Books and Worms

I've got to divest myself of all these books before I have a biblio-breakdown. 

Impact

Government shutdown----Let's see:  U.S. Postal Workers are safe, National Parks workers are not, 800,000 other federal employees will be furloughed.  A government worker I know claims to be so nonessential that he won't even be notified if he's essential or not.  I say Fie!

Learning Something New

  I never knew that Francis Bacon died of pneumonia after stuffing snow inside a chicken while trying to devise a system of refrigeration.  Poor Bacon, poor chicken.

Once said....

I remember translating this from Latin:  Cicero, "On Moral Duties" :  "There are two kinds of injustice; the positive injustice of the aggressor, and the negative injustice of neglecting to defend those who are wronged."  The foundations of justice, according to Cicero: do evil to no man; work for the common good.  *****I'm getting a headache poring over these old books. 

Stats

Explains a lot, if you think about it:   49% of people are dumber than average. 

STOP, or not

   I don't know if there is a regulation for the height of  the placement of a STOP sign, but I think there should be.  I think the STOP sign in the village of Valley Falls at the north end of State Street is too high for it to be readily visible, at least from a regular passenger car.  A height of 5 feet would seem a standard installation; while I haven't measured the one in question, it appears to be about twice as high as it should be.  I think drivers unfamiliar with the terrain could easily miss seeing the sign altogether; it's way up there.  I hope "somebody doesn't get killed."

Trains

To quote Edna St. Vincent Millay:
  "My heart is warm with the friends I make,
        And better friends I'll not be knowing:
   Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
        No matter where it's going."

And we get to ride inside--where there are bathrooms and everything.

Dresses

   News flash: I bought a dress.  That is a rare occurrence nowadays, though there was a time when I had a wardrobe of some pretty spiffy numbers.  I was single, living at home, and in quite  good shape both financially and physically,  so it was fun and interesting to shop at all the local upscale stores  that carried the latest styles and designs.  Almost every weekend, when I was teaching and still living at home, I would purchase a trendy outfit to wear to school that week.  At one time, there was a (secret)  pool conducted by the male teachers to chart which of us single female teachers went the longest without repeating the same outfit.  (Always a dress, because in the 60's, hard to believe, but pants, even pantsuits, were not accepted as items of professional wear.)  A sexist thing to do for sure, but kind of fun.  I was told I won the contest, can't remember how many consecutive days of different dresses, but I did have a lot of nice clothes back then. 
      The last dress of any kind I bought was a 2-piece number for my daughter's wedding, and before that a dress for each of my niece's weddings.  I wore those 3 dresses only one time each, for the occasion it was purchased, and never would have considered wearing any of them again.  I had lost both my touch for fashion, and the physical appearance to carry it off. 
    So it came as a surprise to even me that I bought a dress a few weeks ago, again with the intent of wearing it to a wedding. I'd previously bought a pants outfit, rather drab as befitting my present state when, as I was shopping for something else, I thought why not try a dress.  I selected about a half dozen off the rack, and brought them into the fitting room, where I tried them on and decided none of them would work.  When I brought  them to the "rejected "rack  outside the fitting room, I saw a dress that someone else had left there.  I tried it on and ended up buying it.  I have it at home, and am afraid to look at it.  A dress!  I have the feeling I may well revert to the safe old navy blue pantsuit.  Nowadays I'm not much for any kind of adventure. 

Haute Coutere

   If I were to walk the red carpet, and one of those officious and annoying members of the press were to ask, "Who are you wearing?"  I would have to answer, "Boscov."   (I'm trying to clear out my closet; I really am.)

Lesson #1, As Promised/Threatened

    Object:  To enable the prospective writer to engage the reader
    Topic:  The Persistent Cat
          Boring:The cat comes into the room.
                       I put the cat out.
                       The cat comes in again.
          Transformation into dramatic vein:
                        "There's that cat again.
                          Get out, you cat!"--
                          "What's  the use?"
Now class, which would you rather read?
                            "Neither," you say. 
                            "Well, *#@*  you!"
      

