Welcome to Five O'Clock Somewhere, where it doesn't matter what time zone you're in; it's five o'clock somewhere. We'll look at rural life, especially as it happens in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, cats, sailing (particularly Etchells racing yachts), and bits of grammar and Victorian poetry.
Alas, I was so busy herding cats that I didn't get a chance to post my usual annual blog post in honor of National Cat Herders Day. But, to make up for not getting a post up on time, here is a video about someone who is probably the world champion cat herder: The Lady with 700 Cats. She makes my cat-herding friends Zorro and Juli look like rank amateurs.
Yes, we did some shopping today. But we didn't go anywhere near a mall or big-box store. We needed a hall table for the house in Mesa, suitable for putting mail on, so it doesn't get lost. We found the perfect table at the Shabby Shack, our go-to used furniture store for the past year and a half. There's even a drawer, perfect for putting keys and other small items that might otherwise get mistaken for cat toys. The Queen Anne style and mahogany wood match the piano perfectly.
While we were there, we also spotted a replica of a circa-1910 river steamer (I think that's Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn on the seat), and a carpet runner for the foyer.
Meanwhile, yesterday, the cats "helped" to set up the Christmas tree. This is Lucky's first Christmas, and he has discovered how to climb the tree. Oh, goody.
It is time once again to celebrate Cat Herders Day, the official holiday of Five O’Clock Somewhere, tomorrow, December 15. Those of my followers in Europe are already enjoying the holiday.
The holiday was originally invented by a couple in California who have made up other wacky, offbeat holidays to celebrate. The date for this one, I’m sure, is a reflection on how busy most of us are at this time of year, with shopping, holiday arrangements, parties, entertaining, decorating, cooking, wrapping gifts, shipping gifts, writing and mailing holiday cards, traveling, coping with nasty weather, and sometimes also finishing up an academic semester or term with the accompanying final exams or portfolios and the grading thereof. Even those whose households are devoid of felines may feel like they’re herding cats.
Then there are those who are literally herding cats. Perhaps they have a house full of the critters. Perhaps they’ve taken an interest in a colony of feral cats, possibly even going to the trouble of participating in trap-neuter-release programs to reduce population growth and improve the health of cats in the colony. Perhaps they volunteer for a local animal shelter, fostering cats who need more special care than they can get in a shelter environment or providing kittens with a highly interactive environment to help them learn the socialization skills that will help them to get adopted.
This year, I’ve set up an event on Facebook for Cat Herders Day. You’re invited to come and share the ways you will be celebrating the day. You may post photos of the cats you herd and share your own cat-herding experiences, or if you don’t herd any cats yourself, express your admiration for those who do.
Of course, the Byrnes cat herd is small, consisting of only two cats.
Dulce was adopted in January 1997 from the organization now known as Animal Humane New Mexico. She had been picked up as a starving stray in a blizzard in Edgewood the previous Thanksgiving. She has been living in the lap of luxury ever since, and after all these years, I doubt she has any memory of her deprived early years.
Scratch came last year from the City of Albuquerque Animal Welfare Department, and his beginnings were happier. Although he and his littermates were turned over to the shelter, they were placed in a foster home where they socialized not only with humans but with many other animals, so he was a totally friendly and outgoing young cat. Gerald hadn’t intended to adopt a cat, but Scratch picked him out at an event in the parking lot of a local sporting-goods store.
So my thanks go out to the cat herders whose efforts led to two wonderful cats ending up in our household.
It’s a cold night in Albuquerque. It’s also a windy night. The predicted low is 24 degrees (Fahrenheit), and the winds are howling, gusting to 50 mph and sometimes even higher. According to NOAA, the wind chill means it really feels like 12 degrees or colder.
During the day, a wind gust of 78 mph was clocked in the far northeast part of Albuquerque, and the Sunport reported a gust of 53. Our storm door was flung off its hinges, and in the process, the hydraulic closing cylinder punched a hole in the front door. The result is that the door is letting cold air in, so it’s hard to keep the house warm.
I was listening to my favorite radio station on the way home from work, as my little Vibe was getting knocked all over the road by gusts of wind, and the DJ commented that it was going to be a “three dog night,” as a segue into a song by the band named after that concept.
