The dog in the picture is formally known as Magnolia Maybelle.
She's been in the family since last April (April fool's!) when we rescued her from traffic in Riverside. Poor thing: she was caught between lanes of moving cars and no one was stopping to let her finish crossing. She was terrified. My husband stepped on the brakes to stop one lane of traffic and I ran out waving my arms to stop the other. I coaxed her to the median where she crept over to me, put her head in my hand, and fell sound asleep. When took her home, she slept for 4 days solid, waking only to eat and pee.
At first we called her Maybe -- maybe she had a home, maybe she didn't. We tried to find one, but no luck. She eventually became Magnolia after the street where she was found; we added the Maybelle to convert Maybe into something that would reflect her more permanent status in our family. Plus Magnolia Maybelle sounded southern, our own Blanche Dubois ("I have always relied on the kindness of strangers"). Of course, we rarely call her by her formal name. She is, interchangeably, Maggie, Mag-a-no-lia, Maggie May, Maggie Maybe, Maggie Mayhem, and Magnet.
Since we've been in this area, we've rescued 4 dogs and passed by many more roaming without collars and in dangerous spaces. I see them everywhere -- some look healthy, some are scabby sacks of bones. I worry when I have to pass one by that I will drive past its broken body on my way back home. I wish those who own dogs would keep them fenced or on leash, and at least collared and tagged, but all too often they don't.
I have noticed that the number of dogs in the streets has been increasing in the last year. As homes are foreclosed and families are having to move to rental situations, some are simply leaving their pets behind. Evolutionary biologists, however, think that humans and dogs have co-evolved, that we have each shaped the other's species. Dogs, in other words, are not wolves and those who simply leave their dogs to go it alone are not doing them any favors. I wish instead that they would take their companions to a good no kill shelter or otherwise try to find them a new home if they cannot provide for them.
I also wish that people would spay and neuter their dogs. By the time we found Maggie, she'd had at least one litter, probably about 8 or 9 months earlier. This means her pups are likely also out and wandering (and reproducing) or dead. Some counties (including Riverside) in an effort to curb the geometric increase of companion animals have initiated low cost spay/neuter clinics. The Riverside Department of Animal Services (last link) also helps connect people to other support services and agencies for companion animals.
Maggie has settled in and her antics bring us (mostly) great pleasure. She and her older brothers (see small picture) have sorted things out and become quite companionable. Our home is a noisy, furry, bumptious place and we humans are well loved and looked after. Not a bad deal, considering that we just happened into all 3 of them.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Interesting Event in My Town
I subscribe to a couple of listservs in my town. One is a neighborhood watch/news type list and the other is the Downtown Area Neighborhood Association. This keeps me in the loop on some of the events that are going on in my area.
The following announcement was sent by both lists today and the event looks kind of interesting (though I must say I am not a big fan of death related things). It occurs the day after Halloween, appropriately enough. Maybe I'll go?
The following announcement was sent by both lists today and the event looks kind of interesting (though I must say I am not a big fan of death related things). It occurs the day after Halloween, appropriately enough. Maybe I'll go?
A Celebration To Die For
Where:
When: November 1, 2008
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
Admission: $10 per person or $25 per family
A multicultural event to benefit the restoration of
Evergreen Historic Memorial Cemetery
Dance with the Day St. Dixielanders in the Jazz Funeral Procession
See Ballet Folklorico and Dia de los Meurtos dances
Hear Old English Dance Macabre
Enjoy the Hearse Club collection & Paranormal Tours by Kirchoff
Refreshments by Phood on Main
Rethinking Home
I have been thinking about my last post and feel oddly disturbed for dissing Levittown.
So, in the effort to relieve my guilt and to be fair, let me mention some of the upsides of Levittown.
In theory, Levittown embodied a promise: a piece of the American Dream for young, working class families. Here families could potentially own a single-family home and raise their kids in a safe and neighborly environment. And to some degree, this proved true in my case.
I grew up on a block with 14 other kids all within a year or two in age of one another. There was always someone to play with, someone to hang with. In the warm weather we hung out in the street playing frisbee, wiffle ball, and a game we just called chase, which involved teams and a kind of elaborate hide and seek that finding and capturing your opponents. We swam in above ground backyard pools (remember "Marco Polo," anyone?). We rode our bikes to the local parks or to the beach. In the evenings we sat on the curb or in someone's backyard, listening to the radio, talking, joking, flirting, being.
