Weekend Assignment: #274: The Pursuit of Happiness

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, under the editorial kibitzing of John Adams and Ben Franklin, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Our Weekend Assignment, delayed until the anniversary of the ratification of those words by the Continental Congress, takes its cue from my old buddy Tom:

Weekend Assignment: #274: How do you personally pursue Happiness?
Extra Credit: How do you know when you've caught it?

This has got to be the shortest Weekend Assignment question I've ever posed, but it's not necessarily the simplest. The concept of happiness can be tricky to define, let alone recognize. It's a platonic ideal, frequently defined more by its absence - or its pursuit - than by the actual experience of it.

Yet we know it's real, at least in retrospect. Often we can look back on a moment and say, "Ah, I was so happy then," whether we recognized it at the time or not. Even the big, obviously joyous occasions - a wedding day, the birth of a child, the vacation of a lifetime - can be obscured by the stresses of the moment, or by just being too busy to fully appreciate that ah, yes, this is happiness, right now.

Still, we try for it, all day, every day. An accepted theory of human behavior is that every single thing we do is in pursuit of happiness, of trying to make ourselves feel better, selfishly or otherwise. I've always hated that idea, that the most altruistic act isn't really for the sake of the other person, but to make us feel good about ourselves.

So, to transition from the pontificating, which has been making me happy for several minutes now because the writing is going well, I now must consider what I do to try to be happy. There are lots of things I do, some of them contradictory. I write. I hang out with dogs. I goof off. I stop goofing off and accomplish something, thereby reducing the guilt quotient. I hang out with John. I read. I drive up the mountain. I watch my favorite tv shows. I go to church - which doesn't sound like a happiness-producing activity, especially if you're as uneasy with certain kinds of religious behavior and belief systems as I am. Yet againt the odds, St. Michael's does indeed make me happy, at least as much because of the people as because of the ritual and the meaning behind it.

It's been a stressful week for me. I discovered on Wednesday night that my unemployment claim ran out at the end of May, but the state website let me continue to put in claims anyway. It just didn't pay anything. There was a form in the mail that explained about an additional 7 weeks I qualified for, if I filled it out and turned it in - no later than two weeks ago. I learned of its existence on Wednesday night, and tracked it down in a pile of mail on Thursday afternoon, just in time to get it turned in at DES (Department of Economic Services) before they closed for the holiday weekend. The DES employee couldn't tell me whether it would still be accepted. And I just realized that I should have filed a claim anyway online this week, even if it's not being paid, and I think I've missed the deadline on it. If all this works, it should be paid retroactively, but only if I don't break the chain with a week of no reported claim.

It's kind of depressing, partly because I've screwed up, and partly because I shouldn't still need unemployment payments after all this time. My part time job is good and valuable, but not lucrative. Am I doing enough to find work, or letting my discouragement over the lack of response induce a debilitating lethargy where job hunting is concerned? And does it even matter, when most of the job listings either don't fit my skills and qualifications or are the same ones I've applied for at least once before? Clearly, though, lapsing into defeatism isn't going to lead to either employment or happiness. So I went through CareerBuilder and Monster and a few other sites this week, updating and upgrading, and compiled a master document of past job data: addresses and dates and supervisors' names and phone numbers. And for a moment, I was happy with what I'd accomplished - but I still have much more to do.

Often, though, it's not the head-on, work through your troubles approach that leads to short-term happiness, or at least pleasure. (There's a whole tangent I could pursue but won't: what is pleasure, if not a sort of degraded, shamefaced form of happiness?) We all face that annoying tension between short term gratification and long-term goals. Do I enjoy an ice cream cone now, or deny myself for the sake of a lower number on a bathroom scale?

Maybe we have to have both, the adult, disciplined pursuit of the things that we hope will made us happy in the long run, and the little pleasures that make us happy in the moment. Tonight I was going to start this entry right after John turned off Torchwood on DVD, but instead I spent most of the night reading a magazine about golden moments from each of the 200 Doctor Who stories to date. The many writers of this DWM Special describe particular scenes, and why they're brilliant, and the impact they had on their chid- or adult-selves. Their joy in the show, their love for it and happiness that it's still going strong after nearly 46 years, beams out from the pages, and produces an answering outpouring of emotion from me. So for a few hours, as I read about the "deadly jelly baby" scene and "everybody lives" and the disinfecting elevator, and I'm happy. Then I put the magazine away, and return to the problem of facing my own, imperfect life.

