Sheila's LiveJournal

The weather has been nice here in the mornings, with a healthy layer of marine fog that keep the temperature down, at least until noon. The greys and I have taken advantage of this for long walks along the bluffs, admiring the ocean views and the passing joggers and people walking dogs. Needless to say, the greys love this part! But while Jack is friendly to all, two-leggeds and four, Annie is afraid of little dogs.

I’m not sure why this is. I’ve seen her go snarly mouth to snarly mouth with a mean-looking Rottweiler, and pitbulls don’t faze her. I had to take her home from the dog-park once because she thought she could answer a pit’s challenge. But little dogs make her hide behind me until the menace has gone away.

Meanwhile, Jack has started to bark when somebody he doesn’t know comes to my door. To understand the magnitude of this, you have to know that greys don’t make great watch-dogs, and they usually don’t bother barking. Too much energy, maybe? They’re both nine now, Jack edging towards nine-and-a-half, so they’re officially seniors – although greys can live to be twelve to fourteen with good care, and I know of at least two that made it to within days of their sixteenth birthdays. They’re basically “little dogs on long legs” according to one vet!

So I’m giving them a break from playing therapy dog at the hospice because I’ve noticed Jack is showing signs of stress lately, for some reason. If I take Annie without him, she’ll sulk and he’ll be heart-broken. He wasn’t too thrilled with the last Meet n’ Greet we did for Greyhound Rescue, either. (Since his devastating illness a couple of years ago, I’ve kept a close watch on where he carries his tail.) I think his energy level is just a lot lower than normal.

Now, if only Nicky the Resident Feline God will quit bossing them about....

Today's paper reports that a number of people have come forward claiming Joe left Lucky to them in his "will" -- or whatever. The Lutheran church that held a memorial service today (not tomorrow, as the paper first reported)asked that Lucky not attend -- to forestall rioting, I suppose.

On solider ground, the cops have arrested a suspect in the hit-and-run that claimed Joe's life.

I first met Joe, a homeless amputee, when I came to volunteer at Wells House Hospice in Long Beach, four years ago. Joe got around by wheelchair, but what I noticed most about him was that he had a faithful dog, a black Labrador mix named Lucky. I started the practice of bringing my two greyhounds to the hospice every Saturday as therapy dogs, and they and Lucky became good friends. Hospice is full of interesting, needy people, some homeless like Joe, some on compassionate release from prison, some abandoned by their families, but they almost all seem to respond to a dog's unconditional love.

Soon after I met him, Joe had to leave the hospice because he wasn’t immediately terminal (the definition of a hospice), which can be either a good or a bad thing for a patient to hear, depending on circumstances. Joe, I learned, had gone to an assisted living facility. I also later learned that he didn’t stay there, for some reason, although he was plagued by poor health, especially seizures which apparently frequently landed him in St Mary’s hospital ER .

Some weeks later, I saw Joe and Lucky outside the RiteAid near the hospice, obviously homeless again. I gave him a couple of dollars “for Lucky.” Then late one very cold November evening last year, as I was bringing the greys back from their last outing of the day, we ran into Joe and Lucky again, far from what I thought were his old haunts. While Lucky and the greys became reacquainted, I asked if Joe was doing okay, and he told me that a local church was giving him food and a place to sleep. That was a long way from where we were. But he insisted he was okay, just heading to a pizza shop nearby where they sold by the slice. I asked him to wait while I ran indoors and found some dog biscuits and a dollar or two “for Lucky.” After that, I ran into the two of them at intervals, usually outside a RiteAid, but not obviously begging. I would usually find some spare bills “for Lucky.”

But last week, Joe’s own luck ran out. He was hit crossing a downtown street by a driver who never stopped, and thrown from his wheelchair. By the time paramedics arrived, he was already dead. Lucky was nowhere to be seen.

Then something strange happened. Lucky arrived on her own at St. Mary’s ER where she’d been with Joe so many times. The staff recognized her, and also recognized the fact that she needed closure too. So they wisely allowed Lucky to see her beloved friend one last time. They say she jumped on the gurney and licked his dead face, then had to be pulled away and out of the room. The staff at St. Mary’s and the paramedics who responded to the accident are trying find a loving home for Lucky. It wouldn’t be right for such a loyal, faithful friend to end up at the pound.

Those who have no sympathy for the plight of the homeless will probably read this as an exercise in sentimentality. But I know that our creator cares about all of us, indiscriminately. Rest in peace, Joe. And good luck on your own, Lucky.

This afternoon I drove thirty minutes down the coast to Huntington Beach (self-proclaimed “Surf City”) to meet up with a friend for lunch. We first met in Rwanda a couple of years ago on a People to People trip (we were roommates), then went to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival in Oregon together last year. Yolanda lives in Chicago, so when she called to say she was bringing her granddaughter out to California for Spring break, and could we meet, I immediately said yes. I figured the beach in Huntington would be a better attraction for a fourteen year-old girl than our staid Long Beach sands (no surf because of the breakwater).

We ate a good seafood salad at the restaurant at the base of the pier, then Yolanda and I walked out on the pier to enjoy the view while her granddaughter checked out the beach action. Not a good day for surf, but there were still lots of people in the water, all in wetsuits because the Pacific is still cold even though it was a beautiful day. Then suddenly we spotted a dolphin, playing in the small waves right by the surfers. And soon we saw at least a dozen more. It made me remember student essays I was given when I was teaching freshman composition, about surfing in the early hours of the morning and looking over your shoulder to find a dolphin surfing right along with you. What a magical experience that must be! Just seeing them from the pier was wonderful for me.

I’m doing something I rarely do unless pressured -- reading a volume of critical essays about SF, written by UC Santa Barbara professor Frank McConnell. These are papers he presented at the Eaton Conference on SF over the years. Th Eaton is a scholarly meeting, held at UC Riverside, home of an enormous collection of all things skiffy, a conference that annually attracts critics and scholars from the Ivy League as well as from Europe. I’m not fond of this kind of meeting, and only go because it’s in my backyard, so to speak (and I should disclose that the Eaton Collection now houses my own papers, though it didn’t during the years Frank attended)

When Frank died (too early) a few years ago, I – and others who had known him – was asked to contribute a few memories to be used in the afterword of this volume, and I was glad to, You see Frank wasn’t like your regular dry scholar. He was first and foremost a court jester. His papers skewered the pompous academics and their overblown theories about SF, and at times he had the normally sedate conference rolling on the floor with laughter. But he knew the field better than most, and there was always insight in his papers, underneath the humor. I’ll give you one example. Under the guise of examining the influence of SF on society, he brought a bunch of tabloid papers into the room and proceeded to analyze stories from the likes of the National Enquirer (“Aliens Holding Elvis to Ransom on Moon Base!” “Two-headed Baby Born Talking!” kind of thing.) as seriously as if they were the productions of the Ivy League crowd about legitimate SF stories. I remember laughing so hard that I was choking.

The thing is, there was a strong kernel of truth and wisdom in all the humor. He had powerful things to say even as he was goring all the sacred oxen of the field. He was a kind man, too, befriending a very new and shy writer when the Ivy League attendees didn’t deign to notice she was there. Since the early days, I’ve read a paper or two of my own, and been keynote speaker, but in the beginning I was just a newbie who got lost in the crowd.

The conference isn’t the same without him.