2023/2024 Review/Preview

First the 2023 Review

Run 500 miles: Fell short of the goal. Only ran 400 miles.

Become fluent enough in Italian to read a couple chapters of an Italo Calvino novel: Fell short of this one, too. Did become marginally more fluent in Italian. Rather than a pair of Calvino chapters, I translated the first two chapters of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Dove mi trovo. Much shorter chapters.

Write 1,000 words a week: Again, far short. Even if you include shopping lists.

Read Saint Augustine of Hippo: Read two of the three books I intended to read, On Free Choice of Will and Confessions. Did not start City of God. No apologies, here, though. Pored over Confessions. Was worth the slow, thorough read.

Sail: Made it out on the water so seldom it was disappointing. Made it back to shore every time, though.

Visit Hawaii: Budget and schedule did not allow me this one. Did visit Milan, Italy and the French Riviera for ten days with Marie, though. That trip was wonderful.

Feed the hungry: Opened up the wallet for this one, which was a half-measure, as far as I am concerned. Volunteering my time in addition to my money would have been much better.

Reduce: Reduced in every way imaginable, it seemed. Still, the mountain of clutter continues to cast its shadow on my life.

Well, then, I fell short of every goal. Better than achieving every goal, I suppose. I mean, if I had achieved every goal then I did not aim high enough, right?

On to the 2024 Preview

OK. Going to recycle a 21/22/23 goal. Run 500 miles. Ten miles a week.

Travel appears on my list again this year. Instead of Hawaii, though, it will be New Zealand. Mary and Marie went there at the beginning of 2020, just before the real start of the pandemic. They have been raving about it ever since. I have already set aside money for the trip, inherited from Marianne. She would approve.

Read Augustine’s City of God, at least some of it. It is long and dense and requires quite a bit of thought and reflection. So, my idea is to read as much of it at the pace I can to absorb as much of it as reasonable this year. It is composed of twenty-two books. Maybe I will read one a month, roughly. Perhaps more, perhaps less. Also plan to read the Letters of Saint Paul, all of them.

Write a chapter (or short story) a week.

Learn to sail well enough to attain at least one certification.

Finish translating Dove mi trovo. And then what? Some chapters of Calvino?

Do something unplanned, unexpected, something that I will treasure for the rest of my days.

Live the skux life.

At the Pound

She pulled into the parking lot of the animal shelter. The lot was really just a crumbly mess of decayed asphalt, ringed by a dense band of weeds. The asphalt itself was punctuated with only slightly less weeds than what surrounded it.

The shelter was a squat cinder block building on the outskirts of a small town, just off the state highway.

She walked into the building, a skeptical frown on her face. Why didn’t they just call it what it was. It as a dog pound, not an animal shelter. The only animals there were dogs. Dogs that nobody wanted.

Probably with good reason.

And it wasn’t a shelter. Dogs didn’t go there to get out of the rain or whatever for a bit before moving on along their way. They were brought there and locked up there.

Probably with good reason.

Still, she promised her mom that she would look into it, adopting a dog, a companion. This “animal shelter” was at least on her way home, so she could stop in and say she did it and be done with it.

At the front desk, or the lobby, or whatever you want to call it, she could hear the barking and the yipping and the baying of all the dogs in the back. Opening the front door to the shelter must have alerted them. This was the result. A bunch of senseless barking. High pitched barks that were more like squeaks than barks, drawn-out baying of bigger dogs, bossy bellowing of still larger ones.

She was greeted by an administrative sort of woman with a short hello and a half page of paperwork to complete. These rural dog pounds were eager to get rid of the dogs and did not want a lot of forms and signatures and the like to get in the way of that. Without much delay, she was taken to the “kennel room” in the back.

It slapped her square in the middle of her face. The smell.

The shelter administrator, a portly, affable woman of indeterminate age, apologized for the smell, saying they were having trouble keeping up with the recent influx of dogs.

Sure enough, all the cages, or “stations” as the administrator called them, were occupied. Some even had more than one dog in them in what seemed like random pairings. She surmised that the only requirement placed on a dog for sharing a “station” was that the dog and the cage-mate would refrain from attacking each other.

Without any prompting, the administrator started an introduction, of sorts, beginning with the first cage on their left as they entered the walkway between the two long row of cells.

The first dog on the left was a pathetic mongrel that did not even bother to bark. It did not wag its tail. It did not do anything, really. It just sat and stared at her as the administrator told her his name was “Ned” and blah, blah, blah.

The name “Ned” was enough. She was definitely not going to take home a dog with the same name as him. Ned was, after all, why she was there in the first place, looking for a companion. Or, rather, why her mom made her promise to take a look.

Definitely not Ned.

The administrator paused for a few seconds to see if the woman showed any interest in Ned. The woman, however, was already looking at the next station.

That station was occupied by a loud hound of some sort, backed into a corner of the cage, trying her hardest to make more noise than all the other dogs.

