Pam and Lucy

My dog Lucy is still the most neurotic beast ever to grace the inside of a Dunnevant home, however, she is the most adorable dog ever. I find that I love her even more than the other dogs I've had because of her emotional instability. She's still afraid of practically everything, especially thunder storms. Whenever they are in the area and way before we are aware of them, Lucy begins her terrified vigil...pacing around forlornly. But when crunch time comes( the first distant rumble of thunder ), only one thing will do...Mom!

Lucy isn't much of a snuggler. She prefers to be on the couch with you, but at the other end of the couch. But when the thunder storm monster comes, she finds Pam and plasters herself next to her. This all started months ago during a particularly violent storm, when Pam took her into our walk in closet, closed the door and held her tightly in the dark, singing to her until the storm was over. Now, every storm demands a repeat performance. It's quite adorable to watch. There's Lucy, shaking like a leaf, head buried under Pam's arms. It's the only time that Lucy will allow herself to be good and hugged, and only by Pam. It's quite touching to watch.

I took this last night, after the worst of the storm had passed through and Lucy finally dared raise her head to look around.

Crazy dog...

What's in a Name?

About a year ago I read an article about a reporter who had an impressive resume drawn up and sent to a couple hundred employers. The name at the top was something very generically white, like Jeff O'Leary. Then he sent the exact same resume out bearing a generically black name, like Jamal Lewis. The resume with the white sounding name got several positive responses. The one with the black name at the top...not a single one. It was a disturbing story and illustrated the very real obstacles still standing in the way of minorities in this country.

But now...this:

Michael Derrick Hudson is an aspiring poet from Indiana. He wrote a poem that he thought was his best work and submitted it to 40 different publishers for their consideration. He got 40 rejection letters. But then he got the idea that he might have a better chance of getting published if he used a more ethnic pseudonym. He changed the name on the work to Yi-Fen Chou, and after only 9 rejections, got it published in the Prairie Schooner. Now, the poem..."The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve," has appeared in the American Anthology of Best Poems of 2015, and the literary crap has hit the fan.

Chinese poets are furious, reasoning that now any poems submitted in the future by poets with Asian-sounding names will be more skeptically scrutinized. An angry blogger who goes by the name Angry Asain Man accused Hudson of committing poetry using yellowface. Oh dear.

Of course, none of this is new when it comes to art, especially literature. How many women authors two hundred years ago used male nom  de plumes (George Eliot, B. A. Evans)?  Come to think of it, there's an awful lot of race-cheating going on in our super-charged grievance culture. A few months ago, we discovered that NAACP activist Rachel Dolezal was actually a white woman. And who can forget the advantages that accrued to Senator Elizabeth Warren during her academic career by her ingenious usurpation of favored status as a Native American?

But, I suppose that we will see more and more of this sort of thing in the future. When a society tries to right past racial sins with a regime of set-asides, quotas, and nose counting throughout all of society, hucksters will arise to take advantage. Any system can be gamed by the cunning and industrious, including a well meaning system trying to level the playing field. The trouble is, at what point do we all get cheated by such a system? In an era of social promotion, grade inflation and affirmative action hires, how will we ever know who the best people are? 

When confronted with Mr. Hudson's treachery, the editor of the American Poetry Anthology of 2015, admitted, "I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese-American...I was practicing a form of literary justice that can look like injustice from a different angle."

I'll say! As for Mr. Hudson, he admits that this isn't the first time he has employed the Chinese nom de plume strategy. He uses it whenever he is having trouble getting something published as a boring white guy from Indiana, and it has been successful in the past on several occasions.

Well....so much for artistic integrity! 

Despite the hubbub, the literary-Justice-dispensing editor of the American Poetry Anthology of 2015 has no plans to remove the offending poem. "When I reread the poem after learning of the deception, I still loved it."

What a concept, publishing a poem because it's a great poem!?

Is Kim Davis a Martyr?

While I was away I completely disconnected from news. So, I wasn't aware of of the firestorm story of the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis. Well, I had heard of her because Facebook was dotted with references to her and I had seen a quote from Mike Huckabee about how this was proof of the "criminalization of Christianity" or some such thing, but for the most part, the specifics of the story had escaped my notice. No longer.

