There’s an old bit from Woody Allen’s standup act in which he recalls once having coped with a life-threatening situation by drifting into happy memories of his idyllic youth. He languorously ticks off the images that had filled his mind—“swimmin’ in the swimmin’ hole,” “buyin’ a piece of gingham for Emmylou,” “fryin’ up a mess o’ catfish.” There’s a pause that serves as a sighing tribute to those gauzy days of yore. Then he abruptly exclaims, “Suddenly I realize it’s not my life! I’m about to die, and the wrong life is flashing before my eyes!”
That ‘s sort of how I felt when I Googled myself the other day. I typed “Eric Ries” into the search engine and quickly discovered that Eric Ries is not, after all, “The Ungooglable Man”—the guy of no technological smarts and zero social-networking presence—with whom I’m so well acquainted.
Quite to the contrary, it develops that Eric Ries just about owns the Internet. He’s a hotshot entrepreneur and digital savant in California’s Silicon Valley whose how-to blog about technology startups, Lessons Learned, boasts nearly 60,000 subscribers and is quoted or cited seemingly a billion times across the Web. He has founded or co-founded at least three tech firms—included something called IMVU that Wikipedia describes as a “a 11 + 3D graphical instant messaging client” that hosts 90 million-plus users. He is credited with popularizing for Web applications something called the Minimum Viable Product, or MVP. That’s described by Wikipedia as a strategy used in product development “for fast and quantitative testing of a product or product feature.” He’s written books with names like The Black Art of Java Game Programming. Needless to say, he’s got a Twitter account that no doubt is breathlessly followed by hundreds if not thousands of acolytes. He has given talks all over the world, many of which can be viewed on YouTube.
I could go on, but, frankly, in typing the preceding paragraph I strained my jargon limit and nearly bored myself to death. Suffice it to say, the Eric Ries whose words you’re reading right now scarcely could have less in common with the Eric Ries who BusinessWeek named one its “Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech” in 2007.
As if his professional history isn’t enough to distinguish us as polar opposites, consider the very first line of California Eric’s debut blog post, from October 4, 2008: “I’m one of those people who’s been programming since they can remember. I got my start programming on an old IBM XT: It was thanks to MUDs that I first discovered the Internet.”
OK, just one question from me. That question would be: WTF?!
The only part of the italicized lines above to which I can relate is the lifelong relationship to programming. Except that in my case, it would TV programming. I can’t really remember an age when I wasn’t glued to the set, starting with black-and-white fare in the early 1960s. In my case, it was thanks to muds that I first discovered the back of my mom’s hand—I’d tracked some into the house from the backyard.
Sure, with a little more searching I could have gotten the skinny on the “old IBM XT.” (Which I’m guessing is nevertheless newer than some of my underwear. And yes, I really do need to hit Sears soon.) And I know that the mystery of the acronym “MUD,” similarly, lies just a few mouse clicks away. But the point is, there’s a reason California Eric's (let's call him Cal-E henceforth, like he’s from Krypton) blog is called Lessons Learned and explores innovation, proactivity and profit margins, while my blog is called Lassitude Come Home and more often than not is about how I wish things would slow the hell down and people like the Cal-E would stop hastening the death of newspapers, CDs, land-line phones, commercial radio, and all sorts of other staples I hold dear.
In case you’re wondering, I did watch and hear Cal-E in action in some of those YouTube clips. I would’ve attached a photo of him to this post, or the link to a video clip, except that I honestly don't now how to do either thing and am not much interested in learning. Which kind of hammers home the fact that the other Eric and I are very far indeed from being identical twins.
To that point, physically we’re both white, male, bespectacled and fairly lean, but he’s got short black hair, a somewhat more prominent nose than I, and a confident air that perfectly suits his PowerPoint presentations. As you might have guessed, of the two of us, he’s the one with a right hand to match his left. His voice is a little nerdy but otherwise unremarkable. And of course he’s considerably younger than me. How much so, I don’t know, but those BusinessWeek awards go to entrepreneurs who are under 25. Which means he’s 27, tops. I’ve got a quarter-century on him.
I might have shared with you here some of Cal-E’s key business ideas and theories, but I couldn’t watch more than a minute or two of any of the video clips. They all involve techie stuff (go figure) and are deathly dull to my ears. Standup without the comedy.