For those who don’t know, the phrase comes from medieval times, when home heating was, to put it mildly, not exactly efficient. On an especially cold night, the humans in a house would derive extra warmth by having their dogs, often large ones, in their beds to help keep them warm. A “three dog night” was an especially cold one, as it required three dogs to keep the bed warm enough.
Unfortunately, all Pat and I have is a cat. And Dulce is not exactly a large cat – she probably weighs in at about six pounds. So she’s about a tenth of a large dog.
Now, we do have friends who could be described as cat herders. These friends have large numbers of cats on hand. And those cats are probably larger than Dulce – I’m guessing the average cat is 10 pounds or more. Also, cats’ normal body temperature is slightly higher than that of dogs, so maybe it doesn’t take as much mass of cat as of dog to produce the same amount of heat.
So I open this question up to the cat herders I know: If it’s a three dog night, how many cats is it?
The lucky person who happened to be the 100,000th person to cross the threshold of this blog was a seeker of knowledge. He or she is a Road Runner subscriber from Cincinnati, using Windows NT/Vista and the most recent version of the world's worst browser, late Monday evening, on a search for "find out what part of speech rescue is."
For quite some time, I've wanted to visit Cincinnati. A very good friend of mine from high school now lives there (actually, just across the river in Kentucky), and I've been told that Cincinnati chili (pictured above) is a dish not to be missed.
I even know where I want to go to eat in Cincinnati. The very first year I participated in National Novel Writing Month, my attempt at a novel (it reached more than 50,000 words, but it never reached a conclusion) was not one of the mystery novels I have been successful with since then. It was an ensemble-cast action-adventure thriller, and the adventure began in Cincinnati. Since I've never been there, I researched the place and found out a lot of wonderful things about it. The railroad station is an Art Deco masterpiece that has been preserved as a science and technology museum, while still serving as an active passenger depot. The downtown area has been revitalized and is a hopping place day or night. And there are places to eat.
I looked at restaurant reviews. I had two scenes involving my narrator eating out. In one scene, he had a casual lunch downtown, and I found just the right place for him to chow down on the most authentic Cincy chili available (served over noodles, with cheese and onions on top). It was a bonus that John Madden endorsed the place on Monday Night Football the following night. For the other scene, my character needed a really classy place to eat, and I found an Italian place with great atmosphere and, according to the reviews I read, a chef who believes, as I do, that there is no such thing as too much garlic.
So, while I did have a couple of good suggestions from readers for what the prize should be, I have decided that Pat and I will travel to the winner's location and treat him or her to his or her favorite meal. Cincinnati was already tentatively on the itinerary for next summer anyway, since I want to visit my old friend. Assuming the winner comes back to claim the prize, I hope he or she likes either Cincinnati chili or Italian food -- although I wouldn't mind trying anything else the winner likes.
To be fair to both of the entrants in the contest, I will extend the same prize: Pat and I, when next in your neighborhood (or neighbourhood), will treat you to a dinner of your favorite local food.
Oh, and as for the answer to the question for which the winner came seeking an answer: rescue can be a noun, a verb, or an adjective.
Noun: The firefighters attempted a daring rescue.
Verb: They had only a few minutes to rescue the cat from the tree.
Adjective: The cat's owners thanked the rescue personnel warmly afterward.
Exercises in getting from here to there, or there to here
In planning for this weekend, we had a bit of a problem. I had to return to Albuquerque to teach my classes Tuesday, but Pat has to stay at the lake until his dockmaster duties end Wednesday. So we had to drive up Friday in separate vehicles; Pat took Enterprise with the fifth-wheel, while Dulce and I had Galileo.
Being in a larger, clumsier rig, Pat took a route that emphasized big roads and faster travel. According to Google Maps, this route is 166 miles and takes 3 hours, 11 minutes. That seems about right.
Meanwhile, Dulce and I took a more scenic route. It's shorter in miles, but it's decidedly not suitable for bigger, clumsier rigs. Google Maps says it's 153 miles and takes 3 hours, 55 minutes. The time estimate is WAY off. This trip, Pat and I left at the same time, and while he had to stop for fuel and spent 15 minutes getting lunch, I arrived ahead of him by about the time he spent on fuel and lunch. On other trips, Gerald and I have arrived sooner via the scenic route than Pat on the big roads. My guess is that Google Maps underestimates the travel speed on New Mexico's state highways, some of which are unpaved but still can be traveled at a fairly high speed. Sure, I had to stop a couple of times to wait for some cattle to mosey out of the way, but, hey, that's part of the appeal of the back roads.