After that, a mismatched pair of scruffy-looking, squeaky, pint-sized nuisances that appeared to be trying to squeeze their snouts through the bars to bite her ankles. Didn’t really matter what their names were, neither were going home with her.

The administrator quickly sensed the futility of trying to place one of the dogs with the woman. The bio on each successive dog became shorter and shorter as they made their way up the one side of the walkway and back down the other.

They stopped at the door back out to the lobby. The administrator asked the woman what she was looking for in a dog.

“Nothing, really,” the woman replied curtly.

Then, embarrassed at her own impoliteness, she added that she was not really sure. Companionship, perhaps. Maybe something else.

The administrator took it in, patiently, then continued.

As the two talked, the woman noticed that Ned, or “that little nugget” as the administrator had called him at one point, had stood up and was peering through the bars and around the administrator’s legs to see the woman. He just stood and looked at her, as if waiting patiently for something.

The administrator told her that it was just as well that she did not have any preconceived notions of what she wanted in a dog, since it was the dog that did the choosing, anyway.

The woman had heard that corny bit of wisdom altogether too often from some of her dog-loving friends. She found that droll bit of dog wisdom amusing, at best. She wondered why people put so much effort into explaining their dogs. Dogs were, after all, only animals and did not need any explanation of why they were the way they were. They just were.

The woman leaned slightly to her left to return Ned’s gaze. As she did so, he stepped toward the latch which held the door to the cage shut and pointed his nose at the latch, as if to show the woman where it was.

The administrator asked the woman if she had any questions.

“Just one,” the woman answered, returning her attention back from the little nugget to the administrator.

“What’s that?”

“Can I give him a new name?”

Ryan

The house was dark and still when Ryan woke.

He blinked a couple of times and pondered whether or not to get up off the floor.

He rolled over to think about it and rested his chin on his left forepaw, scanning, taking in the dark, silent living room. Robert lay in his bed nearby, on his back, front paws curled to his chest, hind paws extended, looking for all the world like he was jumping over a log, upside down. His chest heaved shallowly and he had a serious look on his face. An upside down serious look that could not be taken very seriously. An overgrown puppy, even in his sleep.

Pondering his next move, Ryan breathed easily, much more easily than those last few labored breaths he drew right before he fell asleep. He breathed in and then let out an easy sigh. Just a bit to his left was the faint smell of a baked chicken leg someone had dropped on the carpet a few months back. Ryan reached his neck out toward the ghost of the smell and sniffed twice. Robert would search out that same spot several times a day and smell it intensely, hoping for that chicken leg to somehow reappear.

Yep, an overgrown puppy.

It had been a rough day followed by an even rougher night.

In the morning, Ryan faltered when he tried to pick himself up off the floor and walk to the back door to be let out. His owner helped by holding his body up until his legs were under him. As wobbly legs tried to move him, Owner told him to take his time.

Right. As if he had a choice in the matter.

By the time it was time to come back in for breakfast, the legs were bit better but it was still quite an effort to walk back into the house. He stumbled a couple of times on the way. Once inside, Ryan felt exhausted. Too exhausted, in fact, to eat. Instead, he found a soft spot on a rug to lie down and rest. His body landed with a thud.

At mid-day, Owner picked up Ryan off the floor and carried him out into the back yard.

In the evening, Owner again picked up Ryan and carried him out the back door. He patiently endured the jostling as Owner lumbered down the two steps from the back porch. Owner’s cheek rubbing against the top of his head eased the discomfort of being carried. When they reached Ryan’s favorite corner of the yard, near the row of honeysuckle bushes where the rabbits could often be found, they stopped. Ryan patiently complied as Owner held up his back side so he could poop.

By that point, Ryan did not struggle or resist. It was hard enough work just breathing. He simply let himself be picked up, carried, and be set down.

As before, after being carried back into the house, food just did not interest him. And as before, he dropped down without ceremony.

Quietly, Owner had laid Ryan in his bed. After an initial period of fussing by Owner and the rest of the family, he was finally left alone, although someone was constantly in the room until, finally, everyone went up to bed.

Mercifully, Robert sensed that Ryan did not want to play or to have a bone dropped on him or to interact in any way, really. Robert merely padded over to Ryan and gently touched noses before retreating to his own bed.

But now, in the middle of the night, the rough day was behind him and he felt much better. Better enough to look back and smile at his owner trying to sound like a dog woofing every time he said the word “rough.” Better enough to listen to the quiet chirping of crickets outside in the moonlight. Better enough to stand up and walk.

He slowly stood up, front legs first, followed by his ever reluctant hind legs. They managed this time to lift up and support his nearly worthless hips, for once without the usual dull ache that followed him everywhere.

He stepped out of his bed.

He stretched.

He silently stepped past Robert and turned into the front hallway.

Ahead of him, the front door was ajar. He walked up to it and put his snout into the just large enough opening. He threw his head sideways.

The door silently opened half way.

