Kendall Dunkelberg

Day of the Dead: the genesis of a poem

Okay, I’ll admit it. Sometimes I check my stats in WordPress to see how many people are visiting my blog and what they’re looking for. Lately, the number of visitors has risen dramatically, largely because of some posts I wrote awhile back while troubleshooting my DSL modem. Blogging lesson: if you want traffic, write about technology. But this blog was initially supposed to be about poetry and life. I can’t help it if sometimes technology takes over life! However, I was pleased to see someone recently was searching on an interpretation for my poem “Day of the Dead.” That caused me to reread the poem on Nov. 1, and though I don’t want to tell you how to interpret it — isn’t that as much the reader’s choice as the writer’s? — I would like to give a little background information.

That poem was written in Nov. 2005 on a beautiful, sunny fall day when I was walking around the property at Artcroft, a truly unique and magical artist retreat near Carlisle, Kentucky. I had the great pleasure to spend time on the farm of Robert and Maureen Barker at a time of year when no other artists were around. For much of the day, I had the place to myself and could walk the pastures, woods, and ponds looking for inspiration. One day, Maureen showed me an old cemetery on the property, and that became the genesis of the poem. There we found several gravestones scattered on the ground near what had been a field. They were either toppled by the forces of nature, by vandals, or by a farmer clearing the field and not paying attention to the old graveyard at its edge. The history of the site remains a mystery.

At the time, I had been thinking of my own father’s death a couple of years before in December. The poem “Requiem” had come to me a few days previously. The time of year and the time of my life seemed to coincide for contemplating mortality — a theme that I wanted to explore in the book Time Capsules, as I was realizing a seasonal cycle for the collection that was beginning to come together. The epitaph in the poem “Gone, but not forgotten,” came from one of the stones, though unfortunately not one that I captured in a picture. The irony of the statement was not lost on us, and yet as Maureen and I paid reverence to those whose stones had been scattered there, they were not forgotten entirely, though we did not know anything more than their names and dates.

Of course with the title, I was thinking of the the Mexican celebration on Nov. 1, as well as the more familiar version of All Saints Day, a day of remembrance. The belief that a veil is removed between two worlds at certain times is a common one. It may be the coming of winter that turns our thoughts towards death or it may be a reminder like visiting a graveyard. We may need these reminders, both to acknowledge those who have gone before us and to return to the everyday world with a renewed sense of vitality.

So I thank whoever searched for the meaning of this poem for giving me the reason to revisit it and remember where and why it came to me. And I thank Robert and Maureen for providing the experience and the time for reflection that allowed it to become a poem.

Fun with e-books (or Never Say Never)

Quite awhile back, I wrote a complaint about e-books. My issue at the time was that Kindle didn’t include page numbers from the original print versions of e-books, but I was curious that students were starting to use them in one of my classes. They presented a challenge for scholarship, but I could see the advantage.

Also awhile ago on the Creative Writing Pedagogy group in Facebook, I weighed in on the question of whether to use a textbook in a creative writing class (the original question was whether to use a how-to book). I argued that a textbook gave me someone else’s perspective on creative writing; someone I could agree with or disagree with in a kind of dialogue with the author. I felt this was good for my students, and though I still feel that way, in the end my dissatisfaction with my current textbook and the alternatives let me to decide to try writing my own. For now, I call them ‘Notes,’ and not a book, but as I thought about how to make them available to my students, I decided to go with an ebook format.

Creating a basic e-book actually turned out to be relatively easy, though there may be issues I would need to iron out if I wanted it to look more professional. Still the workflow that I’ve adopted works very well and produces a decent looking final product that can be read in several format.

I opted for the epub format initially, since it is open source and can be read by most readers. My biggest concern was that students could have access to the text without much hassle. After weighing several options, I decided the best way to write the text of the book would be in Pages. This was true because I already own it, even though I haven’t used it extensively. I have it to read texts that students send me and to open the old AppleWorks documents on my computer — yes, I’ve been a Mac user since the days of ClarisWorks and AppleWorks. But the biggest selling point was that it would export a document to epub format very easily. I tried a couple of simple documents, and the output was pretty good. I also learned I could create a table of contents that would then be the table of contents in the epub document. To do this, I followed Apple’s help to set up styles that would be included in the table of contents. Once I did that, the TOC updated automatically as I wrote and applied styles.

Besides epub, I decided I should also give students a pdf of the book. Once again, in Pages this is easy. I just print and then save a copy as pdf. The only challenge came when trying to make the book available on a Kindle.

Of course, Amazon won’t read the epub and Pages cant’ export to the mobi format (one of two that Kindle uses). Fortunately, there was a solution that worked incredibly well. It came from Amazon in the form of Kindle Previwere. All I have to do is open the epub file in the previewer and it creates a mobi version.

