When I was practicing medicine and saw everything going down the tubes, I got out. It all started when a poweful BUREAUCRAT told me I had to do things the way THEY wanted me to, not the way I had always done it, not the way I was TAUGHT to do it, not the way I KNEW would work…the way THEY wanted it…didn’t take a Ouija board for me to decide. Our house was paid for and we had enough to live on…so we got the hell out of Dodge. And…you know what? It hasn’t been nearly as tough as I feared. With my lady always there to support me…even when she was frightened, I KNOW we did the right thing, and I can only love her more for what she’s meant to me during such a disturbing and difficult time.
The sad thing is…afterward, I realized I had been practicing medicine at the pathetic end of medicine’s golden age in America…and on Earth, the end of good and promising things. Think about THAT, you overweight guys, or you people with stains in your genome or a bad family history. Today’s merciless actuaries consider you EXPENDABLE! Insurance companies, medicare toadies, government bureaucrats, and the tyranny of their paid, true-believer “nurse co-ordinators”, will see to it you haven’t a prayer. I hold those nurses in greatest contempt…traitors to a beautiful, promising, and incredibly useful profession. If you ask me, those women (and a few men) have a LOT to answer for.
Almost singlehandedly, they stepped in line, sat down, picked up their earpieces, and killed a magnificent and successful health care process.  I’ll leave it to history to tell them what they’ve done, but to tell the truth, most of them will probably be dead long before that. I bet they got a lot of perks and raises, and in the eyes of their overlords, I’m sure they earned them. Killing a system isn’t easy, but they figured out just how to do it…with a LOT of oversight, I imagine. I’m sure the most enthusiastic got ENORMOUS bonuses, but they better pray they don’t develop a debilitating disease. Even those huge rewards won’t be enough…and the system they and their masters left in place won’t cover it.
These days I’m also beginning to believe I’ve lived through the end of America as the shining beacon on a hill. When I think of how many people DIED to preserve that concept, it sickens me, particularly when I see how many now clamor to suck on the biggest government tit they can find, attach, and keep sucking voraciously no matter what happens, no matter the cost, no matter the debt incurred. Almost all of us live on a budget. We KNOW if we spend more than we take in, there’ll be a reckoning, but that’s only us at the bottom of the political food chain…not governments caught in the endless spiral of ever-increasing, unpaid-for largesse, mostly to cream their opponents in their next election, I suspect.  Just now, I think it’s time for a little Shelley…and Ozymandias…one of my FAVORITE poems.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Most scholars believe Ozymandias was another name for Rameses the Great, who ruled Egypt through at least five generations of his subjects. Absolutely powerful, rich, prolific, and successful, he was revered as a god, but he could NEVER have seen how he, too, was living at the pathetic end of a good thing. After Rameses II, there was a succession of increasingly weaker pharoahs, ultimately leaving the door open to invaders from the north culminating with the ROMANS, the rapacious Romans, who killed Cleopatra, the last pharoah (pharoahette?), locked the whole place down, and sort of kept Egypt as their own personal larder…which they sucked DRY. Old Ozzy didn’t see it coming, but it was out there nonetheless…waiting to destroy what he had built, planned, hoped for, and thought would last FOREVER.
Dazzled by endless reassurances of his primacy, Rameses never saw it, and you know, to me he sounds a lot like those idiots in Washington. Like him, they don’t know or see it, but it’s out there…and IT’S COMING! I’ve lived through the end of so many good things: the end of innocence, the end of trust, the end of social civility, the end of freedom to proclaim your beliefs without scorn, the end of common, proper English, the end of FAMILY as a central, stabilizing hub, the end of excellence as a goal for education, the end of promise, the end of fiscal responsibility…and the end of hope.  The ”lone and level sands” are swirling in; I just pray there’ll be another poet like Shelley somewhere out there in the future to document our fall so eloquently.