Next, Ryan put his forehead on the storm door, which was closed but not latched. It gave way easily and in a second he was gingerly stepping down the front porch stairs.

A gentle breeze greeted Ryan with a thousand memorable smells that washed over him. The rhythmic clack of his nails echoed in the quiet night as he slowly trotted to the end of stone sidewalk leading down to the street.

Out onto the street he turned right and continued his trot past the next door neighbor’s house.

Two houses beyond that, by the side of the street, a rabbit intently devoured grass in the moonlight.

Ryan slowed his pace. His head dropped and he changed his gait, gently lowering the back of each paw to keep his nails from announcing his approach.

He paused to sniff the rabbit from a distance.

Then he cautiously proceeded.

He tried to time each step to when the rabbit would bend down for another mouthful of grass, remaining motionless between the irregularly timed bobs of the rabbit’s head.

His progress was excruciatingly slow, but Ryan had learned patience over the years.

The closer he drew to the rabbit, the more he quivered between steps.

Incredibly, the rabbit seemed not to notice him.

His breathing quickened as the distance between them shrank.

His nostrils fanned the earthy scent of the rabbit into his finely-tuned snout.

The rabbit’s own nose twitched but she did not make a move to run away.

Ryan took another step.

Waited..

Another step.

Another.

Ryan was within a half step of the rabbit.

She buried her face in the grass for some clover hidden beneath the tall, unmowed blades.

Ryan seized his opportunity. He deftly bent forward, touching the tip of his snout just behind the rabbit’s shoulders.

He did it!

He did it!

He did it!

After all these years of sneaking up on rabbits, only to have them hop away, seemingly at the last second, he finally touched one!

The rabbit moved a half hop away and looked at him, still munching on the clover. She appeared to be only slightly perturbed at Ryan.

He leaned forward and touched his snout behind her ear, then tried to dig his snout further down into her furry neck.

She let him nuzzle her, but only for a second. His snout was too big and too wet.

She took a couple of hops away from him and then turned toward him as she rubbed her front paw behind her ear.

Ryan thought she smiled at him. His ears perked up and his tail wagged.

She finished her chewing and hopped into some bushes.

Ryan watched her as she disappeared into the shrubbery. Then he triumphantly stepped back onto the cool pavement of the street and resumed his trot.

Above, a few scattered clouds languidly moved past the moon.

A gentle breeze urged him on.

The faint scent of dog treats beckoned him to the other side of the street as he passed Frank’s house. He veered toward the end of Frank’s driveway and sure enough, there they were!

They must have dropped from Frank’s pocket when Frank went in for the night.

Ryan liked Frank. He liked Frank because he didn’t have to beat Frank over the head for a handout. You simply sat in front of him as closely as you could. Frank would look down, chuckle, dutifully put his hand in his pocket, and give you the morsels, one at a time. Then he would tell you “That’s it.”

Then you could grunt to him to tell him that there were, in fact, more and he would reach into his pocket again and pull out another few. You could do this two or three times before Frank would pull out his pocket and tell you, with an elaborated display of exasperation “That’s it! They’re all gone.”

A small mound of them on the street like this was much more fun and much more to the point.

After the treats, the breeze, again, beckoned him on.

Ryan ambled past more of the neighborhood.

He crisscrossed the street, stopping to sniff and pee at his usual stops.

Pretty soon, he came to the tee in the street. Straight ahead would continue taking him around the neighborhood. Turn to leave.

Before he even had a chance to decide which way to go, though, the familiar smell of Bonnie’s treats drew his nose down to the pavement. A small scattering of the little nibbles Bonnie liked to give him spread out on the street before him. Ryan liked Bonnie. With her, there was none of the pretending there was with Frank. Bonnie always gave Ryan two treats whenever they met. There was no need for negotiation or prodding. A small bunch of the treats must have fallen from her pocket when she returned to the neighborhood that evening. He deftly picked each one off the asphalt and swallowed it after a few quick crunches between his back teeth.

After he ate the last nugget, he quickly scanned around him for more until he was satisfied that there were none. Then, without hesitation, Ryan turned onto the short street that he and Owner so often took out of the neighborhood.

Owner always told him to look both ways as they crossed the street at the end of the neighborhood. Owner would turn his head in an exaggerated fashion. Ryan puzzled over that as a puppy but as season gave way to season he came to understand. Owner’s hearing and sense of smell were not all that good, abysmal, really, and that is what he needed to do in order to know if any cars were coming. Ryan learned to wait for Owner to go through his head turning ritual and say “Okay, let’s go.” before trotting across the street.

Occasionally, Ryan would have to gallop swiftly ahead to get them across in time if a car that Owner did not hear came fast over the hill on the street at the edge of the neighborhood. But they always made it.

Once outside the neighborhood, Ryan had many streets and sidewalks, and roads, and paths to choose from.

He started down a familiar street. That led to another familiar street, followed by another.