OK, it's me. Sort of.

  I googled  the term "daisy cutter"  and now I get it, kind of. It's a bomb and  a beer.  It's a military term and also a soccer term.  I guess it related to some powerful drive that can knock a field of daisies right off their roots and flatten an entire area.  I just didn't connect it to a papal action, and I would say the writer, in her quest to be edgy, has stretched the metaphor to where the meaning is murky.  Roses AND daisies---you're trying too hard.   Moral: We're never too old to learn.  (Or to criticize either.)

Reading the Newspaper

     I don't much care what format the newspaper is in.  I just like to be able to understand what I read.  I know certain terms have crept into the language, e.g. apps, selfie, and I've been able to assimilate them with no problem.  However, when I'm reading a rather formally written editorial, and I'm at a loss for meaning of content, I become uncomfortable:  Could it be me?   In today's paper, a  Viewpoint piece about the Pope says that he "doesn't sprinkle rose petals and platitudes,"  but "drops daisy cutters of truth."  I get the metaphor about the roses, but am stumped by whatever a daisy cutter is. Could it be a time-worn term that I've missed out on somehow?  A new expression?  A misprint?  Maybe I didn't read the entire article carefully enough.  I'll have to go back and see.  Oh, the horror of self doubt.

What's MY Lesson?

September is in its gloaming, and I feel the need to teach something to somebody.  I'm tired now, but am devising a lesson plan.  Maybe a writing lesson.....Check back tomorrow.

Heavy Weight

     So early in the year for it to be a 3-blanket night, but that's the way it is around here. I like to feel the weight of blankets piled up on me when I sleep.  I think it stems from my childhood.  Here's the back story:
    My mother's family home was in a rural outpost of  Rensselaer County; it was bereft of most traces of civilization, including paved roads and electricity.  Like cable service of later times, electric utilities were not available in sparsely settled regions, as on what is now called North Pole Road.  My grandmother, uncle and aunt lived on an unserved road, and had to wait until there were enough families to justify the power company's installing power poles where they lived. It was after a long wait and much anticipation that the family  finally became wired, some time in the late 1940's. 
      First purchase was a refrigerator: out with the icebox.  Next, an electric sewing machine, maybe my aunt's long-wished for possession, but perhaps because that was the only other electrified item that came to mind. My uncle was a self-taught electronic genius for his time and had been able to rig up battery operated radio transmissions, and possibly even their first 7-inch screen television.  So what else could there possibly be?
      Anyway, my aunt took up sewing with a vengeance, and for a time specialized in quilts.  My mother, and a few other folks, would save scraps of material, mostly culled from worn-out or outgrown clothing and bring them to her for the patchwork quilts.  In this time, the go-to practice was to make do with what you had, not to buy stuff that could be substituted for.  When the directions called for cotton batting as fill for the quilts, my aunt would not have had that, so she used bedsheets as the filling, folding several of them in order to make the quilt nice and thick.  In time, my aunt made a nice patchwork quilt for the bed my sister and I shared.  I remember tracing the background of a number of the quilted patches, recognizing a dress or skirt we had once worn. 
    There was no heat of any kind in the upstairs of our house, and, moreover, my mother was so worried about house fires that she would put the fire out in the downstairs stove at night. No need to be concerned about freezing pipes as there weren't any---all the water was outside.  My mother would always go upstairs to hear our prayers and tuck us in, and  the last part of our nighttime ritual was when she would spread the blankets out over us.  On the frigid nights in a completely unheated house, a nice thick lovingly-handcrafted quilt seemed like a great idea.  But when my  mother, a powerful woman, tossed the quilt over the lightweight bodies of my sister and me, we initially lost our breaths, and were rendered almost motionless.  That state of being was preferable to freezing, however, so we endured the weight, at least during the coldest weeks of winter, and since it was our mother who laid the quilt over us, we felt warm and secure.  So in tonight's chill, I will spurn the so called comfort and efficiency of my warm but lightweight microfiber quilt, and pile on at least 2 additional blankets or comforters or whatever is available, knowing that at least one of the components can never be replaced.
   