What would genuinely have interested me would’ve been some personal data on my namesake—the city he lives in, whether he’s married and/or has kids, if he pursues any hobbies that don’t involve high-tech gadgetry. (I somehow imagine he skydives or rappels, in keeping with the I’m-like-a-shark-and-must-always-move-forward stereotype I have of his ilk.) But search as I might, I found no such tidbits. Being Cal-E’s East-Coast, lassitudinous opposite, I lacked the skills and doggedness to ferret out all available databases until I found the answers I was seeking. In short—and notably unlike the Cal-E of my imagining—I conceded defeat and gave up.
Per my use of the word in the above paragraph, I freely concede that I’m completely stereotyping Cal-E, based on my preconceptions, prejudices, preferences and, above all, my desire to justify through humor and irony my own non-striving, lazy-ass existence. Cal-E may, in fact, be a great guy who in countless ways is making the world a better place. This seemingly doomed planet of ours surely needs innovation and know-how of the type Cal-E presumably can deliver much more than it does my offerings of humor and irony, which seem vastly unlikely to birth the great green technologies of the future. I assume Cal-E has plenty of family members and friends who love him, and have many compelling reasons for doing so.
Don’t get me wrong—I really do take a certain pride in being The Ungooglable Man. In my own crotchety way, the designation bespeaks refusal to engage in a bunch of (dad-gum) nonsense. Still, it was a little deflating the other day to scroll through screen after screen of “Eric Ries” listings on Google before finally encountering myself—way, way down at link 359. There, I appeared in an index of articles that had been published in my then-employer’s magazine in 1999. And even that mention proved isolated. I hadn’t reappeared through search result 400, when I ceased looking.
I know, I know: I can’t very well have it both ways. It’s unreasonable to both revel in and be annoyed by one’s electronic anonymity. Yet I suffer this duality. Well, I’m not so much upset about my own virtual nonexistence on the Web as I am steamed at Cal-E for so completely hogging our name. It smacks of market domination to me.
Which, come to think of it, probably is one of the strategic goals Eric the Tech Wiz regularly teaches and blogs about. Damn.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Programming Head Axed
James Lee and I might have bellied up to the bar together and shared us a good rant, if not for that unfortunate homicidal nut job thing he had going on.
Lee’s the guy whose grievances against Discovery Communications brought him two days ago to the company’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he held three people hostage while armed with a handgun and explosive devices. Police shot and killed him after he allegedly pointed the gun at one of his captives.
A big part of Lee’s beef with Discovery had been his contention that its TLC cable TV channel irresponsibly promotes population growth by airing such shows as Kate Plus 8 and 19 Kids and Counting. Well, see, this has been a soapbox on which I’ve been standing for years—albeit not one I’ve ever accessorized with lethal weaponry and lugged into an office building, or expressed on the Web in a grandiose and bilious manifesto (at www.savetheplanetprotest.com) that megalomaniacally concludes, “These are the demands and sayings of Lee.”
Why, not a week before the gunman’s demented overkill got him killed, I’d e-mailed a friend that day’s Dilbert cartoon, under the subject line “Why I Hate the Duggars.” (The Duggars being the contraceptive-eschewing clan that’s documented on 19 Kids and Counting.) Dilbert has been asked by a female co-worker to “bring an appropriate gift” to the baby shower of a colleague who is having triplets. In the closing panel, the honoree opens the present and observes, “It’s a … book on how to lower my carbon footprint?” Am unsmiling Dilbert responds, “You’re killing us all.”
Ha! Now that’s funny!
OK, OK, before I start getting angry posts from ... well, I’m not sure who’d write them, because if you’re reading this you’re one of 15 or 20 friends of mine who know that I don’t hate kids, and that I in fact encourage controlled procreation so there’ll always be younger generations to help share my tax burden and, eventually, change my adult undergarments. But still, I feel compelled to state clearly that, unlike James Lee, I’ve absolutely no interest in (again from the manifesto) “stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!”
While anyone who’s ever caught a whiff of poopy diaper readily would concede that human babies can, indeed, be disgusting—and while I agree that overpopulation is killing this planet—I strenuously draw the line at such solutions of Lee’s as encouraging mass sterilization and increased infertility.
Can I say this, though? As an aging technophobe, I’m slightly endeared by the late maniac’s apparent conviction that simply airing a revamped program lineup on a basic cable channel will turn the environmental tide. As if a twittering and texting nation will look up from its tiny illuminated screens long enough to watch and absorb the lessons of such James Lee-endorsed fare as The World Without Us—Seriously!, Breakfast with the Barrens and Zero and Stopping.