So. What about you? How to you pursue happiness, and do you notice when you find it? Tell us about it in your blog, with a link back here, and a link to your blog entry in the comments below. You can get all philosophical on us, as I just did, or maybe just describe a particular activity that does the trick for you. Heck, if stamp collecting make you happy, I want to know about it! Just be sure to get your entry in by Thursday evening, because I'm going to try to get this increasingly tardy meme back on schedule next week. Meanwhile, there's last week's Assignment to wrap up:

For Weekend Assignment #273: Music(ians) of Your Life, I asked for your reaction to the death of Michael Jackson, and whether there a particular musician whose work has particular meaning for you. Excepts from the responses follow.


Julie said...

Sure, I grew up listening to the Jackson 5. I even had a picture of young Michael Jackson on my wall when I was twelve. But my heart belonged to the Beatles. Even then, I listened to a lot of different music. I was probably the only kid my age who knew that swing music wasn't something made schmaltzy by Lawrence Welk. I was also a huge standup comedy fan and could listen to those records for hours. I still can. The other day I was reading an urban fantasy story that involved Noah, and all I could think of was Bill Cosby: "God? What's a cubit?"

Florinda named the Beatles and four other artists:

The Beatles: I was ten years old when I first became aware of them, and they'd been broken up for four years by then. Their sound shaped my musical preferences, and they're still the standard I use for evaluating the best pop/rock: melody, harmony, lyrics, and how it all works together. There's a song in their catalog to go with nearly every moment you can think of. They produced their share of clunkers (for my money, most of them inhabit the White Album), but in eight years of recording together, the classics-to-clunkers ratio is very much in the classics' favor.

Mike also names a number of bands, including...

The next stage came with music I actually bought myself. Mostly that was Styx and Kansas. I loved those two bands. They were a bit different in style than The Cars, but they had the right mix for me. Some good rocking music, but also some slower songs mixed with a little progressive rock; especially with Kansas.

I think Styx Paradise Theater album was the one I listened to the most. It was certainly one of their biggest albums and it hit at the perfect time for me. What I want to know, though, is why is not on iTunes? That is driving me crazy.

That's it for now! As always, I'm looking for suggestions for future Weekend Assignments, and also for more of you to participate in writing the entries. Come on - as good the our three stalwarts above are, we'd love to hear from YOU as well. Thanks!

Karen

Stay Tuned

"Not quite clear, is it? I can see by your face that you're not certain. You don't understand. And I knew you wouldn't! Never mind."' --the First Doctor

This is just a quick note that I haven't forgotten about the Part Two of my EMPS brochure, or the Weekend Assignment, or Feline and Furball with Feathers Friday, or the people I've yet to visit to see their Round Robin entries of last weekend. I've been distracted this week with upgrading and updating my job-hunting listings, and working a handful of hours, and watching First Doctor episodes of Doctor Who, and fielding a large influx of friend requests on Facebook, and looking for ways to walk the dogs in the heat, and watching coverage of the bizarre political soap operas of two Republican governors on tv.

But I will be playing catch-up this weekend, starting with the Weekend Assignment. For now, a hint: I will be asking you for your personal take on a phrase from a famous sentence related to this holiday weekend, the one that begins, "We hold these truths...."

More in a few hours, I promise!


Karen

EMPS: Come to Tucson - In the Summer!

For this week's Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #44:Travel Brochures, which I was too distracted to check out on Monday (more on this later), Carly wants photography suitable for a travel brochure, complete with a paragraph of promotional copy. I am sorely tempted to design a whole brochure as a PDF or something, but for tonight I will try for something a bit less ambitious.

