Dr. Dog's House

1/20/2009 - A beautiful day

I got up this morning and looked out the bedroom window. Time: 7:01 a.m. What a beautiful day!

The sun just peeking above the horizon. The sky was already blue. The crescent moon was hanging in the south, visible between the icicles hanging from the eaves. The thermometer on the front porch may have read 0F, but no matter. This, Jan. 20, 2009, would be a beautiful day.

I went to work as the crowd swelled in Washington, D.C. Our basketball team had won a big game last night, and I had to get caught up on the other scores and write part of the story. The coach from our other team would probably be calling--if he wanted to talk, I would be there.

But I also had the live stream from CNN on my computer, and as the start of the ceremony neared, I was debating whether to go home (just a block away) to watch it there or to watch it in the office.

It was a hard call. I have been looking forward to this day so much and for so long. Back on the day after the 2004 election, I wrote a friend: "I wore black today," I started.

Over two years ago, I saw my first Bush countdown clock, showing how much time remained--900-some days, X hours, X minutes, X seconds at that point--in the Bush presidency. I almost put one on my blog. It seemed like forever.

At about the same time, I did order a black plastic wristband. It read "I did not vote 4 Bush." I put a picture of it on my blog ...

I wore it for a while.

The 2008 campaign started fairly early in 2007. It lasted forever and a day. The long journey--about as long as Frodo's in "Lord of the Rings"--ended last Nov. 4.

One wait ended. Another began, the 2 1/2 months to Inauguration Day. That also seemed to last forever, what with the financial crisis and stock market struggles. Why can't it just be over?

On Tuesday, the wait was over, and a new day began. Today is the day. Sure, I wish I was in Washington. But I can't. I'm here. So I'll watch it here.

The thing to remember now is patience. The change most of us have prayed for will not happen right away. But it will come. Our country took the wrong turn eight years ago, and anyone who has missed an exit on the freeway knows how difficult and time-consuming it is to get to where we should have gone in the first place.

Or, think of it like our beastly cold weather we dealt with last week. Several days of 24-hour-a-day subzero weather. It finally ended, Not that spring is here yet. Spring is still a long way off. But we're a little closer to it now.

Patience. Spring will come. Better times will come. Our generation's FDR is moving into the White House, in the midst of a national crisis much like FDR stepped into in 1933, "The only thing we have to fear is ... fear itself," he told our country.

It was a historic day at a crisis point for our nation. Today is another historic day, being watched just as closely all over the world. As someone who rarely takes a day off work, I think it's time to leave, go home and listen closely to what Barack Obama has to tell me.

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9/24/2008 - To all you independents

Recently, I was quite amazed/amused to hear about the Canadian election, which is coming up on Oct. 14.

Do you know when they called the election? It was on Sept. 7. So the length of the campaign will be 37 days. Thirty-seven days. Yes, I know there was speculation for a long time that an election would be called this year, but the wheels were only set in motion on Sept. 7. Thirty-seven days.

By contrast, the current U.S. presidential election unofficially started the day after the 2004 election and actively after the 2006 election. I'm sure most of you are getting quite tired of it.

I have been doing my best to keep my opinions to myself, but I made an exception back on Jan. 4, when Vox's question of the day was "What is your reaction to the Iowa caucus?", which had just been held. I commented here. I think Efx2 was taking one of its periodic vacations at the time.

I know many people are still undecided, and many are just plain turned off my the entire drawn-out process. Myself included. But I found an article this week that hit home. It was an open to letter to people who haven't yet decided whom to vote for, whatever the reason, whether they follow politics closely or whether they stay far away from it. You're a diverse group. To quote from the introduction:

But there are a few qualities that many of you share. You are fed up with the choices offered you and sick of partisan rancor. You are disillusioned both with the Bush administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress. Many of you are conservative on fiscal policy and liberal on social issues, which is a big reason neither party exactly fits you. Mainly, you want someone who will actually deliver -- on the economy, on foreign policy, on domestic programs. And you don't care what his or her political label is

Because you hold the key to the election, both John McCain and Barack Obama have been assiduously courting you. But you're not sold on either candidate. You like the fact that McCain has a reputation as a maverick and an independent thinker, but you're not sure if he doesn't just represent more of the Washington status quo. As for Obama, you don't know much about him and all the mania about him only makes you suspicious.

As the endless campaign moves into the home stretch, the noise from both sides and their supporters grows deafening. You're sick of the hyperbolic, us-against-them commentary that dominates our political discourse. What follows is a list of the main issues facing the country, and an attempt to compare, in as neutral a way as possible, how the two candidates stack up on those issues.

It was an interesting read, and I thought maybe you would like to see it, too. If you want to read it for yourself, here is the link. The election is less than six weeks away. The first debate is Friday night.