Get off my lawn!

Nobody wants any of the stuff  on eBay, even if it's only a dollar or two, but if anybody wants to get rid of anything, just put it on my front lawn, near the road.  It WILL be gone.  A few summers ago, I had some extra lawn chairs I couldn't use.  I set them on my lawn,  with a Free sign and went into the house to get some twine to fasten the sign.  When I came out, a few minutes later, a man was loading them into his car.  This year I brought my vintage "clamshell" chair to the lawn sale at the library, since I was only 2 weeks from surgery and needed the firmness of the metal chair. While I was in the library for a brief time, two people offered to buy the chair.  Maybe it's a lawn furniture thing, but anything on my lawn, for free, is sure to go. 

"Way leads on to way"

  September is almost over, yet though time now generally slips away in record time, September has seemed like a long month.  It's the first September since I started first grade that I haven't gone back to school in some capacity, except for a few years when I worked at the Education Department, and that was school-connected in a way.  The month also serves as a reminder that for the first time since I was eleven years old, I haven't been employed in some capacity.  Being thus free and unencumbered brings with it a sense of isolation previously unknown.  I now subtract employers and co-workers as well as students from my circle of existence. No staff meetings, no emails, no letters, no messages left on my answering machine, no deadlines,  The way our society is set up, and at all levels, is when your services and presence are no longer required, contact tends to cease.  I could learn to knit, or quilt, or join a book club---but as one of my kids used to say, "Aw, 'it!"

Conception

  First thing this morning on the Today show, a chance to see the moment of  conception.  No, not that exactly, but just as the man's sperm was about to be introduced to the woman's egg, I changed the channel.  I didn't want to intrude on their privacy.

Bon Appetit

    There was a bag of Gum Drop Cookie dough on top of my TV.  But that was not as scary as a brown paper bag of Chicken Fingers on the bathroom vanity.  What's next?

Oily Dealings

  We had our furnace and water heater cleaned last week.  No problems there, but the technician said the oil tank needed to be replaced because of rust.  He declared it unsafe, and he put  a "Stop Fill" on the tank.  They offered to replace the tank for a mere $2595, with a $200  discount , I guess for being such a good customer.  We were able to get a local estimate of no more than $1400.  Yippee, we just saved almost a thousand bucks. 

To sleep....

  I don't mean Mr. Murphy or Mr. Pullman.  Congratulations to whoever  invented the bed.  It was a wonderful idea.

The News Today

  I just heard of a traffic fatality where four people were killed when a car upended over a traffic divider.  I remembered the time I saw a scene like that.  We were driving along at about 70 mph, as was the traffic across the divider, though we weren't really aware of that traffic flow.  Suddenly an explosion of light and sound and flying objects. I thought, though probably did not speak, "Look, an accident over there,"  as the SUV careened along the barrier, emitting a volley of screeches, clangs, sparks and flying auto parts.  But before the thought could have been completely finished,  the scene changed.  "Over there" became "right in front of us,"  as the vehicle upended over the barrier directly into the path of our car.  It spun, landed eventually on one of its sides, and came sliding down the highway.  I thought it's going to hit us, and tried to picture how bad the collision would be.  We were in the right lane, and drove as far onto the shoulder as possible and the sliding monster finally came to a halt in the left and middle lanes, as it was on its side.  Tragedy averted.  I wonder how the couple in the SUV are doing.  They were both able to walk, though the woman appeared to be in shock.  I tried to google the accident, but could find no information.  Just another road event   if you're not involved. 

September Prophecy

What ever happened to the killshot?  Or to Snowdon, for that matter.  Of course, September still has some days left.  Kenya had its own killshot, and who knows what's in store?