We know what you're thinking. Tucson? In summer? Isn't it over 100 degrees there in the summer? Sure is! But with a few tips from this brochure you can work that to your advantage, and have a first class Arizona vacation at bargain prices. Read on....

Secrets of Summers in Tucson

"It's a dry heat..."

The cliche is true - up to a point. 110 degrees at 11% humidity is arguably more comfortable than 94 degrees at 90% humidity. But when the monsoon arrives - Arizona's rainy season - the "dry heat" gives way to amazing cloud formations and dramatic thunderstorms. The high temperature is less extreme, and when the storm hits, the air may cool by as much as twenty degrees in a few minutes.

Air conditioning is almost universally found in Tucson's many hotels and resorts, most of which feature deeply discounted summer rates. Or you can knock twenty to thirty degrees of the summer heat with a drive up Mount Lemmon Highway, to the sky islands of the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Next: Summer Delights!

Karen

Postscript: I was going to do a second entry to finish up, really I was, but it's been so miserably hot and humid all week the I couldn't keep the joke going. See, when the monsoon rain really gets going, it's going to be fun, watching the dramatic weather and feeling the temperature drop and photographing the flooding. But so far in this year's this monsoon, which just started, it haven;t rained much, and hasn't flooded at all. It's just hot and humid and miserable.

So what can I say to entice you to Tucson at such a time? Come to Tucson, and hang out at the malls? Go to the museums, because they all have an inside? The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum does indeed have an inside component, with the fish tanks and snakes and a geology cave, but all the really good stuff is outside - the hummingbirds, the javalinas... but now that I think of it, there's an indoor observation area for the otters and the beaver and the bobcats. And they're open on Saturday nights, which it's cooler. The Toros baseball games are all at night, too. So, yeah. Come to Tucson, and see all the neat stuff. Then go away, and come back when the heat breaks. - KFB

Invisible Wildlife

I took the dogs up Mt. Lemmon Highway this evening, partly to try to find more wildlife to photograph, but mostly to avoid exercising poor, furry Pepper in 106 degree heat. We had a good time, but we didn't see any wildlife other than the flies both dogs were snapping at. Still, we knew there were larger critters in the area - or, at least, that there had been.

We started out from the house around 6:30 PM. "It's a mistake," John warned. "It will be dark by the time you get up there." I assured him that we were only going as far as Molino Basin, about five miles up, and that anyway, it doesn't get dark until 8 PM these days. The car thermometer said 106 degrees as we left the driveway. The dogs rode the whole way up in the front seat beside me, taking advantage of the car A/C.

Sunset over Thimble Peak

From Mount Lemmon Highway

The first stop for me on Mount Lemmon Highway, traditionally, is Babad Do'Ag Vista, the first real vista point and a major destination for watching and photographing sunsets. The sun was setting, but we didn't stop until Thimble Peak Vista. The dogs got out, briefly, but there was no place for them to walk, particularly, and no wildlife to be seen.

Bear Canyon greenery.

As it happened I did not stop at Molino Basin, because it had a self-serve fee station for use (picnicking or hiking or camping). I didn't want to pay, and I didn't want to cheat. In the end we stopped at Bear Wallow or whatever it's called, a picnic area at Bear Canyon. That was probably something to pay a fee for as well, but I rationalized that we weren't picnicking or camping or hiking, and we weren't there all that long, perhaps 20 minutes. It's at this point on the drive up the Catalinas when the pine forests begin, a major contrast to the desert floor below. The temperature, according to the car, was 85 degrees.
.

Alert for signs of wildlife, the dogs are on the hunt.

Well, I heard lots of birds in the tall trees, and a little distant scrabbling that could have been a ground squirrel, perhaps something a bit larger. But the only living creatures we saw were the flies the dogs were snapping at. Still, they had a good time sniffing all the interesting smells, and Cayenne insisted that the grass up there made mighty fine eatin'.

A very different wash (dry creek bed).

At the back of that particular picnic area, just before the steep hill, is a wash that looks very different from the ones in town. The rocks are pretty much the same, but it's not broken up with imported sand or slabs of concrete, or half-ruined with illegally dumped trash. The vegetation surrounding it is very different, of course, and you can't see far along it in either direction as it curves its way down the mountain.

