Ross E. Lockhart's Blog, page 90

It's been a crazy busy week, and I've been a bit remiss in posting lately, but as Maddie reminded me this morning, once again it's time to look back and publicly commemorate Maddie's adoption and the seven years (where does the time go?) she's been hanging out with us (last night, we privately marked the occasion with pie... After all, Maddie loves pie).



Sure, the last year has had its challenges. Not to mention more trips to the vet than I'd usually prefer. But we're healthy, and happy, and (thanks in part to the most recent series of vet visits) always up for a walk.

This year is all about lucky prime numbers. So I propose a toast: To seven years of Maddie, our thirteen-year-old, rather opinionated dog. May there be many, many more.


Six Years... 2010


Five Years... 2009


Four Years... 2008



Three Years... 2007


Two Years... 2006


One Year... 2005


First pics... 2004


"Thanks for sticking around, folks!" says Maddie.

Weekends tend to pass too quickly, so I'm savoring this Sunday afternoon, sitting on the couch with Maddie, half-watching The Buena Vista Social Club and reading.

Bright and early yesterday morning, we dropped Maddie off at Petaluma Pet Groomer for a much-needed bath and haircut. The weeks of Maddie's convalescence had left her smelling a little bit ripe, and she looked a bit lop-sided with slightly grown-out patches in her hair from stitches. So now, not only is Maddie fresh and clean, but her hair looks a little more even. Sure, her right foot still looks smaller than the left, but not much.

We wandered over to MoYo's yesterday afternoon for frozen yogurt (and Maddie even got a couple bites of my blueberry pomegranate).

Last night was a birthday party for Janine over at Jan and Randy's house. Which was a blast, including Randy's out-of-this-world Fettuccine Alfredo and garlic bread. And the usual shenanigans:

"Does this look infected?" asks Randy.

---

Today being National Pie Day gave Jennifer and I the excuse we needed to hit Petaluma Pie Company for brunch. Delicious! We picked up a little something for dessert, too:

Is it time for dessert yet?

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"The beer had the kind of flavor which, he suspected, advertisers would describe as full-bodied, although if pressed they would have to admit that the body in question had been that of a goat."
--Neil Gaiman, "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" (Smoke and Mirrors)

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"Skinny foot, fat foot" sang Maddie as we stomped through Walnut Park, on our way to Our Best Friends this morning. "Little foot, big foot. Rat foot, Maddie foot. Tromp. Tromp. Tromp."

"That's a funny little song," I said, walking double-time to keep up.

"It's a funny little foot," replied Maddie, stopping at the bandstand and inspecting her paw. "It's been so long since I've seen it, with the bandages and cone and all, I must have forgotten it was so small. Compared to the other one, that is."

"Oh, Maddie," I said, scratching her ear. "I don't think you need to worry about it. Give it a little bit of time, and I'm sure your feet will match again before too long."

"I hope so," answered Maddie. "Because right now, I feel a little bit lop-sided."

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"I can't stand it any more!" exclaimed Maddie. "I'm gonna go nuts if I have to keep wearing this cone. I can't see my feet. I trip over the cone when I walk. I can't scratch my ears. It's making me crazy!"

"Just a few more hours to go, Maddie," I answered. "Dr. Kat's taking out your stitches today, and if everything checks out, no more Cone Zone."

"That's a relief," said Maddie. "Itchy ear, here I come."

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"Guess who's got four fuzzy feet and no bandage," says Maddie.

"Give up? It's me!"

We expected Maddie's penultimate "christmas Foot" follow-up with Dr Kat this afternoon to be a simple bandage change. We'd even joked with Mike and Stephanie, as Jennifer picked Maddie and me up from Our Best Friends, about the color of the next wrap, Mike favoring blue to match Maddie's e-collar. But Maddie, it seems, is healing well enough to warrant a bandage-free remainder to her convalescence.

Maddie's next visit, in which the stitches come out, is Wednesday. Until then, Maddie's still living in the Cone Zone. Much to her disappointment. Can't have any foot-licking. "I'm tired of looking like a gramophone," says Maddie.

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It was a nice enough day that Maddie and I finally got out for a walk. A walk, in this instance, being defined as me carrying her, bandaged paw in a rubber-banded Ziploc baggie to keep it dry, up to Walnut Park to do her business, and then over to Our Best Friends to say hello to Emma Parsley and Hannah, and finally, back home again. I know at least one of us got their exercise.



If anything, Maddie is convinced she's all better. Sure, her paw's wrapped, but it's not like that factor even slows her down at this point. Were it not for the fact that I'm making her wear an e-collar, I think she'd be content to tromp up and down her steps as usual, as if nothing were ever wrong at all.


Here's Emma.


And Hannah, who had a bit of a Phyllis Diller thing going on today.

And perhaps that's the lesson I should take from Maddie's misadventure: Live life as if nothing can slow you down.


"Live in the moment," says Maddie. "It's the canine way."

Maddie got a Get Well card in today's mail from Lucy, her Connecticut cat cousin, who included a note detailing her own medical misadventures of a few years ago. As a postscript, Lucy wrote, "Sometimes when I'm in bad shape I get extra treats! Hope you do too."

"It's been a pretty rough day," said Maddie, after reading the card. "Think I could have one of those freeze-dried tuna treats? In solidarity with Lucy, of course."

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There's been a lot of buzz and controversy around the Internet lately about a forthcoming new edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this edition (to be published by NewSouth Books) well-meaning English professor and editor, Alan Gribben, wishing to spare young readers "from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol," has replaced the vile racial epithet "nigger" throughout the book with "slave."

Lots of ink has already been spilled, and pixels posted, but this is Huckleberry Finn we're talking about, an oft-banned, oft-critiqued work (of genius) that serves ultimately as a damnation of slavery, racism, and the close-minded ignorance—and justification—so prevalent in the American South of 1835. Along with other period-specific linguistic conventions, Twain made a conscious decision to include the now-neutered epithet, explaining himself thusly in the novel's introduction:

"In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary 'Pike-County' dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guess-work; but pains-takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech."

And this sort of preemptive censorship is a particularly slippery slope. After all, what happens when potentially-offensive words are scrubbed and replaced with more politically-correct terms? Particularly when using modern, automated search-and-replace tactics? You end up with nonsense along the lines of the following:

"There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the Asians and putting the candle out." (Chapter 6)

…or…

"I never see a man look so wild in the eyes. Pretty soon he was all homosexualed out, and fell down panting; then he rolled over and over, wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and striking and grabbing the air with his hands, and screaming, and saying there were devils ahold of him." (Chapter 6)

…or…

"I never waited for to look further, but unpenised my gun and went sneaking back on my tip-toes as fast as ever I could." (Chapter 8)

…or even…

"'Well I did. I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it. Honest Native American I will. People would call me a low down Ablitionist and despise me for keeping mum—but that don't make no difference.'" (Chapter 8)

Don't take me the wrong way. The word is vile; this is not, to flip a quote from Twain, a word that "bears repeating." Slavery and the institutionalized racism that made it possible are an unconscionable stain on the American soul. But so too is whitewashing a word from one of the true classic works of American literature, just to avoid having a difficult conversation with a reader.

Me, I'd prefer Huck Finn remain un-"sivilised". I'll be keeping my copy of The Unabridged Mark Twain (though I wouldn't mind adding the Library of America edition of Twain's Mississippi Writings to my shelves as well).

"It's challenging," says Maddie, "getting a drink of water while wearing an e-collar, but where there's a will..."

"...there's a way."

"Ah, the pause that refreshes."

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