Mama, Hold My Paw!

If you have ever known a child that seems to need their mama with them at all times, then you know the pains I'm going through with a newly fenced in yard.

We've lived on this culdesac (sp?)-on an island and in the country- for 6 years now. For the first 4 we had a red doxie, named Dutch.


He was friends with every living thing, and I could let him romp around the yard without much worry of him wandering off. He loved to visit the next door neighbor, play with their grand kids, and get a treat when he could. Or he'd roll around in the grass while I gardened, barking at squirrels and passing boats.

We lost our Dutch in late July 07.


Withing two weeks, we adopted Freckles, who needed a new home as much as we needed another pup to love. Freckles delights in running outside. When he's at his happiest, he will leap 4 or 5 body lengths at a time, and has almost caught a squirrel or two. He has a few potty problems, but running back to me when I call him has not been an issue.





A year later we got Snoopy, who we think is secretly part Beagle or something. He has papers (previous owner,) but he is a regular escape artist. Calling him only seems to taunt him into running in the other direction. He aspires to explore every sniffable place he can reach or dig to. When he's on a leash, he's pulling with all that his 10 pound self can muster, and it doesn't matter what kind of lead he's on. He even ended up in the creek at full tide one day. (Thank heavens he was on a leash so I could reel him back in.) He didn't enjoy it much....

To make a long story shorter, Snoops is even good at getting into other dog's yards. And his New Year's gift to us was to let the pit bulls across the street know that he has no fear. He got away from my father-in-law, who was walking him, and ran straight through their gate. He was lucky enough to get away, but not fortunate enough to escape without injury. It took a very arduous 6 weeks to heal the puncture wounds and ripped skin (about a foot long tear) on his back and abdomen. The new fence went up within a week. (I'd been asking for one for months!!!!)

While he was healing, he had to be walked on a leash. Now that fur is slowly inching over parts of his scar, he can run about at will. You would think he'd be romping with Freckles non-stop.

Nah....He's a mama's boy, and mostly sits on the back porch barking up a storm unless accompanied by a human adult. Today he made his voice heard for 40 minutes. Until I let him back inside. Perhaps he's cold without the customized onesie and ace bandages wrapped around his sutures and bandages? It was 70 outside earlier. ??????

Nonetheless, it's a lot like having a dog child who needs a constant, doting parent to hold his "paw."

A Love of Time and Place

The historic coastal towns where I've spent the last decade have become the home of my heart. The ebb and flow of the tides, the Spanish moss and majestic oaks, the serenity of its everchanging marshes hold me spellbound.
One of my favorite places is downtown Savannah.

I could spend years wandering the tree-lined squares of this colonial city, especially as seasons change. It is considered to be an urban forest, with tall trees offering shade to those who live, work, worship, and visit. While some might be disturbed by the palpable feel of souls who seem to still populate the town decades and centuries after their deaths, I find in it a sense of connection to a place that was central to our nation's beginnings.

There are so many places that I love.....

City Market with its many galleries and horse drawn carraiges....

First African Baptist Church, built by slaves, and respite for others who were worn and tired as they traversed the Underground railroad seeking freedom....
Steeples and colonial homes, both stately and demure....

Miles and miles of wrought iron gates and cobblestones....

There is strange appeal to the history of Colonial Cemetery, a place that outdates the famed Bonaventure by many years. Sitting between a historical firehouse and an aged police headquarters, you can walk directly into the city's past. As you wander through it, you can see where bored soldiers altered dates on grave markers with their pocket knives during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. The place was at one point a wintry camp for calvary, and at another was a holding place for prisoners of war.

Above ground crypts are a strange mixture of red brick and concrete, the latter added to repair walls that were ripped out during cold winters by frigid soldiers. Yellow fever wiped out huge numbers during various periods in the city's 18th and 19th century history, which meant that some crypts became mass graves. Family plots are cordoned off by iron or brick fences and walls. Markers list the names of those who mourned as well as dates of birth and death. Once in southern tradition it seems, obituaries of a sort were carved directly into granite and marble. Much of these words are now worn and difficult to decipher.

As time passed, the cemetery became a relic, and fell into disrepair. Many stones were broken off, leaving unmarked the resting places of person's who had been much loved by another since claimed by time. The city even chose to pave directly over the graves of some persons in order to advance a main road from downtown Savannah to its much newer Southside. (There is an entire Jewish cemetery hidden under asphalt a few blocks away.) As I traverse the sidewalk where these graves once stood, I can not help but feel that in someway I am a visitor in a place that should be sacred. I may live in 2009 with parking meters and paved roads next to me, but this is a place that still exists in another time.

Within the last century, the site has been turned into a historical park. Many of the markers once strewn about with abandon have been set into a red brick wall at the back of the cemetery. Fathers, wives, and children claimed in a time of archaic medical means, business men and immigrants who lost their lives while far from home, even sailors and at least one pirate are memorialized in this place. Button Gwinnett, signer of the Declaration of Independence is thought to be buried withing sight of that wall.

I have seen people walk dogs and throw Frisbees through the park's more open spaces. I once spied a vagrant taking a nap amidst thick bushes in the summer's heat. I've also been told that Colonial Cemetery is locked at night due to evidence of a moonlit Voodoo ritual occurring as recently as 2000. Some tourists have claimed to feel a sudden coolness in the air as they snapped shots of strange vapors floating in the middle of the day.

I am mesmerized by the place. While a large part of me wants to remain cynical, and state that the city is not haunted by a multitude of lost souls, I can not deny that it is hard to feel a real sense of solitude here. It is almost as if the humid air of this place, and of all of the the South that holds my heart, is too thick for the memories of those who breathe it in to fade away and allow real time to completely take hold.

The Unwritten Page

I have always loved to write, and am told that I have a knack for telling stories. Somehow I have managed to collect about a dozen beautiful and vastly empty journals over the last nine years. For a while I posted many of my thoughts on a forum, and I can be very chatty via E-mail and Facebook. I also keep a sort of photo journal on my computer. There are at least forty years worth of photos there....I've completed one scrapbook in my life. I gave it to my sister on her 25th birthday.

I've even considered keeping an art journal. I just spend so much time devouring images of other artists that I hardly get any of my own work made.

Last night I realized that in one thick blue journal I wrote a handful of entries as a single woman in 2000, another just after meeting my husband, a couple of distraught ones while going through rough times in 2004, and then the entry I wrote last night. For a journal with about a 1000 pages, only about 50 have a word on them.

I find great appeal in an unwritten page. There is something alluring in the possibilities of the paper untouched by ink or pencil. I even kept crisp and (primarily) white the pages of two dozen miniature books that I handmade and sent as a holiday greetings this past December. It just seemed to make sense as one year ended and another began.

So now that I've realized that I seem to collect unwritten books, I've begun to compile ideas for creating them myself. I also like chiyogami, a wonderful type of Japanese paper. Perhaps keeping a blog will give me a reason to actually do something besides plan. We shall see.....