Bear Canyon does in fact have the occasional bear sighting, but in 23 years of visits to the Catalinas I've yet to see one. Just as well, really. John would prefer that the dogs not encounter so much as a rock squirrel, in case it turns out to be rabid.

Babad Do'Ag, overlooking the city at dusk.

On the way down the mountain, we stopped at Babad Do'Ag anyway, to catch the end of sunset and the beginning of dusk. It was 8 PM as we left. The dogs did more energetic sniffing, and even I could smell that a wild animal had visited, namely a skunk. There are four species of skunks in Southern AZ, if I recall correctly, but I haven't seen one in years and years. And when I did, nothing bad happened. So there.

Karen

RRPC: Wildlife in the Wash

Note to self: having the dogs along is not conducive to getting good close-up shots of wild animals.

A curve-billed thrasher. Not a bunny.

But I tried. For this week's Round Robin Photo Challenge, "Wildlife," as suggested by Nancy of Nancy Luvs Pix, I originally intended to go into the mountains, or to Sabino Canyon; but I ran out of time. (I may yet do this later this weekend.) Instead, per John's suggestion, I took the dogs to the wash, and looked for bunnies there.

A Gambel's Quail hurries away. Not a bunny,
but as hard to photograph with dogs in tow.

Wait a sec, you may be saying. The wash?

Alamo Wash on Friday evening.

I never heard of this meaning for that word either, until we moved to Tucson in 1986. A wash is a river or creek bed that is dry most of the time, but fills up with water during storms, especially during the monsoon (rainy season). The other name for a wash is arroyo. The one nearest our house, the Alamo Wash, runs north and south through many Tucson neighborhoods, including a stretch between the athletic fields of Palo Verde High School and Terra del Sol Park. That's where I took the camera and the dogs on Friday afternoon. I should have brought fresh batteries for the camera as well.

Also not a bunny. Lizards are ubiquitous here, and nothing to fear.

I first took the dogs for a walk along the alley that edges Alamo Wash two weeks ago, on June 13th. The thrasher photo is from a few days after that. I wanted to find you something besides birds, because I've been photographing lots of birds lately and because I personally prefer mammals. In theory, our neighborhood has coyotes and desert cottontails, a smattering of bird species (mostly doves), lizards and various insects. This is a 50-year-old neighborhood in an established part of the city, so we can't expects bobcats or javalinas, chuckwallas or gila monsters. Still, the wash and the two alleyways that edge it, one on each side, are as close to nature as I'm likely to get without driving to the mountains. So that's where we went, up one alley and down the other. I did take the dogs briefly into the wash itself, but didn't like the footing given my history of sprained and broken ankles.

Look! A bunny! Technically it's a desert cottontail.

Even the desert creatures known to live in and around the Terra del Sol neighborhood are not too likely to turn up late on a Friday afternoon, They're especially unlikely to come in camera range of a woman with two dogs on leashes. At first it looked as though I wasn't going to see anything but doves and a few other birds. Ten minutes in, I actually said, "This isn't a happening thing, puppies. I don't think we're going to see any bunnies today. Oh! There's a bunny!"

The bunny was far away, and ran down the wash and up the other side to the other alley, taking refuge in the same place I saw one go ten days before. But I zoomed the camera where I thought he was, and got the photo you see above.

The alleyway immediately east of Alamo Wash

I've done much better with wildlife photos in the past. John and I got some great pictures of a wide variety of critters in our other house in the 1980s, in a much less domesticated neighborhood near the Tucson Mountains. I've also photographed rabbits and pronghorns in New Mexico, and lots of birds in Reid Park. But I didn't want to settle for Reid or reruns this time, so the photos above will have to do for now. I'll try to top them before the weekend is over. Meanwhile, let's take a look at the other Robins' wildlife photos!

