Nom de Plume

Harry has been diagnosed as either having pug encephalitis or hydrocephalus, both of which cause neurological problems and are degenerative diseases. His legs gave out yesterday; he couldn’t stand. He’s on prednisone right now and is doing a little better, but is still very wobbly. I’m too upset to write any more.

Yesterday was a momentous occasion: Steve came to the blog.

To be fair, I had sent him a link to a Harry pic. But once here, he scrolled through and saw that I had posted his birthday print long before his birthday. He started laughing. “Did you post that because you knew I would never look?”

Indeed.

The thing is, Steve thinks I’m a freak for having a blog at all. He says he’s weirded out about being mentioned up here, which I guess I can understand. Not, of course, that I pay a whit of attention. I post away happily, ignoring his wishes in the matter. After all, that’s what a good relationship is all about, right? Right? Hello?

In any case, when I got back from the Dogoween debacle this afternoon, I tossed the bag of freebie treats they gave us on the dining room table. At some point, Steve said, “Oh my GOD, this is so disgusting. What IS it?!?”

I looked over. He was holding the the bag. “You ate dog treats?!”

“Oh my God, I think I’m going to puke,” he moaned. “I thought it was beef jerky.”

“You ate dog treats!!” I started shaking with laughter.

“Just kidding,” he said, tossing them at me. “I got you going, didn’t I? And all you could think was what a great blog entry it would be. Weren’t you?”

Mea culpa.

“That is the lamest Yoda costume I’ve ever seen,” Steve informed me after I had painted Harry with green food coloring, garbed him in burlap, and stuck one of those glow in the dark tubes in his belt as a light saber.

I have to admit he was right. Despite all my planning, I hadn’t gotten around to getting the stuff beforehand. Still, we ambled down to Dogoween . It was a nightmare of too many people, too many dogs, and too many people and dogs on the loudspeaker. We came home instead. Harry ripped off the costume. Now he’s sitting in the yard, hoping the green wears off.

Pig ears are totally disgusting, but His Royal Furriness loves them so …

And I just can’t seem to WAKE UP.

I disturbed His Royal Furriness’ nap; he looked so cute sleeping on sun-warmed leaves and I couldn’t resist snapping a picture.

It was Steve’s birthday on Monday, which means that last week was his “birthday week” and last weekend was his “birthday weekend.” Essentially what this means is that I’m supposed to do whatever his little heart desires.

His little heart desired a surfing/camping weekend. So we packed up the gear and the dog and went to Short Sands to camp. It was wet and cold, but we still had a great time. Among other things, a helicopter came in to rescue two people stranded on the side of a cliff at high tide. It was very exciting. Oh yeah, and two crazy young guys threw off all their clothes and went running into the surf. There was a family sitting next to us — a couple our age and a set of parents — and the very well-dressed, well-preserved mother had her binoculars trained on them as they emerged from the ocean naked as jaybirds. She was riveted.

His Royal Furriness spent most of the time (when he wasn’t being attacked by sneaker waves) trolling up and down the beach for people who would exclaim how cute he was and pet him. As usual, he succeeded.

Which is the best chick lit, I think.

Wonderboy, Fiona Gibson — Couple with child move to the country, grow apart, wife comes into own.

Playing James, Sarah Mason — Intrepid reporter gets assigned to cover a detective. They hate each other. They think.

Society Girls, Sarah Mason — The reporter’s sister gets fired from her art appraisal job, moves home, becomes embroiled in a crime saga … and discovers the guy next door.

One either waxes rhapsodic over Coetzee or one … does not. And I’m not really sure how I felt about Elizabeth Costello, his latest novel. Though novel seems too strong a word for loosely jointed series of lectures.

For a series of lectures it is, told in turn through the lectures of fictional novelist Elizabeth Costello. Costello is famed for her feminist portrayal of Molly Bloom. Although she has written other novels, this is the one for which she is remembered–and she rather resents it. Costello is, as even her son says, a poor speaker: she alienates her audience, talks down to them … and yet, as the novel progresses, we move from disliking her to having a certain sympathy for a woman nearing the end of her life.