I upload all three of these files into my course in Blackboard, then copy and paste the text into a discussion forum for good measure. This allows students who don’t want to download the files a chance to read them online, and they can comment on the chapters as they read them. I make a new thread for each section of the chapter so the discussion gets broken up a bit

More Fun with the Phone Company

We all love the phone company, right? This time I’m not writing about ATT or my dsl modem (see previous posts, if interested). This time, I’m writing about Virgin Mobile, whose prepaid phones we’ve been using for some time now. We’ve started to notice that their customer service is going down the tubes and their prices are going up. We’ve actually never been very satisfied with their coverage, either — we get it in Columbus where we don’t use a cell phone very often, but on the road, where we might, we were constantly searching for service. Many of the places where we go were just outside of the coverage area, including both of our parents’ homes, and a lot of road in between. Kim wanted to use an iPhone so she could connect with wifi and text messaging more easily. She found a good deal on a nice one through ebay, and decided to go with another prepaid plan PagePlus. Even though Virgin now has iPhones, on PagePlus, she could bring her own phone that she bought–it has to be a Verizon or PagePlus phone–and the coverage is through Verizon’s network.

I found a blog post at Geek in the Forest by a woman who had done exactly what we wanted to do, and so we were off. Here’s where the challenge began! The problems so far have not been with PagePlus, but instead with Virgin Mobile. There wouldn’t have been a problem, if we didn’t want to save friends and family the hassle of entering a new phone number for her (and updating schools, etc.). First, we had to make sure she had active service — we had let it run out, so had to put a little money on the phone to start the account up. That’s not so bad, and was something we expected. The cost of adding money to the account was the same as the cost of getting a new number at PagePlus, and Kim used up most of the money to make a few calls before we made the switch, so we really weren’t out anything.

The problem was that Virgin doesn’t tell you your actual account number. You use your phone number to log in to their website, and there is no mention of the account number anywhere in your account information. I had to call customer service to get the information we needed to port the phone number to PagePlus. That’s a hassle, but still not too bad — or it wasn’t until I tried to call.

Virgin has gone to completely automated “customer service.” When I called, I got the typical menu of options: press 1 to get information you probably already know, press 2 to do something you don’t want to do, etc. Pressing 5 was for “anything else,” but it didn’t lead to a person–it led to another menu of things I might want to do, but didn’t. I tried a few options on a few phone calls. Nowhere in the labyrinth of the customer service menus was there an option to talk to a person. I tried filling out the form on their website. After several minutes, I got an automated reply that just thanked me for contacting them and said they’d get back to me eventually. I called again.

This time, out of desperation, I tried a trick I’ve heard of for the auto-menu-from-hell. I dialed 0, even though it’s not one of the menu options listed. This took me to a ‘secret’ mini-menu of three items. I forget the first two, but the third was support, which sounded promising and did lead me to a real person. She was actually quite nice and gave me the information I needed. Now PagePlus is trying to port our number again, and soon we will have a new account (unless there is some new wrinkle) on a new carrier. The coverage promises to be better, so if it’s not too hard to keep the phone active, then we’ll be happy. If we’re reasonably happy, I plan to call Virgin support one more time (as soon as I use up some minutes on my phone!) and get the other account number, so I can switch it as well. I probably won’t go with a smart phone, though. I have an old Verizon dumb-phone that has a new battery and is just itching to be used about once every few months. And I love the fact that the minutes I buy on PagePlus can last 120 days. That means I could keep a phone for my minimal use for just $30 a year.

And PagePlus has an online chat service for registered accounts. I called the first time, and the hold wasn’t too bad (maybe 15 minutes), but the guy a spoke with (without navigating an intricate menu system) told me I could register for an account before my phone was activated and then do everything via chat. That was much quicker, and I could listen to my own music, not Virgin’s hold music. Something tells me this could be a good move. The only drawback to PagePlus is that they are on Verizon’s CDMA network, so when you buy a phone, you have to get one with the right antenna, and you won’t be able to use that phone on another carrier. But if the service is good, that won’t be a problem. Kim has an iPhone 4 — she was looking to go as basic as possible and that’s the earliest one available for Verizon — so there’s not much difference between it and other GSM iPhones. I’ve read there are some more issues, such as no simultaneous voice and data on CDMA, which you can do on GSM phones for the iPhone 5. If those are issues you care about, be sure to check out the differences between carriers before you make up your mind! For my old Motorola dumb-phone, it won’t make a difference at all.

Review of Rivers by Michael Farris Smith

Rivers by Michael Farris Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First the disclaimer: Michael Farris Smith is my colleague in creative writing at Mississippi University for Women. Of course, I’m going to like his book! However, even I was surprised by it. Not that I would expect anything less than a good read, but Rivers is much more than a good read. Michael’s prose is a delight. His characters are fresh and at times haunting. He weaves back and forth in time to show us a dystopian future that is all too real juxtaposed with a much more normal and at times idyllic past. The combined effect is to heighten the drama in the present time of the narrative, since the normal world is never too far away from a world turned topsy turvy by endless hurricanes and tropical storms. Ultimately, the core of the book rests on the emotional choices the characters must make. It is a story of grief and loss, as well as a story of attempted new beginnings, of moving forward and looking back. It is a story that will pick you up with the first page and never let you drop until the last. Clear some time before you crack the cover. This is one book you won’t want to stop reading.

