The Year in Review

One time when I was on the road doing some storytelling, I read a newspaper that was full of stuff that I thought had to be made up.  Of course it wasn't.  It was "real."  So I underlined the headlines, one after another.  And then cut them out of the newspaper and taped them into my journal and they looked like this --

Two die as car speeds off lift-bridge into river

Woman believed to have stolen baby

Police kill wandering emu in suburban St Louis

Man bites panda; panda bites man

Cat kills dog; man kills cat

Hawk attacks people

Voters decided on instant runoff

Maintenance man wins 163 million

Space station receives toxin scare

Bismarkers want world snow angel title back

***

Yes, the whole voyald, as William Saroyan once said, and all the people and animals
in it hopping and popping and scrapping.  I am siding with the five-year-old Jamaican girl
who read her own one-line poem on a stage where I was proud to be part of a program with
Cedella Marley and our daughter, Mariah Fox.  So what did the little girl read?

She stood before hundreds of people and shook a plastic bottle full of uncooked rice
and said in a very loud voice:

"Stop the violence NOW!"

The Blessing of the Christmas Cat

From The Metaphysical Cat. . .


Thus to close the year and pass the blessing along . . . there is an ancient cat myth that says a mother cat was present when baby Jesus was born. In the dove-cooing softness of the manger, kittens were born, and a mother cat did purr.

And, it is said, this sound filled the manger with a song of blessing.

There are, indeed, many stories of this kind, proving the love of Jesus Christ for animals, especially cats. One such tale tells how Jesus found a young cat on the road during one of his pilgrimages. The cat had suffered terribly from neglect, but Jesus spoke soothing words to her, and he carried her to a village and saw to it that she was well fed. Afterward, he gave the unfortunate cat to one of his disciples, a poor widow, who asked the Master a question.

"Is this not some lost sister, that you love her so?"

Jesus replied, "Verily, she has come from the great household of the Father. And whosoever cares for her and gives her food and drink in her need, shall do the same unto me."

Painting: Holly Sedgwick
Cover design/interior drawings: Mariah Fox

A Memory of Roger Zelazny & John Colter's Ears

Roger and I were in Albuquerque in 1994 signing copies of Wilderness which had just come out.  A lady wearing a huge cowboy hat came up to us and asked us to sign her book.  While Roger was signing, she said, "Recognize me?" I gave her a pretty good stare, then said, "I'm sorry, I don't."  She turned to Roger and he smiled and shook his head.  The lady said, "Maybe this'll help" and she removed her cowboy hat. Neither one of us knew who she was, and she saw that. "I am John Colter's great-great-great niece," she explained. "Our book is a work of fiction," I said, "and I've only seen one photograph of John Colter, so I'm not sure if I'd catch any resemblances." Roger chuckled and the lady asked us to look at her ears. After we gave her ears a good look, she said, "Now do you see it? It was passed on down to me. I have John Colter's ears." "Indeed," Roger said, "I think you do."  That satisfied her. "You know," she mentioned, "I think you both got every little detail just right." She looked fretful, then shook her head. "Except for the ears." I suggested that we did not mention the ears because they never came up in the narrative. "And that's the problem," she admitted.  "Maybe you can put John's big ears in a later edition." Well, that new edition is now published after three previous ones in different languages, and still the ears go unmentioned. I hope she'll forgive us if we leave it that way.

Three Years of Kindness

A few of you have asked for more doggie quotes, so here are some from the newly published, The Mythology of Dogs.

"Friend is the name of a dog" -- Jamaica

"If a man lives up to a dog, he is a saint." -- Zanzibar

"Faith is found in the dog kennel." -- Germany

"He who would stike my dog strikes me." -- Ireland

"A dog will remember three days of kindness for three years." -- Japan

All of these are ways of saying that we love dogs not only for themselves but for what we wish to be ourselves.  For more than 5,000 years we've been with dogs in caves, hovels, houses and mansions.  We cannot live without them.  Nor can we speak too highly of them. Which is why we gathered and collected the stories, legend and lore of over 67 breeds.

The Mythology of Dogs -- updated, revised and re-published

Dog riddles and proverbs from our past show that the dog is not just an icon, but a creature whose "moral sense" as Mark Twain put it, surpasses our own.

For example, where does "dog eat dog world" come from?  Our book says it comes from ancient Greece. But American Indians said it this way: "Dog won't eat bear". This meant the dog was too close in kinship to the bear to eat him.  So the saying also meant: "Dog won't eat dog."  In time Indians and Europeans alike were saying it that way.  Today's relatively modern saying, "Dog eat dog world" is a euphemism for the human condition. It's the unsettling world we live in.

There's also "dog tired", "a dog's life", and just plain "dogged" -- all these say something about our world.  But don't blame the pup, the poop, the doggie bizness, because dogs didn't come up with these phrases. They're innocent, honest, absolutely faithful, fabulous furry friends who sometimes do "talk" or say things like we do.

Once at a conference for veterinarians we were thrilled to see an entire audience of seeing-eye dogs and their partners.  It was musician Paul Winter's greatest moment of glory, we think.  He stood before a full crowd of dog people and doggies, and he said, "Time for the dogs to have their say, to let a little howl go out to the universe."  Every dog in the place sat up and howled at the same time. 

We've seen and heard some amazing things, but this was the most amazing.

All in a dog's day, and all in our book . . .

The Metaphysical Cat

The thing about cats is the way they come and go. Fluidly. In The Metaphysical Cat we talk about
how cats do this and we quote authors from around the world. Here's one from a girl in a middle school classroom in Florida:

MY cat is so, so, so, you know, 'I gotta go.'
Where? is what I wanna know
but she doesn't show
because MY cat's so . . . in the flow.

There's a chapter in our book about come-and-go-cats and we mention our Siamese named Sammie. She used to disappear for weeks, months, and sometimes, years. We heard from some ranch neighbors who lived great distances away from us. They said, "I saw your cat the other day." According to our friend, the syndicated columnist (Animal Doctor) Dr. Michael W. Fox: "The dissonance between local (solar) and internal time (set by the sun's position at home) is how the translocated animal is able to find his square mile on the globe." Translation: an internal compass in the feline brain that gives the cat a geo-magnetic directional sense.

So, "this feels like home . . . this doesn't."  Isn't that the way we get around as humans?  We're just not as well-tuned, or well-magnetized, so to say.

This was a fun book to compile, write and experience over the years.  The Edgar Cayce Foundation liked it and helped to get it translocated to many readers around the globe. Cats, we suppose, did the rest, and it's as our old friend Jeff Lindsay (author of DEXTER) says: "The book is a must-read for anyone sensible enough to live with a cat."

Happy Typers: the first ebook in America!

Ever wondered who typed the first ebook?

And when?

I wondered until recently. . .http://www.staythirstymedia.com/201110-062/html/201110-hausman-typewriters-ebooks.html