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4/5/2008 - Memories of a terrible day

Nobody, of course, had any idea what was going to happen. It was an ordinary day, after all, in early spring where I was raised--in the suburbs of Milwaukee. I think it was a Thursday. Not sure about that.

I am sure that it was my senior year in high school. I was two months from graduation, and I had a rehearsal after school. I was in the class play. It was a modernized version of the Greek story, "Antigone," and I was King Creon.

The rehearsal went on until about 5:30 p.m. I lived within walking distance of the school and got home around 5:45. The first thing my mom said when she saw me: "Did you hear? Martin Luther King died."

I hadn't heard.

"Why? What happened? Did he get shot?" President Kennedy had been slain less than five years earlier, and the memory of that day was still a raw wound.

And so I caught up with the news on TV. The details were coming out in bits and pieces. Dr. King had been in Memphis, Tenn., to help the city's sanitation workers, who were striking. They didn't know who did the shooting. This happened at a time when a lot of other things were going down. The war in Vietnam wasn't going well. The Tet offensive had taken place a few months ago, shaking confidence in the government's rosy confidence that the war was going their way.

More and more protests about the war and the draft were going on, and the clamor was increasing. Sen. Eugene McCarthy was challenging President Johnson in the Democratic primaries. Then, after McCarthy did very well in the Wisconsin primary, Sen. Robert Kennedy also decided to run against LBJ. I didn't like the war, but I supported Johnson, anyway, because of his work on behalf of Civil Rights and his war against poverty.

Then, at the end of a televised speech about Vietnam, Johnson announced that he would not seek a new term as president. That only happened a few days earlier. And now this.

I don't remember much from that night. Maybe I was in a daze. I knew the TV networks played parts of King's speech from the night before, when he said that he "may not get to the promised land," like Moses. Premonition?

My only clear memory from that night was the Tonight Show, which went on as usual, despite the national tragedy that had taken place. But Johnny Carson made it clear from the start that it was a night for thought and reflection. What I remember most from that show were the Supremes, the popular Motown group, singing "There's a Place for Us" from "West Side Story." And the tears streaming down Diana Ross' face as she paid tribute to Dr. King during the song. I don't think I will ever forget that.

The next few days passed in a blur. I heard there would be a march in downtown Milwaukee in King's memory. It may have been the first time I ever drove down into the central city area. But I made the trip, and I walked from the near north side--the center of the city's black population--to the downtown area and back. Nothing happened except that I skipped a day off from school, so I had to serve a day or two of detention. Small price to pay.

The play came. And went. I did OK. Not great. Graduation came. And went. I did OK. Didn't really seem to matter a lot. Priorities were shifting. Times were changing. What seemed important before had lost its value, and other things were taking over. I started seeing things differently. Thinking for myself.

In two more months, Bobby Kennedy was killed. Murdered, like Dr. King. Two months after that, the Democratic Convention broke down into riots in downtown Chicago; anti-war protesters confronted Mayor Daley's police. And in the end, Richard Nixon was elected president, and the war went on for another six years.

I don't know what the moral of this piece is. By rights, some great insight should be written here, in the very last paragraph, that may illuminate that time and provide light for all of us today. I don't know if there is one.

I just wanted to write about this terrible day 40 years ago that changed the way I look at the world. And I still wish to hell it had never happened.

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1/6/2008 - Vox repost: The grand scheme for '08

When efx2blogs unexpectedly got severely incapacitated lately, I quickly formed a new blog at http://drdog.vox.com.

Efx2blogs.com is back in operation now, but I plan to double-post from here on. I've been through Modblog and efx2 1.0 and efx2blogs 1.0, so I'm rather tired of starting all over. And over. And over.

This was originally posted at drdog.vox.com on Jan. 3:

What am I trying to do here today? What is the grand scheme of things?

I am trying to write some "new year's resolutions" for 2008, that, I hope, won't be traditional stuff.

It's untraditional already--it appears a few days after the start of the year. Well, I make 'em up as I go along. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

1. I'd like to be happier. Too many days are just a grind, without a lot of fun. Today, for instance. Well, today is a cloudy, coldish winter day, so it goes without saying.

2. I want to hold off getting a new car until 2009. My buggy now has 140,000 miles and is doing fairly well. But I would like something with a little more room. So maybe I ultimately won't be able/want to wait. We'll see what the money situation is like. A lot of uncertainty in this one, as you can see..

3. New widescreen TV by the time the Stanley Cup playoffs start in April. Hockey on a digital TV sounds pretty cool. So do all my widescreen movies. It won't be a huge one--it may not even be HD. But it will be a big step up over what sits in the living room now.

4. I want to get away more. Our of town. Road trips. Sometimes by myself, sometimes with my wife. That should be a lot easier than last year, since we won't have to clean all the stuff out of my mom's house again. Speaking of which...