First of all…and you gotta understand this…I’m not a RESOLUTION kind of guy. I live in a fluid world, my life a river not a succession of speed bumps, but on January first everybody starts talking about them…and asking you what yours is…like it’s going to make a huge amount of difference to ANYBODY. I’m slowly beginning to realize they’re mostly just nosey people who haven’t made up their minds yet or don’t have the mental wherewithal to do a whole lot more than annoy others.
When they ask, I usually tell them I’m resolving to work more diligently for world peace…like that’s EVER going to happen…but it shuts ‘em up, which was what I had in mind in the first place. Still…late at night with Angel at my feet, my lady at my side, the ceiling fan going full blast, Baxter unconscious somewhere out of sight, and delicious quiet everywhere, I tend to catalog my unfulfilled goals, and you know what? I don’t really have a whole lot of ‘em! I’ve been blessed with an amazingly INTERESTING life so far…and I know it.
Oh, yes, I’d LOVE to clean Gordo’s clock on the disc golf course, and to tell you the truth, I ALMOST did it yesterday. We TIED. For a couple of weeks he’s been beating the crap out of me, so it was incredibly fulfilling for me to see him sweat a little. Of course, my brother, the BIG PRO, wiped the floor with both of us, but Gordo and I learned long ago to IGNORE what HE’S doing…just like we ignore his obscenely low scores. Actually, if it weren’t for us, he wouldn’t be playing recreationally at all. I think he should THANK us because nobody else I know wants to play him for fun.
I guess I gotta start working on trying to DISCIPLINE Baxter, but that’s not really a resolution, more like a necessity. Our problem is…he’s SO adorable we tend to forgive him…WHATEVER he does. This evening when I walked into the bedroom, I found a mountain of sticks, leaves, and other stuff he had found out in the yard, and standing next to it, eyes dancing, tail wagging, he seemed to be saying, “LOOK WHAT I BROUGHT YOU! Isn’t it COOL?” I mean…how can you fault a little guy for something like that?
Of course, when I took it out, he followed me, and when I tossed it into the trash bin, I swear I thought I could see tears in his eyes. He’s a LONG way from quiet walks with me in the evening, and to tell you the truth, they’ll probably NEVER HAPPEN; those are for me and Angel…forever. Maybe…if he EVER calms down, I’ll think about a tandem lead and bring him out with us, but I said THINK…not do! If you knew him, you’d understand.
I’m happy, my lady’s happy, Angel’s happy…and Baxter’s NUTS! Who the hell knows what he considers happy, smiling like that all the time…whatever’s going on? We have a small folding barrier at the garage door, through which we come in from the supermarket. It keeps Baxter from charging at us and getting out, and when we’re at home…if he gets TOO obstreparous…we yell, “Time out!” and put him in that little enclosure.
Lately, he’s been doing it all by himself when he gets too off the wall, but you know…if you can figure out a way IN, you can also figure out a way OUT…and he has. He seems to think fifteen minutes is appropriate punishment, so he stays in there about that long and then calmly strides out. He’s also a big kisser…been watching Angel, I guess. We have a set of “doggie stairs” we set up next to the bed. Our bed is REALLY high, way beyond jumping up on, but when the stairs are in place, it’s constant running up, kissing, cutting up a little, then running back down.
When I’m trying to watch TV in the bedroom and Baxter’s doing his thing, I yell for my lady to come get him down and take the stairs away, but when his route up is gone, he just kind of SITS there staring at me with the saddest look on his face. When Angel’s curled up at the foot of the bed, the ceiling fan’s going, and my electric blanket’s on 1 or 2, I try to ignore him and go to sleep, but if I EVER wake up during the night, he’s STILL down there like one of those Chinese dog statues…just looking up at Shangri La, the forbidden territory. I TOLD you he was cute!
Okay…back to resolutions…I’m a writer who LOVES writing but HATES all the bullshit imbedded in publishing, and editors are WAY UP at the top of my list. You gotta explain EVERYTHING to them, and sometimes…I swear to God…it seems like they haven’t even READ the book they’re editing. They ask, “Why did you say this?” and when I explain it, they say, “Okay…that’s nice.” NICE? But they didn’t understand until I told them? What the hell’s going on here?
I’ve since learned it’s not about QUALITY but MONEY…what will make a bundle and what won’t…and it seems to me I’m kind of on the PUNY end of that equation, at least to those people who publish things. A couple of years ago I told my lady how I felt about all of this, and she said, “You like to write…so write; forget about publishing. Do what you LIKE!” She’s a wise woman and wonderful; I would die for her if I had to…and there was no other way of saving her.
Happily, I wrote like hell…six novels, total…but when I wrote “The Assassin’s Wife,” things changed. I really liked what I had written about Rose, the assassin’s wife, but I made the HUGE mistake of showing it to her. I left the printouts with her in the den and returned to my computer man-space…only hoping for approval, but in a couple of minutes, she invaded my sanctuary. “This is GOOD,” she said. “You GOTTA get this published!” It was a classic OH, SHIT moment.
These days she’s unbelievably interested in what I’m writing. I keep feeding her snippets from time to time…but she LOVES them, too! And…she’s an incredibly smart woman, an ICU nurse with an impeccable scholatic history and a keen eye for good literature…and husbands, I hope. So…it’s come to this. I have to jump back into the meat grinder again, a world peopled by cynics, greed, and diffidence…a scary and predictably frustrating world.
So…what with the new year and all…I’m gonna do it, God help me; it’s my New Year’s resolution…to jump back into the razor-studded maze I hate, mostly to preserve PEACE in my own, personal haven. To tell you the truth, HER liking what I’ve written is enough, but she seems to want more…mostly for ME. She seems to think I’m worth it, and even though she’s slowly pushing me toward the horror I despise, I’m going to roll with it. They never really scared me you know, mostly only pissed me off.
I wrote something somebody I love liked a lot, and as I said years ago on a dreary, rainy January day in Orange, Texas…for better or worse. I’m gonna give it a shot and try to publish “Demon Moss,” set in Louisiana in the nineteen-fifties, and from what I’ve seen on this blog, you guys seem to LOVE stuff about Louisiana. Pray God the rest of the world agrees…and pray God those AWFUL people in the publishing industry agree, too.
I’d be perfectly happy to go on writing and never publishing again, but…you know…my lady, Angel, Baxter, and all that…gotta keep peace at home when you can. I’ll keep you posted.

Driving through our subdivision early in the morning is like driving through a cemetery…all those dead blow-up snow-globes, Rudolphs, carolers, and saddest of all, SANTAS. Santa deserves special treatment because he’s in essence our modern-day interpretation of a SAINT, St. Nicholas, who did good things and became inextricably associated with Christmas. Of course, nowadays, he’s only a fat guy in a red suit who’s visit salivating children greedily anticipate on Christmas Eve.
When it’s light and people are moving about, all those decorations glitter and stand proud, but late at night when nobody’s looking they grow dark, deflate, and die. I find house decorations pretty…but kind of silly…I mean…ICICLES? In Louisiana? I haven’t seen anything like a real icicle since I was a boy. We had a coulee behind the house…for you sophistocates, a coulee is a slow moving, and I mean SLOW moving stream. Anyway, we had one, and every winter my brother and I eagerly watched it to see if we could ice-skate on it.
Of course, we didn’t have skates…IN LOUISIANA, way down at the bottom of our country…just a SHADE above tropical? Hell, sometimes even the deciduous trees didn’t answer the call, but If the ice EVER got thick enough, we flew across it in leather-soled shoes. Most of the time we kind of broke through, but now and then…NOW AND THEN…when it was an inch or two thick, we did our best to imitate those figure skaters we had seen on TV…just not nearly as gracefully.

And on those days we had icicles…REAL ICICLES…eight or nine inches long at least, and broke them off, coated them with sugar, and ate them, but these days they’re only memories. We haven’t seen a decent icicle down here for years, but that doesn’t stop the house decorators…only now they’re PLASTIC, electric, and disturbingly FAKE. I have a REALLY heavy coat…arctic capable…but the only time I’ve ever worn it was in northern Arkansas. It just doesn’t get cold enough down here anymore.
It seems appropriate for all those tacky icicles to dim at night and all those snow globes and Rudolphs to die, but the SANTAS, our last link to what this season really means? In Christian theology, Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, but these days the image-makers choose to shun Him, pissing off Christians and I suspect some Moslems…because Islam reveres Him too, deeply actually, along with the Holy Family. They don’t see things EXACTLY the way we Christians do but reverence is reverence…and worthy of respect from EVERYONE. Of course, there’s no chance in hell the faith cops see it that way.
Driving through the early morning carnage, I can’t help remembering those living manger scenes on church lawns: Mary, Joseph, Wise Men, angels, sheep, and cattle acting out the first Christmas beneath a star put way up high, usually in a tree…with a little spotlighted manger containing a beautiful Jesus doll. I mean…what did you expect…a BABY? It got COLD in those days, and parents don’t like to let their babies suffer…certainly not in the name of Christmas.

