Watch Out, Alberto!

Things are getting stickier and stickier for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. New disclosures from his own former chief of staff Kyle Samson--yes, the same guy the White House scapegoated and dumped in hopes of making an ugly issue go away--contradict Alberto's denials that he was in on pre-firing conversations about the eight U.S. attorneys sacked, as we all now know, at the direction of the White House. As a result, the Capitol Hill clamor for the AG's resignation is rising on both sides of the aisle, with Republican Rep. Lee Terry undoubtedly speaking for many of his colleagues in saying, "I trusted him before but can't now."

In the midst of this tumult, President Bush has once again weighed in, calling Gonzalez an "honorable and honest" man who retains his "full confidence." I'm going to gloss right over my inclination to wonder what Bush even knows about the concepts of honor and honesty and instead leap to my point of immediate concern. Hello? Alberto? George W. Bush has gone out of his way a second time now to underscore his support for you. This is the kiss of death. The. Kiss. Of. Death. Can you hear me, Alberto? Alberto?

Well, obviously not. But no doubt you've already figured this out on your own. No doubt you're spending the weekend writing your resignation speech. Something about how you still maintain your integrity and innocence. Consequently, the president is justified in his steadfast support for you. But because this situation has become so controversial and divisive. Because it is sapping energy and attention away from the overarching mandate of our time, i.e., the global war on terror, you have decided, for the good of the country, yea, for the good of the world, to resign your position. You are going back to Texas to spend more time with your family. And the president has graciously, albeit reluctantly, accepted your decision, which by the way, was yours alone and not in any way, not in any way whatsoever, influenced by the White House.

So you go, Alberto. You keep writing. Polish it all up. And go ahead and start practicing your delivery. I predict you've only got a day or so, end of the week at most, until showtime.

Mr. John at the Garden

I'd forgotten this, but Elton John was also born on March 25. (And Gloria Steinem, my childhood friend Mary Ann Gatwood's father, and my Starbucks partner, Adam, who told me last week with obvious concern that 22 feels so old to him, especially since he's dating a woman of only 20.) No doubt Sir Elton--Mr. John to The New York Times--partied the hardest of all of us, celebrating with a big concert at Madison Square Garden.

Having spent a week at The Garden just last month during Westminster, I can tell you that despite its legendary reputation, the place has the ambiance of . . . . Well, I was going to say a helicopter hanger. But then I remembered I actually visited a helicopter hanger recently, when I interviewed a couple of sheriff's department pilots for my book, and it was much nicer than Madison Square Garden. So I'll just say that The Garden is a dump with a whole lot of history behind it. Kinda like the Alamo. Clearly, however, it holds a special place in Sir Elton's heart, as Times writer Nate Chinen explains:

Elton John never seemed like the kind of guy to shrug off a big occasion. So it was natural, perhaps even inevitable, that he would celebrate his 60th birthday at Madison Square Garden. His sprawling concert on Sunday night featured no onstage candles – not even "Candle in the Wind" – but felt ceremonial enough without them. There were dedications, recollections and a shower of confetti. A banner was unfurled from the rafters, bearing a giant number 60 under Mr. John's name.

That last flourish actually commemorated something other than a birthday: Mr. John's 60th performance in the arena. That's more than any other single artist, as the finer print under the numeral made clear. Small wonder that Mr. John wanted to spend his birthday at the Garden: it's obviously a place where he feels at home.

Obviously. But the real reason I took note of the rocketman's birthday bash was that he seems to share not only my birthdate but also my perspective about getting older. As Chinen notes, one of the evening's final songs was "I'm Still Standing."

The song's lyrics amount to a bitter reprisal, but Mr. John made them sound more jubilant than angry. "Don't you know I'm still standing better than I ever did," he sang. "Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid."