View all my reviews

How to Sell One Car and Buy Another in One Day

Okay, this post is based solely on anecdotal evidence. On Saturday, I sold a car and bought a new one, and no, I didn’t just do a trade-in. A fair amount of this was luck, but may provide some guidance for someone wanting to do the same. You may not be able to duplicate the one-day record, but it might help you buy and/or sell a car.

The Sale:

What prompted this was the near-demise of my beloved 16-year-old Honda Civic. In truth, the car had been showing its age, though the interior was still remarkably good. However, we had stopped taking it out of town, considering that the tires were very old with good tread, and who knows what else could break on car of this age, despite the fact that it only had just under 50,000 miles. Still, we were toying with the idea of keeping it until in just wouldn’t run. Then we came home from vacation (great where we were, but very rainy at home for the three weeks we were gone) and we found the interior covered in mold. Okay, I exaggerate, on further inspection, it was primarily on the steering wheel and some on the dash and doors. At first, we were ready to torch the thing, but then I read about it and realized it could be cleaned. The problem was caused by a leak in the door seal or somewhere on the passenger side. I had noticed this the previous summer, but the mold hadn’t been so bad — confined only to a floor mat.

To be honest, this problem of a leaky passenger side something (windshield seal was an early theory, or maybe a plugged drain that was overflowing into the floorboard in a heavy rain) had already led me to start thinking about getting another car, so I had done some research already in the spring and had some ideas on what car we might replace the Honda with. More on that choice in a minute. First, back to prepping for the sale.

Friday was spent cleaning the car. Actually, on Thursday I had gotten out our carpet cleaner and sucked out as much of the water in the wet carpet as possible. On Friday morning, I discovered the passenger-side carpet in back was wet as well as the front. I also bought mold and mildew remover/inhibitor to use in clean-up. But after reading the instructions, I realized that I should get the worst of it cleaned up before applying the product. So I steam-cleaned the carpets and seats. Left the doors open for ventilation and to help with drying while I did this. I also took normal bathroom cleaner and cleaned the dash, doors, any other hard surface. Once this had dried (and after washing the exterior), the final cleaning step was to apply the mold remover and let it dry.

Saturday we were having a yard sale, so my goal was to have the car ready and put a sign in the window, which I did. I had looked up the Kelly Blue Book price for the car in fair condition, and decided to knock off 1/4 of that price, given the leak and the mold issue. Everything else (old tires and any other unanticipated repairs) were covered in the description of ‘fair.’ I also knew that if I got serious about selling it, I would have to get a new inspection sticker and an oil change, and of course, I’d put an ad in the paper and deal with all the callers. So I was willing to go a little low and still make a reasonable amount from the sale of this car that had certainly served us well over the years and had been worth what we paid for it!

The rest took care of itself. One of our neighbors from up the street came by the yard sale. In a little while, his son came back and wanted to buy the car. The son works at a dealership and has access to help and tools to make the needed repairs. He’ll have time to track down the leak. And he knew what a great car the Civic is. He’ll probably drive it, but even if he only bought it to fix up and resell it, I won’t feel bad. It’s work I’m not prepared to do to get more out of the car! A couple of other people were interested as well, so if the deal with the neighbor boy had fallen through, I would have likely been able to sell it anyway.

Could I have gotten more out of it? Probably. But I feel good about this sale, and I don’t feel like I took advantage of anyone. I was up front about the leak and the mold issue. The age and condition of the car are obvious. I’m pretty sure everyone is happy with this deal (except the poor guys who called too late!). I also sold the car and could take off the plate and return it for the few bucks’ worth of credit on a new tag. But it left me without a second car.

The Decision (A Turbo, Not a Mid-Life Crisis):

Given how little we drive two cars, that wasn’t too much of an issue. Why do you think the Honda only had 50,000 miles on it? We were looking for a similar size car that would be better for our small family of 3. When I bought the Honda, I was single, so I wasn’t thinking of having a kid to put in the back of a 2-door, and I wasn’t worried about safety. We wanted a new car that could be more of a true second car. One with good gas mileage, and a high safety rating. As I said, I had done some research in the spring and renewed that when we made the quick decision to unload the Honda.

We were looking for a sub-compact or compact hatchback car, and had gotten interested in the Chevy Sonic because it has more room in the back seat for carpool. We also wanted as much cargo room as we could get in this size, so we could take it on shorter trips (where we won’t need too much luggage). Our Mazda5 minivan will still be the go-to car for longer trips where we need to really pack well. And our other main consideration was gas mileage. We still didn’t quite want to make the leap to hybrid, due to concerns about the batteries’ impact on the environment, if we could get a conventional car with gas mileage that was anywhere close. The Sonic fits that bill, rated at 29 mpg in town and 40 mpg on the highway. But here is the kicker. I had read that to get this mileage, you had to have the turbo engine. This engine isn’t standard, but is an option on the low-end models. It is standard on the LTZ. Either way, it could significantly increase the cost of a car: ordering new with an optional engine would mean less chance of getting a deal from a dealership (maybe factory incentives would still be available, but no wheeling and dealing). Ordering the luxury package LTZ would mean paying for features we don’t really need. In the spring, I had given up on this car, but when faced with the other choices (Fiesta, Focus, Fit, etc.), it still had the best set of features and mileage. Fortunately, we found a used LTZ with a manual transmission at a dealer that was about 60 miles from our town.