Lynn and I are childless by choice, so I can’t profess to personally “get” the allure of parenthood. Cats strike me as much more fun and considerably cheaper than children, if perhaps equally destructive. But hey, to each his or her own, I say. Many people consider children life's greatest blessing, and parenthood life’s crowning achievement. Also, some folks are allergic to cats. Whatever. It’s all good.
It’s all good until, that is, we start rewarding people for having kids by the busload, by making TV stars out of them. That seriously gets my goat. The same goes for when some fertility drug-happy couple in the Midwest drops a seven-spot, appears on the Topeka CBS affiliate, becomes a national story and ends up with so much cash and corporate help that they’re set from Pampers through college. Do you want to know what I’d like to send that mom and dad? Back in time, with a starter kit from Planned Parenthood.
So, I hear what James Lee was saying about the super-breeders. And I don’t dispute that “population growth is a real crisis,” that “humans are the most destructive creatures around,” or that the world’s wildlife is being needlessly sacrificed to ever-growing amounts of farmland. (All of those are among Lee’s better-reasoned and less hysterically expressed points.) However, had old James and I ever sat down at the bar together to rail against the stupidity and indefensibility of Kate and its TV ilk, I might in a very gentle way have suggested to him that he’d do better to push such things as veganism, safe sex, and family planning than those dreadfully draconian solutions of his.
Except that, oh yeah, that particular conversation might’ve ended with him going all James Lee on my ass. You see, that’s the crux of the problem. Your Unibomber types seldom are 100% wrong about things. But they do tend to be 100% crazy.
Lee’s the guy whose grievances against Discovery Communications brought him two days ago to the company’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he held three people hostage while armed with a handgun and explosive devices. Police shot and killed him after he allegedly pointed the gun at one of his captives.
A big part of Lee’s beef with Discovery had been his contention that its TLC cable TV channel irresponsibly promotes population growth by airing such shows as Kate Plus 8 and 19 Kids and Counting. Well, see, this has been a soapbox on which I’ve been standing for years—albeit not one I’ve ever accessorized with lethal weaponry and lugged into an office building, or expressed on the Web in a grandiose and bilious manifesto (at www.savetheplanetprotest.com) that megalomaniacally concludes, “These are the demands and sayings of Lee.”
Why, not a week before the gunman’s demented overkill got him killed, I’d e-mailed a friend that day’s Dilbert cartoon, under the subject line “Why I Hate the Duggars.” (The Duggars being the contraceptive-eschewing clan that’s documented on 19 Kids and Counting.) Dilbert has been asked by a female co-worker to “bring an appropriate gift” to the baby shower of a colleague who is having triplets. In the closing panel, the honoree opens the present and observes, “It’s a … book on how to lower my carbon footprint?” Am unsmiling Dilbert responds, “You’re killing us all.”
Ha! Now that’s funny!
OK, OK, before I start getting angry posts from ... well, I’m not sure who’d write them, because if you’re reading this you’re one of 15 or 20 friends of mine who know that I don’t hate kids, and that I in fact encourage controlled procreation so there’ll always be younger generations to help share my tax burden and, eventually, change my adult undergarments. But still, I feel compelled to state clearly that, unlike James Lee, I’ve absolutely no interest in (again from the manifesto) “stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!”
While anyone who’s ever caught a whiff of poopy diaper readily would concede that human babies can, indeed, be disgusting—and while I agree that overpopulation is killing this planet—I strenuously draw the line at such solutions of Lee’s as encouraging mass sterilization and increased infertility.
Can I say this, though? As an aging technophobe, I’m slightly endeared by the late maniac’s apparent conviction that simply airing a revamped program lineup on a basic cable channel will turn the environmental tide. As if a twittering and texting nation will look up from its tiny illuminated screens long enough to watch and absorb the lessons of such James Lee-endorsed fare as The World Without Us—Seriously!, Breakfast with the Barrens and Zero and Stopping.
Lynn and I are childless by choice, so I can’t profess to personally “get” the allure of parenthood. Cats strike me as much more fun and considerably cheaper than children, if perhaps equally destructive. But hey, to each his or her own, I say. Many people consider children life's greatest blessing, and parenthood life’s crowning achievement. Also, some folks are allergic to cats. Whatever. It’s all good.
It’s all good until, that is, we start rewarding people for having kids by the busload, by making TV stars out of them. That seriously gets my goat. The same goes for when some fertility drug-happy couple in the Midwest drops a seven-spot, appears on the Topeka CBS affiliate, becomes a national story and ends up with so much cash and corporate help that they’re set from Pampers through college. Do you want to know what I’d like to send that mom and dad? Back in time, with a starter kit from Planned Parenthood.