Then for the trip home, I chose a route that I already knew was going to be more time-consuming, but that would also be fantastically scenic. If Google Maps had an option to select the most scenic route, this is how it would tell people to go. It's 193 miles and 4 hours, 8 minutes -- an accurate assessment, probably because none of the roads are unpaved. For out-of-state visitors, the reverse of this route is what I would recommend to get from the airport to Five O'Clock Somewhere; it provides the best of the best of scenery, plus a nifty bonus: the chance to stop at Viola's Restaurant in Los Alamos for lunch. On this route, it wasn't cattle but deer that I had to stop for until they decided they wanted to wander over to the side of the road.
The few people who frequent this blog might have noticed a lack of activity lately. That’s primarily because Pat and I have been on the road for most of the past three weeks. For a detailed travelogue, including pictures, you can look at Pat’s blog, Desert Sea, where he’s gradually putting up posts about the journey. I’ll just touch on highlights here.
The trip seemed to have two major themes: barbeque and detours. Just about every day, we had at least one great barbeque experience – when I travel, I want to sample the best of the local food, and we kept stumbling on great barbeque places. And just about every day, sometimes multiple times in a day, we ended up someplace we didn’t intend to be, sometimes because of road construction, sometimes because of our unfamiliarity with the territory, and sometimes because of a little of both.
Barbeque, May 2: OK, this doesn’t officially count as part of the journey, but we had lunch at JR’s Bar-B-Que in Albuquerque with the guy who was helping his buddy sell the fifth-wheel trailer we just bought, and exchanged a check for the title to the trailer.
Detour, May 2: Not a really big deal, but our favorite motel in Gallup had no non-smoking rooms available, so we had to spring for a suite.
Barbeque, May 3: Big Belly’s BBQ in Tempe, run by former ASU and KC Chiefs defensive tackle Bryan Proby, serves up massive portions of KC style barbeque. I didn’t have enough appetite for it this trip, but I’ve been told the giant potato is an experience I should have at least once in my lifetime.
Detour, May 6: This one was on purpose. On our way to the cruise on Saguaro Lake, we went to Arizona Cactus Sales to see what we might want to put into the landscaping if we buy a house in the Phoenix area – many of the properties we’ve been looking at have been bank-owned or otherwise neglected, and so the landscape is pretty much dead. We’d want to put in water-conserving landscaping, rather than recreating Scottish golf courses in the desert. We learned a lot about cacti and how to take care of them – which mostly means leaving them alone and absolutely not watering them or planting them anywhere water is likely to drain.
Barbeque, May 7: Right near our motel in Bakersfield was The Grill Hut. The menu is extremely limited (beef tri-tip or chicken breast, plus sauces and sides), but what they do, they do very well.
Detour, May 8: Trying to get from the Nimitz Freeway to Alameda Island is insane. The bridges that go to the island are not lined up with the roads the freeway exits lead to, and there’s road construction that makes things really “interesting” – such as semi-trucks turning left from an extremely narrow roadway bounded by Jersey bouncewall into another extremely narrow roadway bounded by Jersey bouncewall, during the extremely brief green-light interval of the temporary traffic light suspended from flimsy cables above the intersection, such that one truck takes three cycles of the light to complete its turn because of all of the other drivers who try to get around the behemoth and end up getting in its way, so it has to halt until they figure out that they have to back up to get out of its way. Apparently, “reverse” is not a setting that exists on the shift levers of most Californians’ cars.
Detour, May 10: Visited a friend on his boat in Marina Bay in Richmond, and then sort of got lost on the way out. Found the cheapest gas in the East Bay area, and also the mini-mart that was featured in the movie “True Crime.” Didn’t go in to see whether the potato-chip display had been moved.
Detour, May 11: Needed to do some financial transactions involving our credit union, so we used the credit-union branch-sharing network to find a participating CU in Berkeley. Google Maps got us there, but not back. We ended up taking a scenic tour of Berkeley and Oakland, including Chinatown, that we hadn’t intended.