Usually there were carols piped in, and the participants moved back and forth completing the whole re-enactment in about thirty minutes. We loved it…because we loved the story…and because sometimes it was funny, particularly when the wise men turned too quickly and you could see a flash of long johns just above their colorful boots…but mostly because it reminded us that Christmas was a lot more than present-getting season. It was also about the birth of Jesus, the personification of love.
Jesus is all about love…SURELY not all about freezing newborns…even though He nearly did that Himself…if His parents hadn’t found a warm manger for Him…kinda steamy, I always picture it, with smells of the Earth enveloping, welcoming Him. Believe what you will, but I choose to thank God for Jesus and honor Him on His birthday. I mean…what else is a Christian…or a good Moslem to do? Both religions keep Him way up high, and I suspect they’re as annoyed by all this foolishness as we are…you know…people trying to expunge the name of the Being who BOTH religions reverently believe presides at the Last Judgment.
Somebody’s going to grouse about calling Christmas His birthday, so I’ll address that pre-emptively. I know December 25th isn’t REALLY His birthday; the History Channel never seems to tire of telling us that date was originally a pagan winter holiday confiscated by the Church, and I THINK I can vaguely remember reading somewhere that Jesus was PROBABLY born in the spring…mid April…ties in with the historical record of the census…like that matters a big whoo.  It’s not about the DATE, people; it’s about WHO was born then and what HE means to the world.
Even more than love, Jesus has been the purest expression of PROMISE I’ve been able to find on my journey, and to tell the truth, I RESENT the faith cops’ decision to try and SEPARATE Him from Christmas, constantly at it, always ready to POUNCE on some poor minister, religious group, or even innocent children when they DARE try and honor His birth. I can’t help wondering what those awful people actually believe in, but the answer’s most likely NOTHING, locked in the illusion of CONTROL and POWER. The only thing they seem to lack is hobnails, but don’t worry. They’ll be wearing them soon enough.
Got a flash for you faith cop people. YOU’RE going to die, too, and even if you’re the most DEVOUT athiests the world has ever seen, wouldn’t you like your legacy to be a LITTLE BIT more than having destroyed a soft, beautiful, and reverent holiday zillions of people cherish? Let’s see…you’re against crosses, Baby Jesus in his manger, those poor Magi, angels, ANY expressions with the REMOTEST religious connection. What’s next? Stars? Carols? Cattle? SHEEP? Maybe even gifts…no, not gifts…they KNOW they’d lose that one…and those gifts help the economy. Faith cops are ALWAYS worried about things like the economy.

So I say keep those Santas on the lawn blown up all night….they’re the last remaining PARTICLE of real Christmas those faith cops seem willing to allow…however prostituted it may be. Let them stand defiantly all night and NEVER DIE…even if it kicks up the December electric bills a little, and personally, I hope people don’t surrender to political correctness and give up on Nativity Scenes. FIGHT for them. They were charming…and INNOCENT…and I, for one, mourn their passing, whatever those horrible people might think.
YOU…FAITH COPS…PAY ATTENTION! You gonna get COAL in your Christmas stockings, but I think you already KNOW that…and don’t give a rat’s ass about any of it…you, the self-styled guardians of truth, despite CENTURIES of philosophers, visionaries, luminaries, historians, novelists, artists, and physicists who haven’t been able to decide EXACTLY what that truth is. And you know what? I’m gonna piss you off even more…because I’m gonna PRAY for you and your silly, artificial posturing and politically-correct ways. Millions of blow-up lawn Santas keep telling me that’s EXACTLY what I should do!
Civilizations grow from what they build upon, not what they DESTROY.

You guys out there from other places need to understand Thanksgiving. It’s when family you haven’t seen for ages and friends you only rarely see gather around a bountiful table and FEAST…after a heartfelt prayer. Lately, my Mom has been ailing, so I decided my lady and I should cook dinner for her…and it’s ALMOST done.
The only thing left to do is THE TURKEY; I mean…you GOTTA DO IT. Thanksgiving without a turkey is just another big meal. We made dirty rice, green bean casserole, and oyster dressing…not so easy these days since the oil spill…not so cheap either.  Everybody wanted candied yams, which I don’t PARTICULARLY enjoy but made anyway…along with broccoli and cauliflower au gratin, and pecan pie.  To make the yams more interesting, I soaked the raisins in dark rum.  They’re wonderful, but the yams are…you know…YAMS.
Tomorrow morning in the wee hours when my lady is fast asleep at my side and Angel pretty much the same at my feet, I gotta get up, wrap in a heavy robe, season a HUMONGOUS bird, and throw it into the oven. Then…I ASSURE you…I plan to crawl back into my spot, kick the electric blanket up to 3 or 4, and float away into dreams. I mean…WHY NOT? We got all kinds of stuff like smoke and fire alarms…and one neighbor who gets up BEFORE the glint of dawn. The house won’t burn down…not with Angel and that neighbor on the watch.
I figure it’ll take about four hours to do the deed, so that should make it ALMOST DONE when I finally wake up again…but I tucked in an ESCAPE CLAUSE. I’m sort of braising it…always tender, always JUICY, so even if I sleep a little longer than I wanted to it should be just about right. Then all I have to do is take the bird out, let it rest and make giblet gravy. To tell the truth, I use those little gravy packets you find at the supermarket and use pan drippings for the liquid.  Purists may object, but what the hell…it’s DELICIOUS!
So…whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, even if you’ve never had a Thanksgiving, I want to wish you a happy one.  Things are kind of puny in this country lately, but life is short and troubles of one sort or another will be with us forever.  Our Creator is always up there in majesty and love…and He should be thanked, even when things get dicey…and we, at least, always make it a particular point to do so in late November.  So…HAPPY THANKSGIVING, Guys…and pray my turkey turns out okay.  At least, I KNOW the cranberry sauce is good.  I tasted it…the oyster dressing, too!  Now…where did I put my electric knife?

A funny thing happened today. I had a lot to do and got up very early, and when I was leaving just after dawn, I looked up at the sky and closed the outside door, the one with the doggie door Angel and Baxter use…but NEVER that early in the morning. That was maybe around 6 or so. I went all over the place, got the oil changed on my Jeep, checked out my mom’s malfunctioning central heating, got a haircut, then on a whim went to Scott to get some boudin and gratons. By the way, they were WONDERFUL, but when I got back home around noon, I was in for a surprise.
Turns out, I had LOCKED Baxter out for most of the morning, and it also turns out it had rained…and he was soaked and PISSED when my lady finally let him back in, not just pissed, ROYALLY PISSED! It’s kind of fun watching a little fur ball be pissed. I mean…WHAT CAN HE DO? Strut around and growl? Baxter NEVER growls…and barks even less, but later in the afternoon when I decided to take a nap, he was up there in the bed with me, growling and barking almost constantly at Angel, not a full-throated bark, more like a yodel, which seems to be his idea of barking.
Even funnier, he seems to blame Angel and my lady for what happened…not me, and when my lady gave him one of my worn-out socks to woo him back into her good graces, it seems he decided I was his only friend…and that sock was his own PERSONAL, reassuring treasure. He’s STILL carrying it around. Of course, when my lady calls him, he IGNORES her, but all I have to do is lift a finger and he’s RIGHT THERE, tail wagging and eyes dancing.

