Relax

So last week was crazy and this week promises more of the same?

Nah — it’s all good.

“We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Have a good week.

Saved by the Beatle

Despite my very own admonition of two days ago, I was scrolling social media as I contemplated what to write in this space, and I was getting discouraged. Many people from my past, people I have always considered friends, were sharing political agitprop full of rage that is demonstrably false about other people from my past and other people I have always considered friends. Oh, the one set of friends was not specifically insulting the other set of friends, but they were saying horrible things about people and issues that I know the other set believe in, so they may as well have been personal insults.

It’s very discouraging, this tendency to frame political disagreements in terms of good versus evil, and after a couple of decades of this, a guy almost loses hope. Yes, I said a couple of decades. It’s gotten downright insane in the past 10 years because of you-know-who and the people who hate him, but this is just the natural evolution of what had been building.

As I’ve said before, I try to come up with things to say here that are encouraging, entertaining, enlightening, or a combination of two or all three. While browsing through the latest servings of seething hatred and anger, it’s nigh on impossible to concentrate on any topic that might be positive or optimistic.

Fortunately, I also had Apple Music in the background playing the “Warren Bluhm Station,” where the algorithm spins a collection of random songs that I have shown an inclination to play more often than not. And suddenly I noticed Paul McCartney was singing about how “People Want Peace,” from his 2018 album Egypt Station.

Brothers and sisters, I beg you to listen,
I know that it isn’t too late,
For we as the people, the voice of freedom
And we’re open and clear, we don’t wanna wait:
People want peace

And I remembered that the world may have politics and government in it, but politics and government are not the world. McCartney’s surviving bandmate, Ringo Starr, always signs off his public statements with “Peace and Love,” and there will always be more peace and love in the world than the politicians can foment the opposite.

That was close, though! I let the merchants of anger and despair get to me for a little while. I will try to remember this lesson.

Summer is Five

I’ve already told all the best Summer stories — about how on the way to pick out our new golden retriever puppy, Red and I talked what we would name her. We went through dozens of possibilities, just like the process that led to the naming of Willow the Best Dog There Was™ before her. Willow was a character in one of our favorite TV shows.

We were going through the characters from another Joss Whedon classic, and the actresses who played them. Kaylee? Jewel? Zoe? Gina? Inara? Morena? River? Summer?

There was a long pause, and I said. “I don’t know why, but ‘Summer’ passes the choke-Warren-up test.”

There was a longer pause, and to my surprise Red replied, tearfully, “Me, too.”

And that’s how Summer became Summer.

Then I spent 45 minutes at the breeder’s house sitting on the floor and letting golden retriever puppies climb over me while I asked, “Which one of you is Summer?” It was a hard decision, but the one with the yellow collar — code name Mimosa — won the day. Summer came home about a month later.

The pups — eight girls and two boys — had been born the night of July 19 and the early morning hours of July 20, 2021. We weren’t sure exactly when our puppy was born, but the papers say July 20, which was good enough for us.

Summer is a very kind, very loving, very strange dog. There are 10 steps down from the deck to the backyard, and she negotiates those stairs all the time. But she has never, in all these years, come down the 10 steps to the basement, no matter how much I try to coax her.

We have been through a lot together, not the least of which was losing her human mom, who died a month before Summer’s second birthday. But with her big sister Dejah, Summer has been a constant source of joy and amusement for five years now. How is it possible that that wonderful origin story was already five years ago now?

Happy birthday, Summer Sum Sum, my amazing little pal.