Linking List

Nancy - Posted!
Nancy Luvs Pix
http://nancyluvspix.blogspot.com/

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com

Steven - Posted!
(sometimes)photoblog
http://www.sometimesphotoblog.com/

Monica
Shutterly Happy (new blog title)
http://monica-frameofmind.blogspot.com/

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Molly Mavis - Posted!
Visual Dialogues
http://visualdialogues.wordpress.com

Peggy - Posted!
Holmespun Fun Memes and Themes (new blog)
http://holmespunfunmemesandthemes.blogspot.com

Vicki **Welcome, New Member** - Posted!
Beach Bum
http://2babb.blogspot.com

Connie - Posted!
Far Side of Fifty Photos
http://farsideoffiftyphotos.blogspot.com

Marina
Visual Chronicle
http://one-x-day.blogspot.com

Vicki
Maraca
http://mymaracas.blogspot.com/

Betty - Posted!
a corgi in southern california
http://acorgiinsoutherncalifornia.blogspot.com/

alexa - Posted!
imagination pounces
http://imaginationpounces.blogspot.com

Irene - Posted!
Notes from the Lion City
http://notesfromthelioncity.blogspot.com

Suzanne R - Posted!
SuzyQ421's Photo Blog
http://suzyq421sphotoblog.blogspot.com

Linda - Posted!
Linda's Window
http://lindaswindow.blogspot.com/

Terri
Ways I See the World
http://teelgeephotos.blogspot.com/

Sandra - Posted!
A Cappuccino a day
http://Acappuccinoaday.blogspot.com

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com

Jen - Posted!
Phun with Photography
http://phunwithphotography.blogspot.com/

Linda - Posted!
Mommy's Treasures
http://mommystreasures.blogspot.com/

I'll catch up with everyone after I've slept some more. See you later!

Karen

Weekend Assignment #273: Music(ians) of Your Life

Michael Jackson's death inspires this week's assignment.

Weekend Assignment #273: The death of Michael Jackson has provoked a huge reaction, much of it from people who grew up listening to his music. Is there a particular musician whose work has particular meaning for you?
Extra Credit: What is your personal reaction, if any, to the death of Michael Jackson?

From Michael Jackson vigil Tucson

I vaguely remember the Jackson 5 cartoon show, and listening to Ben on the car radio; so I guess you could say I grew up with the music of Michael Jackson. When I worked for McDonald's in 1979-1980, I remember proposing my opinion that Michael Jackson would benefit psychologically from being made to work anonymously at McDonald's for a month, to get some idea what the real world is like. I still believe that premise, that a celebrity who creates an artificial world around himself to the exclusion of the real world only exacerbates any self-destructive tendencies. John always said that a celebrity who has survived fame and come out psychologically healthy could do a good consulting business helping new celebs avoid the all-too-common pitfalls of drugs, ego, and money issues. A few years later, as an employee of Buzzard's Nest records, I sold a heck of a lot of Thriller LPs and cassettes, and listened to the promo copy daily for a while. I later listened to our promo of the Jacksons LP Victory, but was less than impressed by that one.

But really, I was never a Michael Jackson fan. I'm a little annoyed that my favorite cable station, MSNBC, has been pretty much hijacked by coverage of his death over the past 24 hours and counting, and that some interviewees have placed his cultural importance above that of Elvis or the Beatles. Fair enough, though: he broke the color barrier on MTV, was hugely influential in the fields of rock/pop, dance and fashion, and fascinated the public almost as much with his tragic life and death and bizarre behavior as because of his music. And we are now in the world of Twitter and texting and 24-hour news cycles. This sort of thing is probably inevitable, if not quite reasonable. (What about Iran? What about the energy bill? Isn't anything else happening today?)

Thursday evening I left the constant Michael Jackson coverage behind on tv and headed to Reid Park with the dogs. As we passed the rose garden, I saw more people there than was usual for that time of day. That's when I noticed the four trucks from three local Clear Channel radio stations in the parking lot, soon joined by news trucks from two tv stations.

More people started arriving in the rose garden, and sure enough, the gazebo was soon draped in KRQ banners. A trio of people stood with white party balloons, on which they had written in Sharpie. "I LOVE YOU, MICHEAL" was one of the things written on them. Ah. of course. As we left, someone had just addressed the crowd about having gotten his single parent mom to buy him a tape of BAD. Then they played the song Thriller, which is still stuck in my head. Darn it.