When he reached a certain street corner, he stopped. Owner and he had always walked straight when they came to this corner. He had occasionally glanced down the street as he and Owner walked on past it. The street went down a hill and bent out of sight. This night, Ryan turned onto the street, ambled down the hill and around the bend to see where it led.

The street led to an unfamiliar street, which led to another, which led to yet another.

At the end of this last street was a wooded park.

Ryan slowly approached the sign beside the entrance to the park to sniff its base. First one post, then the other, chronicled a list of dogs unknown to Ryan. He lifted his leg and added his own name to the list.

A gentle puff of breeze urged him into the inviting path which led deep into the park.

As he walked through the woods, Ryan was soothed by the soft rustle of the leaves being blown along the side of the path. The gentle breeze from behind him also pushed away the few clouds overhead allowing the moon to light his way.

Further along the path, the air started to turn moist and the unmistakable sound of flowing water compelled Ryan’s pace to quicken. It seemed like an eternity since he had last gone for a swim. His trot turned into a gallop.

The sun was beginning to push its way up over the horizon to light up the forest.

Soon, the path bore to the right and opened to a slight embankment. The grass gave way to sand. Before him, a wide stream flowed lazily.

He ran into the water.

After his initial splash, Ryan was soon up to his chest in the stream. The bottom of the stream was soft but firm and he was able to move into the deeper water unhindered. A few steps later, his paws no longer touched the bottom. He pushed himself forward effortlessly. The water felt wonderful. The current moved slowly. So slowly, that it was almost no current at all. He swam a loop in the middle of the river. He swam upstream. He swam downstream. He swam another loop, then another, then another. All the while, his big, wide paws moved him with utter grace and confidence.

He swam to the other side.

As he stepped out of the river, onto the distant shore, Ryan felt refreshed and not all that tired. He was born for crossing rivers.

He shook the water from his coat with a mighty shake.

He had left a forest before crossing the river but this side had a meadow that gradually sloped up and over a rise. He started for the rise. Still soaked, he shook again. Wet, but slightly less so, he continued forward.

The sandy shore of the river led to short grass, which gradually gave way to the long grass of the meadow. Sounds of activity over the rise piqued Ryan’s curiosity. He cantered forward up the gentle slope.

As he trotted up the hill, Ryan saw the points of two ears work their way above the top of the rise. The dark brown, pointy ears were separated by a shock of a cream colored mane that flopped down, nearly covering the eyes of an old trail horse. Instead of being frightened by the huge beast as it lumbered over the crest of the rise, Ryan was drawn toward it. Even from a distance, Ryan could smell that this was the horse that met him at a certain rusty old gate, a side entrance to a horse farm, years back. The horse stepped slowly, deliberately toward Ryan, even as it did back then, a lifetime ago.

When they were close enough, they touched snouts. The horse snorted a gentle welcome. He shook his head from side to side and his mane danced in the air. Ryan wagged back in that universal sign of eternal friendship.

The horse slowly turned around and began to walk back over the crest of the hill. Ryan trotted beside him.

When they reached the top of the hill, Ryan stopped, stunned. In the broad dip between the hill he was on and the next, higher, hill, Ryan saw a huge pack of dogs. Dogs of all sorts. Pure-breds, mutts, dogs of all shapes and sizes. Some were running, some were chewing on bones or sticks, some were scratching. One was on his back, squirming, rubbing the top of his head and his shoulders into some disgusting smell he found in the grass, probably poop from the rabbit that was being chased by another dog.

In the middle of this huge, wonderful pack of dogs, Ryan spotted one dog, sitting, quietly watching Ryan.

Ryan’s heart thundered and he took off in a frenzied all-out dash for the dog in the center of the pack, ears flapping wildly as he ran.

It was RUSTY!

Ryan dodged some of the dogs and leapt over others. Small ones jumped out of his way. Quickly, he reached Rusty.

Ryan whimpered. His tail thrashed. He rubbed the top of his head into Rusty’s chest.

Rusty gently nuzzled Ryan between his big, floppy ears.

When Ryan was a puppy, Rusty had always been there. Then, one day, the old dog just wasn’t there any more and for all these years since, Ryan had watched and waited, painfully, for him.

Sometimes, Ryan would catch the scent of Rusty on an old collar or something and think that Rusty would soon return, but he never did.

And now, finally, here he was.

Ryan pulled his snout out of Rusty’s chest and started to lick Rusty’s cheek.

Rusty playfully turned his head out of reach with a smile. He gingerly stood, turned, and started to find his way through the pack toward the far hill.

Ryan immediately went with him.

Together, they started a long walk together, side by side.

2023

Here are my Goals for this year, in no particular order, with some brief thoughts on each.

As I did last year, I am re-recycling one of my 2021/2022 goals, which was to run 500 miles. That’s still 42 miles a month or 10 miles a week. When will I run this week’s 10 miles? That is the question to ask myself each week. The year will take care of itself.