Odd Numbers

   When I was 11 years old, I considered myself to be grown up.  After all, I had a regular job, was pulling in $3.00 a week, and my mother on occasion would  borrow from me.  I kept my wages in a Lipton Tea box in the right-hand corner of the shelves in my bedroom. 
   It just occurred to me that my mother then was the same age as my daughter is now.  OMG
    ***And furthermore, my oldest grandchild is the same age as I was then. Whether he considers himself grown up, I'm not certain.

Friable?

Yes, I do believe I am.

Envy

   I wonder if the high-stakes winners on the game shows are naturally unappealing, or if I just feel that way because I'm jealous of their good fortune.

Ant

  There was a time when we actually bought ants, or at least I have  memory of having purchased an ant habitat for a young nature enthusiast or two,  and the ants must have come with it, as I'm pretty sure it was a closed system.  I can not recall what became of it, or of its inhabitants.  I know that the advertised "endless hours"  of observation of ant life in an ecosystem came nowhere near the time spent watching the ants in the driveway, alternately feeding them from those little sugar packets and devising ways of torture.
     And so I find myself, in the fading days of summer, sitting on my front steps and observing ants.  I should clarify that all my references are to the medium-sized black ants, not those innocuous tiny red ones that appear to be an infestation, and definitely not those scary big black ones that seem bent on destroying something.  The ants are just regular ants, the kind that stay outside and amuse young children with their hell-bent scurrying around.   All documentation states that ants are highly disciplined in their lives, with all their societal tasks performed in a regimented manner.  But you would never know that by watching them.  They scurry back and forth, with a single ant laboriously carrying a large crumb of something, way bigger than itself, only to release it, seemingly at random on the ground, and then take off in another direction.  Maybe it was a  prearranged drop off point, to be picked up later by a designated transporter ant; no one here will ever know. The follow-up was not that assiduously performed.
   The ant this day is pacing back and forth, when from no apparent source, it is suddenly carrying a large piece of something, a piece of cookie perhaps.  A large foot tromps down on the ant as it is navigating the brick sidewalk, an instrument of sudden death it would seem.  But no, the ant has slid into the cracks between the bricks, and it quickly emerges, burden dropped, and races down the path to where a dead leaf has fallen on the bricks. It halts its progress, and dives under the leaf, where it remains motionless.  I sit, watching it.  It cowers under the leaf, watching, waiting, for some unknown danger to be gone, for some allotted period of time to pass.   I can see it clearly, can determine whether or not it has a future.  I go inside.  The sun is going down anyway. 

Million Second Agony

  I watched just enough of Ryan Seacrest's new show last night to see a young woman plunged into agony.  An awkward moment for sure, worsened by the host's, after acknowledging victory for her opponent, telling her to stay right there, giving her false hope.  Evidently it took her a fraction of a second too long to multiply 16 x 6.  Sob, sob; Ho-hum.

I caved

Against my avowed wishes, I did succumb to watching DWTS after all.  My major concern now is not that Valerie will suffer a seizure (though it's a given she'll withdraw after a few shows), not that Jack will have a relapse,  not that Bill or the comedian will have a heart attack, but that Derek will herniate a disc or other body part  if he has to lift Amber.  ****(I have a feeling Elizabeth Berkeley will not last as long as some seem to think.)

Metaphors and Similes and Such

   Sunday morning, 2 different current events interview  shows, 2 new expressions, new to me anyway.  The interviewer, leading up to a question,  says to the politician, "Well, after you've potted those plants, what is your strategy about.....?"   Less than a half hour later, another interviewer, addressing what he evidently regards as a minor  issue, says to the interviewee, "That's like the broccoli on the news plate." Must be they're focusing on the agricultural aspect, rather clumsily I would say.