It would seem that Kim Davis is a county clerk in Kentucky who's job it is to issue marriage licenses in Rowan County. In Kentucky, this is an elected position, and Mrs. Davis is a democrat. I mention her party affiliation not because it has anything whatsoever to do with the case, but because if she were a republican it would appear in the first paragraph of every news story, and in the headline at the New York Times. Anyway...Mrs. Davis is a relatively new convert to Christinanity, and as such burns brightly with enthusiasm for her new faith. As such, she made the decision to refuse the issuance of marriage licenses to same sex couples after the June ruling by the Supreme Court making gay marriage legal, because to do so would be a violation of her faith and of God's Word. Her view, and the view of her legal team from Liberty Councel is that no one should be required to violate their religious beliefs by the demands of a job...or something like that.

In a democracy, compromise is the oil that lubricates the engine of daily life, which while no doubt true, may very well be the worst metaphor I've ever come up with... but it's all I can manage at the moment.  The point is, we make a million compromises daily to get along with others in this country, even religious compromises. Pam informs me that she has seen Muslim check out girls at Target refuse to touch a bottle of wine purchased by a customer. Then another employee comes over and handles the bottle for her. While this may be awkward, it seems to work. That's the thing about compromises, they aren't always convenient or efficient, but they get the job done. 

My first thought when pouring over the many articles I've read about this case is...is there not some sort of workable compromise that can be forged out of this mess short of a high profile and devicive incarceration? Is there no one else in the Rowan County Clerk's office that could issue the licenses in question? If the problem Mrs. Davis has is signing the document, why not allow someone else in the office to sign? Cannot grown thinking adults fashion some sort of work-around to avoid all of this drama? Apparently not, so she's in jail. My thoughts:

To Mike Huckabee let me just say, you're a dope. This isn't the "crimilization of Christianity". You, Mr. Huckabee are criminalizing the English language by using such a dim-witted phrase. There was a time, Mr. Huckabee, when Christians provided the fuel for street lights in Nero's Rome. Right now ISIS is burning Christians alive simply for being Christian. That's the criminalization of Christianity.

To Kim Davis, let me say, you should resign your position. I don't pretend to judge your intentions or impugn your character by dredging up your past divorces as proof of your hypocracy. I accept the genuineness of your faith and the transformative power it has produced in your life. However, your job is to uphold the law. The New Testament that you read everyday includes admonitions for Christians to submit to the civil authorities, and it is my belief that if you find that to do so violates your religious convictions, and if you are not willing or able to accept a work-around compromise, you need to resign. I would also ask you if you have had equally dramatic dissonance when confronted with the prospect of issuing a marriage license to a couple who had been previously divorced? Rowan County, I suspect is a small town sort of place, the kind of spot where everybody knows everybody else, so I'm sure this has happened. Did you refuse them a license based on your religious convictions? If not, why not? The bible is very clear on that subject as well.

Finally, I would say to my Christian friends, there may come a day when Christianity will be criminalized. I'm not naive. But this isn't that day. As a Christian, there are things I can't in good conscience do, and if my job demands that I do them, I need to find another job. It's not the job of the culture around me to honor and obey God's laws, it's my job to do that. There are thousands of Christians being martyred for their faith in the world right now. Let's not dishonor them by pretending that Kim Davis is one of them.

Until Next Year...

And suddenly, just like that, seven days has come to an end. This morning the lake is blanketed in a thin fog and the thermometer that hangs on the front porch says...46. We will have breakfast, pack up and head to the airport in Portland for a late afternoon flight home. We will leave this place, but it will be some time before this place leaves us.

When we get back home, we will finally turn on a television. We will shuffle through our mail. We will fall back into the comforting routine to which we have become so accustomed. But it will not be a seamless transition. Spending a week up here rearranges your expectations of what life can be...at least what it can be without an itinerary or humidity. 

We thought about taking the ferry over to Islesboro or Vinalhaven one day but we both secretly resented the fact that the ferry company insisted upon a fixed schedule of departure. We knew what they were up to with their scheduled departures. They were trying to impose order on our vacation and we were having none of it!

