Saying Bye to Timmy

I am not one to acquire many material goods. I often say that one good way to not get robbed is not own anything worth stealing. I have no jewelry and no family heirlooms laying around. I have some computer equipment, most of it is too old to be valuable to anyone. With nothing to steal and a couple of big dogs protecting my land, I have never had a house break in. Or if I have, they haven't taken anything that I noticed. Maybe some some beer was stolen.

The first material good that I have loved was my Schwinn LeTour 10 speed bicycle when I was a teenager. My parents would buy me a bike, but not a good one. If I wanted a good one, I'd have to buy it myself. So I saved up my allowance and made money shoveling snow etc. After saving for about a year, I had a bike that I loved and I went everywhere with it. From my home town of Woonsocket, I'd bike into Providence (about 30 miles) just to go to my favorite comic book shop. I'd bike to school in the Spring and Fall and while living in the southern Rhode Island during the summer, I'd bike to the beach. The bike was my lifeblood. It got me everywhere. In my senior year of high school, when the bike was stolen out of my backyard, I was crushed. I learned quickly not to love any material goods because of how easily they could be taken away.

If it wasn't for my wife, I'd never buy anything new. Perhaps it is my working class background, other than my lap top, I wouldn't buy anything I could used and keep it until it died. It wasn't until 2004 that we bought a new car off the lot. I had always bought used cars and had to have them towed to the junk yard when I was done with them. My wife convinced me to buy new after we lived in Vermont for a few years because here in the north country, you need a good car. You can't do much without one. Here is where Timmy comes in. Timmy was our 2004 Toyota Matrix. I say "was" because we traded him in on Friday and got $2,000.00 as a trade in for our new 2014 Prius V. I did not break down and cry when we left him, but I came close; I felt weepy. Why? It is probably because of the time that I spent in him and not so much as a love for the actual product. Like when I lost my bike, the saying good bye to the car, was an end to an era. It is the loving of the product (like one does with jewelry) but what a product added to your life, the independence and opportunity, not the product.

We needed all-wheel drive and a car big enough to carry two or three dogs. We had a very good experience with an old used red Toyota Corolla (aka Ruby) so we went with the Matrix. Ten years brought us 172,440 miles with relatively no problems. We drove him as far south as Florida with our dog Rex when he was a pup. He learned to get excited when he saw the car or heard its engine. We drove to Chicago, Boston and Montreal many times and further into Canada (westward to Ottawa, Ontario and northward to Quebec City, Quebec). In 2009, Timmy became our old car when we bought our second Matrix, Dot. We referred to them collectively as the Matrices. Timmy was relegated to lugging the dogs or kayaks. Since I telecommute, he spent most of the day in our yard or garage awaiting my lunch time errands.

A lot of life happened in this car.

The fact that we traded the car in and didn't deliver it to a junk yard is pleasing to me because we know someone else will get to use him. We move on.  Let me introduce you to Luther:

The bonding will ensue shortly.

Fixing Major League Baseball #worldseries

When I was a kid, watching baseball on television was a ritual. My dad in his chair doing a crossword, my mom in her chair knitting while I sat on the rug between them with my baseball cards in front of me. When Jim Rice came up, I'd pull out his card and check the back for stats and interesting facts, I did the same for Wade Boggs, Dwight Evans and even for the opposing team. Watching baseball is a perfect spectator sport for the multi-tasker. Apparently, kids aren't having this experience with baseball anymore. I've heard that the game is too slow and too long. This is sad news.

If length of the game is the problem, then the problem is not going away anytime soon. It has steadily increased over time. In 2010, the average nine inning game was 2 hours and 55 minutes. This year it was 3 hours and 8 minutes. In that same period, run scoring per game has gone down. So it has nothing to do with higher scoring games. A number of ideas have been bouncing around to speed up the game. Some of them sound interesting and others are quite laughable. Implementation of some of them in the minor leagues and independent leagues has had mixed results. One of them is the 27 second pitch clock. If the pitcher takes longer than 27 second, an automatic ball is called. This may affect some of the more slower pitchers like Jonathon Papelbon who takes about 30 second between each pitch, but it won't affect most of them. Famously, Mark Buerhle of the White Sox only takes 16 seconds, really messing with a batter's timing because he is so fast.