His brain is the size of a walnut, but his sense of personal pride is IMMENSE, a little dog with TONS of attitude…and apparently a pretty good menory…even if he doesn’t always get the subtleties all that well. Of course, my lady, the ultimate tree-hugging animal lover, is devastated. “YOU DID IT,” she says. “and he blames me…WHY?” “Dunno,” I answer, “but it looks like you got a problem. It’s gonna be interesting to see how long he remembers all this.”
From the way he’s been acting, I suspect it’ll be a lot longer than she hopes. Actually, the only REAL victim I can see in all this is Angel…completely peripheral to Baxter’s personal tragedy and totally innocent…but somehow included in his circle of blame. The only one he lets off SCOTT FREE is me, and of course, I milk it every chance I get, petting him lovingly, giving him treats, letting him sit on my lap while I work the Sudoku in the morning paper…to my lady’s and Angel’s UNENDING dismay.
I keep telling them it’s incredibly EASY to fake out a little bitty dog, but it doesn’t seem to give them any comfort. My lady wants FORGIVENESS, which I think is both unnecessary…and much to abstract a concept to fit comfortably in a dog’s NOW consciousness…while Angel only wants peace and quiet, which isn’t likely for quite a while either, and I don’t really want ANYTHING…just the love and adoration of a little dog who feels like he’s been screwed.
I don’t know how to tell him this, but he’s in for another shock pretty soon when we take away those little Garbanzo beans he seems to treasure so much. My lady is torn about it, but I’m not. Little studs whiz all over the place, and I want to do it BEFORE he starts lifting his leg. I know it’s going to make him pretty unhappy for a while…probably a long while…this dog seems to keep a grudge…but I’m trusting on my luck holding…and him blaming my lady and Angel again. Makes sense to me; he’s ALREADY decided they’re the bad guys.
If he understood complex English, I’d explain to him that it’s all part of the drill. How you deal with the trials and frustrations ALL sentient creatures experience becomes a measure of your intrinsic value to the biosphere, but I’ll just have to let the philosophy ride. He’s has to work things out on his own, however dogs do it, but I can pretty much guarantee you, particularly after the next deed is done, he’ll be only SLIGHTLY friendly to my lady when he wants to be fed and to Angel when he’s bored out of his skull and wants to play. My lady keeps trying to explain to him that he’s got it all wrong and they’re on HIS side…but like I said…not a CLUE.
And now she’s blaming ME…for being thoughtful in the grey morning hours, mindful of the impending rainstorm, and doing my best to keep them all safe and happy when I left the house, but actually, I think she’s kinda pissed, too, mostly because I’ve enjoyed such hilarity from the whole situation…while steadfastly remaining the ONLY FRIEND he acknowledges at this point. I keep telling her, “He dog;we people…there’s a DIFFERENCE,” but it doesn’t help…and that’s more the pity. Dogs can be hilarious…and a lot of fun…but you can’t take them too seriously. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to explain things to a walnut.

I’ve always been fascinated by Easter Island and its inhabitants, the Rapa Nui, way the hell out there in the middle of the Pacific, much too far from any sort of contact or intervention by outsiders…on their own and left to their own devices, philosophy, and fate. Forgive me…I’m a history nut, but that tiny little speck, almost invisible in the middle of an IMMENSE ocean, has a story I think we should all hear and learn from.
Like everybody else, they wanted food for their families, security in their homes, and freedom to worship their gods, but even though their resources were EXTREMELY limited, they chose to challenge and fight some of the other people clinging to their little rock, people they weren’t entirely sure agreed with them, their philosophy, or their hopes for the future. To me, it seemsmuch too EASY to demonize people you don’t understand…or even want to…even today.
Turns out, their future was NONEXISTANT, and ever more desperately challenged, they erected more and more moas, tributes to the gods they held so dear…praying, BEGGING them for help, but in doing so, they eventually STRIPPED their tenuous little island of all its trees. You see, they needed logs…something round…to haul those huge basalt statues to their places of honor on the beach, and VERY few cocoanuts float in to replenish those lost to enthusiasm and fanatic religious zeal.
It’s not a pretty story. In time, with food stores and just about EVERYTHING else gone, they even resorted to cannibalism, but even that didn’t save them. People grow even more slowly than trees and not nearly in numbers adequate to sustain an adult cannibal population. Trees, the symbol of hope they ignored, were gone, and so was the hope. Silently among the moas, they died out, and as a writer, I can’t help wondering what it was like for that LAST human being, walking through a desolate island, watching empty sunsets, maybe even praying to those huge basalt statues with piercing, non-seeing white eyes still surveying a paradise destroyed forever.
They had made a simple mistake, considering their environment PERMANENT and IMMUTABLE…and as such, took it for granted…until to their horror, well beyond regeneration, it began to fragment and disappear. I wonder if ANYBODY asked whether it was wise to cut down all the trees when it was all beginning, whether ANYBODY listened to him or even gave what he was saying a momentary thought. Probably not…he was most likely one of the first they ate. Human beings seem to ENJOY eliminating their visionaries.
Like they said in Star Wars, that happened long, long ago and far, far away, now only of interest to archaeologists and incredibly dedicated tourists, and I’ll just bet the tourists snicker when they see the moas, wander around the island, and hear the story. I’ll even bet they feel superior to those poor, benighted souls they consider primitives, cannibals, stone-agers at best…but the archaeolotists don’t…because they see all this as a CAUTIONARY tale.
Now…let’s talk about another island, a beautiful blue island in the midst of an equally IMMENSE void, also much too far out to invite any sort of contact or intervention by outsiders, its people on their own and left to their own devices, philosophy, and fate and like the Rapa Nui thought, overflowing with bounty of every kind, self-sustaining, and endlessly promising. Its people consider it God-given, immutable, eternal, and incapable of serious or threatening change.
But they have the same flaws, those people…who ALSO challenge those they don’t agree with…or aren’t completely sure of….and all of them have begun to try and destroy their fellows on their island…while EVERYWHERE gleefully cutting down their island’s metaphoric trees. Unlike the Rapa Nui, their resourses are vast…enough to convince them that they’ll NEVER run out. There will always be water, so there will always be food…and warm summers, pleasant springs and autumns, and tolerable winters.
They have visionaries, too, but they don’t EAT them…at least not yet. Instead they destroy them with ridicule and laughter. Visionaries HATE ridicule…mostly, I think, because it tells them in no uncertain terms that they’re not getting through, and it won’t be long before they give up, hunker down, and start planning for the inevitable apocalypse…when all of those metaphoric trees are gone. Most visionaries are pretty smart, but even they know when they’re up against a stacked deck.
Of course, the island I’m talking about is planet Earth. We hit the 7,000,000,000 population mark this week…so it’s a pretty crowded little island…a lot like Rapa Nui when they were running around constructing moas out there. And…whether you like it or not, THINGS ARE CHANGING. We’re getting hotter, and our weather is becoming FAR more unpredictable and severe.
You can argue endlessly about whether WE did it or it’s part of some sort of solar cycle, but DAMMIT, THINGS ARE CHANGING! And now, even Saudi Arabia is telling us they’ve passed the midpoint in oil recovery. Those metaphoric trees are getting harder and harder to get to. You can say with certainty that it won’t all come crashing down in your lifetime…and in truth it probably won’t…but what about our children…and their children? Do you hate people you don’t even know yet, your genetic progeny, enough to condemn them to the Rapa Nui’s fate?
Quit trusting science; all they’ve REALLY given us is a BOMB! OK, maybe they’ve also given us a lot of spiffy doodads, but these days, we’re WAY beyond doodad territory. Start trusting your personal philosophy, your instincts, and your innermost thoughts; tap into humanity’s hidden advantage…INSIGHT. Where do you want all this to go? HOW do you want all this to play out? How far are you willing to let all this go? Like Clatu said in The Day the Earth Stood Still…my FAVORITE movie…it’s up to YOU.
Translated: the ball’s in YOUR court, and if you do nothing, it’ll whiz right past you.

