My husband was probably one of the first people at our polling place this morning, needing to get his vote in at oh-dark-thirty before heading off to the firehouse. And I was among the last, getting there around 6:30pm after a very busy day at work and making sure the dogs got at least a little time to play outside before I headed off to vote.
As residents of Chicago, more often than not we find ourselves choosing between bad and worse, or the lesser of two evils, come election time. This year’s race for governor of Illinois has been particularly ugly. Still, I would not skip the responsibility and privilege of voting.
Something much worse than having to sort through a less-than-ideal crop of candidates would be to not have a voice at all.
All of us psycho dog people with blogs have an obligatory First Dog post to make at some point, so here is mine. My psycho dog person credentials: 15 years in Rottweilers, show occasionally, trial infrequently, training is lifelong, health testing is done as appropriate for my breed, not currently a member of any clubs but my personal code of ethics would meet or exceed that of the clubs, have not bred a litter.
Shortly after TMZ broke the news about Tuesday’s upcoming arrival of the First Dog, the mainstream media picked up on it and a few different versions of the story have been reported. However, everyone seems to be in agreement that the pup is a male Portuguese water dog, six months old, from a breeder in Texas who is also the breeder of Senator Ted Kennedy’s dogs. Some are reporting that the pup is in fact Senator Kennedy’s youngest PWD Cappy. Other sources are reporting that the pup is one that was returned to the breeder for rehoming, and is from the same or similar bloodlines as Cappy.
As a psycho dog person, I have very mixed feelings about the whole First Dog thing.
I never had a dog or cat as a youngster, and when I hear my husband and friends talk about their childhood pets, I feel I missed something important by not having that experience. Nothing that permanently scarred me, of course, but if the Obama kids don’t have to miss out on it, good for them.
I didn’t live in the limelight as a child, nor do I now. The Obama family does. Celebrity pets (and I would argue that all of the recent presidents are just as much celebrities as politicians or statesmen) are another thing I have mixed feelings about. They will obviously have all of their material needs taken care of, but in many cases, it won’t be a typical family life they get to live.
The Portuguese Water Dog community is wary of the fallout that the sudden attention to their breed will bring. It’s the same fallout that is familiar to anyone in a breed that has been popularized by a movie or television show: overbreeding, people buying or adopting a pup “like the one in the movie” and between six to twelve months later, an influx of that breed to rescues and shelters because people didn’t research the breed and expected it to be “just like the one in the movie.” You know, the one that some professional trained, and that was performing according to a script.
Since the Obamas and the media have referred to the faux breed name “Labradoodle” whenever the First Dog subject came up, I am glad they did not pick one. I have nothing against mixed breed dogs in general. I have everything and then some against purposely bred faux breed mixes with dumbass cutesy names and inflated price tags.
I’m not surprised at the comments at TMZ and other media sites from people who are unhappy that the Obamas are not adopting a shelter dog. I am slightly surprised at the pure hate in some of those comments, and the ones that say that now they cannot support Obama because he is getting a dog from a breeder. Ummm. There are valid reasons for a person to not support Obama, but his dog source would be a real reach for being any kind of reason at all.
Of course it would be a much better feel good story if a homeless dog went from shelter to White House, but I don’t feel the Obamas are being irresponsible to get a dog from a reputable breeder, especially in light of Malia’s allergies. I really don’t know how many purebred dogs of the so-called hypoallergenic breeds turn up in shelters each year. I don’t think it is many compared to the more common breeds and mixes.
The breeder is a member of a Code of Ethics club, and their breeding dogs appear to be Champions and health tested. If the news reports are true and the almost-First Dog was returned to the breeder by the original owner, the breeder is one of the good ones that take responsibility for a dog for its entire life, and the original owner is honoring a contract that undoubtedly requires them to contact the breeder if they cannot keep the dog for any reason.
So that’s what this psycho dog person thinks. What about you?
I generally try to keep a positive attitude, but I am giving in to some negativity today. I’m disappointed that Axel and his pal Jules didn’t do better at the Kentuckiana dog shows this weekend. Not disappointed in them (they are wonderful dogs and must never ever think that they are not), but just that they didn’t get their turn in the spotlight on this go-around.
For me to feel that way about Axel’s showing is not even right, because he wasn’t supposed to even be there, let alone win anything. So for him to bring home even one ribbon (which is what he is doing) is over and above what he was originally supposed to be doing, which is being at home and wrestling with his sister Freya in our own back yard.
Jules is very young still, and her time will most definitely come, probably sooner rather than later. I just wish it could have started this weekend.
If you refer back to Tuesday’s post, I was inconveniencing most of my circle of dog friends just to ensure that Axel didn’t break the major and thus ruin his good karma. Sometimes I am just too impatient about waiting for that good karma to cycle around.
