Snow, the dogs and memories

Well, it’s the first snow of the season, at least for me and the dogs. Kansas City had some snow over the holidays when were out of town (Pat is again out of town, missing this); we saw the remains of it on the north sides of buildings and walls. But this is fresh snow to wake up to; not too much, only an inch or two, but enough to carpet all the streets and sidewalks and bushes and grass, and to make it necessary to put on boots for our walk (for me, not the dogs). Also warm clothes, because it is also about 8 degrees, which we consider chilly in these parts. Temperatures have been up and down, a combination of climate change and the fact that KC sits smack in the middle of several weather systems; last weekend it was even colder (4 with a wind chill of -13 on Sunday) but it was dry; by Thursday we had a sunny 62! Last night we were outside on a clear 30 degree night, and I told Becky on the phone how that was quite pleasant – didn’t really even need gloves. Not this morning, though.

The snow was pretty virginal, and so Fry, Maggie and I were the first ones to walk in it out of our building and down the street, although a couple of folks had cleaned paths from their front yards to the curb. Almost no one shovels their sidewalks, but a couple of people with snowblowers like to get them out. The real problem walking dogs in snow is when there is a lot of it, and most people haven’t cleared their sidewalks so you walk in the street, but the plows have piled the snow up by the curbs making it difficult to get out of the way if cars come careening toward you, which happens too often. But not a problem today.

It was also Maggie’s first snow-walk with us, although at 5 years old I’m sure she has seen it; we just adopted her after Thanksgiving, to try to fill some of the hole left by Yonkel’s passing last spring. At first, and indeed second, glance she looks a lot like Fry, but in reality she is much stockier and stronger, a combination of golden Lab and Rhodesian Ridgeback, to Fry’s golden retriever and beagle. She has no ridge on her back, but is a fast powerful runner like that breed. She also pulls a lot walking, but the Halti collar helps. On the other hand, while she has been known to bolt from the car and run like a crazy dog for laps around the park, she is too bulky to get under the fences in the backyard, and is not driven by Fry’s beagle-like commitment to trying, so I can let her out to run in the yard, while keeping Fry on the retractable leash.

My friend Barry, the inveterate outdoorsman, says (probably quoting someone else) that there is no such thing as “too cold”, just “insufficient gear”. Maybe, but sufficient gear can be bulky and restrict movements a bit. Not quite like the little brother in “Christmas Story” or those depicted in cartoons who are so bundled up they cannot move, or wearing what the now-disgraced Bill Cosby called “idiot mittens”, connected by an elastic band that ran from one to another across your shoulders under your coat (so called because ostensibly if someone pulled one, the other smacked you in your face; I saw but never actually wore these!). But enough so you don’t move as easily, and frankly taking the gloves off to pick up after the dog can not only be cold, but occasionally messy.

This is, of course, why one of the woolen gloves I usually wear is sitting on a towel on the window sill drying slowly, after being washed out. I hope it dries before it freezes. Obviously, the best way to dry it is on the radiator, but
this requires having radiators, and only one house that I have lived in since being an adult had them, and it is not this one. Putting it on top of a forced-air vent would work if they were on the floor, but in this place they are all in the ceiling. From a physics point of view that makes sense for the AC (cold air descends) but less for heat. Having them on the floor can be inconvenient, as small things roll into them, I remember from the house where I had them, especially when there are small children, but there are also compensating advantages. I have very “warm” memories of finding my son Matt downstairs on cold Chicago morning, in his pajamas sitting on such a vent! (Somewhere there is a picture of this, but I can’t find it, so I’ll just use one of the two boys crawling around on the floor there.)

So there it is; we’re back in the house, it’s sunny outside, the dogs are basking in it on the couch, I have brushed the snow off the cars (nice part about very cold; easy to brush off),  I’ll eat breakfast, and maybe soon we’ll have a fire.

Ah. 

Warren Zevon, and the 7 Deadly Sins

Yesterday, sitting in our lake cabin with the wind blowing strongly (not “fiercely”, exactly; that is for winter!) outside, Pat decided to put on some music using “Pandora” on the computer. “What did I want to hear?” she asked. “The Warren Zevon channel,” I answered immediately, wondering if there was such a thing. Turns out she got one; as anyone who uses Pandora knows it wasn’t all Warren Zevon, but they do a good job of figuring out that if you like him, you’ll probably like some stuff from The Band, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and Dire Straits. I did.