***SPOILER ALERT*** Athiests, I suggest you click away…NOW! Go play a game or something.
My lady told me NEVER to write anything like this. She’s timid about the internet; you know, eyes everywhere reading what I’ve written, but what the hell…I LOVE a good fight…so here goes. I believe in God even though these days it’s not fashionable, but as you might guess if you’ve been reading this blog, I’ve NEVER been a slave to fashion. Anyway…when I was practicing medicine, I saw far too much I couldn’t really explain away…old men and women with no possible way to keep on living who told me they were waiting for specific members of their family to arrive, and when they came, the patient kissed them, said goodbye, and died.
How on Earth can ANYBODY do something like that? Those people were spent, used up, FINISHED, but somehow they hung on. Not only that…they KNEW they would hang on. I also remember one particularly traumatic night in the emergency room when I was trying to help a man in heart failure after a massive heart attack. He, too, was used up, and while I issued a stream of orders, he lay there, incredibly peacefully, until at last he said, “Yes, Lord, I’m ready!” Then looking up at the ceiling, he died. We all looked up there, too, but all we saw was acoustic tile and surgical lights.
Even though it’s really spooky, I’ve come to understand there are more things going on in our reality than ANYBODY could ever explain, influences we don’t know understand or appreciate, even miracles…take ESP, for instance. I know after this a lot of you are going to say, “That’s it! He’s gotta be nuts!” A predictable response…and you have a right to your opinion. My personal insanity is not outside the realm of possibility, but I promised myself I would always be honest with you guys, even when it makes me look a little wierd. One scary night I had an unexplainable experience, something that has mystified me ever since. I’ve written about it before, but it was a BIGGIE for me. It happened during hurricane season.
For weeks people had been talking about a tropical depression in the gulf, and of course, we stayed glued to the weather news on TV. One morning when I was driving to work, the news guy said, “Well, it’s not a depression any more; now it’s a hurricane…and it’s name is CARMEN,” and when he said the name, it was like a flashbulb went off in my mind. After kind of a white blur, I saw myself lying on the sofa in the parlor, my dog at my side, playing with an old transistor radio I hadn’t seen for years. To tell the truth, I was POSITIVE it had been lost forever somewhere along the line, but there it was, so clear, so precise…almost like a photograph.
About five the next morning, we were awakened by incredibly forceful wind blowing outside our window. Now, our bedroom is way at the back of the house, perilously close to two massive old oaks, and when I heard the wind screeching and the oaks groaning, I told my lady it was dangerous where we were and we should move to the guest bedroom in front…as far as we could get from those complaining trees. After we had settled in, I slept a little, but soon awakened. It was getting light, and I wanted to see what was going on, so I took a pillow, moved to the parlor, and stretched out on the sofa next to a large window, my dog following me.
The storm was violent, and while I was watching its fury, my lady got up, came in, and said, “See if you can find out anything with this,” handing me that old radio I didn’t know we had any more. She even brought me a battery, and while I was searching, trying to find an active station, I realized. “This is what I saw…EXACTLY!” I told you it was spooky. “Where the hell did you get THIS?” I asked. “It was In the bedside table drawer,” she answered. “There’s a lot of old stuff in there. Does it still work?”
What was that all about? I wish I had wriiten it all down before it came to be, but of couse, I brushed it off at the time. The whole experience was too precise, much too accurate to wish away, and it showed me how things are happening all around us all the time, unexplainable things I’ve learned to accept and cherish…just like the presence and promise of God. Wasn’t it Shakespeare speaking through Hamlet, who said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy?” Cool guy, Shakespeare…and one SPECTACULAR writer. As usual, he was right.

