Source: imgur.com
I need one
May 10, 2018 by 46 Comments
Have a dog, or get one, or borrow one….When you’ve been deep in your head for a while, it’s important to touch something warm and alive, something mortal….While the dogs sniff a single blade of grass for two minutes, I find myself looking around. I notice a raptor overhead, an interesting human face, an overheard conversation, something discarded or forgotten in the grass. Be here for the writing life and be here for the real life. Each needs the other.
– Chelsey Johnson, from “Chelsey Johnson Recommends” in Poets & Writers (May 10, 2018)
Photo: via Newthom
5:00 P.M. Bell!
March 30, 2018 by 12 Comments
Photo: Young watchdog Enzo pulls on the rope of 17-year old cow Belinda, which has already yielded 150,000 liters of milk, in Heckenbach, Germany. (wsj.com, March, 27, 2018, Thomas Frey)
Where’s Mine?
February 13, 2018 by 50 Comments
We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.
~ José Saramago, Death with Interruptions
Photo: (via newthom)
Puppies. Warm all hearts.
October 17, 2017 by 17 Comments
Russian President Vladimir Putin kisses the Turkmen shepherd dog that Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov gave him during a meeting in Sochi, Russia. (Maxim Shemetov / Reuters, wsj.com 10/11/17)
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
May 15, 2017 by 23 Comments
There’s strength in observing one’s miniaturization. That you are insignificant and prone to, and God knows, dumb about a lot. Because doesn’t smallness prime us to eventually take up space? For instance, the momentum gained from reading a great book. After after, sitting, sleeping, living in its consequence. A book that makes you feel, finally, latched on. Or after after we recover from a hike. From seeing fifteenth-century ruins and wondering how Machu Picchu was built when Incans had zero knowledge of the wheel. Smallness can make you feel extra porous. Extra ambitious. Like a small dog carrying an enormous branch clenched in its teeth, as if intimating to the world: Okay. Where to?
~ Durga Chew-Bose, from “Heart Museum” in Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays
Photo: Paul Nicol with Walk Softly. Carry a Big Stick.
But a man’s life comes full circle; you can learn
February 10, 2016 by 27 Comments
Laddie was a useful dog on the farm for the next few years, and there were moments when he did good things and we understood each other— once we sorted two ewes that we needed for a show off a hundred others we didn’t need in a field and walked them home. But it was a rare moment, and I always knew he wasn’t as good as he should have been. Sometimes he’d run home when I lost my temper and shouted at him. He lost trust in me. I knew whose fault it was. Mine. I knew that I’d let him down. I look back and think he would have made a good dog if I had known a bit more. But a man’s life comes full circle; you can learn, and do better than your past. I am determined not to make the same mistakes again.
~ James Rebanks, The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape.
Notes:
- Photo by Alex Cearns
- Related Posts: James Rebanks
