Friday Round-Up: Going to the Dogs

The days of this week couldn’t be more different. But that is how it should be. Sameness ruins people.

What came out of this variegated leaf of a week?

We dreamt of a new dog, a Samoyed we would name Jak. But because we already had a Samoyed named Jak who was beautiful and beloved, we would call the new dog Deuce. We talked about Deuce while we were driving around northern Minnesota chasing sled dog teams in the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. No Samoyeds run in sled dog teams; they are too big and bulky. But they are northern dogs and we love the north.

Our old dogs shamed us for our disloyalty. When we came home, our current dogs, Minnie and BowWow, alternately on death’s door and wagging their tails to go outside, chastised us with their not caring about our return. It was as if they’d heard the conversations in our truck, tracked my searches of Samoyed dog kennels in Wisconsin. It was like going on match.com when divorce is just a twinkle in one’s eye.

There are new blankets at the warming room. Part of my morning clean-up job at the warming room for homeless people is picking up and folding blankets. I’ve folded them so many times, I remember each, but this morning there were new ones, some still warm from their sleeper’s body. Plaid, bright cranberry, fleece blankets, and quilts like you might find on your mother-in-law’s bed. Fred, a man I met weeks ago, appeared again today with a new story to tell. I found him a piece of paper but no pen. He promised to find a pen and bring the story back when it gets cold enough for the warming room to be open again – under 10 degrees.

I am carving out a new life as an activist. I don’t necessarily know what I’m doing but I’m doing it, starting with daily exercises in carefully and objectively calling a spade a spade. It is often easier to call a spade something else especially if everyone else has decided on a different name. Or to analyze a spade until it becomes a flower or a small kitten. But I’m not doing that, not anymore. It’s very freeing, as you might guess, and one of the extraordinary and fairly secret benefits of age and experience. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

I love my writers workshop. I never thought I would. I only signed up because people kept telling me it’s what serious writers do. At this workshop, we each read our pieces and then the others comment. There’s no discussion. You can’t talk back or argue with the comments; they just fall on you like rain and you have to get wet. Yesterday, a woman across the room circled every time I used the word “I” in an essay. I could see her do it like an especially critical teacher who insisted on underlining every single misuse of the word their, there, they’re. She talked about my excessive I’s and I just nodded. It’s good for me to just nod, it’s relief from all the calling of each spade a spade.

That was my week, the week of January 29-February 2, 2018.