Here’s where the luck really happened. Finding a manual transmission car in our area is a challenge. Finding a manual with the turbo engine that was available on the same day we sold our Honda seems like kismet. What are the odds? You tell me, but we felt very lucky! Searching online helped a lot, as did trying multiple sites from AutoTrader (where our car wasn’t listed) to UsedCars.com, Cars. com, and even Chevy.com (where it was listed on all three). Still, we weren’t ready to buy sight unseen. The price was great (more than $1000 under the Blue Book value). We had communicated with the dealer already, and we had read the CarFax online, so we had some sense of the car’s history. It had been leased to an individual and had 20,000 miles on it in a year and a half. We always say it’s better to buy used, but our last cars have been purchased new because that way we could get exactly what we wanted. If luck had gone against us, we could have waited and tried to find another car that met our needs, but this Sonic presented itself. The only real issues seemed to be the color (Black would not be our first choice) and the state of the car. The only way to really know that would be to take it for a test drive. So on the afternoon of the yard sale, we piled in the Mazda and drove to Hamilton, Alabama, to see what we would find.

The Sale:

We liked the car quite a lot when we saw it in person. It was our first car to test drive — normally, we might want to test several models for comparison, but with limited time and after driving an hour and twenty minutes to get there, we didn’t want to lose the chance at this used car, so we were ready to buy if we liked it. Both my wife and I took a turn with it on the test drive. We liked the way it handled, and our son was comfortable in the back seat. i wouldn’t call it ‘roomy’ (as some of the reviews had in comparing it to other cars in its class), but it was definitely not cramped. I also sat in back, so I know that even a man over six feet can fit. The cargo space is impressive, too. And though the clutch and the 6-speed transmission took a little getting used to, we were happy with it once we got the feel of things. Other controls and features like a digital speedometer that also tells the current gas mileage or the number of miles before you have to fill up are neat, but not a major factor in our decision. OnStar and satellite radio may not get used past the free trial period, though I’ll admit that listening to bluegrass on the satellite radio on the way home was nice. The car was averaging 37 mpg, and had been mostly driven on test drives around town and short trips down the interstate a few miles. Not bad. We were pretty sure this was the car for us, if we could work out a good deal with the salesman.

This part went very easily, since we had already communicated with him. In our emails, I had indicated we were interested enough to make the drive to see the car, but I had also said we might go on to Tupelo to see some other vehicles. I wanted to sound interested but not too interested. I have no way of knowing if this helped or what led to the price we were offered on this car, but after I asked the salesman what price he would give us if we wrote him a check that day, he took me back to his office, ran a few calculations, and gave us over $1000 off the sticker. This was about $600 off the sales price we later saw in their newspaper circular in the dealership waiting area. I talked to Kim and then signed the contract, since the price was about $2000 under the Blue Book estimate, maybe a little more. A few more papers to sign, and we were back on the road in time to get home, get dinner, and get Aidan to the dance at the community center on time, where he played fiddle with his teacher.

The Lessons:

As I said, this could have all been blind luck, but I do think I can get a few lessons from it. For selling your car — clean it up! Even if it’s not in bad shape, a car that looks good will sell faster and for more money than one that needs a good wash. It seems like a no-brainer, but the day I spent cleaning the Honda surely earned me some money or at the very least saved me time in making the sale. Also, know the Blue Book value of your car and price accordingly. I’m not saying you have to low-ball it, but if you do your research, you can be satisfied with the price you get for your car, and an informed buyer will also be happy with the price they get. The yard sale tactic worked great, and I might do it again. The sale brought people to our yard who saw the car for sale. We did sell some things we wanted to get rid of, and we did make some money, though not a lot. I wouldn’t have a sale just to sell the car, but I might time the selling of my next car with a yard sale, if I think I have enough stuff to sell — Kim took care of the yard sale, so without her help, I wouldn’t have done it that way! Aidan was a help getting that ready as well, which left me free to clean the car.

For buying a car, the first lesson is to do your research. Know what kind of car you want (or kinds, if you have time to test drive a few for comparison). Look around. Don’t just go to the dealership in your town, but see what is available in your area. This is especially true for used cars, but even new cars might be available in the color or with the options you want 50 miles down the road. And you aren’t stuck working with our hometown dealer. If you don’t like the dealership’s sales tactics, go somewhere else. If you do like your dealer, it’s likely they can trade or otherwise bring in a car you want. (When we bought our Mazda, we looked at two dealers who each told us they could bring in a new car with a manual transmission from another dealer — different cars in different cities).

