Why Vermont Should Change Its Name With The Seasons

Driving to yoga this afternoon through the annual foliage follies, it struck me that at this time of year the state's name, which means "the green mountains" (les verts monts) becomes a misnomer.  "Vermont" is only descriptive of the state in summer. 

During the fall woodland pyrotechnics, there is precious little green around, so the state name should change to Rougemont, or Montorange, shifting to Beigemont during stick season.  After the first snow, Beigemont would become Montblanc.  In March,  the state should be known as Montboue.

And when spring finally comes, and lilacs burst into bloom, Vermont should be called Montlilas.  Which is rather pretty, I think.

How I Became An Internationally Famous Blogger, And How You Can Too

Several weeks ago, the number of daily hits on MyGreenVermont suddenly skyrocketed.  It's always good to know that one is not just a voice crying out in the desert, so I was pleased.  What is more, my readers seemed to be spread not only across the United States, but all over the planet.  While I slept in my bed at night, people in England, Sweden, France, Austria, Italy and Poland were reading my blog.  So were people in Turkey, Ghana, the Philippines, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.

I couldn't figure out the reason for this explosion of my faithful but modest readership.  Then it occurred to me to check the search terms that my new fans were using.

About a year ago, when Bisou came into heat, I wrote some posts about the reaction of my big German Shepherd, Wolfie.  He followed her around day and night, whining.  He stood over her and washed her face and drooled over her until her hair stood up in points.  He lost weight.  It was intense but entirely platonic, Wolfie being neutered.  The posts were humorous, but hardly salacious.  They didn't even have drawings.  On the labels at the bottom of the posts I listed:  dogs, dog behavior, dog sex.

And that is what my international fans are googling:  dog sex.

I have several questions about this.  First, who are these people, and why are they staying up all night researching this subject?  Have we wandered so far from Nature that the sex life of dogs has become exotic and mysterious?  I would think that my readers in third-world countries would be especially familiar with dog sex, having only to look out their windows to witness the real thing.

Second, why do people keep looking for this topic in as unrewarding a site as MyGreenVermont?  You'd think that the dog-sex aficionados who find me would be so disappointed that the word would get out in the international weirdo community and interest would quickly die out, but not at all.  To these frustrated but persistent hordes, I can only say:  I'm sorry, lo siento, tant pis!

Third, why do so many of my new fans come from Muslim countries?  Don't they know that their religion considers dogs unclean?  And aren't they risking the ire of the Prophet by googling not just dogs, but dog sex?

I may never find the answer to these questions, for who knows the ways of the blogosphere?  But to anyone out there seeking fast fame through blogging: now you know what to do.

Nursing Bisou

Took Bisou to the vet at the crack of dawn today.  She was suffering mightily from a two-inch-wide impacted gland.  I will spare you the location of the thing, and how I came to miss such a big hurt on a little dog.  Suffice it to say that she showed little discomfort until the last day, that she is wiggly and has a lot of long red hair, and that I was not channeling my veterinarian grandfather while this was developing.

At the vet's I held her while she was shaved and the first measures were taken.  When the vet showed me what we were dealing with, I almost passed out.  But, turning bowels into heart (as we say in Spanish), I paid attention while the vet explained about the pain meds and oral antibiotics I would be administering, the many hot water compresses I would be applying (four or more daily, for ten minutes each), and the external antibiotic I would have to put inside the wound--deep inside, the vet said, looking me in the eye.

So far Bisou and I have survived the application of four compresses and one dose of in-the-wound antibiotic.  Every time I see the abscess I feel less queasy.  She, on the other hand, has become the very image of sorrow and mortification, not because she is in pain any longer, but because she is wearing an Elizabethan collar.  She refuses to walk, much less go up and down the stairs, while she's wearing the thing, so she gets carried around a lot.  I take it off to let her outside, and she scampers around as usual, but then starts licking the tragic spot and I have to put the collar back on.

By early afternoon, what with the trauma of the wound and the collar, plus the effect of the pain meds, Bisou was limp with exhaustion, and so was I.  I put her on the bed in my study, took off the evil collar, climbed in beside her, and we both had a restorative nap under a nice soft afghan.

Between now and bedtime, I'll do two more compresses and one more infusion of antibiotic.  And maybe by tomorrow I'll be more confident and she'll be more comfortable, perhaps even willing to take a few steps in her collar.  And with the help of good Saint Roch, patron of dogs, we will slowly make our way out of the woods.

Attack In The Night

Something bit a chunk off Lexi's ear last night.  My dowager German Shepherd, Lexi, is long of tooth, hard of ear and dim of eye, but she can still outrun me.

Around eight yesterday evening, the dogs began agitating to be let out.  I normally make them wait until nine, but this time I relented.  It wasn't until a while after I'd let them back inside that I noticed Lexi's ear, which was missing a half-inch-long, u-shaped piece right next to the tip.

