Author: keres

In a particularly snarky (and timely) move, a developer in New Hampshire has asked for permission to develop a hotel, museum and cafe at 34 Cilley Hill Road in the town of Weare.

The main catch is that particular address is the site of Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

Follow the link:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/23260/

Ask at work if you can partisipate:

“Take Your Dog To Work Day is an event so big and so important that more than 10,000 companies from around the world will be celebrating along with you. It was created to help homeless dogs find good homes and lifelong companionship. These dogs have great personalities and a lot of unconditional love to give.”
“The idea behind Take Your Dog To Work Day is simple–encourage businesses to devote one special day to dogs and their owners as a means of spreading the word about what great companions dogs truly make.

As the creator of this annual event, Pet Sitters International believes that by allowing dogs in the workplace, co-workers who have never before experienced the love and companionship of a dog, or have forgotten the joy that a pet can bring to their lives, will be motivated to adopt dogs from their local shelters, humane societies or rescue groups.”

http://projab.jot.com/WikiHome

From the above site:

“Ever since blog became popular in China, there have been a number of occasions where some blogs were shut down by telecommunications company or internet service providers due to their political speech. These incidents not only brought risks to bloggers themselves but also to blog service providers in China. Many blog service providers had to increase their effort in content filtering. All these brought pressure and helplessness to people who dare to make truthful expressions.
Especially since April 2005, when the law on non-profit website registration became effective, website owners are required to submit their real personal information when they register their websites. The annual registration process as well as hefty penalty for failure in compliance have angered many website owners that use an independent virtual server and domain names.

Therefore, many bloggers in mainland China began to consider moving their blogs outside of China. But because of language barrier, financial, payment and other issues, the cost of moving is rather high and the situation is not optimistic.

It is based on the belief of free speech that we started the Adopt a Chinese blog project. We hope that we and others on the internet who shared the same belief, can share resources and help bloggers who want to freely express themselves and find a safer space for blogging, so that they can continue to blog without retribution.

As a matter of fact, the goal of the program is to help bloggers. The support is not limited to any specific country. It is borderless and global. At least this is what we wish: let people freely express themselves, without the worries that their blog may one day be shutdown.”

It’s Thursday in Australia, and since this blog is supposed to have an international flavor, I’ve decided to quit defering to the Western Hemisphere “dateism.” 😉

I’m dedicating this thread to puppies (and other species) past.  Especially the one’s whose passing broke our hearts – as was the case with Ursula, pictured as a pup below.

What I wrote at her passing:
Requiem for a Bitch

At 3:45pm, February 19, 2001, Ursula — dog, friend and companion extraordinaire passed into the great mystery, surrounded by those who loved and cared or her. Hers was a conscientiously humane crossing–a time chosen. One that hopefully took her to the end of her ability to enjoy life, but not beyond.

As she sat stoically in the back of our Suburban, trusting — as always — that we would do what was needful for her, with her tenuous hold on life falling rapidly and blissfully away from her, the sky let loose the rain it had harbored all day — heavenly tears, to echo our own. And if we are, any of us, more than mere flesh, it was then that her spirit rose, running full out with her tail high and her face wearing the laughing grin that she did in better and younger days.

When everything divine was female — suckling, nurturing, harsh but loving, then the great Goddess sometimes took the form of a bitch. Like the she-wolf who founded Rome, millennium before the patriarchal pretenders Romulus and Remus stole her mantel and turned the world upside down.

Ursula was a Bitch, a Goddess triumphant. Supremely arrogant, and loving, and unquestionably right. She protected our animals, and us, with a fierceness that never wavered, even when we mistakenly asked her to do otherwise. She tolerated and loved us, and all humans for the imperfect beings we are, and yet she loved us perfectly.

As only a dog could, she loved to work. That we were a registered therapy dog team was a fiction; she did all of the work, bearing with equanimity the ear pulls and hair tugs of small or age-worn hands. Children in crisis shelters, whose lives had been torn asunder, sank blissfully, primal, into her unwavering confidence, love, and ability to abide. With the elderly bed-ridden, she was gentle to a degree that utterly belied her size and strength. When she stood up to place her front feet on a hospital bed, she balanced her immense frame with acrobatic grace, as she placed her feet–one at a time–to avoid fragile arms and IV tubes. Those who witnessed this feat had never seen the like of it, and may never yet again.