They Say It's Your Birthday

Well, it's my birthday, too, yeah. And I had a good time. Bob had to leave early this morning for meetings in D.C. But it was still a nice day. Quiet. Relaxing. Just putzing around the house. Enjoying the luxury of a legitimate day off, a day devoted to nothing in particular. I even watched a couple of old Magnum P.I. episodes via DVD. The ultimate in goofing off. And then tonight, a lovely dinner in Del Mar with E.K. and a friend. So I'm 54. Geez. It sounds terrible. But you know something? The older I get, the younger I feel. There's just so much I've already done, so much I don't need to worry about anymore. And so much more to do, so much more to look forward to. I remember being 14 and 24. I was so young, and I felt young. But when I turned 34 and even 44, I'd already begun to worry about getting old. No more. So maybe it's not the Beatles I should be quoting. Maybe it's Dylan. Because I really was so much older then. I'm younger than that now. (No pun intended.)

Political Prediction

I'm a little worried about U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He's neck deep in the latest White House scandal: the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, including San Diego's Carol Lam, who built the case against former Republican Congressman, now federal prisoner, Duke Cunningham. Recently revealed evidence suggests these eight public servants lost their jobs not on the basis of poor performance, but because they irritated the president. An e-mail exchange actually published on the front page of The New York Times proves there was even West Wing talk about firing all 93 U.S. attorneys nationwide, just wiping the slate clean, the better to replace them with Bush cronies. None other than Supreme Court justice wannabe Harriet Miers thought up that brilliant idea. But back to Alberto. I'm worried because Bush has been making a big point of saying he has "complete confidence" in him. Normally, if you worked for the president and found yourself in hot water you'd be glad to hear that. But we all know that Bush is a pathological liar. He just can't help it. He lies and lies and lies and seems to naively believe that people still believe him. Well, I don't. And if Alberto Gonzales does, he should do lunch with Michael Brown or Donald Rumsfeld. And then go home and polish up his resume.

My Kingdom for a Cursor

I'm having technical difficulties. It all started after Lilo went ripping around my study one day when our wireless LAN was on the fritz and I had my laptop cabled to the printer. I came in after the fact to find the laptop on the tile floor and the printer teetering precariously on the edge of disaster. All seemed to be well at first, but upon closer inspection I found a hinge on the laptop had popped out a bit, which causes the screen to flop over backwards once it's pushed past center. O.K. not so great, but not so bad either.

A day or two later, the real nightmare began when I discovered my cursor has taken on a life of its own. Sometimes it drifts to the right or left, all the way across the screen until it hits the edge and disappears. Sometimes it rises like a balloon to the top of the page or falls like a rock to the bottom. Until it disappears. Sometimes it drifts on the diagonal, all the way to a corner. Where it disappears. And sometimes it runs back and forth across the page, like a swimmer doing laps. Before it finally disappears. But mostly it just disappears for no apparent reason. And then I have to experiment with various decidedly low-tech ways of making it reappear.

Intuitively, it seems that tracing big swirly patterns on the track pad should do the trick. When this doesn't work, in other words, about 90 percent of the time, I try repeating these swirly motions while pressing the track pad harder and harder. Which sometimes works. Bob suggested a more macho approach--simply beating on the machine--which actually seems to be the most effective method. So I've been playing a lot of computer bongo lately.

I spend so much time with my computer it feels almost like an extension of myself. Almost human. You know, like HAL or Data. So it seems it should gradually get better, like a person with a bad cold. But it's not getting better. If anything, I'd have to say it's getting worse. Right now, for example, as I type, my cursor is acting totally spastic, jumping up and down the left margin of the screen with every keystroke. When I stop it drops toward the bottom. And disappears. As hard as I try to deny it, this is not the behavior of a healthy cursor.

I wish I knew what it is inside my laptop that controls the cursor, what exactly about its recent unfortunate accident made it go haywire. I have this naive impression that if I only knew what it is, I could fix it myself. I fixed my washing machine once. Took it all apart, put it back together, and it worked just fine. That was 30 years ago, but it still ranks in my mind as a great mechanical moment.

