Mourning for a Creature, Part I

By the age of 10, I had wanted a dog for most of my tender years. I imagined playing with it, taking it for walks, grooming it, all of which periodically led me to beg my parents for the realization of this pet. Due to our many moves and rental abodes, the habitual answer was "no." Eventually, my family landed in Pittsburgh and bought a house in my tenth year of life. This in and of itself felt like paradise and I once again reinstated the petition for a Snoke family dog. It seemed unlikely for us to move again, we had say over the house, and most importantly, we had grass. So one day I mustered up the courage to write a note of promise to my mother and father. I don't remember the particular phrasing, but the sum of what I wrote was, "If you let us get a dog, I promise with everything in me to be responsible for it, even the gross stuff. Please, please, please, please." I wrote it from the bottom of my heart and snuck downstairs to place it on my mother's desk, not having the courage to hand it to her directly. I went back to bed and prayed against reason that this note would somehow finally have an impact.

Well, the note disappeared. There wasn't an immediate response, which was a new and interesting development. For a while, I resisted the urge to bring it up in the hopes of displaying grown up detachment. But eventually, I could not hold back any longer and ventured questioning my mother to ascertain if she had actually received the note. Of course she had and I remember a quite serious conversation in which she leveled questions at me to ascertain the level of seriousness and commitment in my young heart. Oh, I wanted that dog so badly, I promised and promised to be faithful to the note and suggested my mother keep it and use it in times of unfaithfulness on my part should they ever arrive, which of course they never would! If she would just let us get a dog.

I started looking at the classifieds for free puppy adds in the newspaper. Every week, I breathlessly pulled out the printed sheets and imagined each and every breed mentioned. Then, things started to get really serious. On trips to the library, my mom started pulling dog training books of the shelves and bringing them home. She read up on the most hardy breads and how to tell if a puppy has a passive personality. One day, she announced her desire for us to get a beagle. I can still see the picture on the cover of the beagle book she was reading. We. were. getting. a. dog. Joy!

Sometime the next summer, the glorious day finally arrived. My mom's research plus my faithful classified search stumbled upon an add for free beagle puppies. They were a bit older than most puppies looking for a home and came from a farm outside the city. By now, everyone in the family was bursting at the seams with excitement and on a Saturday, we piled into our baby blue Dodge Caravan and headed for the farm. Elation sat in every seat.

After a clamorous ride, we pulled into a long driveway and immediately noticed a kennel with two adult beagles and a hoard of four puppies greeting us with howls as they jumped on the fence.  We climbed out of the van and as my parents went to talk with the owner, I and my three younger siblings scoped out the puppy situation. Eventually the adults joined us and the one male and three female puppies were set free to run around the property. Two of them were highly energetic and the children immediately took a liking to them. My mother on the other hand, did not. The farmer had temporarily nicknamed them Houdini and Ankle-biter, certain bad omens for future prospects at dog training. We turned our attention to the other two. One trick for discerning a puppy's disposition my mom had read about was to pick the dog up on its back and hold it like a baby. If it struggled to get free, it would have a more active personality. What you wanted was a dog who contentedly lay passive in your arms. My dad bent over and picked up the third female and flipped her over. She lay there quietly and then suddenly reached up and gently licked his beard. She had long, soft ears and big, brown eyes. My dad said, "We'll take this one."

Ecstasy broke free and the children rushed to pet and meet the new addition. We bundled her up in a box and put her in the car, excited to start the hour long drive home. As we pulled out, the little puppy started shaking, displaying what was to be a lifelong malady of nervousness to the point of being sick when in moving vehicles . We children thought it was all purely amazing, not knowing how pathetic the poor creature would always be when it came to travel.

The puppy's six new owners commenced on the long and difficult task of choosing a name, again resorting to tips my mom had gleaned. We were instructed to think of a two-syllable name ending with an "ah" or "oh" sound since such names were supposedly easier for dogs to recognize. Somehow this task proved a lot harder than originally expected. How many pet names can you think of that fit this criteria? An early suggestion in the conversation was Sarah, but it was quickly dismissed as too much of an actual name for "real" people. But by the end of the drive home, we faced a serious shortage of other viable suggestions and decided it would have to be Sarah.

And so Sarah became a part of our family.

Thoughts for Avid Instagrammers (Of which I am One)

Here are some interesting thoughts from the introduction to a new favorite coffee table book called Bird Watching by Paula McCartney.

I saw the book in a shop some time back and have had my eye on it since. I finally recently added it to my collection. The photos are very pretty and I was shocked when, after opening up the packaging and starting to explore its insides, I discovered McCartney's photographed world is a fake! Not a single real bird is depicted, but rather cheap craft store replicas. After a few incredulous moments, I laughed out loud and read the introduction. In it, Karen Irvine, the curator of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, offers a refreshing and fascinating discourse on how we hope to encounter nature and the role photography plays. She questions our motives and applauds McCartney's work as a tongue-in-cheek and whimsical exploration of our attitudes.

For those of us who love and frequent Instagram, dumping bajillions of pictures of our encounters with the world onto Facebook, I think the below thoughts are incredibly important. Are our expectations of nature honest? Do they need to be in the first place? It's good food for thought, so I'm passing on this paragraph, though I definitely encouraging you to check out the book itself.

"While the pristine natural settings McCartney photographs are already picturesque, she was looking for something more: 'I wanted to make the landscapes more romantic, more idyllic,' she explains. Like many painters throughout history, McCartney creates fictions at will, and uses birds as symbolic, beautiful elements within a controlled composition. And like the doves who repair Cinderella's dress in Walt Disney's movie, her passerines are friendly, feel-good additions to the landscape. McCartney's pictures reveal a strong need for the fulfillment of an ideal. In this respect they call forth broader issues concerning our relationship to nature and wildlife: What are our expectations when we approach the natural landscape? Are we always waiting for certain romantic experiences to punctuate our wandering, such as a deer running by or a perfect snowflake landing on our mittens? To what extent are we trying to satisfy a preexisting image of nature that we carry in our minds? And what role does photography play in fixing these images and desires in our consciousness?"

Flying My Freak Flag

We've all got a freak flag. Mine is sometimes getting choked up by science. Yes it's true. Without a doubt, it's because I grew up in a physicist's household, but I don't understand why more people don't feel incredible awe at what we have discovered in the surrounding world. I especially can't understand those who have a relationship with the Creator of all and disregard or even disdain modern science. I just finished watching an hour long documentary that my dad gave me by the Discovery Institute on The Privileged Planet and while I don't think I could repeat back half of the ideas and scientific terminology discussed, I came away from the film with a heart of deep praise. The heavens declare his glory! All we see is fine tuned to reflect His wonder and point to something beyond us and I wish so badly that believers took more interest in the sciences. Modern science is not our enemy, but rather one of the greatest and most complex paths we can pursue to better understand the infinite beauty of the Creator. And so this is my freak flag - something I can't really claim to understand, but captivates my imagination.