13 December 2009 Light one candle for the Maccabee children

No ice this morning.

Loki has always been a good watch dog. Unlike Tova, who we acquired in Florida, Loki is generally a quiet dog. Tova was a very noisy dog. She seemed to enjoy barking just to hear herself bark. She would bark if people came to the door but since she barked so much it was not always a good warning for us. When Loki barks we usually know the reason. Both were/are good dogs but Loki is head and shoulders better as a guard dog.


We know if the mail carrier pulls into the driveway or if UPS arrives. We also know when other dogs are running up and down the road, chasing cars or returning from having just chased cars. She has different barks for different alerts.

Other dogs trigger single barks followed by guttural muttering sounds. She’ll sound off and then run from one window or door to another looking for the best vantage point. She will sit in the front room with her head on the window sill watching the road and our land for interlopers. She is highly territorial and does not consider most dogs welcome. However the Newfoundland Retriever that lives up the valley seems to bring out the groupie in her. Like all Newfies, this is a beautiful dog that moves with purposes and grace. It seems to be very shy or perhaps frightened of people. On the single occasion when we met its owner it took the dog nearly half an hour to begin to make friends with Gloria and me. Loki would most likely follow this dog anywhere. It is the biggest dog in the valley as far as we know.

Cars or trucks in the drive cause a series of sharp barks and rapid motion to the front door, followed by circling and barking. We know to check the door. Once we reach the door she stops circling and the barking quiets. We can tell her to stay while we open the door to the deck and deal with whomever has climbed the stairs.

Small fuzzy creatures such as rabbits and squirrels elicit an explosive growling bark and a jump at the window or door behind which is the intended target. If she encounters such animals outdoors she chases them. She seems to stop at pre-determined boundaries, ones she has set. To date she hasn’t been rapid enough to catch either a squirrel or rabbit. We’d prefer she not. The larger scavenging animals, raccoons and opossums are here and often visit Gloria’s carefully tended bird feeders. Loki could be hurt by either one of those. Raccoons care rabies and several infected animals have been reported this year. We make sure all her shots are current. She received a three year rabies immunization last year in November, ’08. We purchased her other vaccinations last week at Tractor Supply in Greeneville and I did the injection to keep her immunities current.

Tonight I’m fixing ginger-pepper seared cube steaks for dinner. I’ll rub them with grated fresh ginger root and freshly ground pepper then sear them for about 1 minute on each side in a cast iron skillet. We’ll flesh out dinner by warming up the left over latkes from the first night of Hanukah. Tonight is the third night. Gloria’s chanted the routine blessing for lighting Hanukah candles as well as the special blessings for nights 2 & 3. The flame gives off a warm glow that is amplified and reflected by the wooden walls of the office and the sundown color of the living room walls. It’s pleasant to look at and the festive nature of the holiday is fun. But the origins of Hanukah are found in cultural and physical warfare. Judaism could well have vanished but for the Maccabean uprising. Assimilation is all too often easier than any alternate path.

There is a lot of commentary about just wars and justifiable wars today. When caught in the middle of them it can be damnably hard to figure out which war is just, which is justifiable. Sometimes the answer won’t be apparent until long after the last combatants are dust. Others are easy to classify and can be immediately catalogued. The more difficult wars to classify are often cast as “holy wars.” The Crusades were not at all holy but were fought over trade routes, merchant profits, and such cultural factors as the way property was inherited among ruling families in Europe. 2nd and later sons who had no hope of inheriting a title or lands in Europe were encouraged to free the “Holy Land” from Moslems and in passing, carve out as much territory as they could hold and defend. WWII was not a holy war but it saved a bit of European Jewry from wholesale extermination at the hands of anti-Semitism that riddled much of Europe. The recreation of Israel opened another so-called “holy war” as millions of Arabs declared war on the new state of Israel. In truth, economics and cultural/social factors are as much at fault in the Mid-East wars today as any religious cause. However, the fanatics in three religions are doing all that they can to label the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Afghanistan/Pakistan wars as the righteous uprising of Moslems against infidels. Call it that or not, there is an ongoing cultural war between the West, believing that religion should not be involved in governing; and the Moslem world, willing to accept religious control of legal, governmental, and cultural matters. Arab states, in particular have used Israel and the U.S. as scapegoats to distract their citizens from their own lack of personal rights and freedoms and the Arab world’s failure to reform religious and social/cultural matters. Until such reformation takes place we will continue to be at risk of attack by Islamic fundamentalists.

With that in mind, we’ll light the third candle tonight.