Whatever's going on with this crazy cursor, it's gotta be a hardware problem. Something way, way beyond me. Which means I'm going to have to get a new laptop pretty soon. I've known this day was coming. I knew it the moment I let my "whatever happens, we'll send a guy out to
fix it" extended warranty expire. I hated to do that, but I had to. This little Latitude is almost 3 1/2 years old after all, and since the battery can't hold a charge for more than 11 or 12 seconds anymore, it required constant life support even before this cursor business started up. So it didn't make sense to invest another $250 in Ole Betsy when I can buy a next-generation model for only a thousand or so.

I did hate to drop that warranty though because I really used it. At least three different Dell repair reps have replaced various parts of my computer and some more than once. Motherboards, keyboards, outboards, inboards, whatever. The first of these guys came once to my office and once to the house. I found him a little creepy. Hardly said a word; couldn't be chatted up. All serious and morose. ("He seemed like a nice enough guy," said John Doe, the suspect's neighbor, "kinda quiet though, usually kept to himself.") Plus, he told me my machine was so gritty inside it looked like it had been to Iraq. He meant that literally, having actually worked on computers that had been to Iraq. Or so he said. Now I ask you, how can that be possible? I know I use my computer a lot. O.K., so I use it almost all the time. And I use it everywhere. In bed. On the couch. In the car. Sitting on the floor. Hello? That's the whole beauty of having a laptop. And I leave it open. And there's a lot of dust where I live. I admit all that. But geez, I live in a house. With a roof and walls and a central vacuum. Not a tent in a war zone.

Thank goodness for Dell Guy No. 2, a grandfatherly type who was as outgoing as Guy No. 1 was reserved. And yet he did not feel the need to guilt trip me about the amount of dirt clogging my hard drive. What a breath of fresh air! But after taking my machine all apart and then putting it back together, Guy No. 2 had a couple of screws left over and seemed totally baffled as to why. Uh... yeah. Really. Still, everything worked just fine. And besides, Dell Guy No. 3, who seemed both psychologically sound and technically competent, fixed the problem I'd called him about and then cleaned up No. 2's mistakes to boot.

But that was then, and now my cursor is playing hide and seek on me, and I can't do much of anything without it, and I have no more Dell Guys standing by on retainer, just waiting to come fix it. So I'm afraid the end is near for my faithful D600. Time to start shopping for a replacement. In the meantime, I really think I'd better go run a backup.

Terra Talks About Therapy

Terra was asked to contribute an article to the newsletter published by Paws'itive Teams, a San Diego organization devoted to training and deploying service and therapy dogs. Here's what she had to say about her work in its new goal-directed therapy program. I hope it gives you a good idea of what therapy dogs do and what an important difference they make in the world--not to mention what a special girl Terra is!

Hi, I’m Terra, a champion Newfoundland, an obedience dog, a water rescue dog, a draft dog—and a therapy dog. Yes, I know, it’s quite a resume, but Newfoundlands are working dogs after all, so we have to stay busy! Some people wonder which of my many jobs is my favorite. Well … I do love the bright lights and glory of the show ring, but honestly? There’s nothing better than being a therapy dog!

Why? Because it’s a win-win situation. As a therapy dog, my job is to make people happy; in return, I get tons of compliments and attention. And usually a few treats, too. Besides, I love seeing people perk up when I walk into a room. They may be sad or grumpy or bored, even sick or hurt, but the minute I show up, they start feeling better.

I began my therapy career as a pup, learning from my big brother, Epic, who worked at a convalescent center. Epic had gone to Paws’itive Team’s Therapy Prep School with my human partner, Sandra, so he knew the drill. “Kid,” he said. “You’re gonna be a natural. Just wag your tail, smile and kiss people.” Epic was right. Therapy was easy for me. And so much fun!