One thing I very much want to improve upon is my Italian language skills. I really love the language and want to enjoy speaking and listening to it. To help move me along in that, I am going to learn at least one new verb each week. Learn the verb and use it a lot to make is stick within me. Additionally, I plan to be able to read at least the first two chapters of Italo Calvino’s Se una notte d’inverno, un viaggiatore.

I plan to write at least one thousand words a week. The only impediment to me doing this is me setting aside the time to do it. Once I actually sit down and start, the thousand words materialize without much effort. It all comes down to setting aside the time.

I want to read, really read and understand, three writings by Saint Augustine of Hippo. The first of these three is one I have already started, On Free Choice of Will. I also plan to read Confessions and City of God. Augustine’s style of writing, at least in On Free Choice of Will, takes some getting used to. He must be the patron saint of double-negatives. But if I slow down and read carefully, he is much easier to follow. It is well worth the effort.

Now that I have my boat and have sailed it a few times, I plan to put it in the water sooner in the water this year than last year and sail it more. Also, my plan is to acquire the first three ASA certifications, 101, 103, and 104, this year. Learning to sail well does require some study, but it also requires actual time sailing. I will do both.

Another goal, or plan, really, is for Mary and me to visit Hawaii. This is something we planned to do a couple of times in the past and both times our plans were scuttled. This time we’re going.

I also want to volunteer in some capacity to feed the hungry on a regular basis. The few times I have helped out in this way felt really good, really worthwhile uses of my time. I want to do more and do it regularly, make it a part of my life.

This last Goal or Plan is to Reduce. Reduce paperwork, reduce the clothes in my closet, reduce the tools and other accumulated things in my garage and basement, get rid of all those things that clutter my life. As they say, “Property is Slavery.” Losing these shackles will give me the time and the space to actually follow through on all my other Goals. I guess that makes this Goal a Synergy. Whatever. I’m ready.

Summing Up 2022

Disappointment.

That is how I would describe my 2022. Disappointment. Primarily with myself.

I didn’t do anything. I didn’t change. I did not grow as a person in any apparent way.

And it’s not that appearances are the point, here. Inner essence is the point. But an essential change in someone really should become outwardly apparent.

I had no change within myself for others to see.

A waste of a year.

It was not a lack of goals that was my problem. I had goals. Attaining, or at least pursuing, those goals should have occasioned some type of real improvement within me. But it didn’t.

I simply must do a better job with 2023 than I did with 2022.

2021’s In The Can: A Look At 2022

First, a review of last year’s goals.

  • Run 500 miles: At 400 miles, I fell well short of my goal. But I learned a thing or two by it. First, you don’t run 500 miles; you run one mile 500 times. Or five miles one hundred times. Or four miles a hundred twenty five times. Or whatever. Need to make those one hundred or two hundred or however many runs happen. Each one. Individually.
  • Read Classics: Read enough to form an idea of what was going on with those ancient Greeks and why they influenced Western thought so much, for better and for worse.
  • Master beginning Italian: I picked up a bit, but not nearly as much as I wanted to. One has to be able to do more than count up to twenty and ask about the train for Naples. I have gotten somewhat past that, but not far.
  • Buy a sailboat: Done. “Four O’Clock” is mine, now, although her name will change. Have not decided what her name will be, though. She’s a twelve foot cat boat a “Beetle-Cat” from Wareham, Massachusetts. Needs to have her keel repainted, which I will do this winter.
  • Learn to sail her: Only managed to get her in the water once. This spring I will sail her much more and take some course or another in sailing.
  • Submit a book for publishing: Didn’t even come close to finish writing it. Probably should have made the goal to finish writing it, instead.
  • Povitica for all my siblings: Done. Even got some useful feedback from Rudy. Dough needs to be thinner. Something to work on.

I blamed 2020 on the pandemic. 2021 was my own doing.

So, what are my goals for 2022? How do I plan to achieve them?

Let’s start off by recycling one of my 2021 goals, run 500 miles. If I really learned something by falling short of that mark in 2021, then I’ll have to put that lesson to use this year. It’s not 500 miles a year, it’s 42 miles a month, 10 miles a week. When will I run this week’s 10 miles? That is the question to ask myself each week. The year will take care of itself.

Reading, even classics, is a pleasure for me, something I do as a matter of course, and probably should not qualify as a goal. So this year, classics or any other type of reading is off my list of goals.

While I did manage to pick up some Italian, attaining some fluency in the language remains one of my unattained goals. By the end of this year I aim to be able to carry on at least a simple conversation in Italian.

Sailing was another area where I set out a goal that was unmet, largely because it was poorly defined. “Learn to sail” is too vague of a goal to measure for success or failure. Attainment of some certification in sailing is much more definite and included in this year’s goals.

Finish that novel AND submit it for publishing.