As I said, I’m not sure how I felt about this book. Didactic and pedantic as Costello is, infuriating as she may be, there is still no question about the response Coetzee elicits from his readers. At the same time, I have to question the point. And perhaps, so does he.

I sent Steve a Friendster invite; he sent me this:

Hi Babydoll,
You have pretty eyes and look really good, I already feel a connection.

I love Indian food, poetry in bed, sensitive doggies, and would love to just listen in front of the fire to what you did during the day.

Sound interesting? You can contact me at yourboyfriendsafattie.com

I guess that means he’s not joining.

Steve made the big mistake of musing what it would be like to put a second story on the garage. “For the view,” he explained. “We could see the water. I could frame it in a weekend.”

When we were still doing the long distance thing, I had this fantasy of us living together, of me freelancing (and working from home), and of having my office in a completely redone detached old garage. Living together — check. Freelancing — check. Cool office in the garage and actually having a guest room again — hmmm. I’m so close! Naturally, I seized upon the idea with the same glee as Harry approaching his breakfast.

We’ve been batting the idea around, so I finally called Seattle’s permit department. Only to be informed that it’s not possible. Buildings in the sideyard and backyard aren’t allowed to be taller than 15 feet. And, unfortunately, moving into the single-story garage isn’t a possibility. There’s too much stuff in there.

Sigh.

My latest eBay print purchase. Never heard of the guy, but I liked it–and the price was right. The frame it came in was a terrible orange plastic with gold trim, so I stuck it in one I had (along with the original matting). One of these days I’ll get it reframed with the acid-free stuff — but for now it sits on my desk, keeping company with the phone cord.

I showed Pete Gade the pictures from my great-grandmother’s photo album and he responded with the following:

I secured a spare moment to root around my (limited) resources on the Mexican-American War of 1846-48 for some possible mention of his tribe during the conflict. The following provides a quick appreciation of the accounts they contain.

As said, California enjoyed a sort of rogue status that suited its “Californio” population quite well. Although technically still under the aegis of Mexican rule, it operated more or less independently after 1834 when the acting president of Mexico secularized the Catholic missions. By the time of the war, two Californio bosses basically held sway over the region — Castro in Moneterey and Pico in Los Angeles. Castro made a fine living off the duties Monterey collected from trade, which provides a clear indication of the way things operated in California at the time.

As for the Santa Ysabel Indians, its possible that they were once associated with the Santa Ysabel Asistencia mission, which was founded just east of San Diego in 1818. An interesting effect of the aforementioned secularization was that the local tribes basically lost interest in their ties with the Californios. Up until that point, the missions made a point of providing socially-oriented lay functions. These ceased once the local forces took over, and over a period of ten years the Indian populations in their immediate proximity shrank from 30,000 to about 10,000.

In late 1846, the Americans assumed control of San Diego after being routed from LA by a single horse-drawn cannon (no fooling). Meanwhile, Kearny’s American “Army of the West” made the epic, and footsore, trek from Missouri to San Diego — in part through the aid of the legendary Kit Carson — but not before engaging in protracted standoff known as the Battle of San Pascual, just east of San Diego. One account mentions that the leader of the San Pascual Indians took pity on the American troops and presented the Californio forces with an ultimatum to leave the Gringos in peace “or else.”
This, apparently, provided the Americans their chance to break the showdown by sending a party to San Diego for naval and Marine reinforcements. One popular account contends that this party was lead by a Delaware Indian in the service of Kit Carson. Another, and perhaps more likely, account sets the credit on the shoulders of a San Pascual Indian.

In any event, my sources failed me here. Not surprisingly, many of them lend only passing and non-specific reference to Californian tribes. Wish I had something specific to Manuel, but all of this occured in the general region of San Diego and thus may be of some secondary interest to you.

-Pete

I am alive. I am not abandoning the blog. Just been very busy lately. Don’t give up on me just yet!

Granted, it was a week ago, but when I got back from the ranch Harry was as round as a pumpkin.

“How much have you been feeding him?” I asked Steve.

“What you told me,” he replied, a tad defensively. “Half a bowl, morning and evening.”

“Half a CUP, not half a BOWL,” I said.

“Oh.”