We would have been more inclined to make some of the many tantalizing side trips that abound here on the Midcoast of Maine had the weather not been so radiantly sublime all week. It's difficult to make yourself put the rental car in reverse and back out of the driveway leaving a sun-splashed lake and 75 degrees to go...anywhere. 

But, what makes vacations special is the fact that they are rare. To appreciate them, one has to have the sort of sufficiently vigorous life from which vacations are needed. So we come back to Richmond and crank that life up again. But something is changing for us. We are in the process of planning out the next act of our lives and that next act will feature a lake house in Maine. Next summer, a month rental. The following summer, the hope and prayer is, our own place and an entire summer here. The kids will come and stay for a week or two, our families for another, and then friends. It will be like running a bed and breakfast that doesn't charge anything, sorta like vacation welfare! Neither of us can imagine anything more fun than the chance to introduce the people we love the most to this glorious place. 

WARNING!!! This blog contains potentially troubling pictures!!!

In all fairness, this particular blog post needs to come with a warning label of sorts. To my vegetarian and/or vegan friends, what you are about to see might be considered a micro-aggression. For any of you who fall into the PETA camp of animal lovers, the following photographs have the potential to be triggering. For all of you who are currently on diets, these images might be damaging to your will power.

Having sufficiently warned you, the reader, let me just say that although Pam and I love eating out while on vacation, something weird happens at Camplaba. We keep coming up with excuses not to. See, to drive the five minutes into Camden for dinner would require us to drag ourselves off the dock or out of the water to take a shower, get dressed, decide on a restaurant, then get in the rental car, drive into town, find a parking space...it's all so exhausting! So, instead, I grab a piece of meat and fire up the charcoal grill..

 

Yes, that's a pound and a half of New York strip steak, cut personally for me by the friendly butcher at Hannaford's. Although I'm not a big charcoal guy, (I prefer a gas grill), these babies were grilled to perfection. We even had enough left over to have steak quesadillas the next night!

Then, it was chicken's turn. Pam came up with the idea to marinate the breasts in the only workable sauce she had on hand...half a bottle of A-1...and the results were mouthwatering! Throw in a frying pan full of fried squash and onions, and a package of Bob Evans Mac and cheese, and you've got yourself a fine dining experience...

Tonight, I think we are actually going to break down and go out to eat...probably.

The Camplaba Creature Strikes!!!

I am quite fond of the elegantly creepy writing of Dean Koontz, so for this vacation I brought along one I hadn't read before:

It's an astonishingly simple premise. An aspiring young author comes home one night to discover a rag doll on his front porch. Intrigued, he brings it inside. Suddenly, the lifeless doll begins to pop it's stitches, revealing a yellow-eyed reptilian monster straining to break free from its cloth restraints, and kill our protagonist. All hell breaks lose and the plot raises on at breakneck speed as our little Lucifer begins to grow etc... Great stuff. Except, this isn't the type of story one wants dancing around inside your brain when last night happens!

Camplaba is a charming cottage, and I mean that in the most sincere way, not the way the people who write descriptions of rental properties use the term charming, which usually means...moldy old dump. However, the place is over a hundred years old. My administrative assistant will surely understand what follows, since she is always regaling me with harrowing tales of what it's like to live in a very old house. She lives in one of those gorgeous Victorians on the railroad tracks in Ashland, Virginia, and suffice it to say, when you live in an old house you share it with...the animal kingdom.

So last night, Pam and I had just settled our brains for a long peaceful sleep in our incredibly comfortable king sized bed in the only upstairs room in the cottage. Spending all day outside kayaking and walking and eating and shopping wears a guy out, so sleep comes quickly...and hard. Imagine my surprise when I am roused awake by my wife who is sitting up in the bed, her knees pulled firmly to her chest, trembling like a child. I bolt up to her side, still half asleep, forgetting that I am hooked up to my dreadful C-Pap machine, nearly pulling it off the nightstand.

"Honey, what's wrong? What is it?" I ask, still not in full possession of all of my waking faculties.

"There's something in here!!! Can't you hear it??"

Immediately I'm thinking of that cursed rag doll from the brimstone-tinged imagination of Koontz. Then I hear it...a fluttering sound from across the room. No, more like a clawing sound, and it's coming from under our bed. Or, is it a pecking sound coming from under the sofa against the wall??