Do your research. Know what other dealers are offering. Know what is available in your market. Know the Blue Book estimate. If buying used, check out the car’s history with CarFax or another service. And let the dealer know that you know what you’re talking about. I can’t prove you’ll get a better deal that way, but it stands to reason. Let the dealer know you’re willing to go elsewhere — I’ve read that you should walk away from the first offer because they’ll probably come down. I could have done that, but the offer we were given was good enough that I felt they wouldn’t come down much. We were pressed for time, but even if we weren’t, I probably wouldn’t have done that. I don’t really like wheeling and dealing, and I don’t mind paying a fair price. Like anyone, I want to pay as little as possible, but I don’t want to go through too many theatrics to get it. Being up front with the dealer. Not sounding too eager, but showing my interest, these were my strategies for getting a better deal.

On the Mazda, we test drove a car at one dealer and called the other dealer from our cell phone while on the drive — we just wanted to be sure we were getting the best price, but he came down significantly to make that sale. It meant another hour’s drive the next day to get that car, but we were happy with it. I might have tried that again this time, but the price on this used car was so good even before we got our final offer, and it had all the features we wanted, so we didn’t want to mess around with it. Again, there just wasn’t much wiggle room on the price, so it didn’t seem worth the extra trouble. Knowing what to expect and knowing when you have a good deal makes all the difference. Even if I could have gotten the salesman to come down further, I know the price I paid was very fair and I was happy with the way the negotiations went. To me, that is worth it, even if I could have chipped away a few dollars with a more stressful negotiation.

We had a good feeling about the car and a good feeling about the dealer and sales staff. If at any point we had reservations, we were prepared to walk away. Since we never got bad vibes, and we never felt pressured, we have no buyer’s remorse. It was time to buy a new car, we knew what car we wanted, we liked it once we saw it, and we made a good deal on a lightly used car that saved us nearly $10,000 off the sticker price of a new car with the same features that we needed (to get the improved gas mileage). Sure, we could have gotten the new car for less than full sticker, but the used car was an excellent deal. So we have no buyer’s remorse. We are just glad this car came along when it did, and we were able to find it and act on it before someone else did. We could feel confident because we knew what we were looking for.

It may seem like an impulse buy to purchase a car in one afternoon, but in reality it wasn’t. It was just that all the pieces came together in a few days, from the day we decided it was time, to finding the car online, and to making the final purchase. In reality, the process started months before and involved many conversations and deliberations about what kind of car we might want next. The only thing I might do differently is to test drive a few cars in that stage. But we didn’t have time for that, and in the end we are very satisfied with our purchase, even though it wouldn’t have been the first car we would have considered. Hopefully we’ll be just as happy with it in the coming months and years!

Western Vacation

In July, Kim, Aidan, and I packed up the car and headed West. Well, actually, we drove North to my mother’s in Osage, Iowa, first, and spent a traditional 4th of July week there with fireworks, the parade, barbecue, ice cream, and lots of local flavor. Then we turned the nose of our Mazda west for an old-fashioned car-camping vacation. It was the kind of trip my family used to take nearly every summer. Long hours on the road with plenty of stops at national parks and other scenic places. So sitting behind the wheel and going back through this country was like a trip back in time, even though our pop-up tent was a lot easier to manage than my family’s Camp-O-Tel.

Back in the day, this was a tent that you put on top of your car. When you got to your campsite, you could unfold it and sleep up there. My parents slept in the car on a mattress, and us kids were in the car topper. There was a stove we could get down for cooking, and a ladder we could climb up when it was time for bed. It was the precursor to the ubiquitous pop-up trailer, which soon eclipsed the Camp-O-Tel. Even when we were using it, we rarely saw another one.

This summer, we had a little 5-person tent (those would be very skinny folks — the three of us had little room to spare, and we’re not big!) We had our sleeping bags, an air mattress (some of us are not as young as we used to be), a camp stove, cookware, food, and three suitcases, plus hiking boots, sunscreen, jackets, camp towels, flashlights, lanterns, and assorted other equipment all piled in the back of the Mazda. It was organized chaos, especially after a few days camping, but we managed 10 nights without much problem and only one night in a hotel when it rained all night. Fortunately, this was a break we had planned, and we guessed right about the weather. The next couple of nights we also had thunderstorms, but they didn’t last too long and the rain wasn’t so bad, so the only real issue was lightning.