Either God exists or he doesn’t. Let’s look at the black side first. If He doesn’t exist, where did all THIS come from? Cosmologists say the big bang most likely occurred when one universe bumped up against the edge of another reality and spawned a new one, us, but where did those OTHER bumping universes come from? Always there…without ANY beginning…just always there? And NOBODY created that other place? JUST ALWAYS THERE? And you think THAT makes more sense than a Creator? Give me a break!
Whichever way you look at it, neither idea makes sense. Either there are a lot of universes bumping into one another, creating new ones, eternally, without beginning or end, or a Being made the whole thing, also eternal, without beginning or end. Get used to the idea. SOMEBODY or SOMETHING has always been here…eternally…without beginning or end, but we just can’t wrap our minds around that sort of puzzle. We’re too finite, too clothed in personal experience to get beyond what we can see and feel and remember. Personally, I think it’s all part of TIME, the illusion we’re locked within. That’s what Einstein called it…and he hasn’t been wrong yet.
They say God’s in the details, so let’s run with it. The incredible thing is our reality exists thanks to the perfect balance of the four fundamental forces of physics. If any one of them were even SLIGHTLY out of whack, none of this would have come into being…none of US, either. Random chaos without purpose would be hard-pressed to come up with so elegant a system, and what about the mathematical certainty and perfection of our galaxy, our solar system, and our planet? Like the best clock ever devised, they move, circling in precisely determined orbits and rotations…so predictable scientists can predict solar eclipses THOUSANDS of years in the future.
You may say, “Okay, so the universe is mathematically perfect…and by the way is and always has been…without creation or end…just there…kind of a mystery for our little minds,” but that’s actually a leap of faith, albeit an egocentric one. How DARE you bumping, eternal universe people make fun of those who believe it was created? They’re making the SAME leap of faith…just in direction you don’t happen to agree with. The fact is we CAN’T figure it out, and maybe we’re not meant to. Maybe each and every one of us is supposed to work it out for ourselves however we can, even fearfully late at night when the bedcovers offer only empty security.
Love is the only emotion not chemically mediated in human beings, perhaps the only thing we can actually create, and once allowed in, it transforms us, growing, enveloping us in the beauty of truth, and changing our lives. You bumping universe preple are living in a really DANGEROUS world because if in fact it’s all random, with no Creator, no Supreme Being, why be good? If there are no consequences, why not be selfish, greedy, cruel…and evil? Most people DON’T because they instinctively understand that good is better than evil and love is more rewarding in the long run. Cruelty and evil just don’t sit well on the shoulders of humanity…while love and kindness fit us like a glove. Sounds a little like God’s wrapped up in all this to me, but that’s only MY opinion.
Sorry, Guys, but I don’t buy the random, eternal, never-created, bumping universe theory. There are just too many potholes in that road. People who believe in God also believe He’s the personification of love, and inherently cherishing that concept, they do what every religious luminary we’ve EVER had says we should. Love one another, do good to one another, help one another, and love God. I have no idea what motivates those random universe, godless people, but to tell you the truth, to me they’re even spookier than that night Carmen hit.
Maybe you doubters are right and I AM crazy…but I gotta tell you. It’s a happy kind of crazy…and isn’t happiness what we’re all looking for in the end? I say, when you find happiness, GRAB HOLD AND HANG ON TO IT! There are enough bad things lurking, waiting to come your way, so treasure whatever goodness you can find while you follow your path…and maybe when it’s all said and done, you’ll find life less painful, possibly even JOYFUL. At least, that’s been my experience. Life’s funny that way; you learn as you slog and trudge along…if you’re paying attention.
I sincerely hope the athiests have given up on this post by now. If not, I’m gonna get a lot of comments from them. Athiests can be REAL pests when you rile them up, almost as bad as mosquitos and horseflies…and just about as relevant in MY opinion.

I have no idea what time it is tonight, somewhere between seven and ten, I guess, but frankly, I don’t really care. You see, we FINALLY got to Galveston…Angel’s eye all healed up and my lady and me TOTALLY ready for some R&R in the salt wind, sun, and foaming surf. Of course, obstreparous Baxter is with us, but he’s young, and adorable…and learning quickly. Even the people he pounces on forgive him.
Just this moment I’m sitting on our balcony enjoying the sounds of the gulf and its seemingly ENDLESS expanse all the way to the horizon…salt water…the same stuff coursing through our bodies with every heartbeat…and incorporated so long ago we can’t remember, but when I’m sitting beside the sea, I EMBRACE it like a friend lost in the convolutions of eternity; I think most people do. Delivered over eons by asteroids and comets, the ocean is really our nursery, our liquid parent, and somehow when I’m here, I UNDERSTAND…and thank it…and God for working things out this way.

I know I can only see the surface and never really know what’s going on down in the comparatively small patch swirling below…thousands of births each day, for sure…and thousands of deaths, little bitty deaths, small fish devoured by birds or bigger fish, shrimp snatched up by crabs, even dolphins…my friends…gorging themselves on nature’s bounty, but for me, sitting in the midst of all this wonder, all I see is beauty.
A land creature, I understand the boundaries I have to live with, but Ialso tend to envy those other mammals I can see out in the surf, chirping, jumping, and celebrating their lives, happy and seemingly carefree. To them, what is simply IS, and they joyfully accept their lot. It’s impossible to impose human concepts of good, evil, opportunity, and necessity on what’s going on out there, so I’ll leave the sorting out to God. At this PRECISE moment, I’m totally ENCHANTED…which is where I want to be.

There’s something viscerally ELEMENTAL about an ocean…maybe because somewhere inside us there are memories, carefully hidden memories, or maybe only because it’s beautiful and exciting, or maybe because it’s a shadowy glimpse of where we all began and yearn to return to…a simpler world free from the constraints of wrongdoing, guilt, laws, and repercussions…our scrupulously maintained moral walls, but sitting just beyond the roar and foam, all those concepts kind of float away in the constant wind.  My eyes command me; what’s churning below is stirring…and beautiful…and endlessly FASCINATING.
I want to go there, jump into that surf and foam, taste the salt, join my progenitors, and swim, but my lady is implacable. “NO,” she says, “SHARKS!” (She’s not all that big on sharks.) But what sharks? There hasn’t been a shark attack in Galveston since God knows when…but she won’t be moved. I love her, and I know I HAVE to work out some kind of resolution we can both live with…so…I’m planning to go wading with her…and while she intently looks for seashells…as she ALWAYS does…I’ll slowly slip out into deeper water and swim like hell. At least, that’s my plan.
There are LOTS of dophins out there; she’s seen them, too, and we BOTH know they’re EXPERT at dealing with sharks. Our seabound, brothers aren’t deterred, so I don’t think we should be either. They kinda PUNCH ‘em in the belly…REALLY HARD, not hard enough to kill but hard enough to get their attention, and it ALWAYS works. Actually, it looks like they’re playing when they do it, but the sharks don’t seem to understand and swiftly swim away.

My lady worries a lot, particularly since I don’t choose to worry a whole lot about anything. The way I see it, life’s too short to burden yourself like that, but she compensates by worrying for both of us…and I’ve learned to live with it. Swimming out there would be FAR more fun than swimming in the pool at the condo…and much more philosophically enlightning, but…you know…it’s a nice pool…a REALLY nice pool…with chairs all around, a shower, and float mats for catching a little sun. What the hell? I’ll do BOTH…fake her out, swim in the gulf as long as I can get away with it, then go back, wash off, and dive into that pool.
GOD, I love Galveston!