Barbeque, May 11: We had already looked at our schedule for our time in the Bay Area and saw that the best time for us to hook up with family was Wednesday evening. My brother had the suggestion that maybe we could meet at Sam’s Bar-B-Que in San Jose, where our cousin often plays with a bluegrass band, Dark Hollow. As it turns out, the band was playing there that night, so my cousin saved us a table and we had a great time. The band played “Detour,” written by Paul Westmoreland and played by Spade Cooley, then subsequently by Patti Page and Willie Nelson, among others.
Detour, May 12: We had a coupon. We were hungry. We wanted seafood. Gerald’s Droid told us that Panama Joe’s atmosphere was “boisterous” but the noise level was “moderate.” I guess it depends what you mean by “moderate”; it was college night.
Barbeque, May 13: OK, we didn’t get to eat this, but our motel room was suffused with the aroma. We were right around the corner from the laundry room, which was also the housekeeping staff’s lunch room. Beneath the open window, they had set up a little electric grill, and the bulgogi smelled heavenly.
Barbeque, May 14: Free hot dogs and beer at the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club open house. Those folks are really proud of their new elevator, which is done up inside like a fine yacht, with wood paneling and cabin sole. We’ve been told that Black Magic used to be part of the Etchells fleet there.
Detour, May 14: Met Silver Girl and visited the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, then took an extended side trip to the Coyote Grill in Laguna Beach.
Detour, May 15: Sunday Brunch on the Queen Mary, followed by wandering all over the ship for several hours. We only got lost a couple of times …
Detour, May 16: Dropped Gerald off with the ASU sailing team for several days’ training at the US Sailing Center in Long Beach and made it out of the LA area with only one or two wrong turns along the way. Made it to Tempe, dropped off a couple of things and picked up a couple of things at Gerald’s apartment.
Detour, May 17: Less than an hour from home, we saw smoke rising and lots of red flashing lights up ahead. We got off the freeway onto Old Route 66 and meandered through the village of Paraje before getting back onto the freeway, which we then had all to ourselves until we got to the outskirts of Albuquerque.
Detour, May 18-20: You thought we were done traveling? Nope. First, Pat went to Los Alamos to pick up Dulce, who had been getting royal spa treatment at my folks’ house (dinner whenever she wanted it, an electric blanket to sleep on at night, and other general spoiling). Then we took the big truck (Enterprise) south to pick up the fifth-wheel trailer and learn how it works.
Detour, May 21: I had been scheduled to teach only one class during the summer term, but I was given the opportunity Friday to add another – this one on the West Side campus, where I haven’t taught before. Pat and I took a scenic drive to assess the layout of the place, and man, is it far away!
Today: No detours, but maybe some barbeque – chicken “wings” from JJ’s (they’re actually thighs, and therefore really meaty) should go well with the hockey game. Now I’m getting hungry!
For the past few years, Pat and I have been operating on an austerity budget. Part of that program has meant that I haven't had much in the way of new clothes for a very long time -- we've been shopping at thrift stores for most clothes. But now, at long last, I have the first pair of actual new shoes that I have had in about five years. And they're magnificent: delightful little black numbers that fit my feet like gloves, but with just enough extra stretch that in really cold conditions I can wear a pair of wool socks underneath.
Especially over on Facebook, many friends, including old high-school classmates, have reveled in their shoes -- how many they have, the special virtues of each pair, the stylishness, the excitement of finding just the right pair. Now, I can join them.
Meanwhile, it's not just my feet but also my boat, Black Magic, that is enjoying the end of austerity. We came down to Elephant Butte Friday with the hope of sailing with Zorro as well as working on boats. As it turned out, it was too windy to sail. First, I helped Zorro with patching some cracks in Constellation's deck and re-rigging the outhaul, which had been fouling far too often. Then Pat joined Zorro and me at the mast-up storage lot where Black Magic is, and we replaced a lot of the rigging: backstay control, mainsheet, jib sheet, traveler (including some blocks and other hardware), jib tack, mast block shock cords, and tiller tamer. Zorro also mixed up some epoxy filler, which he used to patch up some gouges in the keel as well as some dents in the deck.
Saturday, we had hoped that at least in the morning, we could get in some sailing; the weather forecasts predicted a breezy morning and a windy afternoon. But it was blustery from the get-go, much too windy for sailing. Zorro did some work on Constellation while Pat and I paid a visit to our favorite used-book store in the universe, Black Cat Books in Truth or Consequences. Gerald has a rule of thumb that a used-book store is not a proper used-book store unless there is a cat on the premises. I think I agree. Pat and I ended up getting a wide range of books, including a German grammar book, a collection of essays about what it means to be human in a technological environment, and a James Patterson (plus one of his more trustworthy co-authors, Maxine Paetro) thriller.