For my final goal I am going to choose something that might appear to be too vague, as other goals have been too vague, but this one really is not. When I look back on my life thus far, some of the remembrances that bring me the most satisfaction and happiness are the ones where I did something unplanned, spontaneous. This year I want to do one thing that I have not planned and, perhaps, have not yet even imagined. It needs to be something that will, when I look back on it ten years hence will leave me with that same sense of gladness that I did it as I have with some of the other things in my life. Big enough to look back on a decade or more later and something I did not expect at the outset of the year, which is now.

Now is when I start.

Rusty and Ryan

Some years back, while rummaging through a drawer, I came across a collar from our old dog, Rusty. When Ryan, our golden retriever, who was by my side, saw the collar in my hand, he nosed at it, curiously at first, then aggressively. Ryan’s tail started to wag furiously and he became quite animated, paws dancing. I took off Ryan’s collar, a leather one which had become tattered and smelly over time, and put Rusty’s collar on him.

He wagged his tail some more.

Rusty was a rescue. A golden retriever perhaps mixed with something else, Rusty was sick when we brought him home. Bad joints from Lyme’s disease and underweight, he was basically an old dog from the get-go, even though he was quite young. He lived his entire life with us slowly plodding along. There was no rushing Rusty.

Ryan, on the other hand, was a typical eight week old puppy when he joined the family one December. Clumsy, rambunctious, and affectionate, he chewed, as puppies chew, on everything, including Rusty a few times. Rusty quickly let him know that was not appreciated, but that did not seem to stop him or even slow him down. More than once, Rusty looked up at me with a look that seemed to be an exasperated plea for help.

Our walks around the neighborhood were often a source of amusement for the neighbors. I usually walked both dogs together. Ryan would have one leash stretched out in front of me and Rusty would have the other stretched out behind, pulling him along by the neck. Ryan was always trying to pick up the pace. Rusty was always trying not to catch up.

As Ryan approached his first birthday, he showed no signs of slowing down.

Rusty, on the other hand, became sick and started to turn frail at that point. Lumps scattered around his body pointed to the reason for his decline. His appetite left him and he wasted away incredibly quickly. He got to the point where he could not walk or really even stand. I carried him outside a few times a day in the crisp October days to pee and poop and take in a bit of fresh air. Other than that, he just rested in his bed.

For Rusty’s last day the weather turned warm and sunny, a cloudless eighty degrees with a very slight breeze.

I scooped up Rusty and took him to the edge of the shade of his favorite tree in our back yard, a towering maple. As I laid Rusty on the grass, Ryan quickly scampered about, gathering his toys and some sticks and his rock collection. An indiscriminate chewer, Ryan was fond of chewing on rocks and we were always careful to never let him have any stones small enough to swallow. Somehow, though, he managed to accumulate or find a bunch of rocks, some as big as his head. I was not even sure how he carried them.

What he did with all these toys and sticks and rocks was to array them in an arc about six feet from Rusty, all in front of Rusty where he could see them. From the house I watched on. Ryan would chew on one of the toys or sticks and rocks and then, every few minutes, would bounce over to Rusty and touch his nose to Rusty’s. Rusty would wag his tail and Ryan would chew on something else for a few minutes and then touch Rusty’s nose. All the while, Rusty watched on, lying on his belly with his head between his front paws.

He seemed to enjoy the show.

This went on for a couple of hours, it seemed. Then it was time to bring them in.

That night, Rusty seemed unsettled so I stayed up with him in the living room. Ryan slept off and on there on the floor with us. After waking from a couple of dreams, Rusty went back to sleep and just a bit past three in the morning, breathed one last quiet sigh.

After the sun rose, it was time to take Rusty away. They gave me his collar to take home. It went in the drawer.

Ryan, of course, searched the house for his big buddy that morning but didn’t find him. It quickly became apparent that Ryan’s world had been tumbled. He spent the day confused. By that night, he stopped looking for Rusty.

The next day started still, quiet. First thing in the morning when I let Ryan out into the back yard, he immediately trotted to the middle of the lawn and peed, as usual. Then he found a large flat rock near the house and sat on it. He lifted his snout to the sky and for about a half minute Ryan let out a pitiful howl, something he had never done before. He sighed, looked briefly at the ground and then came to the back door to be let in. Inside, he found his bed and laid down.

This routine went on every morning for a couple of months.

He missed his big pal.

Eventually, though, Ryan settled into being The Only Dog. And that’s how things continued.

Until years later when I rummaged through that drawer and came across Rusty’s collar.

Ryan is an old dog now. He has slowed down and a lot of people remark on how well behaved he is. He does have his moments, though, when he doesn’t listen. But I cut him a bit of slack on those occasions because of what he did for Rusty at the end.

Building Story

Art moaned. He sighed a melancholy sigh of resignation.

Penobscot, or “Belle” as she was known to most of the other buildings, felt that Art’s bricks looked more forlorn, more crumbling as of late. The two faced each other across a broad sidewalk that ran along the south end of campus. Through the decades she bore witness to the damage that time and the elements had inflicted on Art. The weathered lines on his façade, particularly at sunset, were external manifestation of his beleaguered psyche. Facing him every day, Belle was more aware of Art’s distress than were the other buildings. She worried about him.

