Welcome: Table of Contents Oct.5,08 - Aug.12,09
Take a hike with me through quiet hills to contemplate dogs, animals, politics, cruelty, beauty and pictures, pictures.
Why I live in Nevada
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| DATE | TITLE | QUOTE |
| October 5, 2008 | Roger’s Ghost | He radiated his goofy, self-effacing grin and he got in my car. I felt I had known him forever…. |
| October 6, 2008 | Early Sunday Walk | Thoughts about the Great Beyond and a potato bug with a picture of this very alarming insect… |
| October 9, 2008 | Dalai Lama on Peace | Featuring a picture of the author and a group of merry pilgrims with His Holiness: Dharamsala January 2000. In the brown robe to the far right is Ven. Lobsang Samten who was our guide.The Dalai Lama:”According to my own little experience, what I learned, when we have difficulties, most reliable friend is our own inner feelings,” he said. “Peaceful society must come from genuine inner peace.” |
| October 28, 2008 | Debased Doggies | …Consider the dog as he really is. He is a running, jumping, digging and dodging hunting machine. He was not made to spend his life in a dog park or on a leash or in a Rodeo Drive handbag. |
| November 3, 2008 | Dreams from My Candidate | The author makes eye contact with Obama. You’ve gotta like him….a woman I later read about in the paper. Her husband had, horribly and freakily, died of a heart attack while canvassing for Obama. Obama had been in Hawaii visiting his mortally ill grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. Nevertheless, he found time to send flowers to the Sparks widow. He called her as well. At first she didn’t believe it was Obama on the line, but she called back and indeed it was he. He arranged a VIP pass for her and she later told reporters she met with him and they hugged. “I blubbered on his shirt,” she said. (RGJ Oct. 25, 2008, by TAMMY KRIKORIAN tkrikorian@rgj.com. |
| November 9, 2008 | Sadiepants Mackenzie | “Sadie’s a good dog,” he said. “She has just enough bitch in her.” I agreed profusely. |
| November 11, 2008 | End Torture: First Priority | Nov. 11 and 13 posts feature four 2002 pictures, the first I ever saw, of the ghastly inhuman treatment of Afghani prisoners at US hands. Not gory pictures. Just horrifying in their utter dehumanization of the victims. |
| November 16, 2008 | They Hunt Swans | …but I’m too upset to go on right now, having just learned that they kill swans. |
| January 7, 2009 | Unleashed Melody | I’ve had 11 dogs in my life. I hate to say it because it’s elitist, and I hate competitions and odious comparisons, but Melody was the smartest. She just was.Tribute to my long-gone beagle/basset |
| January 8, 2009 | Unleashed Melody II | The Saga Continues |
| DATE | TITLE | QUOTE |
| January 11, 2009 | Too Lucky | Lucky enough to spend the day watching tundra swans….I heard their call, higher and thinner than the Canada goose, the scream of absolute freedom. This is how lucky I am, I have witnessed this in my lifetime. Includes link to sound recording |
| January 12, 2009 | Desert Miracles | Inspired by a locally produced TV documentary called “Living in the Big Empty” which appeared on local PBS channel KNPB, I write about my great good fortune, to have the desert as my teacher. |
| January 25, 2009 | No More Victims: My Best Choice | Some truths are self-evident. That torture and war are wrong is self-evident. I feel compelled to do something about it |
| January 28, 2009 | Roger Obituary | This month is Roger’s Jahrzeit. “The final night he licked weakly at a tablespoon of the Ben & Jerry’s Peach Cobbler ice cream I had bought for him.’… |
| February 8, 2009 | In Praise of the Great Basin Collared Lizard | Some spectacular pictures and praise of the venerable lizard, with authoritative information from various sources. |
| February 10, 2009 | Don’t Leash Me In | About TrailSafe, dogs caught in miserable steel jaw traps, letters to local editor pro and con trapping. Keeping a dog eternally on leash is not the answer. |
| February 11, 2009 | Don’t Leash Me In II | For a few precious hours, she gets to be a dog and her world makes sense. …In the boonies, their speed, their energy, their hunting instincts, their autonomy, their intelligence come into play. Around the house, it’s just waiting. |
| February 22, 2009 | Renunciation | A few days later, I arrived home in Reno to discover him, bags already packed and all his possessions moved, on his way out to an apartment his new girl friend found for him. Adding insult to injury, she was, so I had thought, a long-time friend.Karma had done its dirty work and I lost what I didn’t appreciate just when I decided to appreciate it.Coming to grips with solitude |
| March 7, 2009 | Tragedy at the Trailhead | Senseless murder of two coyotes.Not far from here is a loving grave to somebody’s “Jake” with a cross and a picture of the fallen comrade. By contrast here, right where passing children can see it, is a monument to cruelty and disrespect of a beautiful, intelligent creature. |
