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For Craig
Alas, I was not able to get a picture of Jinx returning home with his trophy. But here is one of him with some of the many charnel-house prizes he drags home on a regular basis. Just today, Mrs. Orr had to wrestle away from him an enormous swath of plastic netting, the kind used to wrap round hay bales. One of our farmer neighbors had stripped the netting from a bale and left it near his silage pit just down the road. Jinx had it stretched all the way down the driveway when my wife saw what was going on. I’m trying to teach him to seek and bring…
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A Jinxotic Interlude
Our nearest neighbor recently acquired a puppy who just happens to be about the same age as Jinx. He was supposed to be a basset hound, but turns out that he’s a basset/lab mix, as black as any lump of coal ever mined in these hills, low to the ground, sturdy as a sack of cement, ears down to yar, hilarious gait. He came a’callin’ the other evening, having escaped the confines of his own fenced yard. Jinx and I were sitting outside, enjoying the breeze in the shade, watching the birds. I was half-reading, absently scratching his ears while he sat beside me, leaning against my chair, the one…
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Eyes Without A Face
On the drive to work, the approach of summer announced itself with the early bright sky. I am still pleased with how clear the skies are these days. Ever since this manufactured worldwide crisis began, the murky web of vapor trails in the sky has been almost completely nonexistent. To my eyes, the sky seems bigger, clearer, realer. Even at night, the effect seems pronounced, with the stars appearing nearer and more…present with me. When I arrived at work after a week away, the tree beneath which I park seemed fuller and lusher, its purplish leaves nodding in the morning breeze. I touched my cheek to one of the leaves…
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The Strange Power
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” ― Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses Yesterday marked six months to the day that our beloved dog, Bonnie, died in her sleep. I don’t ponder it as much as I once did, but each time I remember the moment that I realized Bonnie was gone, I feel as if I have been kicked in the stomach. The sense of her being stolen from us is as raw and punishing as it was half a year ago. My grief for my dog caught me by surprise. I never expected to mourn an animal the way I did Bonnie.…
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Cold’s End
And it came to pass that yesterday was a chilly but gorgeous day, and I was as a stranger unto my wife, for I spent long hours of the day outside with the red-spotted dog, starting with a long walk just as the sun was peeking up over the eastern ridge of the Clinch Mountains. Mid-morning, I took Jinx for a ride to the county trash dump. He still has considerable fear of riding in vehicles, but I’ve learned not to try and coax him inside. The cajoling only makes him more skittish. So I just opened the door in advance, and went and got all the trash I was…
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Shine On
The redbuds and dogwoods have been especially vibrant this spring in the Appalachian mountains, and on the drive home this evening I was tempted to sight-see, a temptation my wife strongly warns me against, having been in the passenger seat too many times during my heedless reveries over the years, asking me through tight teeth and compressed lips to please steer the vehicle off the shoulder and back into the lane. The waterfall near our home is now completely obscured by the oaks and poplars along its shoulders, and it rages on unseen until autumn pulls the leafy comforter away. I have to do better with my eating habits. How…
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Pugilistic-19
During the past two weeks of the current, ah, crisis, I’ve been able to work from home quite a bit, and am grateful that I haven’t been laid off. One of the fringe benefits of working at home has been getting to spend a lot of time with our dog Jinx. I can take a break any time I want, and usually my breaks include going outside to romp or walk with the spotted menace. Even though Jinx is mostly red heeler, I enjoy telling him regularly that his spots can be traced to disreputable Dalmatian genes. I also like advising him that it’s only an act of deliberate magnanimity…
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Under A Pink Moon
Have you ever noticed it? The way an approaching change in weather can be detected by all creatures beneath the gaze of heaven? Birds will skim the sweet grass, seeking insects before a drenching rain, and cows will lie down in the fields, resting the joints that the coming showers foretell in them, just as the stooped farmer feels the same ground-glass ache in his knotted knuckles. The very trees seem to face the wind and cross their arms, wondering if this will be the toppling day, or if tomorrow will see them still stretching above the quilt of still things, the soil and dirt that listen, that are aware,…