Another rule would require the batter to keep one foot in the batter's box throughout an at-bat. If the batter stepped out, they would get a strike. A few other ideas: limiting the time between innings to 2 minutes and 5 seconds, having a designated runner (a DR) for the catcher so that he has time to put his equipment on after he bats and limiting the visits to the mound to three per team per game.  The problem I have with all this is that I find nothing wrong with the game. The longer the game, the more baseball I get. I don't think length of the game or slowness is the problem. People leave the game on in a room and do other things, often tuning in when the announcer gets excited or when your team is batting or when your favorite player comes up. Like a lot of sports fans, some people just tune in late in the game. Nothing compares to a walk-off win.

If Major League Baseball wants kids to be interested (which I agree is important for the longevity of the game), I have some ideas that don't involve messing up the actual game that we love. For one, make the games more accessible to everyone. Currently, play-off games start at 8pm to make them prime time, some of them end at 1am. In 2004, when my Sox were in the post season the entire month of October, I was  exhausted. All of New England was walking around like zombies the whole month. Everyone I know who had kids at the time, wanted to let the kids stay up to see the ends of the games, but they just couldn't. It was too late. If they started the games at 5 or 6pm on the East coast, we'd all be able to watch most of the game. The diehards would rather miss the beginning of the game than the end. This would mean that games would start at 2 or 3pm on the West coast which would be great for the kids. They could stagger these times depending on the target audience.

Make the MLB network free with basic cable. I am serious. When I was a kid, we could see the Red Sox game every night on TV 38 - Boston. This was before cable. Even when we spent the night in the cabin in southern RI, we had a black and white set on our screened porch. Sometimes the screen wasn't very clear and the sound was staticky so we'd turned down the volume on the TV and listened to the radio announcers. I would do like to do this today because I don't like Jerry Remy (the Red Sox television announcer) and I love Joe Castiglione (their radio announcer), but MLB instituted a time delay. The radio is a little bit behind the television so you are forced to listen to TV announcers if you are watching the TV. It almost seems like MLB does't want to you to enjoy the game. They keep putting up barriers for the fans.

One big barrier: the cost of the game. My dad used to take me to the games in the late 70's and early 80's. A working class parent could take their kid to the game for a small amount of money back then. We'd have the full baseball experience. The travel into Boston from Rhode Island, the walk through the Fenway neighborhood with the cornucopia of street vendors, the hot dogs, the peanuts, the crazy fans ... and of course, Fenway Park and the game. A fan was born, how could I help it. I was indoctrinated at an early age. I can't see a working class family getting this experience very often, if ever. We'd go once a year. How about something some ticket lottery or working class New England towns like Lowell, Brockton or Woonsocket? Good tickets for a family of four with coupon at the park. They do a little of this now. It needs to be done more. Minor league games are good for this now, but there is nothing like a Major League ball game.

My basic cable packages doesn't have ESPN, TBS, NESN or Fox Sports 1. That means that not only haven't I been able to see any post season games at home until the World Series started yesterday, but I haven't been able to see most of the Red Sox games all year. The only Red Sox games that I have been able to see in my home are the rare games that have played on the regular FOX network channel. Those have been rare. I'd pay for the MLB package, but that package blacks out Red Sox games if you live in New England. I would buy NESN (New England Sport Network) which plays most of the Red Sox games, but it would cost a small fortune. I'd have to upgrade to digital cable and a package that has several hundred other channels, none of which I would watch. I have no interest in the Golf Channel, the SOAP channel or BETV. The only things I watch on TV (not including Hulu or Netflix) is baseball, the major political events (speeches, debates etc.) and Jeopardy. I refuse to pay a fortune for a bunch of channels I don't watch just to have baseball in my home.  Since I only want baseball, I should be able to pay for only baseball. If they can't accommodate me then they don't get my business. I know I am not alone.

With an $8.00 a year subscription, I now listen to the game on my phone. Like when I was a kid, I keep busy during the game, looking up stats etc. It is a lot easier and more fun with the internet. It is because kids have such a short attention span that baseball is the perfect for them. They can play a video, catch on social media and watch a baseball game all at the same time. I wrote most of this while watching the game yesterday.  Game two is about to start. Gotta go.  Go Royals!

Americans Loves Violence #BoycottNFL

That's right, sorry to be the one to tell you ... Americans love violence. Oh yes, we feign outrage. We put warnings on movies and video games and maybe even trigger warnings on books. We are clearly offended by simulated violence. I could play Call of Duty (rated M for Mature) all day and then watch all the Die Hard movies (rated R for violence) and by the end, not a single person would have gotten hurt. Yet, a sport where people pound either causing bodily harm and in many cases brain damage, Americans welcome it into their homes every Autumn Sunday, no warning, rating or censorship. Simulate violence: bad. Real violence: a-okay.

