Blog Sharks! part three

(that poor tree hanging over the studio is mostly gone now, due to the ice storm)

Bill arrived for good, two months later. Those two months were challenging. A very young man arrived to install a land line after about three weeks. Oh! phone and Internet!


"Bless his heart," as we say here, he worked from 8 AM to 5 PM. Then he knocked on the door. "I feel really bad," he shared. "I know they charge you $80 an hour, but I just couldn't figure how to get this to work. I called my boss and they're going to send someone who's done it before. Might be a couple of days."


I loaded the dogs into the van and drove out to the county where my cell phone would work. I needed to tell Bill "never mind"; I wouldn't have a phone after all.


I walked and walked and walked the dogs. And I picked up mountains of poop. Not many people in my new town knew to pick up after their dogs. So, I figured while I was at it... I would end up with grocery bags full of the stuff. It was my own Neighborhood Beautification Program. One time a fellow in a pick up truck pulled over to ask if the dogs were rescued Greyhounds. "Man," he said, looking at my huge bulging bags of community crap. "Them skinny dogs sure do produce a lot of ****!"


I was appointed by the Mayor to serve on a Dog Ordinance Committee. When we were thinking about moving here, we met with the Mayor and two City Council members, and were guaranteed that there were no ordinances limiting the number of dogs in Paducah. Two weeks before we arrived, an emergency measure had passed, limiting the number of dogs per household to three. Of course there was a huge public outcry so the City Council decided to appoint a committee to work it all out.


I met good people on that committee. Wonderful people.


And that's the thing about Paducah. It is full of warm, friendly, supportive, energetic, socially responsible, bright people. Getting to know them has been a joy. A privilege. More artists did move to the Lowertown Arts District, as part of the city's Artist Relocation Program. The city won many national awards as the neighborhood transformed.


And then local people, non artists, started rehabbing homes and building in Lowertown. The good folks who had lived in the neighborhood all along were genuinely happy with the miracle that was happening all around them. The slumlords who wouldn't get their buildings up to code - not so much. Although even they didn't mind the increase in their property's value.


When I was alone here, feeling so out of place and so far from everyone I loved, someone knocked on the gallery's glass door. It was one of those good people who had been living in Lowertown in a gorgeous home they had rehabbed long before there was any Artist Relocation Program


"Hi," she said, handing me a Gerber daisy in a pot. Her smile was so warm. And honest. "Welcome to the neighborhood. We're so glad you are here. If you ever need anything, you just ask. I live in that white house, in the middle of the next block."


And that is how we've been treated, warmly, with a genuine mutual respect and mutual gratitude. So the Blog Shark comment took me aback.


I have since heard by email from the man who made the original statement on the conservative website. He assured me that someone else copied his words and posted them here anonymously.


It was very gracious of him to reach out and let me know that.

The conservative website is one where insults and name-calling are the rule, rather than the exception, so the comments weren't unusual, there.


I am so grateful for my wonderful dear readers and my talented fellow dog bloggers. A civilized discourse, a caring community, a laugh or a tear. A safe place.


Thank you.


love-
Patience



Hug your hounds

Blog Sharks! part two

There was a demolition notice on the front plywood. There wasn't any front door. When I showed the pictures of the house to my dearest friends, they put a hand firmly on each of my shoulders, looked into my eyes, and said, "We love Bill. But no man is worth this. No man."

the kitchen

We arrived. I in the van with the dogs and Bill in the car, pulling a u-Haul trailer. We set me up in the unfinished studio/gallery addition. A mattress on the floor for my bed, and the dog crates stacked and draped to make a 'wall' for privacy. Bill cleverly discovered that if you stuck a flashlight in the hole for the future doorknob in the powder room door you could have privacy and light. Only the light would shine right in your eyes as you sat, since the toilet is opposite the door.

Bill got ready to leave. We were repacking him and unpacking me. Since there were no tables, shelves, closets, or laundry room, things were in tidy little piles, temporarily. The Mayor stopped by after church to welcome us to Paducah. He is a great good sport. We looked, well, remember: no shower, no mirror, no closet to hang clothes - you get the picture. It wasn't pretty. But the Mayor and the Head of City Planning shook our hands and gave us a warm Southern howdy do. I looked down. One of the good Mayor's feet was placed smack on my bra, and the other on Bill's tighty whiteys.

Oh dear God. Don't look down! Don't look down! Please don't look down!

Sam I Am was the world's most adorable thirteen week old puppy. He wandered over to Mr. Mayor.

Don't look down! Ignore the world's most adorable puppy!

"Oh look at this cute little guy," said the Mayor, looking down.

I was sweating in parts of my body which should be incapable of producing sweat. I thrust my pasty palm to the Mayor, thanking him for stopping by. "We better get Bill on the road. He's got a fifteen hour drive ahead of him. So nice of you to come."

There was no fence. I had nine dogs who were used to having a two acre fenced yard right out their living room door, chock full of country squirrels for the dogs' murderous pleasures. And the gallery door was glass, affording them a constant view of stupid city squirrels. I took them out in groups of three to do their business. And I walked them.