I checked her over, but she seemed fine, and was busy licking the drops of blood that spattered the floor and walls every time she moved.  I cleaned the wound with a wet paper towel, set up one of the big dog crates and put her in it, to contain the bleeding.  I did my best to ignore the hurt looks she was giving me (she had house-trained herself as a puppy, and after her first week with us, thirteen years ago, I never crated her again) while I tried to reconstruct what had happened.

True, the dogs had seemed eager to go out earlier than usual, but they often do this, since they know that I will give them a treat when they come back.  Also, the weather had turned windy and brisk, which always makes them jumpy.  They usually run barking out of the house and across the grass and disappear into the woods, until they hear the warning beep of the invisible fence.  Had they barked longer or more furiously this time, I would have noticed.  Even allowing for the ear  being less sensitive than other parts of the anatomy, you'd think Lexi would have yelped when whatever it was bit her, and I would have heard it.  And so would Wolfie and Bisou.

And if they had, surely they would have gone over to investigate, and there would have been a confrontation with the critter.  If there was a critter.

Other than rabbits in winter, turtles in spring, and the black bear who made a historic visit several years ago, nothing much comes out of the woods and into our yard.  The deer, turkeys and foxes stick to the front field, where they know the dogs aren't likely to be.

We did once glimpse a fisher running parallel to the house, just inside the woods, and the fisher is my prime suspect.  A coyote or a fox would have taken a bigger chunk.  But even if Lexi had gone after the fisher, he could have outrun her.  Perhaps she accidentally bumped into him.  But you'd think she would have smelled him--or does a dog's sense of smell also fade as she ages?

A friend thinks that maybe it was a shrew--a tiny but fierce animal with (depending on the species) a poisonous bite capable of killing a mouse and cause pain to a larger animal.  Again, though, shrews are supposed to be quite musky, so you'd think that might have warned Lexi off.

At bedtime, not wanting Wolfie and Bisou to encounter the mystery attacker, I went outside with them, kept them close, and quickly brought them inside.  As for Lexi, I knew that if I let her out she would disappear into the woods and wouldn't hear me calling, so I didn't let her out.  I trusted that her excellent sense of house hygiene would hold through the night, and it did.

Things get dicey when a dog who is still relatively fleet of foot goes almost blind and mostly deaf.  Right now it's dark outside.  I let the dogs out a few minutes ago, and Wolfie and Bisou came back when I called them.  As for Lexi, she's still out there, staying away from shrews and fishers, I hope.  Wolfie is keeping vigil by the back door, looking out for her.

Last winter, to keep her safe, I tried attaching Lexi to a light chain that ran on a line suspended above the yard.  But she was miserable.  One of her few remaining pleasures, aside from eating, consists of ambling  around on her own outside, sniffing stuff and thinking old-dog thoughts.
 
A gerontologist told me recently that, in nursing homes, the policy has shifted from safety at all costs to one that tolerates a certain degree of risk in favor of allowing the very old to retain some feeling of self-determination.  That is how I hope to be treated some day, and it's how I'm treating my old dog right now.

U Is For Uppers

"Honey," the obstetrician said (for that is how we girls were addressed in 1969), "you're two months pregnant and you've gained four pounds.  If you keep this up you'll have a bad delivery, you'll get varicose veins, and you'll look awful."

"But Doctor S.," I replied, "I have horrible morning sickness all day long, and food is the only thing that helps.  Plus I keep falling asleep in the library stacks, when I'm supposed to be doing research for my dissertation."

"Here's something that might help," Dr. S. said, handing me a prescription.  "Take one in the morning."

The next day, having taken the new pill, I went to the library.  At noon I met my husband and some friends at a cafe on campus.  "You'll never believe what a day I had!"  I said, before even sitting down.  "It was terrific!  I found just the sources I was looking for, lots of them!  I wrote and wrote and wrote until I ran out of index cards!"

"Don't you want to eat something?" my husband asked when I stopped for breath.

"What? No...I'm not really hungry.  I think I'll go buy some more index cards!  I'll see you at home this afternoon!" and, waving gaily, I sped off to the campus bookstore, got the cards, and returned to the library.

Reader, those pills changed my life:   my nausea vanished, as did my appetite and my need for sleep.  The dissertation research was going famously.  True, after several weeks I noticed that a vague feeling of apprehension would come over me when the pill's effects started wearing off, a littler earlier every day.  But it never occurred to me to wonder about the pills.  They had been prescribed by Dr. S., and it was his job to take care of me and the baby.

In January, 1970, when I went for my four months check, I saw Dr. P, a partner of Dr. S.  "I no longer have nausea," I explained, "but the pills that Dr. S prescribed give me energy, so I'm still taking them."

Dr. P looked at my chart and looked alarmed.  "Do you know what you've been taking?  Those are diet pills!  Do you know how addictive they are?  I advise you to stop taking them right now."  I went home, put the  pills away in the medicine cabinet, and waited apprehensively for the agonies of withdrawal to begin.  Miraculously, they never did.