How do football fans rationalize this? I can't say I know. They are experiencing cognitive dissonance perhaps. People seem to have an uncanny ability to compartmentalize what they call their beliefs from their actions. I once had a co-worker who used to claim he was a vegetarian then I'd go out to lunch with him at some of greasiest wiener joints in Providence and he'd not see a problem with this. I once went to lunch with friends who complained about tax loopholes throughout the meal and then take a receipt for our non-work related meal for his tax write off. When I pointed out to him that this write-off is a loop hole, he looked at me with complete confusion. We all know people like this, right? Like someone who complains about GMOs in her food or chemicals in her lawn, because they might cause cancer, as she smokes away at a cigarette. Among these cognitively dissonant friends, I put the person who claims that they abhor violence while wearing an NFL jersey. Football is violent. If you like football, you like violence. Admit it and move on.

Football is America's favorite sport. America loves violence. We have a history of violence, founded on violence. We were founded by a bloody revolution, a bloody civil war preserved us and bloody massacres expanded our borders for our Manifest Destiny. We all know this. Just admit America ... you love violence. Stop pretending that you don't. Denial is unhealthy.

I didn't always feel this way. When I was young, I thought I lived in a peaceful nation. I used to say, silly stuff, "there will never be another American war in our lifetime" and "after Viet Nam, we don't have an appetite for war." Then, in 1990, the first George Bush went into Iraq and people loved it. You'd ask them what they were doing for Friday evening, they'd said they were staying home and watching the war on CNN. They'd  stop off on their way from work to get a pizza and a 12 pack and hurry to the comfort of their couch to watch the missiles hammer Baghdad. Peace loving folk. Maybe not.

I had a similar epiphany a few years ago when the reports came out about concussions and Repetitive Head Injury Syndrome in football, I thought, well that's it, no more football. We now have proof that long term brain damage is being caused by playing football for a long-time.  Today, 1-3 NFL players will have some sort of brain injury in their lifetimes. We haven't stopped watching football after this information came out, of course not, if anything viewership has increased. The bloodier the better I guess. I still see people signing up their kid's for youth football.  The trend continues.

As our daily news programs continues to report about brutality that these players commit off the field, the beating of a wife in an elevator or the hospitalization of a child from being hit with a stick, we have to wonder who is to blame? These guys were once very little boys, we told them to go hit someone hard. If you do it well enough, you might make a lot of money. Turn on the television and watch a few more games, drink a few more beers, eat a few more chips and watch those commercials. The violence you are buying is no longer only on the field or on the screen. How many more of these thugs do you need to turn off the television or change the channel. In a capitalistic society, demand is consent. If you stop demanding it, the supply will disappear.

The St. Albans Raid

Since I've lived in the Northwestern Vermont, I've heard references to and seen signs for the St. Albans Raid. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it. I assumed it was something that happened related to the War of 1812 or something more obscure. I did not realize until recently that it was an American Civil War event. When I think of Civil War battles, I don't think of Vermont; I think of Pennsylvania or Virginia. Vermont is too far north yet, the St. Albans Raid was a American Civil War event, not so much a battle, unlike any other.

Bennet Young was a Confederate soldier who escaped to Canada. He made his way back to the Confederacy by way of Nova Scotia and Bermuda. He met with Confederate Generals with his idea to attack Northern cities. St. Albans, Vermont was a railroad town about 15 miles south of the Canadian border. At the time St. Albans had around 4,000 residents, now it has over 6,000. The railroad in town, the Vermont and Canada Railroad, was owned by the governor at the time, J. Gregory Smith.  The town had three banks. The idea was to attack the city, rob the banks and then burn it to the ground. The intent was to help the Confederacy with their financial problems and divert the North's attention to protect their cities from surprise attacks. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant and given a group of 21 cavalrymen to return to Canada with to organize the raid.

They arrived in St. Albans via train from Montreal in cells of 2 or 3 men on October 10th to the 19th of 1864 with the cover story that they were on a sporting vacation and took rooms in local hotels. On the morning of October  19th, Young sat in the hallway of the American House awaiting, reading his Bible as the soldiers gathered. He was posing as a preacher. At 3pm, they stood on separate street corners which is now Main Street and started yelling something about taking the city for the Confederacy. The townsfolk quickly understood that this wasn't a joke when their three banks started getting rob simultaneously while many of them were held at gun point in Taylor Park for their horses.