We went first to the Badlands (where we had our only bad experience with an RV that ran its generator all night, grrr), then on to Rushmore and Custer State Park. From the Black Hills, we headed on to Yellowstone, stopping first just outside the park at Buffalo Bill State Park — a nice park but for the mosquito swarms that hit for about an hour at dusk and for the irrigation sprinklers that went off in the night (not at our camp spot, fortunately). We stayed in Yellowstone 4 night, which was a huge relief after setting up camp and packing it all up the next day for several days running. That also allowed us to be in the park and get to the sites we wanted to see each day much more quickly. Because it is bear country, we had to pack all of our food in our car when we weren’t actually cooking. We took advantage of this fact to have dinner out a couple of times, extending the amount of time we had in the park. We saw most of the main geysers and hot springs, saw lots of wildlife including so many bison we were nearly tired of them by the time we left, and hiked several trails. We didn’t do much back country hiking, though we went far enough from the boardwalks that we did carry bear spray to be on the safe side. Four nights were enough that we felt we really saw the park, but we also realized we could spend a week there (or much more) and still just touch the surface, especially if you got off the beaten track more. Some of our highlights besides the main attractions were Lamar Valley at sunset (in a thunderstorm part of the time, but it was still beautiful), swimming in Burning River, and hiking to the suspension bridge across Hellroaring Creek.

From Yellowstone, we headed south to Grand Teton National Park. This was the first park where we didn’t (couldn’t) make a reservation for the campground, and we were glad when we got there. Road construction meant a 30-minute delay, so we stopped at Colter Bay campgrounds and explored that area first. Here we were able to rent a canoe and spend a couple of hours on Lake Jackson. Aidan and I even swam in the lake. We also took a hike and saw some trumpeter swans nesting on one of the nearby ponds. The next morning, our plan was to get up early and beat the construction crew — didn’t quite make it even though we left the campground before 7:00, but the wait at the one-lane road wasn’t bad, and we still made it to a picnic area in time to cook a dozen eggs for breakfast. Usually we wouldn’t eat this much, but after over a week of camping, we were starting to feel the effect of camp rations and lots of hiking — a couple of us glad for the reduced padding, but ready for a more filling meal. We explored the south end of Tetons, vowing to go back and spend some more time, then headed on to Salt Lake City. We didn’t stop there, but did get our only hotel in the camping part of our trip in Provo. This was where the thunderstorms were the worst, so we were glad we hadn’t found a good park (though there is a state park we could have tried if the weather had cooperated).

Next stop was Arches and Canyonlands for a very impressive, but very different kind of landscape. We went from 40 degrees at night in Yellowstone to dry and hot in Utah, but fortunately we hit it right and the highs were only in the 90’s. We took the parks’ advice and drank plenty of water. Hiked to Delicate Arch and several other short hikes around other arches. In the night we had storms and a mule deer who didn’t like us for camping under his or her mulberry trees. The next day we toured Canyonlands and headed to Mesa Verde, where we camped, hiked, and took a tour of one of the cliff dwellings in the morning. We would have loved to stay longer, but needed to hit the road for the drive through New Mexico to Albuquerque to see Rudy and the rest of the Lucero clan for a brief visit. It was great to eat Michael’s New Mexican cooking — he’s becoming quite the chef — and visit with Liz, Kyle, and Andy. Wish we could have stayed longer there, too, but home was calling.

Family marked the bookends of our trip. We just had a two-day trek back to Mississippi, and for that we hooked up with friends Andy, Elizabeth, and Ely, swapping passengers and riding across Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas together, catching up along the way. It just so happened that both families were returning from our Western vacations on the same days, and our paths crossed in Albuquerque. We spent the night in a hotel in Oklahoma city (they weren’t camping, and hoteling it allowed us to get a little further each day) and separated in Memphis at the visitor’s center rest area.

After two weeks on the road, we returned refreshed, though ready to be out of the car. We had seen a ton of scenery along the way and had some great experiences. We’ll definitely be planning another old-fashioned road trip, including camping, another time soon!

Zinneke’s Story

Our dog Zinneke died yesterday of complications of autoimmune hemolytic anemia. If you’ve followed the posts I’ve written over the last couple of months, then you’ll know what a roller coaster ride this has been. Some dogs survive this disease, and others die very quickly. Some, like Zinne, seem to be doing all right for awhile, then take a sudden turn for the worse. Relapse in the first months to a year is common, so we were prepared for it, though you never are fully prepared. During the first week of the disease, we thought we were going to lose her, until buttermilk and the medicine kicking in, got her appetite back and she began to recover. She seemed to be doing well for several weeks, then a week ago, the Prednizone she was on stopped working as well — we increased her dosage back to the level she was taking in the beginning. This Sunday, she could hardly walk, and we had to carry her to the yard to pee. We kept her indoors by us much of the time, and tried to comfort her as much as possible, bringing her food and water when she wanted it. In the morning, we took her directly to our vet, who gave her more steroids with a shot, and also gave her an antibiotic shot, since she had a slight fever. We were somewhat hopeful that she’d pull through again with proper treatment, but in the afternoon we received the call that she had just lain down and died very suddenly, which is why the vet suspected a blood clot, a common side effect of the disease.