The next morning, I fed Harry his customary half cup of kibble. He looked at his portion, looked at me, and then looked at his bowl again. He was utterly dejected.

It’s awful being a dog.

On another note, we went to a party last Saturday, given by an ex-coworker of Steve’s. Along with many other work people, there were lots of neighbors — and with a dog, who was just milling about as though he owned the place. We were talking to one of the neighbors when the dog wandered up to him. We asked if the dog belonged to him because we knew he didn’t belong to the host. “We don’t believe in animal ownership,” he said. “I’m the guy who feeds him and gives him water. I take him to the vet every now and then, but other than that, he’s free to do what he pleases.”

Steve and I looked at each other, both of us thinking that if Harry were on his own in this cruel world, he would perish in about, oh, point two.

“Yeah, he’s not licensed,” he continued. “We don’t believe in that either.”

“If you don’t believe in owning animals, how did you end up with him in the first place?” asked Steve. I thought this was a very sensible question.

“It was my wife,” he replied. “She had a relationship with him before I arrived on the scene.”

I would think that a couple who doesn’t believe in animal ownership wouldn’t believe in marriage either, but what do I know? All I do know is that “having a relationship with a dog” sounds a little … funny.

Considering that Steve would rather die than read my blog, I feel perfectly safe posting one of his presents. He’s been a little depressed lately, as we haven’t been surfing and he is relatively hobbyless as of late. I thought it might be nice to get him some “surfer art.”

The problem with most surfer art is that it’s truly dreadful–and the stuff I do like (i.e., Bartlett prints), I can’t afford.

Enter Tom Kristensen. An entirely self-taught printmaker from Australia, he was a passionate collector of ukiyo-e prints before he started creating his own stuff. (Artelino has an artist’s profile if you’re interested.) In 2004, he embarked on his project, 36 Views from Green Island, which can be seen at Saru Gallery. I predict that he will soon be as collectable as Paul Binnie.

I really like a lot of these–and would like to collect more–but this is the one I just ordered for Steve:

Steve just got home. The first words out of his mouth were, “This guy? At work? He got bitten in the ball by a brown recluse spider.”

He paused.

“And?” I prompted.

“He went to the hospital and the doctor said they might have to remove the testicle.”

Another pause.

“And?!?”

“They didn’t.”

When my mother and I were unpacking boxes, we found several old photograph albums. I’ve been working on the genealogy on and off for about four years, so this is very exciting to me.

First, a little history.

My great great grandparents, David Leonard Hoover and Cornelia Gertrude Williams Hoover, moved to Southern California from Illinois. They lived in Santa Ysabel (down the road from Julian); DL was a pharmacist, and they owned the DL Hoover General Store. (The building, by the way, is still there, and is now a rather touristy little old time general store.) They had two daughters, Myrta and Lorena. Myrta was my great-grandmother — and one of the photograph albums was hers.

She took these pictures between 1890 and 1900. The description in the front says the photos are of Mesa Grande, Agua Caliente (Warner’s Hot Springs), and Santa Ysabel. The interesting thing is that there are many portraits of Native Americans in this album. Even better, they’re all marked.

Here are three of the photos along with her description. One of these days, I will digitize the entire album–and perhaps give it to a museum.

“Manuel Lechusa, the Old General of Santa Ysabel. Boss of Santa Ysabel Indians about 1895″

“Diego Curo, very old Mesa Grande Indian. Taken at Hoover’s Store.”

“Warner Hot Springs — Preparing yucca leaves to spin into materials for making door mats.”

*** Update: See the whole set.

My mother has always been passionate about the ranch, which my grandparents bought during the Depression. I had never felt the same connection — until this trip. This time, it occurred to me that the ranch is the one constant place in my life; in fact, I can’t remember a time without it.

And it’s funny that you think you forget roads and how to get to a place, but your subconscious remembers the route. Here’s driving in:

We go straight.

Straight again.

The original sign disappeared years ago; Mother painted a new one and tacked it back up to the same tree.

This is it.

New red roof on the barn

A straighter shot.

Millie’s house (once Nini’s house). This is a story in and of itself.

The brand-spanking new ranch house:

As we’re walking down the road