Sketch: Joan and Puppy

Trying out a new medium tonight -- watercolor graphite. Last April my friend Kathleen and I visited an art store in Montpelier, VT and I saw the graphite on the shelf. It looked like something neat to try. It's a little hard to get the shading right, but it's a lot of fun. This isn't quite finished yet, but almost. This is a sketch of my friend Joan, Waffle's breeder and one of the puppies she sold last year. I just heard that one of those puppies may be a daddy. Trump, who was renamed Goofy, went to live with a veterinarian and his wife. They will let us know soon if the mating took.

As far as the art is concerned I'm trying to decide whether to leave the piece as is or to mix pen and ink in with it. I'm not sure how the ink would work over the graphite so I'll have to do some experimenting. I'll share the finished product when I'm done or maybe I'll just leave it as is.

My Dogs are Dancing

As I wrote the other day I've been learning how to animate my collages, so I decided to continue by animating my Dogs Dancing at the Carousel collage. I know its not perfect. You can see that especially around the mat that the center two dogs are dancing on, but then again I never had any intention of animating it when I created the initial collage, so I'm proud of the result. I know I could also work on coordinating the start and ending times with the music, but as I said this was a learning experience and I achieved what I set out to do: My Dogs Dance! Check out the video on YouTube.

Writing

My day job for the last 20 years has been as a freelance writer and teacher. This past week a local reporter with whom I used to work, interviewed me about an article on memoir writing. After the formalities were out of the way we had some time to play catch up and one of the first questions out of the reporter’s mouth was to ask me if I still worked for the same publication where we had met.

“No,” I replied.

“Thank God,” she said. “I can still picture you at the table with your face in your hands saying with a sigh, ‘I’ll take that, I’ll take that’ to all the stories none of us wanted.”

I had to laugh because she’s right, I did. In order to make a living and build my credentials I willingly took every story that came my way, which sometimes meant writing about toilets and sometimes about real estate. It used to be when you googled my name the first thing that would come up was “Take the Plunge,” indeed, a story about toilets.

To be honest, in order to make a living some of this willingness to write anything comes in handy, but I am learning you can also write about what you love. I work for some wonderful publications today, Upper Valley Life and Rutland Magazine, to name a couple, where I get to do some interesting work. I also am finding new avenues to write about topics that spark my interest such as this blog.

This past fall I interviewed Craig Mosher of Craig Mosher Excavating for Rutland Magazine. Hurricane Irene had destroyed Mosher’s property, where he also kept two popular tourist attractions –a pair of Scottish Highland cattle. I covered his renovation efforts. That article recently appeared in Rutland Magazine and I wanted to share it with you, here. The cover photo of Craig with his donkey Pedro and the end photo of Craig with Rob are both mine. The animals play a prominent role in the story, but because the article was primarily about the restoration of the land, one thing that I did not get to emphasize was Craig’s warm relationship with these creatures. I think the pictures capture that a bit. When he walked me out to introduce me to Big and Rob I almost felt like I was watching a boy romp with his fluffy puppy. Both the animals and the man seemed to bask in the affection of the other. It was fun to watch.

I have to admit that my approach of taking just about any story assignment that comes my way sometimes yields a dud, but more often than not even the worst sounding subject usually reveals hidden facets. Whether it’s learning about a new topic or gathering insight into human nature, each assignment seems to offer an eventual silver lining. Figuring out how to construct an article based on a reluctant interviewee or on foreign subject is similar to approaching a puzzle and discovering where each piece should go. Sometimes it is challenging, sometimes even frustrating, but there is always a feeling of satisfaction when you view the end result.

And, just like solving a puzzle keeps your senses sharp, tackling a range of subjects enhances your skills. So, I have no regrets when assignments are being doled out to be that writer with her hand held out. Each assignment is like being given tickets to a new adventure – some are more fun than others, but if you’re willing to press on and explore the hidden side streets and unexpected byways, you’ll usually find something worth writing about.

Soaring

Poor Alfie. She’s a beautiful cobby pug, plump and pert, perfect for the show ring. She is not, however, aerodynamic. Waffles is another story. That pug can fly.

It seems to be a characteristic of my friend Joan’s pugs. When I first visited Joan’s house, crowded with pugs and gates to keep them separated, I remember the repeated whoosh and thump as Egg would jump gate after gate like an Olympic hurdler. I’ve always thought her pugs would make excellent agility dogs and I’m thinking of taking up the sport with Waffles. That girl needs something to do.

