Goodbye to Our Dog “Blue”
By T Blogger | May 29, 2007
My wife and I lost a good friend Sunday (May 27, 2007). Her name was “Blue”. She was a Dalmatian and she was fifteen years old. Those of you who have never enjoyed the company of a good dog for a long period of time will probably stop reading this now. I understand.
Blue came into our lives when she was eight weeks old. A family friend had bred her registered Dalmatian female with a registered male belonging to another friend. There was a litter of eight puppies. All but two were born stone deaf. Blue was one of the deaf puppies. The puppies that could hear were sold. We were offered our pick of the remaining puppies.
When we went to pick our puppy, they were huddled in a little pack in our friend’s kitchen. As I sat in the kitchen, looking at the little cluster of puppies, one of them broke from the group and ran straight to me. It was Blue, and she didn’t wait to be chosen. She chose us.
This pup was a spotted bundle of pure energy. She had one beautiful blue eye and one brown eye. We later learned that the presence of blue eyes is often an indicator of congenital deafness in Dalmatians. When we applied for her individual registration with the AKC we named her “Blue Endeavour”, for her blue eye and the Space Shuttle that had recently flown a mission. We called her “Blue” for short, but since she was deaf, I suppose she never learned her name.
I won’t bore you with the minutia of her life with us. But fifteen years is a long time to live with a dog, and now that she has died it is almost impossible to recall a major event in our lives during those fifteen years that did not involve Blue.
In January of 1998 I was taking Blue on her nightly walk — she loved long walks — when I started experiencing pain in my throat and neck. We were almost a mile away from home when I began to realize I was having a heart attack. Blue and I headed home, and from time to time I dropped her leash to rub my left shoulder. Ignoring the dropped leash, she never left my side until we made our way back home.
Because of the heart attack I stopped walking Blue. I had started letting her and our other dog out at night to run up and down the street for exercise. One night in the late Spring of 2000 while the two dogs were out on their run I heard a lot of barking and yelling in front of my house. The dogs were barking at a man on the sidewalk directly in front of our house. I called out to Brandy, the other dog, and she came into the house, then I headed out to get Blue. Of course she couldn’t hear me or the drunk wannabe gangster on the sidewalk. Before I could get to the sidewalk this frightened little “tough guy” pulled out a pistol, shot Blue and ran. Blue’s front leg was shattered and we were faced with the choice of putting her down or having the leg amputated. We chose the latter.
She adapted well to her new three-legged life and we all grew older together. But time and aging are relentless, and in the last year she had become much frailer and had lost her appetite. She was probably in pain, but since she never whimpered or complained in any way, it was hard to tell. One day about a month ago she just wouldn’t get up. We took her to the vet, fearing that he might recommend putting her down. Her old joints were ravaged by arthritis and old age, and the vet prescribed a course of prednisone treatments. She got better almost overnight. Her appetite returned, she started walking again and even wanted to play. So for a few weeks we had our old Blue back. The syncopated “tick –tick tick” of her three-legged perambulations about the house was music to my ears. She started resting her chin on my knee again — something she hadn’t done for years. But, being an aging human, I know all too well that life and health are ephemeral gifts. Sunday afternoon Blue’s old heart just gave out on her. She was standing tall in the yard, bouncing up and down on her one front leg and barking at the birds that were daring to fly over her domain when she just collapsed. She twitched a couple of times and tried bravely to catch a breath — then she gave up. We buried her in the back yard. There have been many tears.
There is no better friend than a good dog. A dog doesn’t care how much money you have, or what kind of car you drive, or even how nice a house you have. When you come home your dog is always glad to see you. A dog asks nothing more that a bit of food and an occasional pat on the head. Blue was my friend and I miss her a lot. I am not a particularly religious person, so I am not too sure about the existence of an afterlife. I hope there is one. I hope that Blue is there now, with four good legs under her, running flat out and finally hearing even the faintest whispers of leaves rustling in the wind. Goodbye old friend.
©2007, Tom Weeks
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No New Immigration Laws – NOW
By T Blogger | May 25, 2007
Many opponents of the so-call “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation now before the Senate still fall into the trap of believing that we actually need new legislation — just not this legislation. Although I am glad these commentators see the dangers of this new legislation, I think they are missing the point.
I believe that most Americans have absolutely no faith in “The Government’s” will to do anything to stem the flow of illegal aliens into our country. We don’t feel a need for any new laws. We simply want existing laws to be enforced. No administration since Eisenhower’s has seriously tried to control our borders. In 1986 the granting of amnesty to illegal aliens was supposed to be tied to tougher control of our borders. It was not. In the matter of illegal immigration, the will of the People is being ignored, by Republicans and Democrats alike. This arrogance by the political class is the stuff upon which revolutions are built.
The Democrats have the unmitigated gall to say that because of Bush, Americans all live in fear of losing their livelihood, yet they proclaim that allowing a flood of cheap labor is somehow the “right” thing to do.The Republicans, wallowing in their self-pity for getting the short end of the power stick, show even more condescending arrogance than the Democrats. Their big money donors want that flow of cheap labor to continue unabated, and these Republican pols want to continue to be a part of the ruling class, so they assume a detestable “We know more about this than you unwashed yahoos do” attitude.
In a recent column Deborah J. Saunders asked if the politicians think the American voters are stupid. They do (and on some issues they are correct). But this time, they are dead wrong. We are not that stupid!
©2007, Tom WeeksПодаръци
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Sports, Race and PC Newspeak
By T Blogger | April 13, 2007
If I may be permitted to misquote H.L. Mencken: No one ever went broke underestimating the memory of the American public. When the Revs. (Jackson & Sharpton), the news media, and all the other usual suspects fell all over each other in their rush to condemn three Duke University student athletes for raping a “poor black girl”, it had not been all that long ago that the cultural shoe was on the other foot. Let me just say two words: Kobe Bryant.