So, I hear what James Lee was saying about the super-breeders. And I don’t dispute that “population growth is a real crisis,” that “humans are the most destructive creatures around,” or that the world’s wildlife is being needlessly sacrificed to ever-growing amounts of farmland. (All of those are among Lee’s better-reasoned and less hysterically expressed points.) However, had old James and I ever sat down at the bar together to rail against the stupidity and indefensibility of Kate and its TV ilk, I might in a very gentle way have suggested to him that he’d do better to push such things as veganism, safe sex, and family planning than those dreadfully draconian solutions of his.
Except that, oh yeah, that particular conversation might’ve ended with him going all James Lee on my ass. You see, that’s the crux of the problem. Your Unibomber types seldom are 100% wrong about things. But they do tend to be 100% crazy.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Voices of a Generation
Jason and Meghan are my Token Black Guys.
You know how in buddy movies there’s always one black guy in the otherwise all-white gang, and how the TV networks always haul out the Reverend Jesse Jackson or Dr Cornel West as unofficial spokesperson for the (strangely monolithic) “African American community”?
Well, Meghan and Jason are my representatives of the Younger Generation. Or, more precisely, The Not Always Irritated and Vaguely or Overtly Threatened By Nearly Every Manifestation of 21st-Century Life Generation.
I didn’t specifically choose them for this role, and God knows they didn’t ask for it. In each case it was a product of proximity.
Jason is the older of the two. He’s in his early 30s and is the “Web guy” at my workplace. In fact, he set up this blog for me. Which isn’t surprising, because he’s generous to a fault. This keeps me from hating his guts for being smarter, better looking, more successful and two decades farther from death than I.
Meghan is in her mid 20s and has the office next to mine. She’s smart, pretty, has unlimited potential and is roughly half my age. But she typically laughs at my jokes, so all is forgiven.
When Jason first came to my workplace from his previous job as a hotshot writer for the Green Bay Packers’ Web site—a gig way cooler than ANY I’ve had in my 30 years in writing/editing, not that I’m bitter or anything—he was assigned the office where Meghan now resides. So, it’s not exactly a mystery how I became acquainted with these two. While it’s true I don’t get out much—at any given time I probably couldn’t identify by sight, let alone name, more than half of our 170-plus employees—I do at least get next door.
Jason is a huge sports fan and film lover, so we kind of bonded from the start over baseball and movies. Still, when he suggested a couple of years ago that we set a standing lunch date to ensure a weekly hour of face time in the midst of any given crazy work week, I felt rather like Sally Field at the Academy Awards, marveling that the young stud “really likes me!” And if that sounds a bit homoerotic to you, well, I offer as counterevidence the number of crude “That’s what she said” jokes we make all the time. Which you might say is only further evidence of a subtext of sexual tension. To which I respond, “Uh uh!” and “I’m a married heterosexual male,” and “Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay” and “Why am I needlessly belaboring this point in my own blog?!”
Anyway.
It took a little longer for friendship with Meghan to develop. We didn’t have obvious things in common, and I didn’t want to do or say anything to put her on skeezy-older-guy alert, locking her door in dread that I’d stop by to confide my wife doesn’t understand me, or to offer fashion suggestions involving greater display of skin. But it developed over time that for all our differences—encapsulated in a conversation during which, to paraphrase, I mourned for the days before 24-hour connectivity and she wondered why anyone would eschew its marvels—we share a number of crankinesses. Like wishing people would shut up in movie theaters, and loathing bad writing and stupid grammatical mistakes, and being driven batty by some of the same co-workers. We also found that our senses of humor and tastes in music are in many ways attuned.
When it got to the point that we were sharing dark cartoons and riotously offensive Onion stories with each other, I sensed we had crossed some generational Rubicon. Also, as I got to know Meghan better, I was endeared and put at ease by her tightness with her parents—who, after all, are my contemporaries. She clearly counts her mom and dad as friends, which is a strange concept to me. I mean, I love my parents, but I don’t hang out with them. I schedule short visits, hope nobody blows a gasket, then beat it out of there. Still, I like the fact that Meghan thinks coolness can extend beyond age 50.
Like most crabby old farts, I used to reflexively assume that “kids today” were completely self-absorbed, rude, disrespectful, ignorant of history, slavishly devoted to every new gadget, incapable of breaking away from groupthink long enough to decide a tattoo really isn’t necessary, and governed by the fashion rule that if it doesn’t annoy yours truly, it shouldn’t be worn. And I’m not saying that my experience with Jason and Meghan has disavowed me of all those notions. As that old-school nautical philosopher Popeye used to say, I yam what I yam. Which is to say, I really am crabby and old. (And sometimes farty, as Lynn would attest, but that’s a different story.)