Since I’ve been laid up with my cold, she’s been demonstrating her dissatisfaction and boredom by getting into everything. She does it in precise, dedicated fashion turning over trashcan after trashcan until each has been explored. My lip balm and my glasses are favorite chew toys. She has learned to climb on bags and shelves, creating her own personal stairwells to whatever her desired goals. In order to work and conduct phone interviews without the continuous thwack of another object she has claimed dropping to the ground, I have placed my own baby gate at the bottom of the stairs, letting she and Alfie have the run of the downstairs while I work in my second-floor office.

Ever my “Pugdini” Waffles always eventually seems to find a way upstairs. Initially, she would worm her more slender pug body through a crack where the gate didn’t quite reach the wall. Alfie, terrified of the gate ever since it almost fell on her as a puppy, would stare at her with a mix of horror and amazement, bewildered that anyone would try such a feat. When I learned to bridge the gap and block this path for Waffles, she learned to press her body against the gain until it was leaning like a ramp and she could climb it. Again, Alfie stared, awed.

I figured that’s what Waffles had continued to do to make her way to me, until tonight. Tonight she soared over the top like a streamlined jet plane, while my poor little Goodyear blimp sat at the bottom sulking. I stood at the top of the steps wondering what to do with my two little girls. Alfie may be my beauty queen but some exercise classes may be in order. And, Waffles, time to channel my juvenile delinquent’s tendencies into something more appropriate!

To be honest, I’m excited about the prospect of starting something new. One of the best things about a life with dogs is the new directions in which they take us. They make us grab their leashes and follow their lead out into the world. Since I got my first pug, I have been to show rings throughout the country, braved hurricanes and viruses to prance around a ring for a few minutes. I have met lonely people who light up at the mention of their dogs and friendly people as giddy and crazy as me to show them off. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind, locked up in your own world of work and commitments. My dogs never let me stay there long. One of them always seeks me out, finds me, and drags me out the door. Following their lead, I’ve learned to soar.

Mothering and Bumbling Along

I’ve never been a mother, but I’ve been mothering most of my life. When I was a little girl, my best friend Madeleine and I had imaginary children. We kept a list of all the children we knew – my baby brothers and baby cousins, her brother’s girlfriend’s children – and we would pretend they were our own, shopping the Sears catalogue for clothes for them. We would keep empty chairs for them in the school cafeteria so they could sit near us. When I turned 12, my mother would leave Madeleine and I to babysit my toddling brother Mark and newborn baby brother Paul. We would push them through town in their strollers convinced that all the neighbors would be scandalized believing these were our children. And, in many ways they were. When there is a 12-year difference between you and a younger sibling, you end up being a second parent in a lot of ways.

When Paul was very little and would get upset and retreat to his bedroom, I would go upstairs to comfort him, donning a black-and-yellow bumblebee puppet on my hand and talking to him in my funny “bee” voice, until Bumble would bring a smile to my face. As my brothers grew older, our family went through a series of financial and legal problems that led my parents to be away in court a lot. My brother John and I were left to care for the two younger brothers – “the boys” – treating them to a lot of homemade ravioli and pizza.

As the youngest and the eldest my brother Paul and I have been, if not polar opposites, at least on opposite ends of the poles. Being a parental figure means you are also subject to some acting out and it probably wasn’t easy on my pre-teen brother when I moved home from college, but in many ways we are alike and although we’ve had our share of sibling rivalry, neither of us has ever forgotten the days of Bumble. Now he often works the night shift as a cop while I am teaching late and I pass his car on the road, calling or texting just to say, “I see you.” Once when the light was out on my car, a fellow cop ran my plate, called Paul up and he tracked me down in a snowstorm, taking me to a parts store to fix the bulb. He was no longer my baby brother. He was taking care of me.

It was Paul who also gave me the gift of my nephew Christian when as a teenager he became a father. Seeing a teenage pregnancy as a gift might have been a challenge at the time, but Christian proved an unexpected miracle. I have truly experienced the joy of motherhood in being his godmother, watching him grow and mothering him alongside the other women in his family.

It was my brother Paul who first introduced me to pugs about the same time he had Christian. He and his then girlfriend Chesne, Christian’s mom, saw a litter of pug puppies one day and he begged to bring one home. He named her Buffy because she was fawn or buff colored and like Nana in Peter Pan, she became a guardian over the soon-to-be-born baby Christian. When she died at the age of 13, Christian said, “She raised us all.”

Now my baby brother is off to boot camp having joined the National Guard. He leaves tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. and like a mama I worry over the little boy I used to try to make smile. I’m very proud of him, but I like it when my brood’s nearby, when, like in the television show the Waltons, you can call out in the night, “Goodnight John-Boy,” and they can answer with a hushed whisper because you’re close enough to hear.