Speaking of bad karma, I did not think I could hate Mayor Daley any worse than I already do as the wife of a Chicago firefighter. I was wrong. On Saturday he spoke out in favor of a mandatory spay/neuter ordinance which is currently in committee, and on which a vote was postponed this past Thursday.
Understand that I am not against spay/neuter. I am against government making the decision to make it mandatory, and against government involvement in a decision that really belongs with pet owners and their veterinarians. Especially in a time when the city of Chicago has so many other critical challenges to face, the idea that this ordinance would be pushed partially as a solution to gang crime and dogfighting is so ludicrous it makes me laugh even as I should be crying. Yeah, I really see gangbangers being affected by this one. They don’t abide by the laws on the books now, such as registration and leash laws which are underenforced. And obviously committing felonies doesn’t bother them if they are fighting dogs in the first place.
If you are a pet owner in Chicago and haven’t yet done so, please check out AKC’s bulletin on the ordinance and send your letter against it before it comes up for a vote again. If you are reading this blog and think that mandatory spay/neuter is a good idea… why are you even here?
Upon discovering this month’s NaBloPoMo theme, I gathered a few of my favorite quotes, song lyrics and popular phrases for inspiration.
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – General Eric Shinseki
Is that a great quote or what? It is very meaningful to me personally on a couple of points.
First, in my accidental career. I took a job as a typesetter right around the time that the printing industry was almost done switching over from hot type to cold type. If you didn’t make the effort to learn how to use the computerized cold type machines, you were in danger of becoming irrelevant. If you did, the old-timers still didn’t think you were a “real” typesetter. Better a fake typesetter than an irrelevant one.
Ten years later, we did it again, only this time the move was from dedicated typesetting computers to Apple Macintosh computers. Once again, change happened, and my company and I did not become irrelevant. If my blog lens was working properly, I’d be able to say that I’m typing this on my Mac iBook. But it wasn’t, so I’ll just have to miss out on that segue.
Truthfully, my prepress production company, and I personally, have been lucky to make it relatively unscathed through the last few change/irrelevance cycles in our industry. They seem to be coming more quickly now, but thankfully, we’re not irrelevant yet!
Back to the quote. It’s a quote from a Japanese-American from Hawaii. I can totally relate to that, because I am one, too.
Now I don’t really consider myself an Asian-American blogger. I do sometimes write about experiences where my ethnicity was a factor in some way, or more often, about traditions which are specific to my heritage. And I am often heard to say “Don’t belittle my people, you f*****” a la “South Park” upon hearing bad Asian jokes. But most of what I write isn’t about the “Asian-American experience,” whatever that is.
However. Despite that fact, and the fact that I still have lingering doubts about Barack Obama, I am more than a little bit pleased to see two Asian-Americans – General Shinseki as Secretary of Veteran Affairs and Nobel prize winner Dr. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary – named to positions in his administration.
I wonder though, if in my lifetime I will ever see an Asian-American elected to our highest office?
My brain just exploded. Here is one of our felonious Illinois politicians (mail fraud, ghost payrollers), former U.S. Representative Dan Rostenkowski, talking about why we should not consider all Illinois politicians to be scumbags because of Blagojevich. Ooooooo-kay.
I find myself wondering what the late Mike Royko would have said about the Illinois scandal du jour. When I was growing up in Hawaii, our local newspaper carried Mike Royko’s syndicated newspaper column. His topics often featured the quirks of Chicago politics. I thought he must surely be exaggerating about the things that went on in Chicago. It was not until I moved to the Chicago area as a journalism student that I saw for myself that there was little to no fiction in Royko’s columns.
Speaking of other Chicago columnists, or perhaps Chicago scumbags: as I poked around the ‘net today catching up on the news, I was shocked to see Bob Greene now writing for CNN.com. Apparently I totally missed anything he wrote during the election. He really dropped off the face of the earth after he was forced to resign from the Chicago Tribune in 2002. For those who didn’t follow that story, he was involved in a sexual relationship with a then-17-year-old girl some years before that. Totally ironic and screwed up since much of his public persona in his columns was that of a crusader for children and family.
It was a personal love-hate thing for me, and a huge disappointment. I was a big fan of his earlier writing (as in everything before “Good Morning, Merry Sunshine” which simply made me want to hurl). The long-ago days when I wanted to be a journalist were also the days of Woodward and Bernstein. Of course, everyone my age said they wanted to be the next great investigative journalist and bring down a president or at least a crooked businessman. When I was being honest with myself though, bringing down a powerful personage was not all that high on my personal list of goals. I’d rather do something more cool and fun, like Bob Greene or Cameron Crowe, and go on the road with a rock ‘n’ roll band and get paid to write about it, a la “Billion Dollar Baby” or “Almost Famous.” Hey, that was then, and all that.