The pregnancy progressed, and, thanks to that early pill-fueled burst of research, I finished a paragraph-by-paragraph outline of the dissertation.  When my mid-May due date came and went with no signs of labor, I felt betrayed by the universe. It was hot, and I was so uncomfortable that I couldn't even read, much less work on the dissertation.  One especially sweltering afternoon, I remembered the pills.  I got the bottle out of the medicine cabinet, split a pill in two, and swallowed a piece.

In a flash, I was in the fabric store buying material and patterns for not one but five dresses to wear after the baby came.  I flew home, ironed out all the fabric and all the patterns, pinned the patterns to the fabric, cut out the five dresses, and went into labor.

The next day, I was nursing my plump and sprightly daughter when Dr. S came into the hospital room and stood beaming by my bed, "Honey, I'm so proud of you," he said.  "Your baby weighed eight pounds, but your total gain was only fifteen pounds!  You'll be able to fit into your clothes in no time."

T Is For Telepathy

Telepathy is not one of my fortes, with some exceptions.   At certain times, my spouse of the last several centuries and I experience uncanny episodes of thinking/saying the same thing at the same time.  It's as if the buckwheat hulls that fill our pillows become a conducting medium for our minds.

Otherwise, I'm neither a transmitter nor a receiver of notions.  If I want somebody to know what I'm thinking, I pretty much have to come up with some words.  As for receiving, my head is full of thoughts.  I suspect that few of them are my own.  I just don't know whose they are.

The couple of books on intuition I've read insist that we are everyone of us intuitive, and capable of sending as well as receiving ideas.  We're not, however, attuned to this power, and so it goes unacknowledged and uncultivated.  I want to believe this, since I would like nothing better than to be able to communicate thoughts and feelings without having to go to the trouble, and taking the risk, of putting them into words.  This would simplify many social situations.  If someone was boring me to death by going on about, say, car insurance, I could send a suggestion such as "Stop already!  Talk about dogs instead."

The books advise paying attention to those times when you have achieved some degree of telepathy, however slight.  Somehow, I hardly ever manage to do this, and when I do, I reflexively attribute the event  to coincidence.  But I love hearing other people's telepathy stories.  Do you have one?

The Enigmatic Cellist

I was meeting two friends for dinner at the tiny restaurant in the upscale village.  It was warm enough that tables were still set up on the patio under a canopy.  We were led to one of these, but there was a problem:  between our table and the indoor dining room a man sat playing the cello. 

It was a fine sound, deep and clear.  I knew that I would not be able to eat, let alone talk, next to those thrumming notes, so I asked to be moved. The waiter looked annoyed, but went to arrange for a table inside.  The cellist glanced up from his score, and I felt sure he'd caught the gist of my request.  I was mortified that he must think I wanted to move because I didn't like his playing.

We followed the waiter indoors, and as I passed the cellist, I wished I could make eye contact, maybe smile--do something to let him know that the reason I wanted to move away from him was that he played too well.  We sat down and the wine arrived, and the basket of crusty bread, but I couldn't taste any of it because, through the chatter of the diners and the clatter of dishes and silverware, I could still hear the cello.  And it was distractingly, disturbingly good.

I looked at the people around us.  They were talking and eating, seemingly oblivious to the stream of high art wafting through the air.  Somewhere between the main course and dessert, the cellist began playing the Bach Cello Suites, one majestic, soulful movement after another--allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue....  Here is this man, I thought, pouring out this sublime stuff, and behind it lie years and years of lessons, scales, and auditions, performance anxiety and bouts of despair.  And now it had come to fruition...and here he was, in a restaurant, playing while we chewed our food.

I mentioned to the server how extraordinary the playing was. "Oh, he's good," he said, "he plays with the --- Symphony,"  and named one of the top orchestras in the U.S.  I couldn't believe it.  There are thousands of accomplished string players in the land today, only a handful of whom make it into the best orchestras.  I know that symphony orchestras have been having a hard time lately, but this guy's orchestra is still alive and active.  What was he doing playing in a restaurant?

Musicians have always supplemented orchestra salaries with other jobs.  My school uniforms and tuition were paid with the money that my father, a violinist, earned from chamber music gigs, recording sessions, or--steadiest but most disliked--private lessons or college teaching.  I know that in his early years as a musician, well before I was born, my father played waltzes at an exclusive tea-house in Barcelona.  But never again, after I knew him, did he play background music at a social event, much less at a restaurant.

Is the state of classical music today so dire that fine musicians are forced to play in restaurants, I wondered?  Perhaps the enigmatic cellist was just a friend of the restaurateur...or he was a musical masochist who enjoyed playing while people ignored him.  Eventually he stopped, and I was relieved--the tension of trying not to listen to the music had been wearing me out.

As we were leaving, I saw that the cellist had joined a couple at a table, and was eating with them.  Were they avid music lovers who, amazed to find such a star in their midst, had asked to buy him dinner?  Away from his instrument, the cellist looked affable but unremarkable as he cut into his roasted duck.  Again, as I walked by him I wanted somehow to let him know that he had been heard.  But he was munching away so contentedly that I figured he was happy with things just as they were.