Children and siblings grow and as any parent knows there comes a time when you have to let go. After all, I’m in my forties, my brother in his thirties and we’ve both gone on to live full lives, but you don’t have to be a mother to know you never stop worrying because when you’ve loved and nurtured anyone from birth, seeing them through tears and smiles, they, like the Hallmark cards say, wear your heart on the outside. They go off into the world and you hope all the “bumbling” you did to get them there will help see them through.

Writing Prompt: The Magic of Dogs

Hollis sat in his stiff-backed Victorian chair barely making eye contact. He sounded weary discussing his bed and breakfast business as if he actually hoped the article I was writing would discourage guests to his establishment as opposed to promoting them. He sounded ready to retire and yet, here I was interviewing him for a magazine.

Interviews such as this are difficult. Inside, I feel like a failing magician rummaging through a bag of tricks, frantically searching for something that will get the job done – a rabbit to pull out of my hat and start the interviewee talking so I’ll have something to write about. Sometimes I am lucky and I find the key. Sometimes we stumble along, what should be a short, breezy conversation turning into an agonizing bout of stops and starts punctuated with awkward silences. This was one of those times. And, since my livelihood depends on getting the job done, I found myself developing an increasing dislike for the slender, soft-faced Hollis, who so obviously was dissatisfied with his own lot. I stared at his dull blue eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses and inwardly pleaded for him to say something helpful. “And, why did you choose to redecorate the Rose room?” I ask him. “It needed painting,” he mumbles. No gems there.

“What led you to Vermont?”

“Can’t really say.”

A part of me wanted to jump up and strangle poor Hollis, but we both struggled on, me reluctant to end the conversation without more information, he, not seeming to care either way.

Finally, when I realized I had rung him for all he was worth, I got ready to excuse myself. And, this is why I love dogs. Just as I was getting ready to leave, Hollis mentioned his Jack Russell Terrier, Baby. It was a passing remark, not meant to elicit any response, but I rose to the occasion. “You have a Jack Russell? I have pugs,” I said.

And, thus, I released a font of information I did not think possible from Hollis. Suddenly, he turned his face to me and his dull blue eyes began to sparkle. He took me through a journey of Baby’s 13 years on the planet – her litters and potty training, breed standard and show history. He showed me photos and discussed where each of her puppies had ended up. I listened and chatted, forgetting the clock and thoroughly enjoying this man unfold from his shell.

What is it about dogs that do this? Why could Hollis not master a single, happy word about his work, but could ramble on, smiling and sharing about a wee bit of a dog? Why did I find myself suddenly warming up to this man?

I could picture him late at night when the guests were asleep curling up in this very same chair, glasses on the end table, Baby in his lap. His jaw would slack and the tight lines disappear as he and his dog would drift off to sleep.

Looking at Hollis during our interview I would have said he was a tired and lonely man, but in the half hour I listened to him recount Baby’s life, I learned of breeders and handlers and people who bought Baby’s puppies that all were woven into the web of his life. What do our Baby’s do that transform us so? They turn unhappy men into delighted children again. They so often are the rabbits we pull from our hats to work magic on our lives.

Writing Prompt: What Lights Up Your Life?

Writing Prompt: Rest

Some days are harder than others. Sometimes you can't wait to take some Nyquil and curl up in bed with a box of Kleenex and some snoring dogs. And, even though you're sick, you sleep soundly embraced by dreams and watched over by your own guardian angels.

Writing Prompt: Who Watches Over You?

A Mad but Happy Lot

North Korea is going crazy. My thirty-four year old brother is joining the National Guard. My mom is worried about her approaching knee surgery. My friend Joan’s leg is infected from a severe burn. Her favorite pug needs daily baths because of incontinence. I’m on medication again for yet another sinus and ear infection. The world is serious place. And, perhaps that is why I don’t question fun where I find it.

The general consensus, I know, is that we, as a society, have gone stark raving mad about our dogs. Animals that once ate table scraps and lived largely outdoors now receive gourmet dinners and share our beds – more likely we share theirs. Experts hypothesize that we are lonely, unfulfilled, increasingly removed from each other, so we find solace in our pets. We take their silent regard as unconditional love. Maybe they are right.

But, this is what I know…

On some days it is hard to smile…

Until we see our pets do something funny…

Wag their tail

Chase a ball

Fetch a stick

Sometimes we revel in their dogginess, leave our lofty concerns behind, get down on

their level and play.

Some days it takes a little more.

So I don’t often question why I join crowds of other folks with furry four-legged friends at Pug Parades, Costume Contests and Fashion Shows. I smile as we trot through halls and down hillsides to see wide grins looking back. I cannot stop global warming, heal my Mom’s knees, prevent battles from being waged, but I can swell with pride as children reach to grab my costume-clad pug and hug her, I can stop to let people snap pictures of her purple princess gown, I can share photos of my own, capturing lizards and hedgehogs also in costume in hopes that in seeing them you will break out of the haze that’s all around us and frolic.