I’ve had lots of therapy jobs since then. At the library. At a family shelter in downtown San Diego. Sometimes I put on my “crisis response dog” vest, and Sandra and I drive to disaster sites to cheer up anyone who’s scared or upset. About 3 months ago, I started a great new job in “goal-directed therapy.” This means I get to visit with people and help them learn new things! Our program is called Paws’itive Animal-Assisted Therapy or PAAT for short. Here’s how it works.

Once a week, Sandra and I go to a special high school, where we meet the other PAAT teams and head off together to the classrooms. First we visit with “transition” students, young adults, ages 18-22, with special challenges like Down’s Syndrome, cerebral palsy or brain injuries. Each dog team works one on one with a student, practicing whatever he or she needs to work on. For example: some students need to learn to use their words and voices better. So their teacher and Sandra teach them my favorite words, and if they can say something I know loudly and clearly enough, I’ll sit or lie down or speak to let them know they got it right. Boy, do they get excited then! They smile and laugh! You can tell they feel proud of themselves. Some students need to exercise their muscles, so I let them brush me. Or they throw one of my toys; I go get it and bring it back so they can throw it again. Sometimes they hold my leash, and we go for a short walk.

Each of us dogs works with one or two students, then we take a break. Next, we visit the “at risk” students—kids who get extra attention at this school to help them succeed in school. Our human partners show these students how to take care of us, help us practice our favorite behaviors and even teach us new things. At first, some of them act like they don’t want to work with us. But pretty soon most of them realize how cool dogs really are, how much we like them and want to play with them. And then they get involved and actually have fun. That’s when the treats start flying. Yes!! So far we’ve taught these kids some of our agility, water rescue and basic obedience moves. They don’t always show it, but inside they feel happy and proud to be our partners for a day. (Dogs just know these things.)

Then it’s time to go home. Sometimes Sandra stops by Rubio’s on the way and buys a treat for us to share. When they’re all gone, I curl up on the back seat and take a nap. Making so many people happy can be exhausting. But for a therapy dog, there’s nothing like a good day’s work to guarantee sweet dreams.

Spring Census

Terra Nova is conspicuously short on rabbits. Time was, Bob and I would make a game of predicting how many would dart across our path between the main road and our driveway. But lately I've seen just one or two here and there. From this dramatic turn of events, I can deduce only one explanation: all those hawks and kites and owls and eagles soaring over the canyon, all those coyotes skulking from shadow to shadow, the occasional bobcat spiriting its way through the underbrush, must've been dining fairly well all winter.

Fortunately, it's spring. The finches are chirping outside the windows. Lizards are scurrying over the rocks again. The first treefrog has returned to my porch fountain. And though we've yet to see them, neighbors say the snakes are waking up from hibernation, too. This means, no doubt, that any surviving rabbits are busy doing what rabbits do best. I'm expecting to see a resurgence in the population anytime now. I really hope they hurry. Easter is just around the corner.

Oyasumi nasai Laji san

Yesterday I got the sad news that my good friend Henry Large died last Thursday, and I'm frankly having quite a time adjusting to the idea of a world without Henry in it somewhere. There was no one remotely like him in my life, and never will be. I knew he'd been sick for quite a while; he hadn't been able to get together for our usual Starbucks moments for the last few months.

I'd been calling and e-mailing to check on him, and each time we talked he sounded terribly weak, but each time he assured me he'd gradually regain his characteristic vigor. The doctors said so. "We'll have time together in the future," he wrote me. He didn't tell me, as his wife did yesterday, that he'd recently been diagnosed with cancer on top of his other ailments. And now, just like that it seems, he's gone. My mind can't get past this one question: What will I do without Henry? I honestly haven't figured it out yet.

Henry long ago lost patience with the church, so no services are scheduled. His wife plans to scatter his ashes on a mountain in Montana where they both were born. Henry would definitely like that. But it doesn't seem right to let him fade away from my life without any sort of pomp or circumstance. So I've been wondering what I could do to honor him at his passing. All I've been able to come up with is this excerpt from my manuscript. I hope it gives you even a hint of Henry.