Pam is positively freaked at this point, so it's crucial that I remain totally unimpressed by events while at the same time not dismissive of her fears.( after 31 years of marriage, I've learned a few helpful tips in this regard) 

"Yes, I do hear it," I answer. Affirmation. Step one in diffusing any female fear-derangement syndrome is to agree with them about the threat. "Wonder what it could be?" I ask in as up-beat a tone of voice as I can muster at 1 in the morning. "Maybe a bird?"

At this point I'm tempted to trot out that old standby...it won't bother us if we don't bother it...but I wisely reject that tactic. Besides, whatever this thing was, it was making quite an unwholesome racket. So I decide what I always decide in moments like this...blind, irrational action. I jump out of bed, walk across the room and throw on the light switch, half expecting to see a bald eagle perched in the rafters above...damn that Dean Koontz!! Instead, I saw nothing, and now neither of us heard anything. Still, the damage had been done. There were two chances that Pam was going to go back to sleep in that bed, slim and none, and none had just left town on vacation. So, there we were tucking ourselves in to the twin beds in the downstairs bedroom, feeling a little like Ricky and Lucy Ricardo. I hadn't slept in a twin bed since the Nixon years. Of course, I woke up with a very stiff and sore neck.

The dawn has ushered in another Chamber of Commerse day here on Meguntecook, bright sunshine and birds chirping...outside, where they belong. There is no sIgn of our little friend from last night. But, Pam will be sleeping with one eye opened the rest of the week, unless I can figure a way to find and kill the Camplaba Creature. 

Now that I think about it, doesn't Steven King live right up the road?

Why can't I have everything I want?

Sometimes, spending time in an idyllic, natural setting surrounded by the beauty and majesty of God's creation causes you to think deep thoughts, to ponder the large, unanswerable questions of life. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? That sort of thing. To those epic questions that have baffled philosophers for millennia, my wife has added another, which has become perhaps the theme of our vacation....Why can't I have everything I want??

As she kayaks around the lake gazing at the various properties on the shoreline, she sees several that would be perfect for us to buy...NOW! But then she discovers that they don't have enough bedrooms, or bathrooms. Then she is disappointed to learn that they aren't for sale, or on the rare occasion when they are, they cost a billion dollars. She then looks at me with plaintive eyes and asks a simple yet profound question...why can't I have everything I want? WHY???!??!!

At first glance this would seem a question born of envy and greed. Not so! It is not a petulant demand, but rather a baffled stating of the obvious, more like an expression of confused resignation. She knows  why she can't everything, but still feels compelled to ask the question...to no one in particular. And it's not just about big expensive stuff. She asked the same question yesterday when trying to decide whether or not to buy the package of...well, I'm not exactly sure...

Apparently, this treat has some sort of historical significance to her, some childhood In Maine thing. I said, "Honey, that's 1200 calories you're looking at right there and if you ate all four of them, you would consume exactly 0% of the daily essential viatmins and minerals crucial to maintaining human life on earth." 

" But they are sooooo delicious! Why can't I have everything I want? Why!!!???

Later, we had to decide when to meet with our realtor contact here in Camden to talk about buying and/or renting a place for next summer. The decision boiled down to, do we see her in the morning or afternoon? If we go with the morning, we'll miss the warm sun on our dock and the morning is the best time for kayaking. But if we go with the afternoon, we'll have to take a shower at lunch time and we will miss our afternoon coffee and fluffer-nutter triscuits. Why can't I have everything I want???!!! WHY?

Last night after grilling steaks on the grill, we both went down to the dock and sat in the dark and talked. She informed me that she wasn't leaving on Saturday. She had decided to stay at Camplaba forever. I reminded her that the owners might object, that eventually she would run out of food and starve to death. Wouldn't she miss her kids? Our dog? Her friends? Me? She let out a long sigh. Then a couple minutes later...Why can't I have everything I want??!!

I attempted an answer..."Because if you got everything you wanted, you would start acting like a spoiled brat and you wouldn't have anything else to dream about, no more goals..."

" Would not."

Well, who can argue with that?