jumpingfish

1. Sitting Down to Wait

“You can sit right here,” we said, and I motioned to a man with a dog.

“Ok,” he said with a glad look on his  He had been walking back and forth evidently looking for a place to sit, for a while.

The people at the table next to us were a bit alarmed, because two of their group had gone in to order another beer. But they eventually offered to move over themselves so that this guy and his dog could slide in at the picnic table. 

A woman joined him just as we were all sitting back down. So we were two full tables amid the many other tables of happy, loud, talking people waiting for the bluegrass band to return from their break.

2. A Young Crowd

The two of them were bluegrass fans. They said they regularly visit St. Elmo Brewing Company on Thursdays for bluegrass night. Indeed, as it turned out, they play bluegrass themselves.

They talked about a bluegrass jam they have at their house with a couple of retired guys. They talked excitedly about a festival they’ll be playing at in the fall. And they told us about each of the musicians when they returned to the stage.

At some point one of us asked, “When did you get here?” You know, the where are you from and what do you do in your day job conversation.

Trudy answered, “I came to Austin in 1991.”

“Oh,” the woman said with wide eyes. “You win!”

Trudy threw a glance my way.

“But he,” Trudy said, pointing at me in a J’accuse! kind of way. “He has been here longer.”

They looked at me.

“I came to Austin in 1982,” I said.

The woman’s eyes opened even wider. And the man shuffled their little dog in his lap, turned to me with a smile on his face.

“I came here in 1982, too,” he said. He paused and added, “I was born in 1982.”

Let’s just say, that it was a young crowd. (As it turned out, the music was dang good, too.)

Back to Berkeley… 

1. The Procession

After perhaps an hour, accompanied by Pomp and Circumstance, the graduates filed out of a tunnel on the north end of the stadium, walking (not particularly solemnly) behind the chancellor and a banner of Berkeley Blue and California Gold. 

There were many of them. The procession went on for a very long time. And as their seats on the field gradually filled, I took a panorama photo.

(You can usually click the photos to enlarge them.)

2. Sharing the Pano

Having some time on my hands, I looked to see if I could AirDrop the pano to Trudy’s phone. 

Trudy’s iPhone phone didn’t show up in the list, but there was someone else who did. I had no idea who she was, but I sent the photo to Cathy’s iPhone. It was promptly declined.

I stood up and looked around.

“Cathy…,” I said. “How could you?”

A woman sitting nearby had been paying attention to this, and she chuckled at my disappointment. I turned to look at her.

“You want a copy?” I held out my phone to show her the shot (which of course she could have taken herself if she really did). She played along.

“Sure!” she said. So she enabled AirDrop, and I sent the pano to her. It was promptly accepted.

3. An Afterthought

You know, I’m not sure I ever did send that pano to Trudy.

Sorry, Trudy. Want it now?

1. Some Facts

From the day we adopted him, Charlie has been afraid of riding in the car. Horribly afraid. Whereas Izzy lives for jumping into the car, as did Mr. Guinness, when we go somewhere with Charlie, his face is grim and he begins to shake. And we discovered today that the same applies to thunderstorms.

Now, Charlie isn’t the first dog to dislike thunder. Indeed, Mr. Guinness was the template from which canine dislike of storms is derived, although now that I stop to think about it, his reaction was one of challenge rather than fear. Charlie, on the other hand, seems to be terribly afraid of thunder.

In spite of the fact that thunder brings cool air blowing in the front door and refreshing rain for the tomatoes, at the slightest hint of a storm (black skies in the west and a distant rumbling), we discovered today that Charlie comes up to us for protection, plainly asking for help from the approaching danger, shaking just as he does when we go out in the car.

2. A Theory

Charlie, you should know, is ten years old. We intentionally adopted a senior dog because they are hard to adopt out and … because honestly, we didn’t want a puppy. As we were talking to another senior rescue dog who was wigglingly happy, wagging her tail and giving us many kisses, Charlie sat regally in the lap of his foster mother gazing into the distance, periodically blinking his eyes. He had a meditative look to him. I was hooked.

But why would a gentle, laid-back, ten year old dog need to be adopted? What circumstances led him to be out in the wild, emaciated and alone? What happened to this wonderful zen-dog that he needed to be rescued?

My theory is this.

Once upon a time, Charlie must have been in a wonderful home. He lived with people he loved and who loved him back. They treated him well, because there is no sign of the kind of fretful timidness in him that you can see in dogs that have been abused. He had a happy life and lived many years in that happy home.

But something happened. I don’t know what it was, but my guess is that it ended with a long car drive out into the countryside, with the opening of the car door, and with the car racing off, leaving Charlie standing on the side of the road wondering what just happened, with a fear of cars newly burned into his psyche forever.

And so there he was, far from home, alone, in the countryside. And my guess is that he was alone that way for a very long time. There must have been storms, and my guess is that his trembling this morning with the approaching thunder and lightening is not a reflection of his fear of the weather but rather a flashback to that horrible time when he was all alone, abandoned by his family, cold, hungry.

I would shake, too.

But Charlie is once again a happy dog. Now that the storm has passed, his shaking has stopped, his pensive gaze has returned, and the luminosity of his zen is glowing out from under the desk where he is very contentedly curled up.

There were dogs in Michigan when we put the dock in — two white dogs and one black one.

Izzy would have run circles around them (in the literal sense, not in the my-dog-is-better-than-yours sense), and then she would have run straight into the woods which would have been the last we saw of her, because within seconds she would have been on a bee-line off to … Kalamazoo.

And this, alas, is why there was only one black dog and two white ones up there in the woods.

Trudy objects to this characterization of Miss Izzy.

“She would come back…,” she says, but I know no such thing.

Besides, Izzy would never sit quietly for hours in a carrier under a seat in an airplane. But don’t tell Trudy about this opinion of mine, because there is no doubt that she’d love to put the hypothesis to the test when fall comes around and the dock needs to come out.

With a bright sun shining and Pomp and Circumstance playing, the graduates streamed into the stadium, walking to their seats on the field.

We saw them come in. We saw the radiant smiles. The relief. The joy. We all saw it. We all shared it.

Tomorrow they would finally be able to sleep in without guilt. If that’s not joy, what is?