Okay, bring it back home. I think I still have a copy of my favorite Bob Greene book, a collection of his early columns called “Johnny Deadline: Reporter.” In its introduction was a little description of what a “Chicago story” is. It’s a story that is so strange or gross or sick in some way, but can still make you choke out a little laugh and an “ohhhh Gawwwwwwwwd!” That is what this whole week has been here, every time I click to refresh Chicago Breaking News.
In other brain-exploding news, I also see the news that WordPress 2.7 is now out, and according to my blog Dashboard, it’s time to update. If this site disappears sometime after you see this, you’ll know my attempt at updating was not quite successful. But I will think positive, and say I’ll see you all back here in a day or so!
It has been brought to my attention that perhaps I was a bit unclear in yesterday’s post.
I am still somewhat suspicious about the extent of President-elect Barack Obama’s connections with the dark side of Illinois and Chicago politics. I guess that could all come to light fairly soon, though.
I am not quite so concerned about one specific politician riding on his coattails to Washington, D.C. any longer, as if this plays out as it should, he will be in federal prison alongside another recent Illinois governor.
If any of my friends not from Illinois are following the drama, one thing I didn’t realize when I posted yesterday (I hadn’t yet finished reading the vast quantities of words produced yesterday on the subject) is that one of the issues involves shady dealings with the Chicago Tribune and thus was not fully reported upon in that paper. Surprise, surprise. Chicago Sun-Times should have the rest of the story. Or not. You just never know what the Chicago media is covering up.
Man, does my state totally suck on the ethics front or what.
And to think I believed the biggest change in my world in December 2008 would be the closing of Maurice Lenell Cookies in Norridge. This is still a big change, although one that I have been resigned to since the bankruptcy organization and subsequent sale of the bakery to an Ohio company earlier this year. Thankfully, the company store is still open for this year’s holiday season, and thus my annual trip to get cookies for the office and my husband’s firehouses went as planned. And the cookies still taste the same as I remember from every single holiday that I’ve lived in northern Illinois. No wonderful bakery smells when I drove up to the store though and that was truly sad for me.
But enough about the cookies.
Remember I wrote back here about corrupt sleazebag Illinois politicians? Well, this morning I wake up to the news that Governor Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff have been arrested on federal charges, including alleged attempts to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. The sad thing is that no one I’ve talked to about it is surprised. Or if they are surprised, it’s only at something like the timing, or at the specific charges being emphasized by the media.
One of my other earlier concerns, that of Obama bringing Illinois machine politics and corruption to Washinton, might not be so big now, though. Here is a quote from one of the news releases:
In a conversation with (chief of staff John) Harris on November 11, the charges state, Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them.”
Lots of stuff to read on the whole sorry mess at the Chicago Tribune site.
Speaking of the Trib, there’s another big change. They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday. Again, not a really huge surprise in light of trends in the newspaper industry all across the country for some years now. Sad to me as a former journalism student, even though working for the Tribune has not been part of my personal dream for decades now.
And one last change, another one that’s obviously been coming for a while, but something I didn’t really think would happen just so soon: no more Polaroid instant film. I’m not one of those “loyal and passionate” Polaroid followers described in the CNN article. I didn’t have a Polaroid camera as a child, although I remember whining for a Polaroid Swinger (and now the commercial jingle is stuck in my head, beware the YouTube link within the Wikipedia link!) and getting a Kodak Instamatic instead, and actually being okay with that.
I do have a Polaroid OneStep camera still in good working condition. I bought it a long time ago – early ’90s, maybe? – to take pictures of our few “nice things” for insurance purposes. I like to take pictures but I’m not a great, or even good, photographer. Hence, the Minolta Maxxum instead of a Nikon or Canon film camera, and on the digital side, old and new Nikon Coolpix point and shoot cameras instead of a digital SLR.
But as usual, I digress. Back to Polaroid in my life. Every so often I go back to take classes at DePaul University’s School for New Learning with the idea of eventually finishing the B.A. I started umm… a very, very, very long time ago and for which, in my defense, I have not yet had a need for. I had some arts requirements that needed to be fulfilled, and in Winter Quarter 2005-2006, one of the classes offered was “Artistic Issues in Instant Image Photography.” This was one of the most enjoyable classes I’ve ever taken, despite having to go out in the dead of winter to take pictures, and as anyone who has ever owned any vintage of Polaroid camera, cold and instant photography do not mix well.
The syllabus for the class is online in case you’d like to see:
