PRO PATRIA MORI

Three decades later, the old lie is still being repeated, by Republicans at least: Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon "to help the country heal and move forward." It was a selfless act of putting the nation before his own political career — I've read this no less than six times today.

But history, if you read it, shows that it was nothing more than a shamefully naked partisan act, which brought down on Ford's head well-deserved and widespread condemnation.

Can you imagine if Al Gore had won the presidency (oh wait, he did!). Scratch that. Can you imagine if Al Gore had not been blocked from the presidency by a partisan Supreme Court and he went on to pardon Bill Clinton? Would Republicans hail that as helping the country to heal and move forward?

Uh, sure they would.

I mean, rest in peace, Gerald Ford. I have no problem with people being remembered fondly in their obituaries. But let's not distort history, shall we? Nixon was a criminal, and you were his apologist, whether or not you were also a good father and friend and all-around nice guy. Ronald Reagan knew about the Iran Contra scandal and much worse. Johnson was an old racist and escalated the war in Vietnam and told repeated lies. Kennedy's well-documented, but well-covered-up womanizing was the least of his wrongdoing. Honoring the dead has nothing to do with telling lies, and even if it did, couldn't people at least invent some new ones?

MERRY MOTS

Here are some feel-good items for your holiday:


• We have a story in today's paper about road rage. A woman in it says: “I think we’re particularly prone to project our feeling of anger or stress on strangers at this time of year." That made me think of something that happened last week. I was up at my campus office, and the professor across the hall had a brash young woman standing in the doorway yacking at him. She spoke authoritatively, rapidly and nonstop on any number of subjects: how she hated long lines at Wal-Mart, how people with big-screen TV's are tacky "when you think about it," how she couldn't stand doing laundry — especially folding it, how she couldn't figure out retroactive graduation requirements, how she was allergic to lipstick but felt naked without it, etc. The professor, a very genteel and spiffily dressed gentleman, said nary a word the whole time. Occasionally he would let out an "uh-huh" or "I know"; otherwise, I would have thought the woman was talking her own leg off. I couldn't close my door because I was waiting for people to come by, and her voice was so loud that the mere thickness of the door wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Plus, I was beginning to develop a freak-show type interest in what she would say next. Her main topic of conversation was how she might have to miss some schoolwork on account of a bogus report to child welfare services; seems there was some dispute about whether an "accident" with her son happened at home or at the daycare. Not the sort of thing I would be yammering about for all and sundry to hear, but that's just me. I was dying to see the look on the dapper professor's face. Was he suppressing a scream? Was he offering silent prayers of "shut up, shut up, please God, shut up"? Was he doing his best to look sympathetic? Should I help him out by interrupting and saying I needed to talk to him? How long before he cuts her off with oh my gosh, look at the time? Finally the woman concludes her child-welfare tale by saying, "So if I don't show up for the final, you know I'm in jail!" Then — boom! — without pause she moves on to another subject: driving. Apparently one of her "major, major all-time pet peeves" is people who are timid about making left turns. She can't stand it. "I've had to give so many people the finger lately because they can't drive. I had to flip off my neighbor earlier this week right after she backed out of the driveway, and the week before I had to flip off the superintendent of schools on 23rd Street." That's when the gentle professor finally breaks through his polite facade and says, "Oh my gosh, I know what you mean. I had to flip off an idiot yesterday in the Target parking lot."


• I saw a "sold" sign in a co-worker's yard. I drive by her lovely turn-of-the-century home often on my way to the grocery store. My co-worker and her husband have fully refurbished it, inside and out, in a very tasteful and pleasing way — an obvious labor of love. I was shocked that they were selling it. Having dealt with my own fixer-upper — in a similar neighborhood on the older, east side of town — I know a little bit about the financial and emotional investment, and I can't imagine selling my house. Ever. Even if I move to another state, I would do everything in my power to keep it. It means that much to me. So I was very eager when I ran into my co-worker last week to see what the story was. Since she just had a baby, I had a vague and disappointing suspicion that she was packing up and making a soccer-mom-to-be pilgrimage to the newer, "nicer," beiger side of town. Another one bites the dust. I say, "Hey, what's with the sold sign?" And sure enough, she tells me that they bought a bigger place on the west side. She says it's "safer" for the baby because there's not a creek in the backyard. She starts describing how neat the house is, but I find it hard to pay attention over my deafening thoughts of "traitor! sell-out! suburban Philistine!" And then I'm drawn out of my head by a question. She asks, "Didn't you used to live on Forrest?" I answer yes. Forrest is a street by her old, beautiful home. She says, "We were walking there the other night, and there were these three black guys standing around smoking weed." I think, "Oh no, here we go." But then she says: "I'm really going to miss that. Friendly neighbors who hang on the porch. Ella's just not going to get that diversity in the new neighborhood, and it's really a shame."

HALFWAY EXCITED

When I started kindergarten, my mom got a dog for me and my siblings. Her name was Brandy, but we called her BB. She was a long-haired Chihuahua mix who was temperamental, prone to obesity, and really couldn’t stand people. We loved her like crazy. All of us. Everyone in the family worshipped her. When we’d have friends over, she’d chase them into the other room or growl at them if they got too close to one of the family. And we’d always take her side. We were a real “love-me-love-my-insane-dog” type clan.

When I started college, BB died. So I have always associated her life with my childhood and her death with its passing.

Consequential as that sounds, her death was even more momentous for my mom and stepdad. A few years later I would get another dog, and then, over time, three more dogs, two of whom have also since died. But my parents never owned another dog after BB. And that was 21 years ago.

So yesterday I bought them a dog — this little white puppy that I found, with Erin and Ben’s help, at a “country store” in their hometown.

I have wanted to get my parents a puppy for years. I don’t understand how anyone can be dogless for even a day. But they were always full of excuses: We’re not home enough; who will look after it when we travel? etc. They both mouthed the same reasons, but I could tell that it was my stepdad who was really against it. If he wanted a dog, they’d have a dog. Just like if he wanted a new house or car or stereo or computer, they’d have those things. My mom’s wanting something has never been reason enough to get it. But don’t get me started on the gender inequality in their marriage. I’ll just leave it at this: One time she said to me, “If Dad dies, I don’t want another husband, but I’m going to get me a dog first thing.”

One excuse my mom offered for their not having a dog is that BB’s death really tore up my stepdad. And it’s true. He loved her as much as everyone else did, and he had to watch her die after her stroke. He didn’t want to go through that again.

So they have been dogless forever. And I decided enough was enough. I know what’s best for them — I always have — and it’s time everyone acknowledged that.



I was just going to surprise them, but I had it too deeply ingrained in me that you don’t give pets as presents. So I looked around for a long time, mostly in the classified ads. I really wanted to adopt one from a shelter, but I wanted to get them a small dog and a really young one so it would be with them a good long time — that kind of dog is hard to come by at the pound; you basically just have to get lucky. Then E and B took me to this place that had just the kind of dog they’d like. I should have just bought it on sight, but I had to hem and haw, as my mom would say. I convinced myself that I had to ask them first; otherwise, if they really didn’t want a pet, I’d end up keeping it myself — a third dog. So I left without the pup, drove two and a half hours home, tried to forget it.

After three minutes of trying to forget it, I call my mom and say, "There's a Christmas present I want to buy you, but I thought I better ask first." Then I spill the beans. I can tell she's thrilled but she's trying to act like she's not. There's something in that generation that tells them that every pleasure has to be tempered. All compliments are qualified. All sex is married. All money is saved. Unalloyed joy is alien to them. I know just the thing to convince her, though: "I'm going to send you a picture, and you call back and tell me what you think." Two minutes later the phone rings. She says, "That is the cutest dog I have ever seen," followed quickly by "Dad will kill me. I may have to move in with you."

I am so thrilled that my mom is doing something simply because SHE wants to do it that I summarily say, "OK, I'm getting it. I'll call you later." A minute later she calls back. I think she's going to backtrack. But she says, "I already have her name picked out: Molly."

Yay.

So I drive back two and a half hours to pick up Molly. We stop and play with Erin and Maggie and Charlie, then head home. My plan had been to give her to my mom the next morning, but I decide that very night would be best. I call her and say, "I'm bringing her tonight." I can hear my stepdad saying something in the background. My mom says, "No, you've done enough driving tonight." I get worried. "Did you tell him?" I ask. She says, "Yeah," nervously, "I think it'll be OK." I say, "I'm going to bring her tonight," and my mom says something to my stepdad, then says to me, "Dad doesn't want you driving on K-10; he says you'll hit a deer."

That is the essence of my stepdad: forecasting the worst — and usually the zaniest — outcome for any set of circumstances: If your hot-water heater makes a tiny rumble, the whole house is sure to explode; if you let your gas tank fall below half full, something terrible will happen to you in the car; if a newspaper remains on your porch more than an hour after it's thrown, every thief in town will know you're not home; if you pay even a single bill late or don't pay your credit card balance in full every month, you'll have to declare bankruptcy; if you don't wash your car inside and out at least once a week, its resale value will plummet; and on and on.

Some people might recognize a touch of paranoia there; I just recognize my childhood. So I concede that it would be terrible to kill a deer for the sake of delivering a puppy, and I tell her I will wait until the morning.

But my mom calls me one more time that night. She says, "How is Molly doing?" I hear my stepdad say something in the background. My mom says, "Dad wants to know how much she weighs." Then she says, "Dad has been reading about Molly's kind of dog on the Internet. Don't tell him I said this, but he's halfway excited."

TRANQUILITY INTERRUPTUS

I took Mabel and Rupert to the offleash-cruising park today. They haven't been in a couple of weeks, so they were extra excited. I don't think I've mentioned this, but whenever Mabel's thrilled about something she passes a lot of gas. Her happy reflex is somehow directly linked to her tooting reflex. (I'm hoping Nurse George can explain that for us.)

Anyway, by the time we got to the park Rupert and I were extra eager to get out of the car. We headed down the western trail, which, as I've said before, seems to be the one less traveled by the gay cruisers. I almost always take this trail, especially if there are a lot of cars in the parking lot, because I am fearful of surprising someone in flagrante.

Usually I walk with the dogs, go exploring, keep them from rolling in hideous smelling stuff. But today I felt kind of depressed and lazy, so I just plopped down at a picnic table and trusted them to stay out of trouble. They kept pretty close to me for a while — splashing in the ice-cold river, chasing each other in sloppy figure-eights, terrorizing a plump little rabbit, digging furiously at a heap of decaying logs. The next thing I know, they're taking off down the trail, their alert little tails disappearing into the woods. Confident that they'd soon return, I lapsed into a daydream.

It's so peaceful at that park. The wide, flat Kansas River seems still as granite in winter — just a matte gray, stony slab — between banks of leafless cottonwoods. Placid is the word that occurred to me. Placid and dormant and leaden. Yesterday someone found a woman's body by the levee. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be out walking and find a dead woman — how that would stay with you forever, how certain things would always make you think of it: rivers, Decembers, walks. One day I was walking by the river and I saw a body, and when I got closer I realized that it was a woman and that she was dead. You would tell that story a thousand times before someone, someday, found you dead. It would be the weirdest thing that ever happened to you. Probably.

And then I started to think of stories in general and how everyone has a most-often-told story — the one experience in their life that they recount more than any other. Everyone has a story like that. It's their story, but they probably aren't aware of it. Most people, I think, if you asked them what story they tell the most, they couldn't tell you; but maybe someone close to them could — like a spouse or a sibling or a parent.

As I'm contemplating this, I hear Mabel's extra loud howling-bark coming from the woods. She's part coonhound, so she's extremely vocal. Next I hear Rupert's lesser, much lower bark. I call their names. After a second or two, they crash through some brush and come running toward me at full tilt. And then two men — evidently the object of their barking — come out of the same brush. Mabel and Rupert must have surprised them, must have come upon them unexpectedly, because normally they don't bark at people at the park; they only bark if people are where the dogs don't expect them to be.

The guys come toward me, and I feel very odd. What is the protocol? Should I just walk the other way? Should I stand my ground and apologize when they get closer? Apologize for what? For barking, but harmless, dogs? What exactly did Mabel and Rupert interrupt? Before I can decide on a course of action, one of the men yells at me. He says two things. The first thing I can't make out, but I can tell he's angry. The second thing — a really mad yell — is this: "Those dogs are supposed to be on leashes!" Then the two men turn around and disappear into the other side of the woods.

My fear gives way to disbelief. Huh?! The nerve of those Nancies! This is a city-operated off-leash dog park! How dare they yell at me — they who were probably back there doing something that's definitely not sanctioned by the city. Bastards! And to think, I was just coming to terms with their activities, even celebrating them in a recent post. I had finally begun to realize that there may be no better evidence of happiness than a cigarette butt, a PBR can and a used condom. Why can't they see that a pile of dog doo and some barking are evidence of another kind of happiness? Why can't they share the park as we are willing to do? Selfish assholes.

I'm really getting worked up. Too restless to sit at the picnic table, I start walking. Did those jerks not notice in their selfish pursuit of bliss that this is an off-leash dog park? Hello. Do they think I'm just some asshole out here breaking the law? Or do they know full well that it's perfectly legal now for dogs to run around here and just resent it? Are they trying to intimidate me? I keep walking — and then boom! — it practically knocks me over: a big green city sign nailed to a tree that says: DISC GOLF AREA — DOGS MUST BE ON LEASH.

WHAT?! They were right?! When did this happen? How can this be? There is no western off-leash trail anymore? I have to use the trysting trail? How is that possible? No one ever uses that damn disc golf park. How do those nonexistent people suddenly trump the dogs?

Does anyone know anything about this? Damn! I have some investigating to do. Stay tuned.

PUPILS AND PIXIES

For their last graded exercise, my students had to edit a made-up story about Paula Abdul coming to town to host a cheerleading workshop. One sentence described her as the perky, pixyish 80's popstar who now doles out motherly advice on "American Idle."

You can see a few mistakes there.

Beginning editing students tend to be timid, so instead of confidently correcting errors, they usually just write questions in bold suggesting that something might be wrong.

Like:

Do we need that many adjectives? Consider taking out perky.

Shouldn't the apostrophe in 80's go before the 8?

Isn't pop star two words?

Does the reporter mean deals, not doles? I've never heard of doles.

Is motherly the right word?

According to the official Web site, it's Idol, not Idle. (It amuses me when they get all official on my ass — when they appeal to the highest authority where common sense would suffice. I tell them you don't need a gun to kill a fly, but they don't know how to reconcile that with the paranoia I've worked so hard to instill in them).

One student changed the sentence to Paula Abdul, the pixy who doles out advice on "American Idol." Apparently he didn't think she was perky, or possibly he thought perky was an essential component of pixy and therefore redundant. I'm not sure. And I don't know why he considered her more of an actual pixy rather than just pixy-ISH. All he wrote by way of explanation was this: I took out that she was an '80s pop star because I thought it might be a sensitive subject for her.

Adieu, KG. Thank you for being fabulous.

REGRETS ONLY

I had a party today, and Mabel and Rupert were not invited.

Wouldn't it be great if people could react that way to getting left off a guest list? By just showing up at the host's door and howling their protest. That would make life so much simpler — if we could just whimper and growl and bark our feelings, instead of keeping it all inside. No worries about how we'll be perceived or about making a bad situation worse. Mabel wasn't nursing hurt feelings in some corner: Oh gosh, why aren't I popular? Did I say something to alienate the hostess last time? Do people hate me? Is my conversation off-putting? Hell no. She was pounding down the door: Hey, Goddamn it, let me in! I fucking want in there! Can't you see how fun and beautiful I am? Open up!

It's a much healthier way to live.

And it would be terrific, too, if an univited guest could be pacified with a pig knuckle, like M and R were. Just open the door and toss out a putrid pork bone, and they're like Woo-hoo! Party in my paws!

M and R weren't invited to my party — the first family party at my house — because (a) I spent all day cleaning yesterday after a week of their getting mud everywhere; and (b) the guest of honor was this little tiny man who's been in the world for only a week, and I didn't want the Terrible Two to mistake him for a chew toy.



Mabel, however, made quick work of the swine bribe, and was back at the door begging to get in. Please! I'll be the life of the party! I swear! Something about the way she was arching her eyebrows made me believe her. So I sponged off her paws and opened the door. Immediately she began to work the room. Here, let me show you a few tricks. Who brought the rye and dill dip? It's out of this world. Hey stranger, you like petting my butt? I like it, too; don't stop!

She goes to this room. She goes to that room. Back to this room. Circulating. Networking. My living room has never had this many people in it, and she greets every single one — except the guest of honor. She totally snubs him. Hardly a person of substance. Obviously a pity invite. Can't even hold his head up high.

But then someone puts the guest of honor in my lap, and Mabel goes bananas. All of a sudden he is someone. She wants to sniff every inch of him. She wants to bat him a little with her paw. She wants to lick his ear. She wants to share my lap with him. Eventually she takes a very keen interest in his diaper area. Sniff, sniff, sniff.

The guest of honor's mother, who is my niece, says: "Did he poop again? He's been poopin' like a goose."

"I don't smell anything," I say.

"Maybe Mabel tooted," my mom offers.

Mabel takes a deep whiff and wrinkles her nose. Then she smells her own butt. Then she takes a deeper whiff of the diaper and looks at me. This guest isn't even house-trained.

Turns out Mabel is right. The little man had pooped like a goose. And when the diaper comes off he screams like a banshee. "He hates being naked," his mother explains, and I think it's unbearably cute how she's had him for just seven days and is already an expert on his likes and dislikes.

As she gets his fleece outfit snapped back up, my aunt marvels: "It's really something how putting his clothes on makes him stop crying."

My sister-in-law elbows me and says: "That's nothing. That's how I always get your brother to stop crying: just put on my clothes."

And there you have it, my first family party. Are you glad you weren't invited?

WAY TO REPRESENT

Apparently I'm not the only one in the mood to spread holiday cheer. My representative in the U.S. Senate has also embraced the spirit of giving. In a magnanimous yuletide gesture, conservative Christian Sen. Sam Brownback has told an appellate judge that he won't sabotage her career just because she happened to be friends with a lesbian — so long as she promises to not hear any cases about same-sex unions.

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a potential presidential candidate, said Friday he would lift his hold on a federal judicial nominee if she agrees to step aside from any case dealing with same-sex unions.
Brownback, a Republican raising money for a possible White House bid, has stalled the confirmation of Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Janet Neff to the federal bench because she once attended a lesbian commitment ceremony.
Neff has said she attended the ceremony as a friend of one of the two women, a longtime neighbor. She insisted in an Oct. 12 letter to Brownback that the ceremony had no legal effect and would not affect her ability to act fairly as a federal judge.
Brownback, a prominent gay marriage opponent, says he is concerned the incident colors her legal view on the constitutionality of allowing same-sex marriages.
Neff has declined any public comment about her nomination.
Under Senate rules, a single senator can block a vote on a nomination by placing a hold on it.

As my colleague Eryn says, "Way to represent!"

GRAY SKIES ARE GOING TO CLEAR UP!

You should never give up on life. Never. Even if you're having a really shitty day. Because you never know when something fantastic will happen — like winning a plastic snowman in a drawing! Which, believe it or not, actually happened to me at work yesterday. Just as I settled into my cubicle for a long winter's nap, some grumpy elf from HR whips by my desk, announces my name like she's serving a subpoena, and hands me a foot-high Frosty.

"I won?" I ask, in utter disbelief, as the elf speeds away. My trembling fingers hover over my mouth like a new Miss America.

My co-workers pop over their cubes and echo "You won?" "You won?"

