Today’s Throwback Thursday features four favorite females from 2000.
From left to right; my step-daughter, Amber; my wife Cindy; my daughter, AnnMarie; and my mother-in-law, Kay. I know it’s hard to believe so much beauty could be assembled in one spot, but here’s photographic proof!
Today is National Dog Day, observed by those of us who love our own dogs and/or any dog.
Here’s 
a picture of our beloved Wolf in March of 2000 when he was a puppy and our sweet Noise. Cindy already had Noise when we met in 1996, but in 2000 she wanted another puppy for Valentine’s Day. Wolf turned out to be quite a different breed than we were told, but by the time we found out it was too late; we had fallen in love with him, weird looks, behavior, and all.
Next month will mark 5 years since Wolf passed away at our cabin in 2010. It sounds strange to say it, but losing him was like losing a member of our family, but then maybe not so strange because he was in every way. I wrote about that horrible day a couple of years ago.
Noise was back with her original owner, Cindy’s son and his family, when she passed away a few years ago. She was such a sweet girl and so adorable. She accepted Wolf when he arrived as a puppy, and she accepted my grandmother’s adult cat, Squeaky, when we brought her home after my grandmother’s passing.
Here’s a photo of Bella and I when we rescued her (or perhaps she rescued us) 4 ½ years ago. When Wolf passed away, I wanted nothing to do with having another dog. The pain of loss was so deep and so complete that I did not want to go through that again. I still don’t. But I was on the road working a lot and Cindy did not want to be at the cabin alone, so I could hardly say “No” when she put it like that.
Where Wolf was high-strung, defensive with everyone but Cindy and I, and perhaps a bit neurotic at times (and we loved him, no matter his quirks) Bella is one of the most easygoing, even-tempered dogs I have ever seen. Yes, she’ll bark at strangers or a noise outside the cabin or house (that is, after all, one reason Cindy wanted a dog at the cabin), but once Cindy or I tell her it’s OK, she settles down. Her sweet nature and cute face just beg you to hug her, and she’ll let you do so without a fuss. She has brought so much happiness and love to us.
So, if you have a dog, give them a little extra treat today in honor of National Dog Day. If you don’t, maybe consider rescuing one if you’re able, or going down to a pet shelter with a donation of some type, or an offer to walk one or two of their dogs. Maybe you can foster a dog or two while they wait to be adopted.
I can guarantee you the love you give will be returned over and over. Happy National Dog Day!
Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying the Roman city of Pompeii, on this date in the year 79. Pompeii was about five miles away from the mountain, and it was a resort town for Rome’s elite. It’s estimated that about 20,000 people lived in and around Pompeii at that time, and most of them were able to escape relatively unscathed.
Just after noon, a plume of ash, pumice rock, and debris shot up into the air and began falling on the surrounding area. Before long, the ash in the streets of Pompeii lay nine feet deep. Pliny the Younger witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius from across the Bay of Naples, and noted that the billowing soot, rocks, and gas looked like an enormous pine tree. It eclipsed the sun.
“Darkness fell,” Pliny wrote, “not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a dark room.” Even from his safe distance, he observed, “I believed I was perishing with the world, and the world with me.” About five thousand people died – most likely from a blast of blistering hot, poisonous gas, not debris or lava – and the whole city was buried under millions of tons of ash and debris.
Pompeii and the nearby city of Herculaneum were rediscovered in the 18thcentury. They were almost completely intact, buried under about 23 feet of volcanic debris. The modern science of archaeology was born with the widespread excavations of the two cities. The excavation is still ongoing today, with about one-third of Pompeii still buried.
Mount Vesuvius erupted last in 1944, and experts believe it could erupt again at any time.
Today, about 3 million people live within a few miles of the crater; 600,000 of them live close enough to the volcano that they would not survive an eruption today. Scientists monitor the volcano – one of the world’s most dangerous – around the clock and have a plan to evacuate the area in advance, if an eruption seems imminent.
Thanks to The Writer’s Almanac for the above.
Cindy and I visited the Lowry Park Zoo in November of 2000. This is proof that back then I was bigger than an elephant.
I awoke to the sad news this morning that Yvonne Craig had passed away Monday evening at the age of 78 from metastatic breast cancer that had spread to her liver.
The first time I saw Ms. Craig was in 1967 when she joined the Batman TV show’s third and final season as Batgirl/Barbara Gordon. The character of Batgirl was actually created in the comics as a result of the TV show’s producers wanting to add a female superhero to the show’s cast. I was 12 going on 13 and probably occupied the perfect demographic of teen boys (and maybe some dads, lol) that the show was trying to attract with the addition. Plus, it didn’t hurt that I was a huge comic book fan, and had been for years.