Gone

  I read his obituary today.  I had been thinking of him just the other day when I was going through some old papers in an endless pursuit of  trying to organize.  I came across some  pictures of myself, back at a time when I didn't shy away from the camera.  I was remembering that one of my fellow teachers, back when the world was new, would comment that I looked like Ann Blyth.  I believed he meant it as a compliment, though the actress had been out of the spotlight for some time, and I wasn't sure how attractive she was considered.  Now I realize he made the comparison based on ethnic heritage. He was Irish, with a complexion so fair that a friend and fellow teacher used to say he looked pink, added to by the fact that he was immaculately groomed. 
    His obituary made no mention of the year or two that he taught at HVC, so I don't imagine he would have had any memory at all of anybody or anything  that was part of that experience. But my mind holds on to certain bits and pieces of the past in vivid detail.  I can picture the man as he was then, can see him clearly, hear his voice.  He taught English as did I.  We each had a class of ninth graders, and his room was just a few doors down from mine.  I should mention that he was very well educated and intellectual, proficient in several languages.  The ninth grade text included the poem, "The Highwayman"by Alfred Noyes, which I had been teaching for several years by then. 
    On a day when I had a prep period and he was teaching, I heard his voice instructing the class that the author of the poem was Alfred Noyes, but he pronounced it Alfred "Noi-yea."  I was appalled because I'd always pronounced the name "Noise."   I felt uneducated and provincial, wondering how I was going to undo the gaffe I'd made.  I could conceivably correct it for my current classes, but not for the years before.  My insecurity was relieved when I later found out I was correct.  Of course, I never told him, so all those students in his succeeding classes would hear an English author having his name pronounced with a French accent.  Oh, the horror!  Anyway, he left high school teaching and went on to the college level, so he presumably had no more interaction with "The Highwayman,"  "when the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas."

Love with strings.....

     "Gone, Gone, Gone" is a really touching love song that comes with a redeemable rider.    The singer (Phil Phillips) proclaims his undying love that will last long after his "Baby" is gone.  (Where she may have gone is undetermined.) But he says he'll be there to help at any time, offering even to shut down the city lights and carry her away from war.   He'll do anything for her and love her forever.  But listen carefully--there's a lesson to be learned valid for all times.  In the midst of his proclamation of eternal love is a verse:  "Give me reasons to believe That you would do the same for me.  And I would do it for you."  
    Nothing in life is free:  you don't get anything for nothing.  There's always a price, even if the buyer is willing to pay. 
    BTW    I think this may be the only song ever written with lyrics that include the word "poultice."

Lost in the World

  No wonder people succumb to senility, or Alzheimer's, or dementia, or whatever you want to call it.  For a person used to thinking and at least gaining a minimal understanding of how things function, living in a world where explanations exist is no longer possible, at least for some of us.  I'm not referring to trying to gain a rational explanation of human behavior, which is and always has been based on whim and fancy and ambition and such.  I'm talking about regulated practices and standards and cause and effect and precedents.  We joke that we need lawyers to untangle legalese, the language intended to obscure interpretation.  But it's not really comical when you think you should be able to grasp a concept but realize you lack some piece that prohibits comprehension. For example, medical billing:
    I know healthcare, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Hillary-care, and all that preceded present health delivery systems is a tangled and complicated web, fraught with codicils and exceptions and secondary insurance, co-pays, co-conspirators, etc.  But why can't a normal human being understand what would seem to be a simple step. A surgeon's fee appears on a statement as $9200.  Medicare allows $1450, and pays $1135, leaving a balance of $815 to be paid by the patient, who hopefully has secondary insurance to pay another portion.  That's a simple process to understand, except the part where the initial billing is $9200.  I assume the doctor has to set a high number so that he will be reimbursed a sufficient amount to justify his expertise.  But why does that figure need to be so high?  Those who are setting the percentages know the actuality of it; no one is thinking that there is any chance that Medicare is going to reimburse the full amount, so why play with such an inflated stack of figures?  This is just one of an array of scenarios that I don't understand, and can only believe that
I could comprehend if I really wanted to, but it's not worth the effort.  Isn't the breakdown  of cognitive thought a symptom of senility?  Or do just the elderly make that connection, and don't bother to connect synapses.
   