After that, Pat and I stopped by the hardware store to look for bolts to use when replacing the old cam cleats on the boat. In stainless steel, the longest bolts the store had were two inches, so we bought only four, two flathead and two pan-head, with the idea that whichever fit best, we could come back and buy more, and if neither fit, we weren't out much money.
Then Pat and I returned to Black Magic, where Pat set about working on replacing the old cam cleats on the console with the new ones that we had ordered. The old cleats were ancient and decaying even when we first got the boat, but we had never had time or money to replace them all -- when one of them failed, we put a new one in, and we kept saying that we needed to get them all replaced. It took Pat 20 minutes to remove just one cleat. We discovered that flathead bolts were the best for the new cam cleats, but two inches was too short -- we needed three-inch bolts.
Meanwhile, Zorro had done some more work on Constellation but had learned that the Sunday weather forecast was for even more wind, far too much to go sailing, so he decided to put his boat away and head back to El Paso. He stopped by Black Magic before heading south, and he and Pat worked on the shrouds -- we're looking at replacing turnbuckles at the very least and possibly at replacing the shrouds completely. We made plans to do more boat restoration next weekend, including new bottom paint at least on the parts of the keel that got patched. In the meantime, we can get the three-inch bolts and a few other bits of hardware we need. Top of the agenda for next weekend is completely redoing the outhaul on Black Magic so we can depower more effectively in a gust. There have been a lot of those lately.
Zorro is super-eager about all of these repairs and refurbishments, because he really, really wants to see Black Magic racing next weekend. And I do have to admit, I'm excited about seeing my boat finally getting back into a condition where she can sail well. But I'm feeling ambiguous about actually racing. I'm not sure I want to support the RGSC's current leadership -- the current commodore who, when he was vice commodore, tried to call meetings of the board even though the club constitution doesn't give him that power, and on shorter notice than even those who have the power are permitted to do; Zorro's replacement as race committee chairman to whom I gave the blog nickname "Space Invader" because of his creepy behavior toward me even before I learned of the New Mexico court records about him and the many restraining orders women have taken out against him; the club management that failed to notify one of our favorite restaurant owners that the sailing club was planning to hold a skippers' meeting in the restaurant's back room and thereby royally pissed off the restaurant owner ... I don't know that I want to race and thereby seem to support the current club leadership.
I think I'd rather just go sailing. And wear my new shoes.
Pat and I seldom buy new books anymore. Partly it’s because we’re in a state of financial austerity, but even if we had plenty of money, we have found that used-book stores and thrift shops offer far better deals on reading material.
One side effect of buying used books is that sometimes there’s something extra in the book. Someone will read a book, or part of a book, and will use something as a bookmark that is subsequently forgotten, and so when the book goes to the charity donation bin or used-book store, the bookmark is left buried among the pages.
Sometimes the bookmark isn’t all that exciting. I will often find airline boarding passes as bookmarks in mass-market paperbacks, for example. The scenario behind that sort of bookmark is fairly obvious – so-and-so bought a copy of The Da Vinci Code to read on her flight from Albuquerque to Newark, she used the boarding pass as a bookmark, she read the book, and then when she was done (or gave up on it partway through), she decided she didn’t need to keep it.
Other bookmarks can be more interesting. A couple of years ago, one of my fellow participants in National Novel Writing Month was the proprietor of a used-book store. She had all sorts of tales to tell of what she had found within the pages of books that have come into her establishment. Her NaNo novel that year was based on one such intriguing item.
One interesting bookmark that I found was in a softcover copy of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, which I picked up at the Pagosa Springs Humane Society thrift shop. This was a newspaper clipping from a newspaper in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, giving details about the death of a young man on one of the lesser islands in the island group. The headline was “Erromango Boy’s, a Mystery.” The article – actually more of a news brief – detailed how the body of an island native (who was called a “boy” even though he was 27 years old) had been found alongside a road, a victim of a hit-and-run car crash. The brief quoted the island constable as saying the victim was “more than dead.” In the margin of the clipping, someone had written “I thought dead was all you could be.”