Any of you guys ever read Chita? It’s a superb novel by Lafcadio Hearn…and I LOVE the author’s name almost as much as I love his book! If I made it up in a story, EVERYBODY would consider it far too off-the-wall to believe, but he was REAL…even lived in New Orleans for a while…where he learned about the destruction of Isle Derniere during a hurricane in the 1800′s and wrote about it. That’s where things get TANGIBLE and kind of spooky for me because I’ve BEEN there…to Isle Derniere…or more accurately what’s left of it, just spitting distance from dad’s favorite oyster beds when I was growing up.
Now only a few pilings and boards scattered among the palmettos, with maybe a HINT of a pier here and there, a gently sloping beach, and a lot of high, dry ground where a magnificent summer hotel once stood, it was a favorite retreat for people from New Orleans in those days, bathed by sea breezes, lavishly Victorian, and free from “Yellow Jack,” which we know as Yellow Fever. New Orleans has ALWAYS had problems that way, cloistered as it is between two bodies of water and completely vulnerable to miasma breeding and buzzing in the shallows.
If you want to lose yourselves in the horror of those times, watch “Jezebel,” one of my favorite Bette Davis movies, even though I didn’t really care for her concept of a Louisiana accent…more like Georgia, and for that matter, the scenes they depicted of New Orleans, too…but they got the idea across: antebellum, lavish, and VULNERABLE. I guess they were trying to establish a MOOD, but when Henry Fonda slapped that mosquito on his neck, EVERYBODY knew. Above the Yellow Jack line or no, he had CAUGHT it, and he was one dead puppy.
Most people don’t get this, but in the last few scenes when Bette is acting up a storm in a cart rattling over cobblestones toward Lazaret Island…which doesn’t exist…there are NO islands in the Mississippi around New Orleans…there were always NUNS in the wagons, nuns with big, fancy hats…and that’s accurate, too. The Daughters of Charity took care of those people at great personal risk and significant mortality to its members, and TO THIS DAY, they ride free on any New Orleans public transportation…as thanks from a grateful city.
The rest of it is also accurate, like those cannons firing sulphur into the air, stupid though it may seem. Those poor people didn’t have a CLUE about what was REALLY going on, but that didn’t stop the politicians and medical hacks from ordering the army to do things like that. They were wrong, of course, but they were DESPERATE; what else could they have done? Voodoo? Prayer in St. Louis Cathedral? They did all of it…everything they could think of, but the disease still got to them because if could FLY.
Poor New Orleans, Yellow Jack wasn’t its only disease problem; there were LOTS of others…like CHOLERA, and one poor, innocent bastard wound up crushed by both the disease and history. You see, if you’ve had cholera, you’re usually IMMUNE to re-infection, so when an epidemic hit, the guys who had it before were enlisted to stay and help the others…while the rest of them fled, usually to places like Isle Derniere. One of those staying behind was a minister, who in his quiet hours before sleep began plotting the new cases on a map of the city.
In time he realized something. Cholera seemed to follow WATER, and he made the big mistake of writing an article about it in the local newspaper. While he was only trying to help, the doctors in New Orleans POUNCED on him, demanding a retraction, and in time he printed one…poor fool, poor intuitive, brilliant fool. He was RIGHT, but that didn’t stop the establishment. I’ve read his announcement, and it’s heartbreaking. How do you reach back in time and tell a guy like that he was right and the rest of them were WRONG?
Not much later, some guy in England made the same connection, and HE’S considered the visionary…not our poor minister. I can’t help wondering…I’m a PHYSICIAN novelist, after all…what would I have done? Told them to BOIL their water, for sure, and to drain their swamps, told medical personnel to WASH their hands after every patient encounter, told cholera vicitms to drink a lot of water with salt in it, but doctors in those days were a stupid bunch…and VERY poorly trained. They’d probably have run me out of town on a rail, most likely tarred and feathered.
These days New Orleans is free from cholera and Yellow Jack, but you can just bet they’re still out there…waiting patiently in swamps surrounding the city for something to unleash them. In the old days people spoke a lot about malaria, even patients much later when I was practicing medicine, and I don’t see why it couldn’t have happened, same swamps and all…but these days all the cases New Orleans sees are imported, much like the few cases of cholera they had a couple of decades ago.
Of course, they had the usual problems, viral infections, pneumonia and infected wounds, just like we have today, but non-infectious causes of death were also common, most prominently including childbirth, accidents…life was tough in those days…and cooks burning to death in the kitchen. At one time, immolating cooks outnumbered childbirth deaths, and it makes sense if you think about how they cooked…on open hearths…while wearing MOUNTAINS of lacy undergarments. One well-placed spark or cinder and the cook went up like a Roman candle.
The people at Isle Derniere all drowned, of course, and that was common in those days. Not many people were effective swimmers, particularly considering the way they dressed. That’s actually STILL TRUE in the great Atchafalaya Basin. I’m always ASTOUNDED by how many of those trappers and fishermen don’t know how to swim…or even dog-paddle, and every now and then one of them falls in…and people say, “Well, he drowned…fell out of the boat.” FELL OUT OF THE BOAT? Hell, we used to DIVE out of boats when we were water skiing. Take some swimming lessons, Guys; you won’t regret it.
Sorting through all this makes me even happier to be living in the 21st century than I was before. Life is tough enough without the deck stacked against you…like it was in those days. I’ve never seen the statistics, but I’ll just BET there were a lot of food-borne illnesses, too…no refrigeration, easy for staph, shigella, or salmonella to get a toe-hold and bring you down. A word about staph food poisoning…as a physician, I saw a lot of cases, and the thing I remember most was when we had identified the infected food item, the patient always said, “But it was DELICIOUS!” No wonder we had so many infecitons; it seems staph tastes GOOD.
In the old days, death was always close by, sometimes only inches away in the kitchen, and EVERYBODY lost a child or two during a lifetime. There was nothing to do about it, so they went on with their lives, not perfectly, some might say not even in a civilized fashion, but they did persevere and left us an odd mixture of good and bad, as I suspect most forebears do. For one, I’m grateful they did, leaving us the Louisiana we have today…filled with promise and hope, free from cholera, Yellow Jack, dead mothers and infants, and with MUCH safer cooking…but there’s STILL one sticking point.
The old guys cleared the land…or more precisely, their plantation workers did…and we’ve built on it…in more ways than one. Normal life here no longer has the sting of unexpected illness and death, but at a truly TERRIBLE cost to humanity…and yes, I’m talking about SLAVERY. I’ll never understand how those cultured, sophistocated people considered it reasonable to go to Africa, link human beings into an iron chain, and work them nearly to death in their cotton fields. Slavery was…and ALWAYS will be a MONSTROUS evil…horrible, and damned…not just a human illness, a societal one.
Slaves died, too, from overwork, from illnesses, from childbirth, and from despair, but NOBODY has statistics on them. They DIDN’T COUNT…non-entities to those white folks behind the columns who only worried about the cotton crop, the latest fashions, and whether food arrived hot at the table. If those old guys could speak to us, they’d expect us to be grateful for what they endured for our sake and they’re right…up to a point, but thank God, modern sensibilities have kicked in to put things into perspective.
I’ve read the Civil War journals of BOTH Mary Chestnut and Sarah Morgan…several times. My copy of Mary’s journal is almost falling apart, and the take-away lesson is THEY KNEW SLAVERY WAS WRONG and did absolutely nothing to change things…didn’t even like to talk about it. Most of them were scrupulously religious…and not a little superstitious. I wonder why they didn’t see Yellow Jack, cholera, death in childbirth and all the rest as Divine retribution for their demonic traffic in human misery. Personally, I don’t think God sends death and destruction, but he DOES send tests…to help each of us learn EXACTLY who he is. Unfortunately, they failed theirs flat.
So…Old Guys…the way I see it, the best you can hope for from us is a WASH, whatever horrors you endured…and even there, the odds are iffy.