Obviously, the town was never burned to the ground. The damp rainy day prevent them from lighting their bottles of Greek fire. One of these buildings is still a bank (TD Bank), another holds an art gallery now and the other building no longer stands, the local Toyota dealer is there now. One town person was killed and another wounded as they got out of town heading north with $208,000.00. The only building that was destroyed was a shed. As they headed out of town, they diverted their trip north to go northeast and then east. They headed toward a town called Sheldon because it also had a bank, but the bank was closed. They set fire to a bridge that was put out immediately by the local preacher. The bridge survived for another 100 years. They stole a horse while in town from the house in the picture below. In the upstairs bedroom lie a Yankee veteran who was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia earlier that year. Ironically, he was the nephew of Reverend Reuel Keith, who married Robert E. Lee and his bride, Mary.

Reverend Keith is buried next door behind the Presbyterian church in downtown Sheldon. 

This was the time of the telegraph. So word got out of their approaching the border so they split up as they reached Enosburg, a larger town than Sheldon. The raiders made it into Canada where they were arrested but eventually freed. Only $88,000.00 were recovered. Local legend is that one of the local farmers found the remainder in a hole in the ground and built a beautiful brick house that still stands. 

At the time, the raid was considered a success. Yankee General Philip Sheridan was ripping through the Shenandoah Valley so any victory helped the spirits of the Confederacy. The raid did scare many of the American towns on the border of Canada thinking they were next. Canadians at the time were still British subjects and were afraid to be pulled into the war. The raid turned popular opinion against the Confederacy.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls and the Magical Negroes

If you ever get the impression that American society is not white-male-centric, you don't have to go very far to change your mind back. Just watch a movie.  When I look at Wikipedia's list of top grossing films of all time very few of them have a female lead and I can't find one with a non-white lead.  I guess you can't blame Hollywood if they are marketing their films to their audience ... but do white guys watch more movies than other demographics?  I don't know, really.

It is not just who the lead of the film is but the tone of the films. The story arcs of most American films revolve around white people. An all too common trope is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.  This term was created by the film critic Nathan Rabin back in 2005 after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, but the term can apply to films much earlier. It refers to a stock female character in a film that influences the main character (a white male) and is usually his romantic interests. She is quirky, attractive and girlish. A majority of the mainstream films made in America have a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Why create something new if an old trope will suffice? Most people won't notice that they are watching the same old thing. We have Barbara Streisand in What's Up Doc?, Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot, Carrie Fisher and Natalie Portman in the Star Wars flicks, Natalie Portman in Garden State and to a lesser extent Beautiful Girls, Emily Watson in Punch Drunk Love, Kate Hudson and Meg Ryan in pretty much everything they have ever been.  They have no growth, very little depth and merely revolve around the protagonist like a satellite, not doing much but influencing the tides.

Things are changing I hear. Of the 40 movies released this summer by major studios, 17 of them had women leads. This is less than half but higher than most years. But is this really an improvement?  The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media did a study of 122 recent family films, of 5,554 speaking roles only 29.2% were female. This is the same ratio as 1946. Of these 40, there was only one female director. Perhaps that is where the studio needs to start to fix this problem. This is a problem!

A lesser used trope is the Magical Negro or as Spike Lee called it the Super Duper Magical Negro. The Magical Negro doesn't always have magical powers but when they do, they help out white people. Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance appears on golf courses and helps white men with their golf game or Michael Clarke Duncan's character in The Green Mile is a magical prisoner on death row that uses his magic to help the white guards. I am not making this shit up. I don't think there is a single black person in any Stephen King book that doesn't exist to help white people. Mother Abagail in The Stand (the magical old black lady), Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers' character) in The Shining and Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman's character) in The Shawshank Redemption are example of this.

I want to say that this trend can't continue, but since woman are a majority perhaps this is just naive. According to the Hollywood reporter, 54% of film goers this years were Caucasian while making up 60% of the population. White movie-goers decreased while Hispanic and black movie-goers increased. Will we get more Forrest Whitaker and Steve McQueen (the director) in the years to come? I hope so because I love those guys. This year's Best Movie Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave was a great film. But please note, it is not on the list of the top grossing films. Most Americans want an escape at the movie theater, not introspection. We'll save that for our Netflix queue. I watched it on the plane. No one wants a downer when you drop $8.00 at the box office.