During the whole Duke lacrosse affair, the identity of the alleged victim was closely guarded. A spokesman for the New Black Panther Party anointed the accuser with sainthood and declared that “Guilty” was the only acceptable verdict. Rewind, if you will to 2003. A rich black man is accused of rape by a poor white girl. His team of high-dollar lawyers immediately (through third parties, of course — deniability intact) get her identity spread on the Internet, and commence an assault on her character that would make the Marine Expeditionary Force proud. The usual race-baiting suspects immediately get their face time on television proclaiming Bryant the victim of “racism”. The results of this year-long assault on the alleged victim are history. There was never any doubt in my mind that Bryant’s big bucks would make his little problem go away. Contrast the treatment of Bryant with that of the Duke defendants. No cries of Bryant being “rich black hooligan,” or “privileged, spoiled thug”. No. That would not fit the political correctness template which frames “news” stories in todays media outlets. Bryant was constantly referred to as a “gentleman”. Conversely, the Durham prosecutor won his Democratic primary race by getting many minutes of TV face time calling the lacrosse players “hooligans”. Their guilt was simply assumed — because they were white and not “poor”.
If you will forgive a slight digression — contrast if you will the similar conferring of sainthood on the Rutgers University women’s basketball team in the wake of Don Imus’s nasty comments to the conferring of hooliganism on college athletes who happen to play a game with very few black players. The usual feminist man-bashers were quick to point out that male athletes are all potential rapists anyway. Let’s see, the female athletes that Imus insulted are, by virtue of having been on a good basketball team “The best of the best”, but the guys on the winning Duke lacrosse team are “hooligans”. Give me a break. Imus was, in fact, referring to the Rutgers team’s tatooed appearance and rough play. And if their lives have been altered by the passing comments of a grouchy old has-been curmudgeon on a radio show with very few listeners, perhaps they aren’t as “rough” as Imus thought they were.
©2007, Tom Weeks
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The State of the President
By T Blogger | January 24, 2007
The “State of the Union” address is a perfunctory bit of political theater. Mr. Bush, for whom I voted in 2004, delivered a pretty good speech. Given the relentless attacks he suffers every day from Democrats and spineless “Republicans”, when he spoke about foreign policy and the war on terrorism, Mr. Bush demonstrated great courage and even considerable oratorical skill. One is reminded of Lincoln in the darkest days of the Civil War. Hardly anyone had a kind word to say about old Abe, but he never wavered. He knew in his heart that he was doing the right thing, and he knew that the Constitution gave hin the authority to do it. He fired generals willy-nilly until he finally got his Grant. With Grant at the helm of his war machine Lincoln proceeded, against a great public outcry, to wage the bloody war of attrition needed to preserve our Union.
Mr. Bush’s situation eerily parallels that of Lincoln, with the important exception that the war Bush feels honor bound to win is a foreign war. The yammering of short-sighted political opportunists has reached the level of the yapping of a pack of jackals establishing their pecking order. So I was heartened by what I saw during the speech. Bush looked a little bit grayer, and the weight of his office showed in his shoulders, but he looked the yammerers in the audience in the eye and said what needed to be said.
We cannot lose the war in Iraq. The president is the Commander-in-Chief. Most of the incumbents in both houses of the congress were downright eager to get their vote FOR this war on record. It is time for the yammerers to fish or cut bait. They either want us to win in Iraq, or they don’t. If they don’t — SHAME ON THEM.
©2007, Tom Weeksикони
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Me, Jagger, and the Panhandler
By T Blogger | January 3, 2007
Yesterday I drove to the local Wal*Mart store to pick up a prescription for my wife. After I pulled into the parking space I left the car running so I could finish listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Let It Bleed”, one of my favorite Stones songs. I was sitting there, singing along in my best Jaggeresque voice — “We all need someone we can lean on, and if you want to, you can lean on me.” — when a guy about my age (sixty-something) walked straight up to my driver’s side window and knocked on it. I resented his intrusion into my little musical interlude, but I rolled the window down anyway, expecting an elaborate sob story and a request for a ride, or some money, or both.
Now I’ll confess that I am not the world’s most generous person, and when I give money to a panhandler I expect it to be used at a crack dealer’s house or a liquor store within a few minutes of the mendicant’s receipt of it. It is also the case that my wife and I are, by all current standards, living at the “poverty” level ourselves. So I imagine I had that skeptical “So what’s your sad little tale?” look on my face as I turned to face this fellow. He looked a little rough around the edges, but his clothes were clean if a little threadbare, and his breath did not smell of alcohol. He looked right into my eyes and said, “I’m homeless and hungry. Can you help me?” I reached down to lower the volume on my car’s CD player, but I hit the “next track” button instead, and as luck would have it, the next track on my homemade CD was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. As the horn played the intro, the words of the chorus echoed through my brain: “You can’t always get whay you want, but if you try sometimes, well you just might find you get what you need.” The guy must have thought I was ignoring him as I fiddled with the CD player controls, and he turned and walked away. I got out of the car and called out for him to come back. I had a twenty, a five, and two one dollar bills in my pocket. I grabbed the twenty, handed it to him and said, “I can help you, brother.” The man’s eyes filled with tears and he reached out and gave me a hug. My eyes also filled with tears as he walked away.
The bean counters would say that he became $20.00 richer and my wife and I (already quite poor enough) became $20.00 poorer. But $20.00 does not come close to quantifying the way that giving up that cash made me feel. I felt like a billionaire.
©2007, Tom Weeks
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