In one way or another we all have gone mad. We choose how to embrace it.

I howl at the moon and bark!

New Art Projects

Unfortunately, I came down with another sinus infection over Easter, but I haven't let that stop my art projects this week. As I wrote the other night I've begun some drawings to accompany one of my student's book projects. I sent them to him this week and he likes them enough that he has asked me to continue. I also have been starting some new collages. Actually, revisiting some collages I began and abandoned a while back. One of them, featured above, has to do with life and death and everything in between. It tentatively is entitled "Osprey" because the nest in the center of the image is an osprey nest I photographed at a writers' retreat a couple of years ago.  I was  looking through my rough draft file and stumbled on the image below, which I began adding to last night.

I still haven't completed the digital part of the image and I anticipate doing a lot of hand-sewing on this one around the nest and some of the background. I thought people might be interested in seeing how I get from here to there. One of the writers' in the Hubbard Hall Writers' Project, Rachel Barlow, does wonderful animation on her blog and I've been interested in learning how to do the same. I haven't tried it with any of my drawings yet, but I did figure out how to make a .gif file of the steps in my collage process to share here. This doesn't show everything I did, such as changing the girl's hair color, but it shows a number of the steps and decisions I have made thus far.  Enjoy!

Also, here's another teaser drawing from my student's book.

I'll keep you posted on the progress. In the meantime, I wanted to remind you that my limited edition print, Dogs Dancing at the Carousel, is still on sale for another week. I've sold several and am very excited as it is my first limited edition offering.

Things that Go Bump in the Night

In the many years I have lived in my Vermont home, our yard has been home to many creatures  -- skunk, deer, weasels, even moose. With Vermont being a largely rural state this may not seem that strange, but we reside on a very busy main street not far from the downtown. Although those of us inside the house never saw the moose, we’re told he was standing on our front lawn looking directly in our living room windows and gathering a crowd of spectators on the street. The weasel I saw years ago when my cat, Mime, a ferocious hunter, dragged it inside. It was lean and white and as big as the cat that killed it. The deer have crossed our lawn many a time, but the most magical occasion was the Christmas Eve, Alfie and I witnessed a herd crossing the backyard. Skunk are omnipresent. One year, however, we had a whole family invade the back lawn – a mom and three babies. The babies were so little that they became a spectacle for the neighbors who would show up out back with their cameras to take pictures. I didn’t mind at first, but after the mother died – hit by a car – I became extremely upset and worried about what would become of the babies. I wanted to capture them in a Havahart trap, but found out that this is discouraged as skunk can carry rabies. I didn’t have time to try because soon one baby after another died, either hit by a car itself or caught by a predator. The last I found in a far corner of the lawn. I donned gloves and placed the remains in a box and buried him in a cardboard box not far from where I found him. Vader always loved baby skunks. Once on a walk he shuffled up to one giving it Eskimo kisses. I often looked out the kitchen window to the backyard and found him doing the same.

With all this wildlife surrounding us, you would think I wouldn’t be surprised to find a furry visitor in the night, but this is not the case. The other night I went to let the pugs out the back door to use the bathroom, and at the bottom of the steps was an unexpected site – a large, furry possum with cute little pink nose and rat’s tail, feasting on the remains of dog snacks the pugs had left behind. It was big and fat and despite the rat-like tail really quite adorable. I had only ever seen one other possum in my life while visiting my sister-in-law’s hometown of Ogdensburg. We were in the park taking a walk late one evening and when I turned around there was one behind us. I think we took off at a run. That creature I remember as being hideous, but maybe since there was a door between me and the one that turned up the other night, I really didn’t think she looked too bad. I grabbed my camera and snapped some photos before googling possums and learning that as far as having wild animals in the backyard goes, they are not that bad.

It seems they have a low chance of carrying diseases such as rabies and distemper and are only vicious if they are cornered or their young threatened. That was the official word. There were also lots of horrifying YouTube videos of people discovering possums in their underwear draw and being attacked while in bed. Our visitor wandered off before we could decide what to do, but she’s been back at least once more. All the information I can find says that if you remove their food source, they will eventually go away. We have only one problem. My mother seems to be that food source. For months I have been trying to get her to stop throwing snacks out for the pugs to get them to go outside, watching as their waistlines disappeared over the winter. My pleas have been to no avail. Surely, she’ll stop now, I thought as I read to her the solution for ridding our yard of the possum. Just as she had when I warned her to stop feeding the pugs, she wholeheartedly nodded in agreement only to find her just as enthusiastically throwing out handfuls of snacks, the next morning. Then last night the possum returned – just as cute, just as nonchalant, but maybe, just maybe a wee bit fatter.