The First of the World Wars

This year marks the 100th year anniversary of the start of World War I, but we could easily call the war between France and Britain in the 18th century (1754 to 1763) a World War. Here in America and in English speaking Canada, we refer to it as the French and Indian War.  It spanned most of the continents of the world: Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. The belligerents were mainly France and England but their empires spanned much of the globe at the time. In French Canada they call it La Guerre de la Conquête (the War of Conquest). The French name has a lot of meaning for them in that it marks when France was removed from the North American mainland and French Canada (New France) was taken over by the British. We now know this land as Quebec just a few miles north of me. They still grapple with maintaining their French identity in an English nation.

Europeans call this war, The Seven Year War, which is odd because it lasted nine years. The name Nine Year War was already taken, The seven years refers to the most active years of the war, '56 through '63. The Swedes and Prussians referred to it as the Pomeranian War which describes the region that they were fighting over. This theatre ended in a stalemate. In India it is referred to as The Third Carnatic War which was basically French and British troops battling over the India. Britain's victory left them as the dominant colonial power on the Indian sub-continent.

This all started on the border of Pennsylvania and Ohio when a 22 year old Colonel in the British Army, named George Washington, left Fort Pitt (aka Pittsburgh) to inform some French settlers that they were encroaching on British land.  The French refused and continued to build Fort Duquesne. Washington returned with an army to remove them and war began. The British were allied with the Iroquois Confederacy (which was huge) while the French were allied with the Abenaki, the Algonquin and the Shawnee among many other native people that I never heard of.

France cared more about gains in Europe and maintaining possessions in the Caribbean. Canada was a money loser for France and didn't care if they lost it that much. The sugar crop from the Caribbean Islands were too important to their economy. While Britain decided to concentrate on North America. By 1759, Britain controlled Quebec and by 1760 Montreal surrendered.  Britain attacked many of the places that were vital to French economy (the slave, sugar and gum trade) in Senegal, Martinique and the Caribbean. In the Treaty of Paris, Louisiana goes to Spain and Canada goes to Britain while France ends up keeping their major Caribbean Islands.

It was this war that put Britain in debt.  If not for the huge war debt accumulated during this war, American independence may not have ever happened just a few years later. Britain raised taxes on the colonies to pay off the debt sand rebellion ensued in responses to over-taxation. The American Revolution may have lasted longer if Britain could afford it and the US would never exist.  George Washington started the war that indirectly lead to our country being created. He really is the father of our country.

The Strangers I Have Come To Hate

I walk along the road in front of my house and I see the same trash on every walk: Budweiser beer cans, cigarette butts and disbursed lottery tickets. I hate these people who can't keep their trash in their cars. Okay, maybe hate is too strong of a word.  Not sure why people don't think they have to keep their own trash in their own cars. I have a social worker / minister friend who is very analytical. She would say that they are not invested in their society. Of course, I take the other route. I just think they are dickheads. A few weeks ago, I went kayaking in St. Albans VT in a lovely alcove of Lake Champlain. This is one of the few places in New England that you will see a Northern map turtle. They are all over the place.  You wouldn't know that there was a patch of pristine wilderness hidden away from the huge pile of trash that lie at the entrance of the boat launch. I almost didn't put the boat in because of how disgusting the launch was. People were fishing there and other boaters were going about their business ... no one was picking up the trash. Maybe hate isn't too strong of a word. I picked up what I could. I don't think I will ever understand how someone can go fishing somewhere but not be interested in the long term health of where they fish. Are they not invested or do they just not connect the dots? Do they think that someone else will pick it up?  I am not sure, but I think it has more do with people not seeing how their actions affect the rest of the world. Dots not connecting or synapses not firing.

Several years ago, my wife and I had to make the decision on whether to have children or not. It was a complicated decision with many factors. I mentioned in an earlier post about the environment being a factor, but that was a minor factor. The biggest factor was my wallet. Both my wife and I spent a good part of our lives being poor. For me, it was my 20's, when I lived in Boston, that I was flat broke. I didn't want to revisit that era in my life. It wasn't until I was in my 30's that I became financially stable. Having kids would have brought me right back there. One of the other minor factors is that we really didn't like the world we would be bringing a child into. People's priorities seem so wrong. If I had a child, I think I would be unbearable, especially about the environment. I don't know why everyone that has a child isn't an environmentalist. What kind of world are we leaving them? How can I think that we are going to resolve this when I can't even expect a fisherman to clean up the shoreline where they fish? The fishermen that day are lucky I didn't have any progeny, I think I would have yelled at them. The world should be grateful ... I have dogs instead.