LIGHT ONE CANDLE

Peter Yarrow- ©1983 Silver Dawn Music ASCAP

Light one candle for the Maccabee children

With thanks that their light didn't die

Light one candle for the pain they endured

When their right to exist was denied

Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice

Justice and freedom demand

But light one candle for the wisdom to know

When the peacemaker's time is at hand

watching for widow makers

The wind has decreased markedly. The high temperature for the day, 66.38 F was recorded at midnight. It has been dropping slowly and steadily since then. Currently, we are at 54.32 F and should bottom out tonight at 36 F. I suspect that I will plug in one lamp in the well filter enclosure tonight in case it drops below expected. We’ve had 0.09 inches of rain since midnight, just enough to keep things wet.


It’s has been overcast with intermittent drizzle all day. Tomorrow is predicted to be sunny.

The woods now contain fewer “widow makers”. Many broken and dead branches have been blown to the ground. But the risk is still high as yesterday’s winds may have created some that haven’t fallen yet. So any trip near trees requires careful attention to the overhead.

I’ve seasoned a piece of top sirloin with garam masala to fix for tonight’s dinner. I’ll cut some sweet potatoes into wedges, coat them with olive oil, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, and chili powder, and then bake them to serve with the steak.

I slept in until 0815 this morning. The dog didn’t demand I take her out any earlier. Those two days each week when I don’t have something scheduled really are welcome.

I just finished “The Jew Store,” by Stella Suberman. It’s a very interesting book. Her parents, immigrants from Russia to New York packed up their family and moved to Union City TN in the 1920’s to open a dry goods store. They became the only Jews in a southern town. Once I began reading the book, I discovered that her family lived one county east of the county my great aunt and uncle –from my maternal line, lived in. While I became a familiar with NW Tennessee only via family visits to Tiptonville, I was able to recognize some of the types of people they had to deal with. My mother’s aunt and uncle were upper crust folks in their town and county. My earliest memories of Tiptonville place it squarely in the “Old South.” Everyone I met referred to my aunt and uncle as “Miz Alice and Mr. Warner. I can recall seeing black citizens, mostly sharecroppers and domestics, step off the sidewalk when they neared my relatives. In many cases, the only real difference in the small towns that Mrs. Suberman knew and knows, and the one I knew was the newer technology. Everything else was pretty much untouched. That includes the restaurant at Reelfoot Lake.

My mother, an RN, who grew up in the boot heel of Missouri and escaped to St. Louis via an Army Nurse Cadet Corps scholarship, offered her by Jewish Hospital of St. Louis during WWII; left bigotry and racism that permeated the region behind her for the reality nursing demanded. That my biological father was first generation of a Russian Jewish family that settled in St. Louis, leads me into the book from another direction. My two grandmothers were all too similar to Mrs. Suberman’s aunt and many other women of that era. Bigotry and religious fervor tied into identity and too much concern about what outsiders might think have destroyed many families. Fortunately, my mother’s father showed the wisdom and compassion that Mrs. Suberman’s father displayed in her book.

My mother is a very strong woman. I’m grateful to her for teaching me early on that bigotry and exclusionary religious fervor have no place in our world. She taught me a lot more, as well but that’s another tale. She’s an exemplar of Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation."

Suffice it to say that this book took me more deeply into both sides of my heritage than I anticipated.

The hillside behind the house has a lot more yellow on display than yesterday. Despite the winds of yesterday there are still lots of leaves remaining on the trees.

The creek is at ca. the same depth and flow rate as yesterday. The image below is from about 1130 this morning.

Gloria’s trout pool is still full of good sized rainbow trout. They seemed to have found good places to hole up and escape being washed downstream by the last high water. It is amazing how big a fish can hide under an undercut bank.
 
 

The contrasting yellow back dropped by the dark gray-green of the hemlocks is a very pleasing view from the back deck or the office windows.

There are many squirrels, rabbits, and other small game this year to keep the dog busy sniffing every inch of the property she is allowed to reach. We try to keep her from crossing the creek during low water periods. There are too many free-running and feral dog packs that she need not encounter. She seems to know not to try crossing the creek in high water. She did it once and then took nearly an hour with me watching her from the opposite bank to find a place she felt suitable to cross. Still, we keep her from the creek as much as possible.


We often have hunting dogs turning up in the yard looking for food. They’ve been turned loose in North Carolina during bear hunts but often manage to get lost and wander here following bears. If they have collars with phone numbers we try to notify the owners to retrieve them. These are expensive dogs worth thousands in breeding fees. Many of them wear radio tracking collars with GPS units to ensure their safe return.

We hear tales of hikers on the Appalachian Trail removing the dogs’ collars and destroying them. As we understand it these are anti-hunting people. Regardless of one’s position about hunting, the dogs have no say in the matter. They are simply bred and trained to do what dogs have always done. It is cruel and unconscionable to prevent a dog’s retrieval or to cause it to become lost because of one’s personal views. I dislike using dogs to hunt bear. So I don’t. I also dislike creating stray dogs. Apparently these hikers have no problem causing a dog to become lost.

One of the dogs across the street was hit while chasing a truck today. The saga continues.