I mean, my overriding feeling about the 21st century and my place in it was succinctly and brilliantly described in the New Yorker cartoon from a few years ago that shows a weary looking older guy saying into a phone, “Just waiting for Facebook to go away.” That cartoon bespeaks a mindset—my mindset—that doesn’t take kindly to the world it knew so rapidly disappearing.
But you know, I think my two Token Young Guys (Guy and Gal, whatever) serve me well, and that the gods of office seating showered me with providence. Because, for every debate I have with Meghan about whether cell phones are indispensable or an abomination, for every time I wish Jason would renounce his iPod and buy economically indefensible CDs like me, I enjoy many more moments with them that are built on commonalities or spent laughing at our gulfs.
Perhaps within their circles of friends, I’m a token, too. The Naysayer. The Holdout. The “Ungooglable Man,” per another New Yorker cartoon, by Roz Chast, that marvels “Even the most powerful search engines cannot detect him! No Facebook page, no MySpace page, no nothing! And yet he walks amongst us!” In many ways I am that man. But I’m also living proof that even the Ungooglable Man can start a blog. It might have been set up by Jason, and it may be known to only a handful of people, but this blog is one new millennium wave I’m actually riding.
I’m still waiting in vain for Facebook and its inevitable successors to go away. But I can’t say there aren’t things I love about this day and age. Like doing what I’m doing right now at my keyboard. And acquiring friends who add richness and variety to my old and farty life.
You know how in buddy movies there’s always one black guy in the otherwise all-white gang, and how the TV networks always haul out the Reverend Jesse Jackson or Dr Cornel West as unofficial spokesperson for the (strangely monolithic) “African American community”?
Well, Meghan and Jason are my representatives of the Younger Generation. Or, more precisely, The Not Always Irritated and Vaguely or Overtly Threatened By Nearly Every Manifestation of 21st-Century Life Generation.
I didn’t specifically choose them for this role, and God knows they didn’t ask for it. In each case it was a product of proximity.
Jason is the older of the two. He’s in his early 30s and is the “Web guy” at my workplace. In fact, he set up this blog for me. Which isn’t surprising, because he’s generous to a fault. This keeps me from hating his guts for being smarter, better looking, more successful and two decades farther from death than I.
Meghan is in her mid 20s and has the office next to mine. She’s smart, pretty, has unlimited potential and is roughly half my age. But she typically laughs at my jokes, so all is forgiven.
When Jason first came to my workplace from his previous job as a hotshot writer for the Green Bay Packers’ Web site—a gig way cooler than ANY I’ve had in my 30 years in writing/editing, not that I’m bitter or anything—he was assigned the office where Meghan now resides. So, it’s not exactly a mystery how I became acquainted with these two. While it’s true I don’t get out much—at any given time I probably couldn’t identify by sight, let alone name, more than half of our 170-plus employees—I do at least get next door.
Jason is a huge sports fan and film lover, so we kind of bonded from the start over baseball and movies. Still, when he suggested a couple of years ago that we set a standing lunch date to ensure a weekly hour of face time in the midst of any given crazy work week, I felt rather like Sally Field at the Academy Awards, marveling that the young stud “really likes me!” And if that sounds a bit homoerotic to you, well, I offer as counterevidence the number of crude “That’s what she said” jokes we make all the time. Which you might say is only further evidence of a subtext of sexual tension. To which I respond, “Uh uh!” and “I’m a married heterosexual male,” and “Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay” and “Why am I needlessly belaboring this point in my own blog?!”
Anyway.
It took a little longer for friendship with Meghan to develop. We didn’t have obvious things in common, and I didn’t want to do or say anything to put her on skeezy-older-guy alert, locking her door in dread that I’d stop by to confide my wife doesn’t understand me, or to offer fashion suggestions involving greater display of skin. But it developed over time that for all our differences—encapsulated in a conversation during which, to paraphrase, I mourned for the days before 24-hour connectivity and she wondered why anyone would eschew its marvels—we share a number of crankinesses. Like wishing people would shut up in movie theaters, and loathing bad writing and stupid grammatical mistakes, and being driven batty by some of the same co-workers. We also found that our senses of humor and tastes in music are in many ways attuned.