5. Selling my mom's house. Or renting it out. It's costing me too much money, what with heating, taxes and insurance. Let some one else pay..

6. Finding a nude beach/lake I can visit fairly often. Once in a while, anyway. If that guy would ever write back, it should take care of it. Maybe I need to enlist S to help--she would be happy to.

7. Freedom Fest again this summer. Nuff said. Will need a new tent for that, I think. Must do research into that.

8. New upstairs windows on the house. Replace the crappy old ones.

9. Go to bed earlier. Especially when I'm feeling horny. Blogs can wait.

10. More interesting blog entries. Fewer "day in the life" stories. More philosophical, more controversial topics, more stream of consciousness entries, which can take weird turns.

11. Let my wife be herself. Flip side: Let me be myself. Everyone is happier that way.

12. More sexy movies. More foreign movies. So what if she doesn't like subtitles? Tough. Take a chance!

13. Clean up household clutter. Get rid of stuff I don't want to keep. Sounds easy ... in theory. But I have to do some of that before I can get the new TV.

14. See a live hockey game. Not a kids game, either. If only my weekends weren't so crazy.

15. Get away from the prudes and the closed-minded people. Let's live life a little.

16. Find something else to cut out of my diet (following the trail blazed by white bread and 2% milk). Sugared soda could be next, except my wife likes them, David likes them, and I have this fondness for root beer. Meat? That's tough, with my wife around; most of her recipes involve meat somehow. But maybe a meatless day or two each week isn't out of the question.

Since this was originally posted, I have come up with two more resolutions:

17. Take my wife out for a movie date much more often. At least once a month. A nice dinner, a good movie. Sounds like nice, relaxing fun.

18. Treat the lawn for weeds before the dandelions pop up their lovely yellow heads in April.

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12/31/2007 - Yesterday, today and tomorrow

It was my turn to write the newspaper's editorial for our Christmas week edition. It's not an assignment I enjoy. I was supposed to write something about the holidays, but I didn't really feel that happy, thank you very much.

It was just after Lady Visine's dear Spouse had died, just as my father-in-law was preparing for his heart surgery. And I was also thinking about some of the blog friends I haven't heard from for a long time; about S, who I was especially missing around that time. And maybe I was feeling a little lonely. I wasn't feeling happy.

So this is what I wrote. I'll leave it for you to think about as 2007 ends and 2008 begins.

A wistfulness pervades the air this time of year. The old year is nearly over, and we inevitably look back. We do a lot of thinking about what has happened in the last 12 months, both the happy memories and the sad ones.

Some people we know spend their lives looking in the rear-view mirror of their memory. We have always pre-ferred the view out the windshield—after all, how are you going to get anywhere if you’re not looking forward?

But the last half of December is different. We think about the things we have done and didn’t do and should have done and maybe shouldn’t have. We think about the people we know, the friends we love and hold dear in our heart.

Absent friends—those who have moved away, those who have died and those whom we simply haven’t seen very much recently. We remember the last kiss we shared, the last warm hug, the last laugh, the last drink we quaffed together. At that time, we never thought it would be the last one.

Sometimes you see something or hear a piece of music or something someone says—and the memories come flooding back. We sit and remember and wish those good times could come back somehow. Sometimes they can. Sometimes they can only live on in memory. Treasured memory.

Have you lost someone this year? You are hardly alone. All of us write our own story, our own joys and heartaches. The cast always changes. People exit the stage of our lives, never to return.

Then new characters enter. New people come who maybe are also feeling a little lost and lonely and who are looking for a friend. Maybe you’re the person each other is looking for. But how will you know if you don’t look out that windshield and think about the future?

Dan Fogelberg died recently. I don’t know if you know his music, but he had some really thoughtful, perceptive songs. The one running through my head for the last few days was “Another Auld Lang Syne.”

It tells the story of a chance meeting between two people who were once lovers, and how the memories came rushing back to both of them. They spent a little time remembering together, and then they part again.

And now we’re at that time of year ourselves, thinking about the ones who are gone from our lives, remembering the good times we shared together. The ghost of Christmas past.

It’s OK. We all do that this time of year. Next week we can look ahead to 2008. But not right now. Let’s enjoy the warm thoughts for a while.

Let’s also enjoy each other during this holiday season. We can’t see what lies ahead. Probably that’s just as well. But we have today. Our reality today is the people who are now around us—our friends, our family, the people we meet every day.

Tomorrow, today will be yesterday. So let’s enjoy today. Tomorrow may be too late.

To all my dear friends here on efx2blogs.com, I wish all of you a wonderful new year, filled with thrills and happy excitement and wonderful memories.

Tomorrow, today will be yesterday. So let's enjoy today. Tomorrow may be too late.

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