Zinneke was 7 and a half years old. We had her in our lives for nearly 7 of those years — we brought her home on July 13, 2006. The picture above is from that first day. If you knew her in recent years, you can see the ten pounds or so she gained in her first year (and we struggled a little to keep her at optimum weight — she was always happy to keep eating, though she was always happy to exercise until the last couple of months). She was calm and gentle, but as a herding dog (we assume), she did nip a few people in the heels now and then — esp. kids running by or strangers who invaded her house. We had pretty much weened her of that behavior, though the instinct to herd anything running past her was still strong. She never ran away from home (except for one time, when a foster dog led her on an excursion and she got a block away before realizing there was a fence between her and her back yard — her barks led us to where she was, so she wasn’t missing long). She would stay in our fenced in yard or in my Mom’s completely unfenced yard. She didn’t do tricks, but she would obey nearly any command. And she was one of the best popcorn catching dogs you will ever meet, though frisbees were only meant to be picked up off the ground in her opinion–then she would want you to chase her around the yard with it. When she was young, she used to run circles around the yard for the pure joy of it, and she loved it most if someone would try to catch her. But she was never much of a barker. Only if she was left outside longer than she wanted to be, then she would let us know, or if a stranger came to the door, she would announce them.

Zinneke was a very healthy dog most of her life, though she was no stranger to hospitals. When we first brought her home from the Humane Society, we knew she had a great personality, but it didn’t take long to realize there was a slight problem. She peed. At first, we thought she was a house-training challenge, so we took her to the yard a lot. Still, she peed in the yard, and then peed some more as soon as she came inside. We took her to the vet, thinking she might have a urinary tract infection, which might be a complication of her recent operation for spaying. Our vet gave us some medicine, and we watched her for month. You might say she tried our patience, though we knew by that point that something was wrong, and she wasn’t intentionally soiling our carpets — we did replace those and put down hardwood later. When we finally took her to the vet school at Mississippi State, we learned that she had an ectopic ureter. Essentially, her plumbing wasn’t hooked up right and one of her kidneys wasn’t connected to her bladder. She spent the first nine months of her life constantly leaking a little urine, which was probably why the family that surrendered her at the Humane Society did that, though they apparently didn’t give the real reason. We were told she was too aggressive with children (and she did nip kids, so that might have been part of the reason). She had been at the shelter for two months already; if someone hadn’t adopted her, she wouldn’t have lived long. And if she didn’t get treatment, it would likely lead to an infection that could be fatal.

It took an expensive operation and much post-operative care to get her back to normal. We never regretted the cost, knowing that we had a lifetime of love from our pet to look forward to. It was also a responsibility that we had agreed to take on when we adopted her, so we were just glad we had the resources to be able to give her the care she needed. (And we can certainly sympathize with those who face a similar choice and don’t have those resources — whether that means the financial resources to pay for the surgery or the nearby vet school that can perform the surgery). After the operation, she developed a bladder of steel. We remember one early camping trip when she wouldn’t relieve herself on a leash until 4:00 in the morning, when I had to take her out of the tent and let her off leash in a field. Even after that, we never had problems with her until recently, when she was on steroids and again couldn’t help herself. We also remember her puppy bouts with car sickness and a few other trials, but for the most part, she was a trouble-free pet. Our only trips to the vet were for her annual shots or to pick up heart worm and flea medicine. We spent more time at the vet with the various foster dogs that we took in temporarily than we did with Zinneke.

Of course, we expected 13 or more years with her, or possibly less since we didn’t know her pedigree. We’ve often been told she looks like a blue heeler or a cattle dog, though we’ve never known for sure. She certainly acted like a herding dog, though. That she would also come down with a somewhat rare terminal disease (40-60% of dogs die of the disease within the first year or so, and most dogs who get it will have their lifespan shortened) seems unfair, but life is unfair and unpredictable in this regard. And though we would like to have had several more years with Zinneke, we value every day we had with her. She was an excellent dog who gave as much love back as we could give her and who taught us many lessons. There are many other Zinneke stories, and I’m sure we’ll tell them to each other over the next weeks and days as we grieve together and remember her.

Fiddling Around

I try not to brag on our son too much or I might sound like a broken record, but with Father’s day coming up, I can play the proud father for awhile. Aidan impresses us in all kinds of ways, but one way is with music. He’s played violin since he was four and is working his way through the Suzuki repertoire. Since he was 8, he’s taken fiddle lessons from Jim Brock, a local fiddler who played with Bill Monroe, Jim and Jesse, and the Salzman Brothers, among others. They sit around and play music, which I get to record. Mr. Brock teaches Aidan old-time fiddle tunes, country songs, bluegrass, jazz, Western Swing, etc., and since he doesn’t read music, they do it all by ear. Mr. Brock has also introduced us to a number of great old fiddlers — Kenny Baker is one of Aidan’s favorites, as are Tommy Jackson, Benny Martin, Arthur Smith, and Charlie Stripling. So Aidan has developed a wide range of styles and a sizable repertoire. At one count, they were up to nearly 200 songs, though some aren’t full songs — just the fiddle licks to songs Mr. Brock plays with his band. Some are ones we learned and haven’t kept up on, but many are ones that Aidan has played at Pilgrimage or that he continues to play, and a few are ones he picked up off of a CD.