Three of the four dogs that I have had could be considered rescues. I don't know who owned my dog Rex before we did. I am glad I don't know them. It has been two years since he has passed and I still get very sad when I think of him. The act of missing him is a grab bag of emotions. I laugh a little, I cry a little and occasionally I get angry. When we got him from the Humane Society, he was damage goods. He was six months old and had a lot of fear aggression. When he got afraid, he got aggressive. He bit two people that I know of, one of my neighbors and an incompetent dog sitter. We noticed early with him that if you raised your hand too fast, he'd duck thinking we were going to hit him. We don't know the details to how he got that way. I know nothing about the strangers that had him before us. They are strangers to me, but I hate them. I have no problem using that word. They are the scum of the earth, the wrong kind of people, the bane of humanity, the dregs of mankind, the unclean masses, the riffraff, rubbish and vermin. At this point I have thank Thesaurus.com for actually have an entry for Scum of the Earth.

I still have my German Shepherd, Cokie. We got her at six weeks old back in 2002. She is getting quite old now and has difficulty walking. I have to carry her down the stairs a few times a day for her bathroom breaks. When we got her she was only a few pounds, half of her body weight was worms. The dog that we got free from an ad in the paper cost us a fortune at her first vet appointment. We found her at a trailer park in Crowne Point, NY. The people who had her said no one wanted her because she was a runt. She was living outside about to be put down. She might be the best dog I ever had. She is the only dog we've had since she was a puppy and our best behaved dog, so I think we've done well by her.

Stray and neglected dogs are the unfortunate residue of irresponsible humans. After my lab Max passed away a few months ago, we realized our house was very quiet. Too quiet. We went from having three dogs to having one, in about a year. The two dogs that passed were the loud ones. The one remaining was the quiet well behaved dog that is now so lame and old that she doesn't leave her bed all day long.  We need more dogs, but we could not handle a puppy just yet because Cokie is just not up for that amount of energy just yet.  We joined a fostering group for dogs in transition. These dogs are rescued from bad situations and need a place to stay while a permanent owner can be found.  So far we have fostered one dog, named Tammy, a black lab from the Carolinas. Apparently, she was bred by a irresponsible breeder for hunting. After they determine which pups will be good hunting dogs, they dispose of the rest of the litter. She was left somewhere out in the woods to fend for herself. She was found and brought to the rescue facility. This was the most screwed up dog I've ever met. She was afraid of doorways, wouldn't walk on a leash and would pee when I picked her up. When I brought her outside in my fenced-in yard, she would hide under the porch all day. Luckily, a wonderful family in southern Vermont adopted her and I only had her in my home for a few weeks. The family that adopted her had three old labs and had just lost two of them due to cancer. Their one remaining dog would not eat because he was lonely. When Tammy came to live with them, he started eating and I hear they are best of friends now and she is walking on a leash.

Sometimes people adopt dogs and don't realize how much work they are going to be. But instead of finding a good home for them or bring them to a shelter, they just let them go. Most Vermont shelters are non-kill so you can drop a dog off without it being a death sentence.  Our latest dog, Hazel (she's a keeper) was caught after six weeks of wandering around a town here in Northern VT. Obviously, someone didn't want her and didn't do a good job of finding her a new home. The people in this town tried hard to catch her and a few people tried to kill her, I hear, with poison traps. She is an awesome dog with one obvious problem. She has major separation anxiety. She just loses it when we leave her alone. We are working on the problem with her. In the three weeks that we've had her she has destroyed two screens, a metal crate and has ruined part of our fence. I got home one day and she was waiting for me outside the fence. We've been able to leave the home once, so far, without incident. Perhaps she is figuring out that we are coming back.

In his novel, Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins writes that "There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.” I guess I am one of those people who aren't smart enough to know better because I think there are two types of people in the world: those that cause most of the problems and those who are, at least, working on the solutions. I like to think I am in the latter.  Do I seem self righteous, here? Sure, I am self-righteous and if you are one of those douche bags who is being so casual about the lives of these beautiful animals, you really need to know, I am better than you. You are the strangers that I hate and I don't think that is too strong of a word. I think it the perfect word to describe how I feel about you.