When it got to the point that we were sharing dark cartoons and riotously offensive Onion stories with each other, I sensed we had crossed some generational Rubicon. Also, as I got to know Meghan better, I was endeared and put at ease by her tightness with her parents—who, after all, are my contemporaries. She clearly counts her mom and dad as friends, which is a strange concept to me. I mean, I love my parents, but I don’t hang out with them. I schedule short visits, hope nobody blows a gasket, then beat it out of there. Still, I like the fact that Meghan thinks coolness can extend beyond age 50.
Like most crabby old farts, I used to reflexively assume that “kids today” were completely self-absorbed, rude, disrespectful, ignorant of history, slavishly devoted to every new gadget, incapable of breaking away from groupthink long enough to decide a tattoo really isn’t necessary, and governed by the fashion rule that if it doesn’t annoy yours truly, it shouldn’t be worn. And I’m not saying that my experience with Jason and Meghan has disavowed me of all those notions. As that old-school nautical philosopher Popeye used to say, I yam what I yam. Which is to say, I really am crabby and old. (And sometimes farty, as Lynn would attest, but that’s a different story.)
I mean, my overriding feeling about the 21st century and my place in it was succinctly and brilliantly described in the New Yorker cartoon from a few years ago that shows a weary looking older guy saying into a phone, “Just waiting for Facebook to go away.” That cartoon bespeaks a mindset—my mindset—that doesn’t take kindly to the world it knew so rapidly disappearing.
But you know, I think my two Token Young Guys (Guy and Gal, whatever) serve me well, and that the gods of office seating showered me with providence. Because, for every debate I have with Meghan about whether cell phones are indispensable or an abomination, for every time I wish Jason would renounce his iPod and buy economically indefensible CDs like me, I enjoy many more moments with them that are built on commonalities or spent laughing at our gulfs.
Perhaps within their circles of friends, I’m a token, too. The Naysayer. The Holdout. The “Ungooglable Man,” per another New Yorker cartoon, by Roz Chast, that marvels “Even the most powerful search engines cannot detect him! No Facebook page, no MySpace page, no nothing! And yet he walks amongst us!” In many ways I am that man. But I’m also living proof that even the Ungooglable Man can start a blog. It might have been set up by Jason, and it may be known to only a handful of people, but this blog is one new millennium wave I’m actually riding.
I’m still waiting in vain for Facebook and its inevitable successors to go away. But I can’t say there aren’t things I love about this day and age. Like doing what I’m doing right now at my keyboard. And acquiring friends who add richness and variety to my old and farty life.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Ellie
Ellie was, in a sense, the Chauncey Gardiner of dogs.
Ellie being Elska Abbott-Ries, the cancer-stricken greyhound our friend Julie Smith, DVM, euthanized in our home last month. Chauncey Gardiner being Chance, the blank-slate gardener onto whom others projected their hopes and expectations in Being There, the 1979 film based on a Jerzy Kosinski novella.
This is my third mention of Ellie in this blog. The first was contained in my post of July 16, when she’d visited our bedroom after an early morning earthquake. I’d mentioned her illness at that time. The second appearance came on July 29, when I’d kiddingly (sort of) blasted her failure ever to sniff us up a human corpse amongst the chicken bones she always seemed to find on our walks. In that post I’d noted Ellie’s death, but had added that the pain was too raw to linger there.
In between those dates, on July 24, Lynn and I had said our tearful goodbyes to our 10-year-old rescue dog, transported her body to a pet crematory and, the next day, brought her back home in an attractive cherrywood box that now sits on the baker’s rack in our sunroom. So, at this point Ellie has been gone more than a month. Time has helped heal that wound—Lynn and I truly have grieved—but it also has helped me clarify Ellie’s legacy.
Some readers of this blog received an e-mail from me the day after Ellie’s death that, upon rereading, strikes me as having been a verbose way of expressing what Lynn has been telling people in two short sentences: “I miss Ellie. I don’t know why.”
Meaning, more precisely, “I can’t easily articulate why.”
In my e-mail, I’d listed a succession of things Ellie was not: affectionate, responsive, playful, joyful. I’d pointed out that she’d spent the first half of her life crated at a dog track, and I’d speculated that her harsh and regimented years there had prevented sunny adjectives from developing in her. I’d praised Ellie’s adaptability and temperament, and had made note of her physical beauty. Those had been the tangible things we’d loved about her. Her easiness. Her gentle nature. That sleek, sinewy body. The sad doe eyes and the exquisite, deer-like snout.