Now, there are many questions that could arise about this, such as, how does a newspaper clipping from a Vanuatu newspaper end up in a book for sale in the Pagosa Springs Humane Society Thrift Shop? Who clipped the article? How did she come to be in Vanuatu? How can I meet this person, who is obviously interested in language and usage, and who also seems to have the ability to travel to obscure places around the globe?
My most recent intriguing bookmark also came in a book from the Pagosa Springs Humane Society. A very long time ago, I bought an omnibus edition of three of Cleveland Amory’s books: The Cat Who Came for Christmas, The Cat and the Curmudgeon, and The Best Cat Ever. For several years, that book has sat on my shelf, waiting for me to have time to read it. A week ago, finally, I did.
Tucked into the book, marking T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Naming of Cats,” was a bookmark consisting of a strip of postage stamps, laminated together. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be all that big of a deal. But these stamps were from the old Soviet Union, commemorating the 1980 Olympics, which the United States had boycotted, and which many other nations either boycotted or allowed athletes to decide whether to boycott, to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The images on the stamps are classic Soviet art – chiseled, idealized athletes, two female, two male, participating in track-and-field events: sprint, pole vault, high jump, hurdles. Even if these stamps were created in the 1980s, there is a serious 1930s feel to the images.
Since these stamps were about an event that Americans were supposed to pretend didn’t even exist, it’s a mystery how they ended up in a book of cat tales in a thrift shop in southwestern Colorado.
Once again, Captain JP has issued a request for his fellow bloggers to submit their top 10 blog posts for the year. As my previous post indicated, this has been, yet again, annus horribilis, with too many disasters to count.
But I did find 10 posts that were, at least in some way memorable. Here they are:
I started the year with observations about astronomy, tides, and how Pat and I got into sailing, with A tale from the past.
Those of you who have known me for some time know about my love-hate relationship with photocopiers, including how a copier figured strongly in my novel Murder at the Community College. In February, I had an ironic experience, recounted in The copier temptation.
Also in February, Tillerman issued a challenge: Write about the worst sailing innovation ever. My contribution: Work.
In March, a fellow instructor at the community college, whom I also knew through the sailing club, died suddenly and unexpectedly. Then a week later, Pat’s dad passed away. The Old Soldier had lived a long life, and he didn’t want a fancy funeral – no fancy church service or procession or anything like that. What he got was a very simple graveside service, with his fellow veterans from the American Legion providing an honor guard to shoot a 21-gun salute and blow “Taps” on a bugle. He would not have wanted anything fancier. I reflected on his life in Sending the Old Man Home.
As it turned out, the Old Soldier had chosen a beautiful time of the year in Texas to die, and according to the people who follow such things, this past spring was one of the best ever for Texas wildflowers. Planting wildflowers along highways was a passion of former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. We took many great pictures on the way home from the funeral, and I put some photos online in Thank you, Lady Bird.
May 1 was the most devastating day of the year. Our extremely dear sailing friend Marty Stevenson went overboard from the boat he was on as we were preparing to hold a regatta. I wrote about how much he meant to us in A few words about Marty. I had been planning to deliver those words at his memorial service. Unfortunately, his widow would not let me or anyone else from the sailing club speak. So nobody heard those words. Only those who read them in the blog or the sailing club newsletter ever received them.
On a lighter note, I did get into one of the more specialized cooking techniques that I know. I have known all of my life about Beer can chicken, a tradition I probably learned from relatives in Arkansas, but for many others, it was a novel method.
July was funeral time again. Another sailing fried passed away. This time, it was not so shocking; he had been in declining health for some time. And his widow and family welcomed me to speak at his funeral, In Memory of Richard Dittmar. It is good to laugh at a funeral, when it’s remembering what made us all so joyful about the person who is now no longer among us.
There was another memorial in July. My colleague had died in a car accident in June; his family and very close friends had had a small, private funeral. But long before his death, he had made his wishes clear to his family and partner: He didn’t want mourning; he wanted a party. So that was what he got. I summed up that party in Remembering Herman.
In September, we had car troubles. Babe, the Ford Expedition, has been increasingly having problems with electronics. As it turns out, the troubles that led to When machines rebel were not electronic but physical – the rear differential and axle essentially disintegrated – but at the time, it was easy to blame the computers.
Then I had another trip down memory lane, thinking about classic cars and beautiful times on a European road trip nearly 30 years ago. I don’t like big roads; I like little ones. I don’t like big places; I like little ones.