| March 8, 2009 | One Less Wood Rat: Reminder of Humility | …typical of spiritual experience? My Lama calls him Mr. Karma and he has a wicked sense of humor.Today I let my dog kill a Wood Rat Am I any less guilty than the coyote killer?There was no escaping it. I was on Mr. Karma’s meat hook. To console myself, I painted the scene from Sadie’s point of view. “Good day today,” she writes in her doggie diary,”I finally got a wood rat. Mom actually gave me enough time to do the job right. I’m a hell of a dog, yes I am.” |
| DATE | TITLE | QUOTE |
| March 16, 2009 | Monkey Mind | Feature: Monkey Macaque slide show linkThis is India, the home of the original hippies and the Golden Mantled Rhesus Macaque. The most right-brained, zany country on earth. Double booked railway seats, random sleepers, staring mute passengers, useless windows and hordes of free-roaming monkeys. |
| March 19, 2009 | Monkey Mind II | From my three-week brief but impassioned week observing wild monkeys, I think the monkey gets a bad rap. In fact, they may be among the most profound teachers around. We need a few more monkeywrenches in the works and a few less rigid left brain military school types. A monkeyless India would lose most of its charm, at least for romantics like me. |
| April 2, 2009 | Weep for Afghanistan and Pakistan | From 12/22/08 to 1/21/09, I had Google Alerts sent to my email inbox. I was trying to get a handle on numbers of Afghan civilians killed or wounded by the USA.I was so overwhelmed with information, that I shut off the pipeline after a month.US and other NATO forces are responsible for hundreds, possibly thousands of civilian deaths. |
| April 14, 2009 | Afghanistan Civilian Deaths Due to US Action: 2008 | From Dec, 22, 2008 through January 21, 2009, I received daily Google Alerts on the keywords: “Afghanistan,” “civilian deaths”. There were such deaths every week in that time frame. Overall, journalists agreed 2008 was the worst year yet for civilian deaths at American hands. Estimates are as high as 2,000 dead… |
| April 16, 2009 | In Memory Of: From the Afghan Victim Memorial Project | I can add nothing to this moving and powerful photoessay. Here we have names, faces, family so these victims can never again be blank statistics… |
| April 23, 2009 | Prosecute Entire Chain of Command | ‘Just following orders’ hasn’t been a defense since Nurenberg.And giving the orders is damn sure no defense. |
| May 5 2009 | Arrowroot April | April 23, 2009, the first day this year the local muted gray-green landscape was finally punctuated by clusters of emphatic yellow.Info about and pictures of: Arrowroot, Mules Ear Tribute to spring |
| May 16, 2009 | Lizard Season Opens | Discovering difference between skinks and dark phase of Great Basin Fence Lizard. Breeding season now, and males adorn the rocks…Some good photos |
| May 17 2009 | Growly Class | Sadie is taking an extreme obedience class: “Hear Me Roar”, or Growly Class, in which participants wear a harness, a collar, a Gentle Leader and a muzzle. It works. Five weeks of training and she’s mellower in daily life even without all that gear. Something relaxed in her. I was afraid it would break her spirit, but far from it. Her huntress spirit is intact, but her anxieties and defenses have all but evaporated, and she’s happier for it. She smiles now. Her face used to be a taut mask. See picture of Sadie’s smile. |
| DATE | TITLE | QUOTE |
| May 25 2009 | First Butterfly Photo | By first I mean first butterfly picture I want to show in public. Most likely it’s a Sagebrush Checkerspot. Info and pix on local butterflies. |
| May 25, 2009 | Cooperating Lizard | Another day of great good fortune. Fortune for Sadie hunting and for me taking pictures. Miserable for the ground squirrel and the lizard she nailed. There goes what’s left of my karma. |
| June 6 2009 | Long-nosed Leopard Lizard | Another discovery. I was lumping all the patterned lizards into one category. In fact, this guy, who obligingly posed, who, in fact, almost tugged my pants cuff to get my attention, is a leopard lizard. Some good pix and info |
| June 10, 2009 | Lizard Clarification Clarified | This leopard lizard was standing right by my foot as I paused for breath. He cheerfully posed for three pretty good shots |
| August 3, 2009 | My Vindication Garden | I avoided vegetable gardening until 2009. I do not like to fight nature, especially when backache is involved. But the author finally grows some pretty good veggies. With pictures. |
| August 12, 2009 |
They’re everywhere, most often lurking by anthills. And they don’t run as fast as the thinner lizards, so once you spot one your chance of getting a picture is good. Some rare pictures.
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