Art sighed again.

“It seems like you’ve become quite the subject for the architecture students and the art students, and photography, too,” Belle blurted abruptly, apropos of nothing. She tried to sound jealous. “It used to be that they would set their sights on me, but now all I see of them is their backsides.”

“I do not think they have come so much to admire as to chronicle,” Art groused. ” I spied more than a few journalism students stopping to take notes. Vultures!”

“Oh, dear. Excuse me one moment,” Belle interrupted him. She cleared her throat and then from her belfry the chimes signaled the start of another hour on campus. Once the first note sounded, pretty much all conversation on campus suspended until the hours were fully counted.

Mon dieu!” Foreign Languages cooed when Belle finished. “Bellisimo! Such a delicioso way to mark the passing of time.”

The Vincent and Melody Lane Performing Arts Center, on the other hand, simply smiled to itself. It knew an out of tune F-natural bell when it heard one. Still, it was nice to hear such harmony amongst the buildings.

“Foreign Languages, you have such a way with words,” Belle demurred.

“Ah! Merci, beaucoup!” Foreign Languages tittered, appreciating the joke.

“By the way,” PAC interjected on cue, sensing Belle’s attempt to lift Art’s spirits, “that was quite the crowd that showed up for your last exhibition, Art. What was it called again? ‘Campus Nudes‘ I believe.”

Art’s red brick façade turned a deeper shade of red. “Well,” he sheepishly stammered “it did cause quite a stir.”

“There’s never such excitement at my front door,” Mathematics added. Its jealousy was genuine.

The other buildings chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Mathematics asked the rest of campus.

“Oh, don’t worry,” one of the dormitories answered for the rest. “We’re laughing with you, not at you.”

“But I wasn’t laughing.”

“Ok, then,” Engineering shot back, “we were laughing at you. Did you ever bother to take a look at yourself? Did you ever wonder why you were stuck at the edge of campus? You look hideous, that’s why. And what’s inside is useless! Theorems and such!”

The other buildings found Engineering to be overly blunt at times. Practical, but blunt.

“How could I look at myself?” Mathematics asked, confused and hurt. “That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not logical. I am the one building I cannot possibly see.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Engineering rolled his eyes, irritated with Math’s precision. “You don’t have to look at yourself to see yourself. Just look at your reflection in Miss Performing Arts Center’s mirrored front.”

Melody muttered that Engineering should stop being so haughty. “You’re not exactly the Taj Mahal.”

“Excuse me?” Engineering retorted indignantly. “Miss ‘Performing Arts’ drama queen is telling ME to not be so haughty?”

“MISSUS Performing Arts Center,” she corrected him. “After all, it is the VINCENT and Melody Lane Performing Arts Center.”

“Well, and don’t we know it! All flashy and shiny steel and glass façade! Talk about ‘sound and fury signifying nothing!'” Engineering raged. “When was the last time you staged any real culture? Huh? All those pop shows! Give me a break!”

“Well, what’s a venue to do? I AM at management’s mercy, you know. They can schedule whatever they want. And, besides, students nowadays. No taste, whatsoever.”

“All glass and metal. You look like a pair of cheap sunglasses.”

“Oh, come on, now, you two,” Social Sciences interjected. Belle’s attempt to cheer up Art was floundering. The discussion was veering off to the land of insults and regrets.

“Oh, put a brick in it!” Engineering retorted.

“‘Put a brick in it?’ That doesn’t even make sense,” Mathematics piped up.

“Melody is right,” Belle chimed in. “We really do not make the final decision on things.”

“Especially the BIG things,” Art agreed. “Like when your time is up.”

No one knew quite what to say to Art at that point. “Art is Life” had been above his front entrance long before any of the rest of them had even been blueprints. After Art, The Octagon was the next oldest, although few of the other buildings took Octagon seriously. Art had often referred to Octagon as an “Adventure in Poor Taste.”

“It seems my fate has been decided by some pencil-pushing bean counter armed with a spreadsheet,” Art despaired.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re not going to start crying again, are you?” Engineering moaned.

“No, I’m past that.”

“Good,” Engineering harrumphed. “And at least you’re not behaving childish, like you did when it first hit you that the rumors were true.”

“Childish?” Art was indignant. The pressure in his steam heat pipes started to rise.

“Yes, childish! Like when you purposely stopped up your plumbing as an act of defiance. It took maintenance three days over the long weekend to clear you out.”

“I don’t remember it that way. Not at all. That can’t be right.”

“I am afraid Engineering is right,” Administration weighed in. “I saw the paperwork for the overtime myself. Plus, an outside plumbing contractor had to be brought in to assist.”