We were also well-supervised as every parent on the block had "bossing rights" over us and every parent knew every kid. Politeness required calling our friends' folks Mr. or Mrs., but the formality belied the familiarity that underwrote these relationships.
The homogeneity that the suburbs tends to promote can be insidious. On the other hand, last Spring, I was back in Levittown for a visit and spent a lovely Saturday having lunch with Lisa, Linda, Junior and Ant'ny... kids from the block now 20 plus years later. And, we picked up the conversation as if we'd seen each other yesterday. There is something to be said for this.
So, in the effort to relieve my guilt and to be fair, let me mention some of the upsides of Levittown.
In theory, Levittown embodied a promise: a piece of the American Dream for young, working class families. Here families could potentially own a single-family home and raise their kids in a safe and neighborly environment. And to some degree, this proved true in my case.
I grew up on a block with 14 other kids all within a year or two in age of one another. There was always someone to play with, someone to hang with. In the warm weather we hung out in the street playing frisbee, wiffle ball, and a game we just called chase, which involved teams and a kind of elaborate hide and seek that finding and capturing your opponents. We swam in above ground backyard pools (remember "Marco Polo," anyone?). We rode our bikes to the local parks or to the beach. In the evenings we sat on the curb or in someone's backyard, listening to the radio, talking, joking, flirting, being.
We were also well-supervised as every parent on the block had "bossing rights" over us and every parent knew every kid. Politeness required calling our friends' folks Mr. or Mrs., but the formality belied the familiarity that underwrote these relationships.
The homogeneity that the suburbs tends to promote can be insidious. On the other hand, last Spring, I was back in Levittown for a visit and spent a lovely Saturday having lunch with Lisa, Linda, Junior and Ant'ny... kids from the block now 20 plus years later. And, we picked up the conversation as if we'd seen each other yesterday. There is something to be said for this.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Going home
Well, a funny thing happened right after I set up this blog to investigate my adopted home in the Inland Empire...
I spent the better part of week in NY, at a conference that was held about 7 miles from where I grew up and where my mom still lives in the house we lived in.
Levittown. My friends and I called it Leave-it-town. It is the original suburb -- designed by Sam Levitt to provide affordable housing for returning WWII vets. The center of Levittown is filled with Levitt houses... each house exactly the same on little square plots of land. The story is that when people first moved in, they'd often walk into their neighbors' houses, mistaking them for their own... that's how much alike everything was. My section of Levittown was built a little later... in my neighborhood, there are two kinds of houses: ranch, ranch, cape, ranch, ranch cape, ranch, ranch, cape....
We lived in a cape, next to a ranch on one side and an empty parking lot that eventually became a garden apartment complex.
Running through the center of the area, from the University I was visiting (Hofstra) to well past the turn for my mom's house, is a 6 or is it 8 lane street called Hempstead Turnpike... it is strip mall, fast food, gas station bleak. I had forgotten how ugly it is, how much I hate its retail insistence, its flatness, its mundanity. Is that a word? Looking at it, I suddenly realized how much like so many sections of So Cal it is... and it dawned on me why the IE felt oddly familiar when I moved here.
I spent the better part of week in NY, at a conference that was held about 7 miles from where I grew up and where my mom still lives in the house we lived in.
Levittown. My friends and I called it Leave-it-town. It is the original suburb -- designed by Sam Levitt to provide affordable housing for returning WWII vets. The center of Levittown is filled with Levitt houses... each house exactly the same on little square plots of land. The story is that when people first moved in, they'd often walk into their neighbors' houses, mistaking them for their own... that's how much alike everything was. My section of Levittown was built a little later... in my neighborhood, there are two kinds of houses: ranch, ranch, cape, ranch, ranch cape, ranch, ranch, cape....
We lived in a cape, next to a ranch on one side and an empty parking lot that eventually became a garden apartment complex.
Running through the center of the area, from the University I was visiting (Hofstra) to well past the turn for my mom's house, is a 6 or is it 8 lane street called Hempstead Turnpike... it is strip mall, fast food, gas station bleak. I had forgotten how ugly it is, how much I hate its retail insistence, its flatness, its mundanity. Is that a word? Looking at it, I suddenly realized how much like so many sections of So Cal it is... and it dawned on me why the IE felt oddly familiar when I moved here.
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