So 2010 on the blog was often melancholy or wistful. It’s been a rough year. I will very much miss the people who are no longer with us. But I know I will go on.
Yes, once again, National Cat Herders Day, December 15, approaches. What are you going to do to celebrate the day?
To make the holiday even easier to celebrate this year, I have established an event on Facebook where we can all share our festivities. Are you organizing a project to help homeless cats? Participating in a feral cat capture-neuter-release program? Volunteering at your local animal shelter? Kicking back to enjoy the holiday season with the cats in your household, whether you have one or many?
Or are you more of a figurative cat-herder, trying to get holiday plans to come together, with shopping and decorating and cooking and entertaining and and whatever else is on your agenda? Pour yourself a shot of eggnog and take a break from the chaos.
The guy who does the weather on the noon television news that I often watch has a holiday for every day of the year. It was through his broadcast that I first heard of National Cat Herders Day, the official holiday of Five O'Clock Somewhere.
So today I was watching the weather report, and learned that today is Remember September Day. Nice.
I'm sure this holiday was inspired by the song "Try to Remember" from the musical The Fantasticks. The original singer of this song was Jerry Orbach, whom most people knew as the wisecracking Detective Lenny Briscoe on the television series Law & Order. But long before that show ever hit the airwaves, Orbach had a successful career on Broadway. The Fantasticks premiered on May 3, 1960, with Orbach in a leading role.
Here are the lyrics for the song, written by Tom Jones:
TRY TO REMEMBER Lyrics
Music: Harvey Schmidt Lyrics: Tom Jones Book: Tom Jones Premiere: Tuesday, May 3, 1960
Try to remember the kind of September When life was slow and oh, so mellow. Try to remember the kind of September When grass was green and grain was yellow. Try to remember the kind of September When you were a tender and callow fellow. Try to remember, and if you remember, Then follow.
Try to remember when life was so tender That no one wept except the willow. Try to remember when life was so tender That dreams were kept beside your pillow. Try to remember when life was so tender That love was an ember about to billow. Try to remember, and if you remember, Then follow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember, Although you know the snow will follow. Deep in December, it's nice to remember, Without a hurt the heart is hollow. Deep in December, it's nice to remember, The fire of September that made us mellow. Deep in December, our hearts should remember And follow.
Pat, Dulce and I are at Five O'Clock Somewhere; Gerald has taken Scratch to Tempe for the start of the new school year.
Dulce had found the new kitten to be rather irritating, so she had been hiding in her lair under the bed in the master bedroom since his arrival, coming out only briefly to eat or use the litter box. She is now much more at ease, without the vexation of a kitten to put up with, and up here at the place she likes best.
Our main reason for coming up here, and being here on a weekday, was so we could arrange for a plumber to fix a leaky water pipe. The well is at one end of the house, and the place where the water line enters the house is at the other end; for most of that distance, the pipe is buried four feet deep so it won't freeze. But the last couple of feet before it enters the house is not as deep; it probably froze in the winter and cracked. We didn't even realize we had a leak until recently; it's been gradually getting worse.
So now that I have a couple of weeks off between terms, we decided to come up for a few days, get the plumber in, and just relax a bit. We've been doing some reading, some sleeping, some movie-watching (Clint Eastwood), and of course, some online stuff. Dulce has been enjoying her royal cushion on the back of the sofa, and she's eating much better now that she's more at ease.
As I've mentioned before, 2009 has been something of an annus horribilis for us, so it's been hard to get into a holiday mood. I've been working all of the usual devices, most especially the music. Circumstances this year have made it difficult to socialize with friends – mostly the physical distances between us. The weather hasn't been exactly cooperative.
Christmas Eve, I saw for the first time the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Yes, I know, it's supposed to be impossible to be older than maybe 10 years old and never have seen it, but it's true – I'd never seen that movie before. Yes, I knew the basic plot line, but that was all.
I think I needed to see that movie. It was the right one for me to see right now. Some of the events of the past couple of months have left me figuratively out on that bridge with George Bailey, looking down and preparing to leap off. I think my own personal Clarence might have been working at the television network, placing that movie in a time slot where I could finally see it, at a time when I pretty much couldn't avoid seeing it – Dulce was in my lap, so I couldn't get up, and there wasn't anything else on that was worth watching (we don't have cable or satellite, although based on what I hear from people who do have either, I'm not really missing much).