“Well, it wasn’t childish; it was a perfectly reasonable reaction after hearing all the rumors and murmurs and then being confronted with the reality of it all. But I’m over that now,” Art said resignedly. “Although it did sting when the campus newspaper ran with ‘Crappy Art‘ as their headline afterward.”

“That was definitely a cheap shot,” Melody concurred.

The other buildings agreed, even Engineering.

“Look, Engineering,” Art continued, “you’ve no idea what I’m going through. And that goes for the rest of you, too, especially you younger ones.”

“Well, Art,” Engineering offered in a conciliatory tone, “for what it’s worth, I do agree with you that we are at the mercy of a bunch of administrators and lawyers. No regard for functionality. The whole emphasis is on the bottom line.”

“If you think about it,” Philosophy piped up in its corner of the campus, “from the day our foundations are first dug, the wrecking ball looms somewhere off in the future for each and every one of us.”

The buildings considered this for a moment.

One of the dormitories broke the silence, “Even dormitories?”

“Yes,” Administration confirmed, “even dormitories.”

“But people live in us!” the dormitory protested.

“Ha!” Art exclaimed. “How does it feel?”

“I’m just not going to dwell on it,” the dormitory replied.

“Carpe diem!” Foreign Languages declared.

“Well put,” Administration spoke up. “For each of us, there is a scheduled Termination Date, although budgetary considerations or unforeseen circumstances could ultimately alter the actual Date of Decertification.”

“Of course,” Engineering interrupted, “for one as sturdy, well built, and functional as I, that date is way further off in the future than for the rest of you.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Administration cautioned.

The buildings pondered this last admonition.

“Administration,” Engineering ventured slowly, carefully, “you have all this information in the Master Plan for the campus, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Administration allowed, warily. It knew where this line of inquiry was headed.

“Well,” Engineering probed, “what might those dates for some of us be?”

“Yes, me, too,” Mathematics joined in.

“And us,” the dormitories chorused.

Art felt a twinge of sadness for his fellow structures. He detected a hint of alarm in some of their voices. He could almost feel Belle’s pulse quicken from across the wide walkway.

“Parts of the Campus Master Plan are Restricted” Administration quoted the Plan itself.

“That includes Dates of Decertification,” he added with a touch of gentleness. “I’m sorry. Those are dates I cannot divulge.”

Anxiety permeated the campus and none of the buildings said anything for some time.

Philosophy was wanted to speak up but then thought better of it.

A gentle breeze blew through the campus. The softness of the breeze helped calm the nerves of some of the buildings as they all stood silently in thought.

This was, after all, something new for each of them. Before Art, new buildings were erected on available space within campus. With that space now all occupied, existing buildings would have to yield to new ones.

The buildings had never considered this before.

Art broke the silence meekly.

“Administration?”

“Yes?” came the kindly reply.

“Is there anything you can tell me about this? What to expect or what will happen to me or what comes after?”

Administration sifted through what he knew carefully for some time. Finally, he addressed Art.

“Well, Art, the demolition plans are still in the works and nothing has been finalized.”

Art groaned.

“There are a few other details which will be announced shortly, though, and I do not think I am out of line in passing those along to you before they are made public. Unofficially, of course.”

“Of course,” Art agreed quietly.

“The first thing that was decided, before any discussion of a replacement or timeline or anything of that nature, was that a memorial must be established to acknowledge the place you’ve had in the history of this campus.”

“Really?”

“Really. There was quite a list of school benefactors who wrote to the school president asking if they could contribute, on the condition, of course, that they had input to the memorial itself.”

“Really?”

“Really, Art. I’ve seen the letters myself. I house them. They’re official university correspondence.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Art, really. Then there is the issue of your brick façade. Being that it is of aesthetic, historic, and cultural interest, significant portions are to be preserved. The thought is to create an “ambient space” within the new building that will foster a connection with the creativity of the past.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Art. Really. You know me. I stick to the facts.”

The buildings all were silent, waiting to see how Art reacted.

He became quiet, thoughtful.

The breeze stilled and the campus settled in for the night. Belle gently asked Art if there was anything they could do for him.

He answered no, there was nothing. He just needed some time to think things over.

After a few moments, though, he softly asked, “Belle?”

“Yes?” she answered just as softly.

“Remember that song the opera student played on your bells a few weeks ago?”

O mio babbino caro?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Would you like me to chime that for you?”

“Yes, that would be sweet if you did.”

Justice is Personal

As I have said, and wrote, everything important in life is personal.

Justice is personal. There are two forms of justice. Proportional, or distributive, justice is the notion of receiving what one deserves or what one is worth. Think of equal pay for equal work. Absolute justice, or corrective justice, holds that an injustice against someone is an injustice, regardless of the victim.

George Floyd and his family received some measure of justice today. What Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd was a severe injustice and today it was publicly recognized as such. Many people will try to put this into a larger context and try to make some inference about what this means for society, but at the bottom of it, Derek Chauvin was held publicly and personally accountable for the death of George Floyd.

Justice was served.

That has not always been the case.