Our friend Henry Large is an acquired taste. I’d met him a decade before, in an extension class on Japanese language and culture where his studious demeanor, arcane grammar questions and brown polyester wardrobe quickly set him apart as the class geek. Eventually, however, I’d learned there was more to Henry. Much more.

He’d grown up during the 40s, a smartass kid in an unusually refined Montana family. His father, a noted opthamologist, responded to his son’s adolescent pranks by banishing him to military school. From there Henry edged west, going to college in Seattle, working in some undefined capacity for the CIA, even moving to Korea with his bride, Wilma, another fearless Montanan.

They’d lived there for a couple of years, time Henry spent learning his first Asian language and collecting a boatload of grisly stories that seemed to come pouring out of him whenever people were trying to eat. Medieval sounding tales about Korean toilet habits, violent street brawls, and severed heads displayed on spikes.

“Laji san,” I said to him once, using the Japanese derivation of his name as we did in class. “Do you just say everything that comes into your mind?”

He cocked his head, and his eyes bored into me with geekish gravity. “Sandra,” he replied. “I have no unexpressed thought.”

Once in the midst of an elaborate sushi dinner at the home of our Japanese teacher, Henry tanked up on sake and launched into such a graphic and distasteful narrative that Bob, seated beside him, laid a firm hand on his arm.

“Henry,” he said, “it’s time for an unexpressed thought.”

Over the years after their return from Korea, Henry and Wilma had owned a number of bars, a fairly substantial cabinet-making operation, and a menagerie of extraordinary animals, including a huge, precocious dog named Goopa and a rather demanding cat named Doo Doo. All at one time or another I heard about over coffee and Japanese lessons, a habit Henry and I continued on our own long after we’d exhausted the extension catalog’s course offerings. By then of course I’d discovered in Henry a brilliant mind, philosophic insight, surprising sensitivity--and a trusted friend.

Recently, Henry had announced he was going into real estate. So when we’d found a likely house just weeks before, we’d ask him to help us make an offer. And when we’d lost it to a higher bidder, Henry had taken it harder than we had.

“Now don’t you let your lip drag the ground over this one, Sandra," he said. “We’ll just keep looking until we find something even better.”

We did. But it took some doing. After I found the online real estate listing for the house that would become our new home, I called Henry, and we arranged to see the place the next day during my lunch hour. Henry met me at the office, and I climbed into his big green pickup truck for the trek to Wildcat Canyon. It was a wild, circuitous ride.

By the time Henry and I finally stumbled upon the right mailbox and turned off the asphalt onto the right dirt road, we’d explored a half dozen others and asked directions from a man on horseback. At the turnoff, the first property we passed was a mess of twisted metal and heavy equipment surrounding a couple of rusted
old house trailers. From there, the gravel road led straight ahead past a neatly kept geodesic dome and then dead-ended against the closed gate of a chain link fence. Our only option now was a sharp left turn that left us looking straight up at what had to be the steepest skinniest sliver of asphalt this side of Nepal. Henry sized it up in a single word. “HELL-o,” he said and slipped the truck into low gear.

So hello, Henry. And goodnight, my friend. But no need for goodbyes. Your stories, your humor, your spirit, your friendship will always be a part of me.

A Winter Gone to the Dogs

So much has transpired since I last made the effort to update this blog. To those few of you who actually still check once in a while to see if there's anything new to read, I apologize for my long hiatus. But sometimes it's true that the more things change, the more things stay the same, so no one here should be surprised to learn the common denominator in my life for these past 3 months could well be described as dog-related.