Holidays are stressful even when things are going well. When life is one disaster after another, the super-cheerful spirit of the season just seems like salt in the wounds. Everybody else is happy and celebrating, but I'm fighting a cloud that feels like impending doom.
So to James Stewart and Frank Capra, thank you. You've earned your wings – although probably you already got them a long time ago.
Yes, it's now December 15, and we can celebrate National Cat Herders Day. To all of you who literally herd cats, and to all of you whose feline-herding efforts are merely figurative, we salute you.
As you scramble through your days, doing all of the stuff you usually do to take care of your family, your job, and whatever other duties you have, and then on top of all that, cope with all of the holiday preparations and shopping and cooking and planning parties and whatever else you do, remember that there is a holiday in your honor.
The closest thing I had to an entry in my writing project about the true meaning of Cat Herders Day was a somewhat cynical comment about how those who think they can herd cats are delusional. I offer this photo as evidence that Tillerman's suspicions may be correct; we have a creature whose natural instinct is to be the herder, but he's joined the herd instead.
As I was writing my recent post about National Cat Herders Day, I went to see if I could find further enlightenment about the holiday, beyond what I had found in the past. I didn’t find anything new, and in fact, I found that the source I had previously used no longer existed.
However, I did see that someone had blogged, “I’d like for the person who decided that December 15 should be Cat Herders Day to step forward. Please explain yourself. What exactly is this holiday all about?”
Since my research last year had turned up at least a partial explanation, I ventured over to that blog. I found it to be full of useful information about pets – if rather heavier on advertising than I really like. I posted a comment that at least partially answered the blogger’s question about the holiday.
Then I began wandering around the site. The pets blog is one of many at this site; others feature such issues as women’s health, parenting, and recipes. I was getting a really warm feeling, as if somebody was baking sugar cookies. I could smell the sweet, buttery aroma, and I was mentally transported back to earlier, stress-free times.
Then I realized—this is the evolution of women’s magazines. In the past, there were Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal; now there is Blisstree.com. Its focus is on the home and the traditional roles of women but with a decidedly modern flavor; one of the blogs is on green living. It’s not normally the sort of thing that I’d be interested in, but I found a lot to like.
I did find the large amount of space devoted to advertising to be distracting—but then, advertising is a reality that journalistic enterprises have to cope with. When I worked for a newspaper, the area of pages devoted to advertising had to be about 60 percent for the paper to break even. (And that was when the salaries of those of us who produced the actual editorial content added up to about 2 percent of the paper’s expenses—paper and ink and electricity and running the press are a lot more expensive than reporters and editors.)
All in all, though, I found Blisstree.com to be an enjoyable and informative site. I’m giving it a thumbs up.
Yes, I looked at the calendar. National Novel Writing Month is over, and that means it’s now … December! Yes! Holiday time!
No, not December 25; I’m talking about December 15, National Cat Herders Day. Yes, the official holiday of Five O’Clock Somewhere, when we all think about those we know who spend their lives herding cats. Sometimes this is a literal thing. Zorro has somewhere in the vicinity of 11 cats, and Teddy Bear has an unknown but also large number (his wife volunteers for a humane association). Just this afternoon, I discovered that one of my fellow faculty members at the community college is also a cat herder; he rescues feral cats.
Then there are also those who find themselves herding cats in a figurative way, trying to get all of the various parts of their lives together and get control of them. The middle of December is probably when a very large number of us are frantically trying to organize holiday events, shopping, work, family, and who knows what all else.
This year, rather than write a post saying pretty much the same thing I say every year, I’m opening this out as a writing project for everybody. Between now and December 15, write a blog post about “The True Meaning of Cat Herders Day” and post a link to it in the comments here, or write a comment on the topic. If you have pictures, even better.
The grand prize for the winner of this project will be an autographed 8 by 10 glossy of Dulce, the queen of Five O’Clock Somewhere. (Well, OK, how about a jpeg?)
Alas, I was so busy herding cats that I didn't get a chance to post my usual annual blog post in honor of National Cat Herders Day. But, to make up for not getting a post up on time, here is a video about someone who is probably the world champion cat herder: The Lady with 700 Cats. She makes my cat-herding friends Zorro and Juli look like rank amateurs.