Mom and Mama Cass

   Some time back in the 70's, Mama Cass was a guest on one of the talk shows, Mike Douglas maybe, Dinah Shore, I'm not sure which.  Her mother was in the audience, and the host turned to her to ask what she thought of her daughter's liberal and controversial  lifestyle.  Her mother, probably in her 50's, answered that she was fine with it, and only wished that she herself was alive to enjoy it.  I remember thinking it was an odd choice of words, since there Mom was, looking very alive.  I suppose she felt that only the young are capable of really enjoying life.  I understand now more than then.

Mr. Bojangles

     Mr. Bojangles had a dog for 15 years until its death, and after 20 years he still grieved.  I had a dog, Lassie, for 11 years and after more than 50 years I still grieve.  She became my dog when I was 8 years old, and died when I was 19.  We believed it was from complications of a rabies vaccination, which was in its early stages of distribution at the time.  Lassie and our other dogs absolutely loved bring indoors in the evening, and they would stretch out and try to be invisible when night fell and it was time for them to go out to their doghouses.  My mother at that time did not want dogs in the house during the night. I don't know the reason; it was just the way things were.  Lassie had been sick for a week or so, not wanting to eat, though otherwise with no visible ailment.  So she was allowed to stay in the house overnight, and it was cold and wintry.  After I finished my college homework, I let her out before bedtime, and stood by the open door so she could come back in.  But on her way back from attending to her business, she stopped by the door where I was standing and looked at me, and then, so unusual for her, passed by to go into her doghouse.  I remember her making eye contact  with me before she continued on.  In the morning she would be dead.  I can still see her looking at me; she had brown eyes.

Mad Writing Skills

    I thought of a new career or at least temporary vocation for myself, but it was shot down.  I'd thought I could enter the job market as a translator, not for another language per se, but as a translator of cursive writing.  Since it's not going to be a focus of the Common Core curriculum, and is destined to be no longer taught, it seems there might be a need for interpreting cursive script in case some of the newly educated wonder what those historical documents actually said, or how to unlock the mystery in that cache of old love letters uncovered in somebody's attic.  But alas, my hopes for a new career were dashed when it was pointed out, correctly perhaps, that the secrets of cursive could be unlocked by computers, and more efficiently than I would be able to do.  Moreover, reading further I find that perhaps while teaching the laborious task of writing cursive may become obsolete,  schools may teach only how to read it. So I turn my thoughts of writing to another format:
      I was intrigued by an obituary notice I read in last week's paper. Obituaries used to be standard, formulaic documentation composed by the funeral directors in concert with newspaper editors. But increasingly, the prose of obituaries has taken off in widely disparate directions.  I was told once, by someone in a position to know, that contemporary obituaries have often been written by the deceased.  That would account for the listing of survivors including beloved  pets, even lizards, as appeared in a recent obituary.  But the death notice that caught my attention described the deceased as having died "while resting alone."  He loved lighthouses and daschunds, the obituary went on, and appeared as a stoic and ascetic loner with  a haunting air about him, "a walker between worlds, neither dead nor alive,"  suited to life as a lighthouse keeper or in residence at an Irish monastery.  Very compelling and fanciful impressions of a life, until the illusion-shattering line that, "His mother was not among those he held dear."  According to the notice, his mother has been dead for some years, so the motivation for  the jarring note will never be clear, at least to the uninvolved reader.   I'm not sure I could compete with the force of whoever wrote this particular obituary, but it makes me think maybe, for a start, I should construct my own.  We may have no control over what is said about us after we die, so this could be our last chance to set the record straight.

    

September Song

" I suppose I should collect my books and go on back to school," but there's no longer any school to go to.......