The locals thought I was nuts on so many levels. Why would anyone move into that wreck of a house? In fact, when we tried to get the first appraisal for the building loan, the appraiser was stumped. His report said that if we invested the amount of money it would take to make the building habitable, given the location the house would never be worth that amount. We found another appraiser. I walked the dogs, three at a time, three times a day. Folks thought I was walking the same three skinny dogs to death! But they were used to free runs in our neighbor's 450 acres of farm land that surrounded our little farm. Used to that big yard for long games of tag and squirrel massacres. I felt so bad for them.

On the second night alone, at midnight, sweet old Caruso whined. He was no false alarmer. I put his lead on, only to have the rest of the crew jump up and cry, "Me too!" I was too tired to consider the notion of three trips outside in the scary dark, so I leashed up all nine. "Come on. We're having a quick pee. That's it."

I opened the door and out we went. There was a drunk leaning on the stop sign. I had been a country girl my whole life, so that was a concern. My city friends would say things like 'harmless drunk' but I would lean more to 'brutal rapist' in my mind. But before I could work myself up into a blind panic, I was floating in the air. Had I been shot? Was I dead, winging my way to my Creator?

No. There were two opossums at the base of the oak tree across the street. (Perhaps bereaved kin to the floaters in the basement.) I was flying, whippet speed (zero to 30 in under two seconds) toward the quarry. I forgot all about the drunk, who no doubt entered rehab the next morning, after seeing a vision of a middle aged woman in jammies flying out of some construction project, propelled by a whole herd of ghost skinny dogs! I finally got the dogs back into the studio and used the flashlight to wash all the road rash I had sustained. The studio utility sink worked fine. The dogs forgot that they ever had to pee.

I thought, "What have I gotten into?"

to be continued

hug your hounds

Blog Sharks! part one

If you are older than dirt, as I am, you remember the silly Saturday Night Live skits called (cue Jaws tuba... dah dmp dah dmp dah dmp) Land Shark.



[AOL Video]

Well, recently we had a rare (for this blog) sighting of (dah dmp dah dmp dah dmp) Blog Sharks.

I accept full responsibility. I unwittingly dangled the bait. Here's part one of the Rest of the Story.

In telling about my experience with this unprecedented natural disaster, I said,

"But most of the stories are of the heroic efforts of the people working twenty-four hours to get the power back up. And of neighbors helping each other. Of the rapidity and effectiveness of this President's response, in stark contrast to the Katrina victims who are still waiting."

A website of political commentary had linked to my blog, (unbeknownst to me) to share the photos and stories of the ice storm that I had posted. The author of this website writes a weekly syndicated column which appears in nearly 200 newspapers and websites. According to Wikipedia, the website is "at most times residing among the top five conservative political blogs."

And there was a link from that website to Patience-please, Days of Dog Poop and Stories.

So an army of folks got offended. (If you think the comments are bad here, you should see what they say about me there!) The anonymous commenter here thought I was taking a "cheap shot at President Bush" though on that other site he isn't anonymous, he is 'Tim from Paducah'.

He went on to say, in the comments here, and on the political website:

"The excellent response to this disaster has everything to do wih the character and the spirit of Western Kentuckians and nothing to do with anyone in Washington; but how would a Northeastern liberal artist relocation program transplant know anything about character and spirit."

First, I want to reassure my Northeastern liberal (and conservative and politically uncommitted) readers that those are Tim from Paducah's words, not mine. I am well aware that folks in the northeastern parts of this country (as well as people in other countries altogether, other continents, even) know a whole lot about character and spirit, and have frequently demonstrated both.

Some of you might be confused by the "artist relocation program transplant" name calling. My husband and I moved here, six and a half years ago, as part of an innovative program initiated by the City of Paducah. The city had an idea to revitalize a blighted, drug infested, decaying section of Paducah, by encouraging artists to move in and fix up the homes. When we bought our burned out shell for $17,000 from a private citizen, we became the first out of town artists to sign up. There was no guarantee that any other artists would come, ever, but we loved the city so much that we were willing to take the risk. We especially loved the people.

The house was amazing. The people we bought it from had purchased it after a fire had destroyed the interior. They had gutted it, mostly, and then had abandoned the project, leaving it to sit vacant for two years. There were no interior walls, just the inside of the exterior brick, and no windows. Where our dining room table now sits, there was a 6' by 9' hole. Peering over the edge of this hole one could see the two dead possums floating in four feet of standing water which was the basement. All of the original woodwork, fireplaces, staircase, fixtures, everything had been removed. It was our dream shell.

We had a nice little eighteen acre horse farm in Maryland. We sold that for Bill to be part of the exciting dream which was Paducah's Artist Relocation Program. We put all of our resources into rebuilding this house, at way more cost than we planned. (Anyone who has ever rehabbed a home will draw in their breath and roll their eyes and nod, I'm sure.) We left family and friends, and I placed the kids' ancient ponies who, I feared, would not survive the move, with my generous stepdaughter.

The whippets, nine of them in those days, and I moved here two months before Bill did. He was making sure the transfer of his medical practice went smoothly, and that his patients were cared for. I knew no one. The house wasn't yet finished so the dogs and I lived in the new addition: Bill's studio and gallery. No shower, no kitchen, no light in the powder room! No fence for the dogs, no computer, no phone, no cell phone service unless I drove out of town.

No friends, and at this point the neighborhood was still a little dicey.

too be continued...

hug your hounds