It was a typically diverse Tucson crowd - black, white, Hispanic, kids and baby boomers, man and women. Nobody was crying, or seemed particularly upset. At least one guy in his forties was standing just outside the rose garden with his young family, a vinyl LP under his arm. But the few words I heard as I walked by seemed to be about a trip to a local casino.

I have to wonder what December 8, 1980 would have been like given 2009's technological zeitgeist. I will never forget the death of John Lennon, whose murder provoked a similar reaction but in less high-tech terms. John Lennon and his three chums from Liverpool have been a significant part of my life since 1964, a hundred or a thousand times more so than Michael Jackson. I did a project on the Beatles' music for school in 1973 or so, spent high school collecting their albums, drove across town to get a McCartney LP the day it came out, wrote to Yoko after her husband's death, and eventually saw Paul and Ringo in their respective concerts in Los Angeles in the 1980s. I was a record store owner-manager when John died, and handed out free buttons in commemoration the next day. (I think I've written about this part of it before, so let's move on.) John Lennon's death was as sudden as Jackson's, and more extreme, horrible and unforeseeable in its circumstances. And like Michael Jackson, John Lennon was a complex and interesting person in his public persona.

But that's not strictly relevant to John Lennon's musical impact. I'm not one of those Beatles fans who idolize Lennon and discount the other Beatles' contributions. Paul McCartney was and is at least as talented. They complemented each other musically, and pushed each other to collaborations that were better than anything they each did alone. George was no slouch, and Ringo did his part; each deserves more appreciation than they get. But without John Lennon, I doubt that we'd all know and appreciate his friends to the extent that we do, even today. He was the one who put together the band, and instigated many of the Beatles' musical and technically innovations. 45 years after their breakthrough U.S. tours, what John, Paul, George and Ringo did still matters.

How about you? Did you grow up listening to Elvis, the Beatles the Jackson 5, New Kids or Nirvana, or someone else entirely? Tell us about your all-time favorite in your blog, and don't forget to link to your entry in the comments below. (Also, please link to this entry in the entry you write, okay? Thanks!) I'll be back next Friday (probably earlier in the day!) to recap the results, thus:

For Weekend Assignment #272: Here Comes Summer!, guest professor Carly and I asked you to describe your summer plans. Here are exceprts from the responses:

Julie said...

Vacation? What's that? Oh, I could use a few days off, but it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

We're so swamped right now that getting away for more than a weekend is problematic. And even then it's a weekend combined with something else, like a convention appearance for me or a bowling tournament for Chris.

Florinda combined this assignment with the previous one (to describe your town or city) in her entry:

School is out for the summer now, and families will be looking for ways to keep the kids busy until it starts back up again a week or so before Labor Day. My family is no exception. The summer days in Simi Valley can get very hot and dry, but thanks to low humidity, the nights are usually pretty comfortable. However, my husband doesn't have a high tolerance for the heat, despite having lived in Southern California all of his life, so we tend to seek out air-conditioned indoor activities during the day. We'll be going to the movies a lot, or staying in to watch DVDs. This year, we want to try to make one or two trips to the beach - the nearest one is only about thirty miles away - and to use the neighborhood swimming pool. Simi Valley Town Center is an outdoor mall, so if we have shopping to do on really warm days, we'll probably go to the indoor mall in neighboring Thousand Oaks.

Mike references his own recent vacation that kicked off his summer:

Well, as you can see from my last few posts, we've already taken our summer trip. We went to Walt Disney World to see the parks and sweat as much as possible. It was a good time! That is not the norm, however. This year was our first big vacation since we had kids. (Our son is seven by the way). Jenn and I have done little weekend trips on occasion, but this was the first time we went all out on a family vacation. And, based on the cost, it's a good thing we waited this long. I need to find a place that gives the best price for plasma donations, any recommendations?

That's it for now! I'm rushing off to do a photo shoot for later tonight, but will be making the rounds properly over the next day or so - this time for sure! As always, I'm looking for suggestions for future Weekend Assignments, but at the moment I'm especially looking for participants to write the entries. Thanks!