We were planning to go to Galveston for a week, a long, HOT trip for the dogs, so I decided to have Angel clipped to a “summer cut.” She’s been groomed so many times I didn’t really worry about it and went to help my cousin with her computer after I dropped her off, but I kept my celphone with me…just in case. Nobody called, so when I got home and my lady’s wet eyes told me there had been a problem, I was STUNNED. I mean…grooming? How many problems could there be?
Turns out it was a bad one. When the groomer-lady was working on her face, Angel suddenly jerked and the clippers SPLIT her lower eyelid, producing pain, fear, and a lot of blood. Before we get any further, I have to say that lady has done a BEAUTIFUL job many, many times before. She’s compassionate and devoted to the animals in her care…so I don’t blame her. It was an ACCIDENT, but by the time I was brought into the picture, Angel was ALREADY in surgery! Angel…my Angel…in SURGERY…it tore me up…and I didn’t really know what to do.
I mean…Angel, my SPECIAL friend? We’ve shared so many walks together, so much time in the evening, our souls touching and meshing perfectly. My God, Angel…surely Lord, NOT HER! The vet did a beautiful job; I know…I checked it carefully, but he sent her home in a “cone of shame,” which she HATED. He called it an Elizabethan collar, a huge, horrible thing she could barely carry around, but all I could see within it were her sad little eyes…one traumatized, asking me, begging me to tell her what she had done wrong…and I could do nothing but weep.
When she saw how much it was hurting me and my dog, my lady IMMEDIATELY took that damnable thing off…and Angel drank, ate, and happily ran outside to do her “business”. Since then, we’ve watched her obscessively, but she doesn’t even seem to know there’s anything wrong with her right eye. Now, our only problem is Baxter, who constantly wants to play with her. I keep slapping a rolled-up newspaper in my hand (which he’s TERRIFIED of) to remind him, and so far at least he seems to be getting the message.
Of course, I called the lady at By the Sea Condos in Galveston, and told her about our misfortune. There’s NO WAY we could go, but you know what? She was WONDERFUL about it all and happily rescheduled our vacation. I discussed the situation with Angel and my lady, and we decided to leave all the bags, cases, and what not in the parlor…just like we were leaving tomorrow. Somehow, that makes the whole thing less painful to all of us…except maybe Baxter, who’s OBLIVIOUS to almost everything going on at home.
The funny thing is Angel’s all worried about ME. She knows I’m upset and has NEVER been more compassionate or supporting, quietly following me around and when I’m sitting in my chair in the den, jumping up and covering me with those wonderful, slobbery kisses. My morning ritual is to crack open a Starbuck’s Frappuccino, gather up the morning paper, and watch the news on TV, and as always, Angel is right there with me, usually tucked at the edge of the lounger peaceful and happy. It’s strange, but even Baxter seems to understand we need that time together more than ever right now.
My lady and I are WRECKS, while Angel seems to think nothing much has happened, but guilt is hard to dodge.  Dogs are so pure, so innocent, and so trusting. I HATE it when what we do to try and make them more comfortable hurts them…like I EVER thought it might, but just now, I feel like I owe Angel much more than a walk in the gathering twilight.
I owe her an apology…for trying to help her and failing, for HURTING her, however inadverdently, but I can easily see what Angel thinks about all this…lounging at home with the people she loves, comfortable, happy, and free from that collar…cut eye be damned! She forgives me…it’s obvious…if she EVER blamed me…which I doubt. I just wish I could forgive myself.

UPDATE 8-25-11  I’m feeling better about things.  Young as he is, Baxter seems to understand what’s going  on, while Angel still seems to have no idea there’s something wrong with her right eye.  To tell the truth, it’s hard to tell where the repair was, and I’m planning to bring the torture collar back to the vet tomorrow.  Today in the bedroom we watched Julia Child, whom we ALL love, on the Cooking Channel…with the AC and ceiling fan going full blast, Angel at the foot of the bed in her usual place, Baxter in the crook of my arm, and my lady next to me.  I went to sleep (not a whole lot interested in what the French have to say about pizza), and when I woke up, Angel was still there, and Baxter, and my lady, all waiting for the final “This is Julia Child. Bon Appetit!”  Now, I know we’re all going to survive this and have a WONDERFUL vacation in Galveston in September, with Angel barking at waves and retreating when they come crashing in, eyes alert and bright as always, and Baxter probably digging TONS of sand somewhere, but most of all I need to thank God…for helping a lovely and complete innocent heal…and for showing me what’s REALLY important in the end.

Final Update 09-02-11  Today Angel got her stitches out, and I gotta say.  The vet, Dr. Richard Broussard, did a PHENOMENAL job!  You can’t even SEE where the cut was…and I KNOW; I studied her eye through his magnifier.  I was in there when he anesthetized her, and it kind of got to me, watching her like that…all limp with her tongue stuck out, my Angel, my friend who was harmed only because I wanted to make her more comfortable.  Of course, I asked him whether the anesthesia might suppress her breathing, but he said it wouldn’t…and he was right.  When I went to pick her up, the tech said, “She’s STILL pretty groggy; it may take a couple of hours before she’s normal,” but when she saw me, she jumped into my arms, curled up and started kissing me.   And when she got home, she ate, drank, and went outside to do her thing, then came back with me into my man-space computer room…where she slept it off at my feet.  At this point I don’t REALLY know exactly how I feel about all this.  I feel guilty, of course, but she IS more comfortable, though TERRIFIED now about going to the vet.  The funny thing is…she doesn’t really seem to CARE about any of it…just an inconsequential hiccup…at least to HER.  She’s still my Angel, my friend, and she still loves me.