This year, we decided it was time to get Aidan to play in public. He’s done performances with the Suzuki groups and orchestra, of course, and he plays now and then with Mr. Brock, lately at the senior dance in New Hope, but then he’s not on his own, and he often just plays on a few songs with Mr. Brock. So we signed him up to play at the Columbus MS Hitching Lot Farmer’s Market. To prepare, we went through his extensive list and pulled out the songs he thought he could have ready. We came up with 6 sets of about 110 songs total. It was ambitious, but he was up for the task. For the past two weeks or more, he’s been practicing over an hour a day to get his sets ready to go.

This morning, he played his three hour gig, and did a marvelous job. In that time, he took a couple of longer breaks to refuel with a pastry from one of the vendors, and he only repeated a couple of songs near the very end. He played from 7:00 a.m. until about 9:45, when everyone was packing up their wares. And he hardly missed a beat, even when Mother Goose showed up and danced with kids to his songs. (If you’re not from Columbus, then you won’t know Edwina Williams, this Columbus institution — the town’s child librarian who has performed as MG for decades. Let’s just say she’s flamboyant, esp. in full costume with flowered hat and stuffed goose.) Here are links to three of the songs he played (If you look close, you can just see Mother Goose in the first one behind the tent pole): Methodist Preacher, Orange Blossom Special, and Scotland.

All he had to work with was his set list with the titles and the note each song starts on. He had come up with this idea as a way to help him keep them all straight, though in the end, I don’t think he even needed it! This morning was a lovely morning. Lots of people stopped by to listen, and the weather was grand, actually fairly cool for June in Mississippi. I couldn’t have asked for a better start to the weekend.

Canine Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia update

Our dog had some bad news this week, though apparently it’s not uncommon. We took her in for her blood test and learned her red cell count was down, which is not the direction we want to see it going. I wasn’t surprised, since she’s been less energetic in the past week or so. We hoped it was the heat, but the test confirmed that she’s not getting better. So our vet increased the dose o steroids again from 3/4 of a pill twice a day to 1 pill twice a day.

Reading online, my wife found that other people had similar experiences. Though she had seemed to respond well, and had been on 3/4 of a pill for a month, now she’s having a bit of a relapse. Or maybe the reduction in medicine was too soon. We’re hopeful that increasing the dosage will help, and that she’ll still be able to reduce the dose again later. It seems like this can happen. For now, the goal is to stabilize her blood count and get it up to the level where she needs to be.

DSL Modem Conclusion (I Hope)

Everything in our DSL modem trauma came to a head yesterday when my wife tried to call home but couldn’t get the phone to ring. It would ring briefly on her end, then go directly to busy or static. We confirmed this with a FaceTime call, since our DSL was working at the time. Before calling for ATT support again, I ran through all the options I could think of inside, including running new line to our phone box on the house and new phone cords, DSL filter, etc. Eventually, I even took the phone outdoors to the box and used my cell phone to call it. Still no luck. (Note to self: try the last step first next time!) That confirmed that the problem was with the line, not the phone, so I called ATT.

Their phone support for home phone issues is Byzantine to put it mildly, but after navigating all of the options, I got to where it would test my line and put in a service request. What was frustrating was that I never was able to talk to a human, and I had to hang up the phone so they could test it. They never called me back, though eventually, I was able to check online to see the status of my request. There I confirmed what the phone message had told me: they promised to have the service problem resolved in a week and a day. Naturally, that didn’t make me very happy, but I was glad when a couple hours later a very helpful service technician arrived to check out my line.

He used some fancy testing apparatus and could tell there were problems coming into our house. Eventually, he climbed a pole and fixed something there. We confirmed that the line was working again (he called me on it) and that our DSL was back up (and it hasn’t gone out since). He agreed that the phone line problem may have led to the DSL connection problems, though he didn’t say for certain that was to problem. Since we don’t have inside wire maintenance, he didn’t do any testing in the house other than to call in and check the internet connection.

What I suspect is that we were losing our signal periodically (every few minutes or every few hours) due to the problems on the line. The Motorola 3360 modem isn’t good at reestablishing the connection in Bridge Mode, but does better when you set the modem to establish the PPPoE connection. At least that’s what I’m hoping. And I hope that now that the line problem is fixed, the modem will work in Bridge Mode because it won’t lose the connection all the time. So far, so good. In over 12 hours, we haven’t lost our connection yet. Interestingly, when I called DSL support, they tested the line, and it checked out okay — there were no internet outages, and our speed test when connected was actually quite good — but they didn’t uncover the phone line issue. That took finding out that people couldn’t dial in (we could dial out and establish DSL).

So if troubleshooting a DSL issue, I would recommend testing your phone line. I can’t guarantee that you’ll always have the same problem we had, though you might experience static on the line (something we’ve noticed in the past as well). Check at the box where your phone line comes in the house (esp. if, like us, you do your own inside line maintenance) and rule out other problems in the home wiring before you call.