Jerry and The Pope

Do I understand this correctly:   The Pope is against providing aid to  the persecuted Syrians, while  Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer were  arrested under the Duty to Rescue law, for failure to help the fat guy being carjacked at gunpoint, and are still doing time as far as we know.

Lost in Translation

Time Warner Cable ad says I "can stream live video without buffering,"  and I don't even know what that means.

Tech Support Redux

   Another call today from same outfit as yesterday.  Sounded like the same guy, but today his name was Jim, not John.  He would not stop talking, intent on having me turn on my computer.  This time I told him not to call again.  Tomorrow he'll probably be Joe.  I don't quite get the angle, but figure it can't be good.
    I googled the above, and found the description almost word for word.  Most likely based in Nigeria, they attempt to try to sell you some product to protect you from infecting viruses.  They like to prey on the elderly.  The bastards.

Scram, you scammer.

    Today I was on the computer when the phone rang.  The caller said he was from Windows Technical Department, and this was a check-up call.  He asked me to turn on my computer so he could do the checking for me, the customer.  I said no thanks, and hung up.  He called back, still wanting me to turn on my computer. I asked him his name and he said John, and he "likened to give proper knowledge." I told him I was sorry but I could not trust any incoming calls, and asked  for the  telephone number of his company so I could contact them. He supplied me with a number, but still wanted me to turn on my computer.  (He did not know it was already on.)  I hung up again.  Later I tried the number he gave me and the message said it was "a canceled number."  Big, bad John.

Tremor

    I was standing near the doorway, looking at one of the exhibits in the Veterans Building.  Suddenly I felt the floor shake, and I immediately thought earthquake.  I looked down and the old wooden floor was moving, which  served to confirm my thought, until I turned around and saw a woman had entered the building.  She must have weighed close to 500 pounds, judging her size against another person I've known, and for each step she took the wooden floorboards creaked and settled.  She was a young woman and moving with apparent relative ease, but I expect that may not always be an option for her, or for that matter, for the many others of a similar weight who were at the fair.  A grossly obese person used to be a rarity, often the subject of stares, but unfortunately (maybe fortunately for them), this is no longer the case.  The only reason I noticed this woman was that I thought she was an earthquake happening. 

Dog -gone Almost

   The agility course was set up  for the 4-H dog show,  and dogs and  kids  were ready.   A beagle showed early promise but would not  participate in some of the obstacles his handler chose, and so didn't accumulate as many points as he could have.  A little pomeranian was willing but its small size limited what it could do, too small to see the light at the end of the tunnel and too light to move the teeter board. I had already predicted victory would go to the only border collie in the competition, but he apparently was new to the obstacles and lost his focus.  A very pretty boxer took the apparent lead, performing very well at whichever obstacle he was faced with.  I thought he would win until the next dog, a golden retriever, entered the course.  At first she was goofy and distracted but settled down and ran through the remaining obstacles at record-breaking speed, and then decided on her own to repeat some of them, which accumulated extra points. 
      I wanted to see whether the boxer or the golden was the winner, but I had to leave after the next entrant.  The handler of the tiny black poodle took the leash off her dog, as most handlers did.  The dog, probably weighing only about 3 lbs., was doing fairly well for her size, and running the course very quickly when while running at a high rate of speed ran right  underneath the sparse railing at the end of the barn out into the roadway just as a tram was passing by.  Everyone was aghast, the young girl running from the building calling her dog, one man flagging down the driver and several other people looking underneath to see if the dog was there.  Of course the show stopped while the search was underway.  I think the dog, traveling at its top speed, might have run right beneath the moving vehicle, but I couldn't wait to see.  As I was leaving, probably 5 or 6 minutes later, a group of people entered the building in hot pursuit of the poodle, still clocking about 20 mph on its tiny little legs.  I don't know which animal won the obstacle course; I suppose  they resumed the competition, but I didn't stay.