But my e-mail had only hinted at the intangible things we loved about Ellie. I’d mentioned how she’d stand statue-like next to us and not budge until we stopped petting her. I’d submitted that as evidence we were pleasing her—meeting a need in her that had no other expression. I’d suggested that this had brought us joy. And it had. It always made us feel wonderful—as if, in adopting her, we’d done something very, very good.
For a dog who showed little and revealed less, Ellie had a remarkable capacity for expansively rewarding us. When she fairly scampered for an hour straight during walks in the crisp, autumn air, she reminded us of the importance of savoring every moment. When she maintained a doleful equanimity in the face of our cat Winnie’s endless tauntings, she tutored us in perhaps this century’s most useful skill: forbearance. When a halo of sunlight spotlighted her perfect body on a bright spring day, she almost made us believe in God.
As the news of Ellie’s death spread among our friends and family, many, many people called, wrote or came by the house to express their condolences. Every word and gesture was truly and deeply appreciated. But two e-mails in particular, I think, bespoke Ellie’s power.
One was from our friend Adrian, the husband of our friend and doggie daycare provider ilkim. Adrian had co-parented Ellie whenever she stayed at their rural home. The following are excerpts from his e-mail to us:
Ilkim told me Monday night about Ellie. I had to tell her that for some reason as I was walking to my car last Wednesday after work, Ellie entered my thoughts. There was no precursor. I was just walking, and shortly before I got to the parking lot she popped in. Being ever so light on her feet, I guess she is well capable of such stealth.
Perhaps the unusual part of this is the fact that Ellie, being such a quiet and easy-to-please girl, entered into our thoughts and conversations quite a bit. She left such an impression after every visit and I never tried to understand why. It was just there. But with her passing, I have been thinking all morning about her and why she had such an impact on us. I can only try to convey this feeling: She had a way of sharing a bit of her soul, and at the same time knowing the entirety of your own soul.
Then there was this from Ellie’s sometimes-walker Ritch, a friend and neighbor who frames our pictures and enriches our lives with his dark, funny and utterly idiosyncratic insights:
Ellie and I have had many insightful conversations together while walking. It’s hard for me to remember every profundity, every simple truth she blessed me with. I should have taken notes when the professor spoke, but she assured me that there would be no written exam. “Just go and attempt to live well, and be fair to everyone around you,” she would say. “And respect nature, and the animal world too, dammit.”
Once, she asked me if I remembered “the wind in [my] face while running full tilt” when I was young. I said, “Ya, wasn’t that great?” She nodded and said, “I miss it too. But I had it once, I really had it.” I said, “Ellie, I’m a little afraid of dying,” and she looked at me and said, “Don't be. It’s like the wind in your face once again. Just take one day at a time, and you’ll be all right.” I thank her for everything she did for me.
Sure, you can look at these as the hyperbolic musings and extrapolations of people—Adrian, Ritch, Lynn, me—who’ve superimposed our own stories onto the still photograph of a deceased animal. You can blow it all off as our attempts to parse why we so miss a dog who gave nothing back by way of face-licks, Frisbee acrobatics, or, frankly, much long-term interest in humans save our usefulness as food providers and walk facilitators.
But, in reflecting from this distance on my love of Ellie, I see these musings and extrapolations as something more than a mere collection of happy, self-soothing anthropomorphisms. Ellie was a sweet, gentle and sublimely lovely animal, to be sure. But beyond that, our dearly departed friend somehow enriched the spirit. She inspired what, given Adrian’s and Ritch’s beautiful words, can only be described as poetry. I’ve no idea how or why Ellie had this effect. She just did.
Perhaps she whispered her secret to Ritch. I must ask him.
Ellie being Elska Abbott-Ries, the cancer-stricken greyhound our friend Julie Smith, DVM, euthanized in our home last month. Chauncey Gardiner being Chance, the blank-slate gardener onto whom others projected their hopes and expectations in Being There, the 1979 film based on a Jerzy Kosinski novella.
This is my third mention of Ellie in this blog. The first was contained in my post of July 16, when she’d visited our bedroom after an early morning earthquake. I’d mentioned her illness at that time. The second appearance came on July 29, when I’d kiddingly (sort of) blasted her failure ever to sniff us up a human corpse amongst the chicken bones she always seemed to find on our walks. In that post I’d noted Ellie’s death, but had added that the pain was too raw to linger there.
In between those dates, on July 24, Lynn and I had said our tearful goodbyes to our 10-year-old rescue dog, transported her body to a pet crematory and, the next day, brought her back home in an attractive cherrywood box that now sits on the baker’s rack in our sunroom. So, at this point Ellie has been gone more than a month. Time has helped heal that wound—Lynn and I truly have grieved—but it also has helped me clarify Ellie’s legacy.