Karen

Brief Encounters

I've been planning this entry for a week or two, and now I'm going to rush it because I'm waiting for a nurse to call with news that a friend is ready to be picked up from outpatient surgery at a hospital on the other side of town (St. Mary's, fact fans!). After that I'm due at at St. Michael's, and I'm already stressed about getting J. home and still getting to work on time. Plus I have to call that prospective second employer, who didn't call me back last week, but I don't want to tie up the cell phone. So there's that.

Anyway.

More and more over the past several weeks, I've taken the dogs gallivanting around my neighborhood rather than making the ten minute drive to Reid Park and Miko's Corner Playground. This is partly to save driving time, so we can get a late start and still get a walk in. It also saves gas, obviously. The dogs don't seem to mind. They don't pause or pull me toward the car as we go by it, but are happy to trot along down streets and alleyways, sniffing the occasional other dog through a fence and smelling whatever smells may be found. But I miss the number and variety of encounters I have with people and animals when we go to the park instead. To wit:

There was a dog owner, S., whose dog never really warmed up to me, or anyone other than S., really. I photographed her dog a few times, including for my April Fool's Day entry in which I claimed to have adopted five more dogs and given them all spice-related names. Early in Holy Week, S. and her dog were there as usual, and S. ended our chat with "See you tomorrow," to which I replied, "Probably." I have not seen either the dog or owner since then. I worry that something happened to S. or the dog. My hope is that S.'s schedule changed at work, and everything is fine. But every time I'm at the dog park and she's not there, I worry a little more.

A colorful food vendor truck at the performance center.

Most of the encounters are briefer and more light-hearted. There was the time I walked past a tall man and a short woman, practicing slow dancing next to the duck pond, without music. The man was instructing his partner on a waltz step or somesuch. There was a woman who asked me what all the birds were in a certain tree (Black-crowned Night Herons), and correctly deduced that the speckled one was an immature bird of the same species. There was the tween-age girl who confided that she was carrying tadpoles in a cup.

And there's a little man from Parks & Rec, part of whose job is to politely shoo people out of the rose garden at 7 PM or sunset, whichever is earlier. I didn't give him grief the first time I met him, even though I needed a rose picture for a photo shoot and couldn't go in to take one. Now we always smile and say hi as we pass each other on our respective rounds.

A game of follow-the-leader

From Reid at Random

Then there are the kids, inevitably reacting to my two dogs. Some are frightened, and I try to reassure them that they are nice dogs if you're not mean to them. Some exclaim excitedly to their parents, and want to rush over to pet the doggie. If the parent tries to frighten the kid away, I try to balance their instruction with the same reassurance I give the frightened kids, but in either case I don't encourage them to approach the dogs. Cayenne is not all that great with children, who may approach too quickly, hand out in what Cayenne seems to think may be an attack. Pepper is much more relaxed about this, and I must say that the children who are slow and gentle about it seem to be delighted with the result. Even Cayenne will tolerate the occasional child - and she's great with her adult admirers, demanding extensive petting at times.

Another jaunt down a neighborhood alleyway.

Walking around the neighborhood, I don't see many people, and speak to even fewer of them. My most recent contect with our next door neighbors was at a toy show a couple of months ago. I've chatted a little with the lady across the street, who has cancer, and who also has a sweet golden retriever. I've said hello to a few other neighbors as we go by. And the other night I came across a young adult teaching a girl to ride a bicycle, accompanied by several other kids. I had the usual back and forth with the kids, giving the dogs' names and supervising a moment of petting. The young adult (big sister, probably) didn't say a word.

There was also the child in a house the next street over, shouting to his mom as we passed by on the sidewalk. "Mom! There are two really pretty dogs in the front yard!" I heard no reply, and to my slight disappointment, the kid didn;t come out for a closer look.

"Do you hear that, fuzzheads?" I told the dogs. "People think you're pretty."

The dogs, who hasn't seen or smelled anything or interest, continued down the sidewalk without comment.

Karen