I like Warren Zevon’s music, and am sad that he died a number of years ago so that there will be no more. The stories about really bad people like “Excitable Boy”, “Werewolves of London” and “Mr. Bad Example”; the political/social/antiwar commentaries like “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”, “Leave My Monkey Alone”, “The Factory” and (combining both) “Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner”; the “feature story” commentaries like “Boom Boom Mancini”; the commentaries on the celebrity scene like “Even a Dog Can Shake Hands”, “Detox Mansion”, and the wonderful “Trouble Waiting to Happen”. And many, many others. I can’t figure which is my favorite (luckily there is no reason to choose), but I also really like the contrasting beautiful love songs: “Reconsider Me”, “El amor de mi vida”, and poignantly released after his death, “Keep Me in Your Heart for a While”. I admit that the last, posthumous, album, “The Wind”, is strongly tied for me to the death of my son Matt, which was less than a year before Zevon’s own, and its release.

One of the songs that they played was in fact “Mr. Bad Example”, and it stayed in my head all night; I woke thinking about it, in particular the “seven deadly sins” with which Mr. Example is “very well-acquainted”; he mentions “greed” and that he has “no time for sloth”, but doesn’t list them all, so I kept trying to think of them. I knew I knew them (Dante, for one source; also the film “Seven”) but could only get Pride, Envy, Lust, Wrath, Greed, and Sloth. I left out Gluttony because I had lumped in my mind with Greed; in fact it occurred to me that Greed as in Avarice should be a separate one from Gluttony, although they have much in common.

So I started thinking about the ones that weren’t there, like Hate and Fear. Heck, this is all Christian theology, about which I know little and am committed to none. Hate is a big one, and I’m not even begin to go into all the evil things that have come from or been motivated by Hate. Almost as many as by the religious beliefs of Those Who Know. I recently saw a comment from on a blog about abortion who shared with us “I think the Creator would not want us to kill one of his creations.” I really thank him for his opinion on what the Creator thinks – not. Who cares? Well, those who are harmed or killed by folks that Know. While I’m sure (or hope!) this guy is not going around killing people, committing acts of terrorism, conducting Crusades, those all come from that same Certainty.

OK, fear is not really a sin (as far as I know), but really a lot of the bad in the world – including a lot of Wrath and Envy and Lust, as well as Hate – arises from Fear, transformed by the magic (from sports, about which I know more) of “the best defense is a good offense.” Fear of the Other is pretty common among Those Who Know. As a society, we could use a little less fear, and have a lot less to fear. And less Hate, and less Wrath, and sure as heck less Pride and Greed.

One of Zevon’s many iconic songs, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”, is of course sadly ironic now. RIP Warren.

And Matt. We love you and miss you.

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And, for those not so familiar with Zevon, here are the lyrics to the refrain from “El Amor”, kind of bittersweet (“if only I could meet you”) which I have as my ringtone when Pat calls:

Tu eres el amor de mi vida

Si solo te pudierá encontrar

Con todo el corazón te diriga

Tu eres mi amor, de verdad.

December at the Lake

Early winter. Only early December, so officially still fall. Cold, but not bitter, mid-winter cold, about 30 this morning. A rime of frost on the railings of the deck, and on the grass out front, and on the chewed up dirt where they dug the sewer line where there used to be grass. A bit late for the main migrations but there is a bunch of ducks paddling across the lake – I can’t tell what kind – and later another flock honking (if ducks honk; I don’t think they are geese) across the sky. Later, I saw a kingfisher in a tree, and a great blue heron wheeling around the lake. The bird feeder Herbie bought, which I cleaned out of its clumped husks a few weeks ago, is doing a good business, mainly goldfinches and nuthatches. And we saw a strange (to us) nest hanging on a tree in the woods, apparently belonging to a Baltimore oriole.

I sit in the cold with a thick fleece, and wool gloves, and a towel spread on the metal chair, with a cup of coffee and a book I need to finish. It is already light out, and the sun is rising above the trees across the lake. The lake is not completely calm, but certainly not too rough to go out on. It is just still a bit cold. Maybe later, if the temperature gets to 40 or more, after eating. The dogs, especially Fry, are jumping around, wanting to go for a walk. Even though they are not on a leash, running around near the house isn’t enough, but they won’t go for a long walk without one of us.

Yesterday morning, in the West, in time zones where it was still dark when it occurred, Nancy and Amy saw the lunar eclipse in the morning. Amy, farther west in Grass Valley in the Sierra foothills, says it was very impressive. In Kansas City the sun was already up, so the eclipse was not visible, but last night there was a huge yellow full moon hanging in the sky, reflecting on the lake. It was very beautiful here.

The trees are bare, the air is cold, and the coots that spend the winter here are not yet in evidence, nor the otters. But it is very peaceful, and very pretty. I think that you would have liked it, Matt.