I love her as I have loved no other animal. That her life was cut short by a brain tumor, is a cruelty that I can only abide by honoring all she tried to teach me. I owe her that — to take into myself her spirit, and carry on her life of unconditional love and acceptance, and to guard fearlessly, as she did, all who are entrusted to my care.

Eulogy for the Living

I wanted to thank everyone who expressed her kind concern for us in the wake of Ursula’s death.

We buried her Tuesday, on a south facing hill, in the center of a natural stone circle. Several ancient Oaks edge the site, a beautiful blood red Manzanita — a survivor of the fire two years ago — holds the slope above her. In this, the rainy season, water in a nearby cataract cleft plashes and races, making it’s way to the pond, joining its timeless voice to that of the reverberating frog chorus.

The spot is isolated and serene, but not so far from the road that she can’t bark at the cars if she’s so inclined.

We dug her grave with surprising ease through layers rock and clay, and the rich red soil that made California the Promised Land for my agrarian grandparents and so many others like them. The sky was drizzly, but a clear band of light gave relief along the horizon.

After about an hour of digging, we got her from the yard and brought her as close as possible in the truck, carried her the last 50 feet, and finally lowered her into ground — still wearing the harness (with her name tag) that she had worn since her surgery in July, which we had used to give her a steadying hand these last few month. Roses from the Valentine’s bouquet went with her. The loose dirt resisted shoveling, so we scrabbled, dog-like, with our hands to replace the ground above her. The grassy loam that I had carefully peeled up and set aside went back on top.

When I visited her today, I had a hard time picking out the spot, so thoroughly had we, and the rains, erased our trespass beneath the mantel of our Mother.

Einstein said, “time exists so that everything doesn’t happen all at once.” But he was wrong, everything does happen all at once. Yesterday, today and tomorrow all hit me at once. My grief for my dog is my grief for my father is my grief for ultimate loss of my one true love that will shatter time and life itself. This awareness is too much, too boundless, and I flee from it, knowing that if I run fast enough, eventually I will be able to re-erect my boundaries — as I always do. But now, in this eternal moment, I touch the endless with a hesitant hand — one no longer made of flesh, but of stars.

Actually, it’s Friday in Australia.

Pyreanean Mountain Dogs (aka Great Pyrenees) are known as “mat dogs” in their native France – for their tendancy to lie right in front of the door.  That way they can nap, and not worry about missing anyone coming in or going out.

Here’s what she looks like awake.

I took the following photo, about a half hour ago, at 4:30 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Yesterday SusanHu posted an article about a young man named Axil Cobb, who was essentially stalked and then kidnapped by the USMC.  Fortunately for Axil, his mother had the resources and wherewithal to get him back. Link

Ever Jandres was/is not so fortunate.
As I noted on the aforementioned thread, Axil’s situation was similar to that of Ever Jandres, whose plight had made the news (both in print and on the web) back in mid-May. Ever Jandres’ story.

Wondering what had become of Ever (especially in light of the positive outcome of Ms. Cobb’s protest on behalf of her son), I did a web search and could not find anything past the initial report of Ever’s induction.  So, I emailed Ms. Phillips (she and her husband are working to free Ever) and got the following response:

I can’t help but see the racism and the classism in the differing outcomes.  Many people have commented recently about the “young white middle-class woman in danger” news stories — to the effect that people (non-white, working- or poverty-class, older, etc) go missing everyday in the US, usually without much fanfare from the press.

Mr. Jandres is Latino, and to many people’s way of thinking, did not have any better “prospects” than those “offered ” to him by the Army.  Hence the lack of press follow-up — and Ever’s continued plight.

Even though I’m an ex-pat living in Australia, I’m still registered to vote in California.  And I will be writing my congressional representatives.  If you are in a position to add your voice to this matter, I hope you will do so as well.

pax, keres

(my appologies for any spelling/grammer mistakes – I’m dyslexic)