All the Youngers spent Christmas in Arizona, surrounded by seven canines, one for every human, and even at that, Lauren's 18-month-old Newfy pup, Lilo, stayed behind in Seattle. (For the time being anyway.) Afterwards, Bob and I left our two Newfs on the ranch with Terri and John, while we drove farther east to Albuquerque. We arrived in sync with the worst winter storm anyone in New Mexico could remember. Within hours, the airport and freeways were shut down, so we spent the next three days snowed in at the Hotel Albuquerque, attending our second Richard Rohr conference. It was tough sledding for some 300 conference registrants who couldn't get there, including four in our own party turned away in mid-air just 5-10 minutes from the airport. (Excuse me, in Albuquerque, they call it "the sunport.") But for those of us already in place, looking out on a winter wonderland from warm, Southwestern style rooms, equipped with broad-band wireless Internet, and just an elevator ride away from a nice restaurant, it was a different story. Personally, I was pretty much in heaven before Father Rohr said a word. But as we've come to expect, he took us a few big steps further in that direction. Funny that a couple of Lutherans should end up looking to a Franciscan priest for spiritual insight, but Rohr has provided exactly what we've found lacking in Protestant circles for the last several years: a deeper way of thinking and talking, a larger way of living. Here's a typical Rohr nugget: we don't think ourselves into new ways of living so much as we live our way into new ways of thinking. In other words, God speaks through our experiences to our inner selves, the real selves that usually can't wedge a word into the incessant mental babbling of our self-made, resume-polishing, public personae.

But back to the dogs. We drove home by way of Sierra Vista, where we picked up Terra and Charter, whom Terri had already happily converted into ranch dogs, making for a rather fragrant ride on to California and mandatory baths for both pups before either was allowed into the house. Within the next week, the Newf population at Terra Nova jumped to three when Lilo arrived from Seattle. At first, we considered it an extended visit, just long enough to give Lauren a break from the considerable demands of single puppy-parenting. But seeing Lilo blend seamlessly into our larger "pack" and quickly abandon a number of neurotic behaviors that had really begun to worry Lauren, confirmed her diagnosis of severe separation anxiety and convinced us all that Lilo belonged at Terra Nova for good. Lauren has since been down to visit her "baby girl," and pronounced her happy and well-adjusted, a denouement that helps ease the heartbreak of giving her up. In the meantime, Bob and I have had to adjust to Lilo's impressive repertoire of puppy antics, but we're wowed by her exuberance, intelligence and athleticism. Terra and Charter seem somewhat less in love with Lilo than we are, but they've been good sports about it, and if pressed, might actually admit she's a lot of fun to chase and wrestle with.

Finally, I have this astonishing dog-related news to report. EK and I went to Westminster! Yes, we were there, ringside no less, at the 131st episode of that granddaddy of all dog shows. We were there as the television cameras flashed live coverage from New York City's storied Madison Square Garden, images of the world's best-looking dogs and, in many cases, oddest-looking humans. We were part of the surreal interspecies insanity that inspired Christopher Guest's classic mockumentary, "Best in Show." It is a Camelot moment. An oxymoron of an event that gives people ordinarily consumed by slinging kibble, vacuuming fur, scrubbing slime and scooping poop a chance to don tuxes and sequins and show off their favorite canine companions under a nationwide spotlight.

For the uninitiated, let me try to explain the full glory of this experience. Sitting ringside at Westminster, not to mention partying with the judges and having your photo snapped with James, the dashing English springer spaniel crowned "best in show," is akin to sitting just behind the winning bench at the Superbowl, or midcourt for the NBA finals. And then partying with the triumphant team after the game. It's like sitting in the front row during the Oscars, on the aisle where the winners brush by you on their way to the podium. And then chatting it up with Helen Mirren, Jennifer Hudson and Martin Scorcese over drinks and hors d'ouevres afterward. It's like watching the Kentucky Derby from the owners' booth and then helping adjust the roses just so for the official photographs. I could go on.

Suffice it to say, it was a dream come true for both of us, made even sweeter by EK's own appearance on the green carpet with five other winners of Westminster Kennel Club scholarships for vet students--the reason for our trip and VIP treatment--and only slightly tarnished by our 3-day delay in flying home to California after a Valentine's Day ice storm shut down every New York airport. Snowed in twice in as many months! Hardly a typical winter for a Southerner turned Southern Californian. But a great one, especially for a dog lover.