.
I'm sitting here in the dentist's office.
What?
Mary's here.
Mary's right here with me.
What have you been doing?"

I knew that many were texting to one another when
they were not communicating verbally, now they can
also report their progress through life to the whole
world by twitting.

"I had dinner at Uncle Fred's then
drove to the park, saw Robert standing in
his yard and waved to him..."

My old dog ties me down, he needs a lot of
attention. I haven't been north in a few years, so I was
thinking that the cellphone talk I hear was particularly
Southern, this compulsion to report with endless
detail, and to inform. That was the atmosphere in
which I grew up. They noticed everything. They knew
where you were and where you had been and many
of the things you did or said while you were there.
There was no privacy.

Then I heard about twittering and looked at it and now
it's clear to me. There's a bunch of closet Southerners
out there typing away on their little keypads.

I bet when I do get to go north again or if I head west
and find myself among people talking on cellphones
that I'll feel right at home.

New Year's Traditions

I had forgotten about the traditional New Year's dinner
until I saw the grocery ads at the end of December.

My folks never forgot. Every January first there were
bowls of turnip greens and black eyed peas and a
platter of hog jowl on the table.

The greens were supposed to represent bills, the peas
coins, and the meal an assurance of good luck all the
year, as one of the grandmothers would remind us.
If Grandma Brewer was there, she and Daddy kept
urging one another to another helping, joking about
how rich they would become if only they could eat
enough greens and peas. Grandma's chin would be
shiny with grease from the fat meat. Grandma Jones
would even laugh and comment on how much the
others were eating, and she would put a little more
on her own plate than usual.

Nobody paid any attention to me, they knew I would
be picking at the food. The greens weren't bad with a
dash of vinegar from the bottled hot pepper and there
was cornbread with a bit of margarine, but the peas
were cooked until the water they were cooked in was
thick as brown gravy. The little slab of fat meat- they
couldn't afford a large piece- had been cooked in the
peas so it was also as brown as the pea stock and it
quivered when anyone walked across the floor. Even
if I believed that it meant good luck, I couldn't bring
myself to touch it.

And I didn't believe. Every year the same ritual with
the peas, the greens, the jowl, and every year there
were months when the rent wasn't paid, the many
breakfasts that consisted only of biscuits and margarine,
the school lunch times when I would work at my desk
while the other children ate.

I don't think they really believed in the magic of peas
and jowl, either, but my grandmothers had always had
the special New Year's dinner and my parents carried
on the tradition. Traditions are comforting, and who
knows? maybe this year would be better. I think it was
a ritual not of belief, but of hope.

The Blago Book Club

The Chicago Sun-Times "opinion writers", under the
heading of "Blago Book Club", are having a discussion
with readers of the 78 page indictment of Illinois
Governor Rod Blagojevich. What did you like best
about it? Which part is most interesting?

in a related matter, Barack Obama's senate seat is for
sale on eBay, not by the Illinois Governor, who was
doing his best to auction it off, but by a college student
who will send the winner a before-and-after picture of
the supposed seat and by a pair of young men pictured
holding the "seat" aloft and promising a free domain
name to the winner.

Blagojevich is probably kicking himself for not having
thought of eBay, he must have forgotten Sarah Palin's
example. Too bad there isn't a Nobel Prize for
corruption. Blagojevich would surely win it this year.
He has even shocked the citizens of Chicago, that city
where offices and whole wards have been for sale,
where the dead rise from the graveyards and march
to the polls.

But one Chicago woman, after reading about
Blagojevich said: "We might as well open up the
jail house and turn those people out to run the
government.

Welfare Queens

The top dogs of the Big Three automakers zoomed
into Washington, tin cups in hand, seeking handouts
of taxpayers' money. They came in their three
separate corporate jets, flights costing thousands of
dollars, couldn't even jet pool.

GM's president didn't like the idea of being asked if
he was willing to give up his $22-million salary.
Ford's Alan Mulally made slightly less last year- only
$21.6-million.

The American Insurance Group (AIG), shortly after
a multi-billion handout financed by taxpayers,
treated four executives and friends to a pheasant
hunt in England. Total cost: $86,000. AIG had, a
month or so before, provided a $500,000 retreat at
a fancy California spa for its top dogs. After sipping
fine wines and shooting pheasants, its hand was out
again for a few more billions.

Remember when Ronald Reagan created the myth of
the Welfare Queen? This was supposedly a brazen
creature who showed up in a Cadillac to collect
welfare checks, several of them. The effort to portray
as rich cheats those forced to subsist on welfare
continued for another decade or so. Too bad Reagan
isn't around to see these real live Welfare Queens.

Hope is Not Enough

My vote, here in the red belly of Georgia, didn't help
elect him, and I doubt that my urging others to vote
for Barack Obama had much effect. No one
seemed impressed by my Obama/Biden buttons,
nor indeed seemed even to notice that I wore them.
The signs I placed in my yard near the road were
only there for three days before they were stolen.

I didn't get to Chicago for the mass ceremony in
Grant Park where I participated in the protests
against the Vietnam War forty years ago. I have
no television reception, but I did get to watch on
my computer as people came into the park, and
the park filled until faces stretched far into the
distance and still there were people coming down
the sidewalks, then after the speech the great
surging mass moved slowly toward the exits until
little clumps of people could break away and
start walking back along the sidewalks. And I was
deeply moved, especially by all the beautiful young
people, but also by those of all ages who had been
told by the leader they elected that he believed in
them. America can be rebuilt. he told them, repeat-
ing several times the phrase they would echo back:
"Yes we can".

I hope they will still be able to believe in themselves
at the end of the next four years. I hope they aren't
counting on recovering the way of life they once had,
for no leader, no matter how qualified, is going to be
able to more than leverage a few speed bumps into
the downward spiral of a morbid and decaying system.