Some readers of this blog received an e-mail from me the day after Ellie’s death that, upon rereading, strikes me as having been a verbose way of expressing what Lynn has been telling people in two short sentences: “I miss Ellie. I don’t know why.”
Meaning, more precisely, “I can’t easily articulate why.”
In my e-mail, I’d listed a succession of things Ellie was not: affectionate, responsive, playful, joyful. I’d pointed out that she’d spent the first half of her life crated at a dog track, and I’d speculated that her harsh and regimented years there had prevented sunny adjectives from developing in her. I’d praised Ellie’s adaptability and temperament, and had made note of her physical beauty. Those had been the tangible things we’d loved about her. Her easiness. Her gentle nature. That sleek, sinewy body. The sad doe eyes and the exquisite, deer-like snout.
But my e-mail had only hinted at the intangible things we loved about Ellie. I’d mentioned how she’d stand statue-like next to us and not budge until we stopped petting her. I’d submitted that as evidence we were pleasing her—meeting a need in her that had no other expression. I’d suggested that this had brought us joy. And it had. It always made us feel wonderful—as if, in adopting her, we’d done something very, very good.
For a dog who showed little and revealed less, Ellie had a remarkable capacity for expansively rewarding us. When she fairly scampered for an hour straight during walks in the crisp, autumn air, she reminded us of the importance of savoring every moment. When she maintained a doleful equanimity in the face of our cat Winnie’s endless tauntings, she tutored us in perhaps this century’s most useful skill: forbearance. When a halo of sunlight spotlighted her perfect body on a bright spring day, she almost made us believe in God.
As the news of Ellie’s death spread among our friends and family, many, many people called, wrote or came by the house to express their condolences. Every word and gesture was truly and deeply appreciated. But two e-mails in particular, I think, bespoke Ellie’s power.
One was from our friend Adrian, the husband of our friend and doggie daycare provider ilkim. Adrian had co-parented Ellie whenever she stayed at their rural home. The following are excerpts from his e-mail to us:
Ilkim told me Monday night about Ellie. I had to tell her that for some reason as I was walking to my car last Wednesday after work, Ellie entered my thoughts. There was no precursor. I was just walking, and shortly before I got to the parking lot she popped in. Being ever so light on her feet, I guess she is well capable of such stealth.
Perhaps the unusual part of this is the fact that Ellie, being such a quiet and easy-to-please girl, entered into our thoughts and conversations quite a bit. She left such an impression after every visit and I never tried to understand why. It was just there. But with her passing, I have been thinking all morning about her and why she had such an impact on us. I can only try to convey this feeling: She had a way of sharing a bit of her soul, and at the same time knowing the entirety of your own soul.
Then there was this from Ellie’s sometimes-walker Ritch, a friend and neighbor who frames our pictures and enriches our lives with his dark, funny and utterly idiosyncratic insights:
Ellie and I have had many insightful conversations together while walking. It’s hard for me to remember every profundity, every simple truth she blessed me with. I should have taken notes when the professor spoke, but she assured me that there would be no written exam. “Just go and attempt to live well, and be fair to everyone around you,” she would say. “And respect nature, and the animal world too, dammit.”
Once, she asked me if I remembered “the wind in [my] face while running full tilt” when I was young. I said, “Ya, wasn’t that great?” She nodded and said, “I miss it too. But I had it once, I really had it.” I said, “Ellie, I’m a little afraid of dying,” and she looked at me and said, “Don't be. It’s like the wind in your face once again. Just take one day at a time, and you’ll be all right.” I thank her for everything she did for me.
Sure, you can look at these as the hyperbolic musings and extrapolations of people—Adrian, Ritch, Lynn, me—who’ve superimposed our own stories onto the still photograph of a deceased animal. You can blow it all off as our attempts to parse why we so miss a dog who gave nothing back by way of face-licks, Frisbee acrobatics, or, frankly, much long-term interest in humans save our usefulness as food providers and walk facilitators.
But, in reflecting from this distance on my love of Ellie, I see these musings and extrapolations as something more than a mere collection of happy, self-soothing anthropomorphisms. Ellie was a sweet, gentle and sublimely lovely animal, to be sure. But beyond that, our dearly departed friend somehow enriched the spirit. She inspired what, given Adrian’s and Ritch’s beautiful words, can only be described as poetry. I’ve no idea how or why Ellie had this effect. She just did.
Perhaps she whispered her secret to Ritch. I must ask him.
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