One colleague's voice is tinged with envy — the one who pulled me downstairs to the employee recognition ceremony in the first place, the one whose lead I followed in signing up for the drawing. You won, she says, with a distinct emphasis on the you. She cannot believe it, and she is unmistakably jealous behind the veneer of her first-runner-up smile. She doesn't even need that decorative snowman, a plain Jane like her; she doesn't even wear earrings or rouge, for Pete's sake, I can hear her thinking.

And it's true. I don't need any of the things available in the drawing — not a DVD of some Hallmark TV movie I've never heard of, not a CD of Celine Dion making merry, not an insulated lunch box with the company name on the side; and certainly not a faux-wood Frosty with a pinhead and a miniature carrot for a nose; mostly what I need is something to do with my hands, because things like employee recognition ceremonies — events where you're thrown together in a punchbowl setting with people you wouldn't normally drink punch with — make me feel ridiculously self-conscious and awkward. So writing my name down on 50 pieces of paper and stuffing them in a fishbowl helps take my mind off that stress.

And in this instance it also helped make me a WINNER. I've never won anything in a drawing. Not that I can remember. I mean, I'm sure in grade school I came up tops in a drawing to see who would erase the chalkboards, or who would get chosen last for a team, but that's not quite the same. And I've been close to a winner; in junior high my sister won a $50 U.S. Savings Bond at some community raffle (I remember my mom telling her that it wasn't really worth $50 yet, but if you waited 130 years it would be worth like $90 — and my sister's eyes got big with anticipation).

So the cool thing about winning something is that it makes you a winner. You are feeling like a loser — and then presto! — you are a winner. Everyone wants to be you.

And I mean everyone. How many people stopped by my desk to marvel at my good fortune? Too many to count, I can tell you that.

The first thing I did with my Frosty was flip it over and examine the label on the bottom. Some Miss Manners in HR had made a perfunctory attempt to blot out its price with a blue ballpoint pen. $12.99 it clearly said under the angry chicken scratch. And SuperTarget. And Made in China.

Immediately my co-worker Susie says, "You can take it back and get the cash. Tell them you lost the receipt."

"Why would I do that?" I say.

"Or you could put it on your porch," she offers, seeing that her first suggestion had tended to devalue my prize and deflate my pride in winning. "Yeah, put it on your porch."

"Yeah, I'll put it on my porch," I say, "because it says 'welcome.'" Welcome to the home of a winner.

After the excitement dies down a bit and my neglected work tediously piles up, I discover that I can share the joy of winning by holding Frosty by his base and making him do a little jig, with his pinhead bouncing along the top of my co-workers' cubes: "Hello, Eryn! Happy New Year!" I say in a tiny falsetto. And "Hello, Susie, March will be here before you know it." The latter is something I say to Susie nearly every day, by way of making fun of her, but it was especially fun to say it in a Frosty voice. Susie is an insane college basketball fan. The mere mention of college basketball will make her spontaneously break into a cheer: Go 'Hawks! Woo-hoo! One day, like in September, she got a bad case of NCAA Tournament fever and wildly announced, "March will be here before you know it!" Yeah, hon, in just a mere six months.

Later, after I took frosty home, I put him on the floor and Mabel and Rupert (above) each gave him a few sniffs and licks. And I patted them on their heads and said, "That's right, no more blues. Mommy is a winner now!"

••••••

And in the spirit of holiday giving, I'll share a couple more seasonal joys:

Here are some gingerbread cookies that Erin and I made last weekend. Most are self-explanatory. The one with a "G" and the one with a yin and yang are for George. The penis is also for him because he's a dick (for never visiting me anymore).




And here is my Christmas tree. It's a big woolly Scotch pine that I got from a nursery after rejecting the scrawny saplings that the Luncheon Optimists were schlepping in the grocery store parking lot — for the same price! Oh brother. I'm all about charity, but I'm not going to spend the yuletide staring at some yucky diseased looking shrub so 10 cents out of my $35 can go toward buying some needy kid a pair of unattractive glasses. Please.