I have no idea if any other actresses were auditioned for the role, though I feel sure there had to have been. But Yvonne Craig was perfect for the role. Her dance background gave her the coordination and flexibility to pull off the fight scenes in a believable fashion, and she was beautiful, kind, caring and intelligent. Probably without realizing it, the producers and comic book writers had created an empowered female character, instead of another sidekick.
Ms. Craig only played Batgirl for the final season of Batman, though there was talk of her continuing the character in a Batgirl TV show. Sadly, that never came to be. But she took that one season and made the Batgirl character all her own.
The next time I saw her was a year after the final season of Batman when she showed up on another favorite TV series of mine, Star Trek. In the final season of that show, she played Marta, the green-skinned Orion slave girl who tried to seduce and then kill Captain Kirk. Even under the heavy make-up (which the beautiful Ms. Craig never needed) and green skin paint, I recognized the former Batgirl.
Mark Evanier, who had the pleasure of meeting Yvonne Craig, has a touching and humorous blog post up today about spending time with her.
When Cindy and I took a cruise several years ago, the only part of the whole experience I disliked was having to share our evening dinner with six other people we did not know. That’s part of the normal cruise experience, but if it had just been me on the cruise, I would have taken meals in my cabin every night! I really have no desire to dine with strangers.
I look at strangers and make up stories about their lives all the time. I sometimes even do that with people I know but don’t know intimately. I create jobs, lives, motivations and even construct secrets about strangers and some friends so that I can make them a character in a story. But I very, very seldom feel an urge to sit down and talk to strangers.
So I thought it was out of character for me to feel a tingle of excitement and thoughts of “I might like to do that.” when I read this article in the Washington Post about Anthony Lacey and how he makes an effort to dine with strangers as often as he can for his blog Dining With Strangers.
Anthony Lacey, 35, interviews and dines with Meredith Denbow, 29, at Jyoti in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
But then I figured out that these are strangers he seeks out because he wants to learn something and write something about their work or life.
THAT’S something I’ve done before. The first time was back in 2007 when my friend Michelle gave me an opportunity to interview a comic book artist (that I had almost no knowledge of or about) when he was appearing at a local comic book shop. It wasn’t really “cold” questioning, like Lacey seems to do, because I researched him as much as I could prior to our interview and gave him some “hooks” with my questions that he could expand upon.
I remember driving to the interview and thinking, “OK, you’ve always admired Superman and Superman’s alter ego, Clark kent, is a reporter, so you’re just filling out your admiration to the complete character.”
Yeah, I have weird thoughts.
Since then I’ve done other interviews with strangers (some cold and some prepared) and I think I’ve gotten better at it, but even those have either been over the phone or at their place of business.
So, though I am not fond of the idea of dining with strangers, I could probably get into it in a big way if I was seeking out people whose jobs or careers I really had a great interest in learning about.
Could you?
One of the best X-mas gifts anyone ever gave me was a desk calendar containing 365 of Gary Larson’s Far Side comics. I laughed every day of the year thanks to that calendar!
Today, we take a moment to say Happy 65th Birthday Gary Larson!
Here’s a little background on the man and his comic strip from The Writer’s Almanac:
It’s the birthday of American cartoonist Gary Larson, the creator of The Far Side, a single-panel comic that ran from 1980 to 1995 and became beloved for its anthropomorphic deer, birds, cats, dogs, dinosaurs, snakes, vipers, and cows, often drawn with cat-eye glasses and beehive hairdos. He grew up in Tacoma, Washington.
After college, he began drawing a comic called Nature’s Way for The Seattle Times. It displayed much of what The Far Side would perfect: a combination of attitude and irony tethered to the craft of comic art. And it had cows. Lots of cows. But it was placed next to a children’s crossword called “Junior Jumbo” and people complained, calling it “incomprehensible.” On vacation from his job as a cruelty investigator for the Humane Society, he drove to San Francisco and dropped his portfolio at the San Francisco Chronicle. They offered him a job, but wanted to change the title. “They could have called it Revenge of the Zucchini People for all I cared,” Larson said. A week later, he was dropped from The Seattle Times and The Far Side was born. Collections of Far Side cartoons have sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.
I know, I have several on my bookshelves at Wolf’s Haven! But this cartoon below has always been my very favorite of all The Far Side cartoons.
What’s yours?
Looking through my photos last night I found this one of Mikey & Heather in 2005 when Heather was just a few months old and Mikey was four and a half.
Mikey and Heather in 2004.
School starts back in a couple of weeks and Cindy and I will be heading back to Wolf’s Haven in three weeks for a couple of months, so I wanted to take the opportunity in the next two weeks to spend some extra time with my three oldest grandchildren before we all go our separate ways.
It’s just too damn hot and humid in Orlando to do much outdoors without melting into a puddle of sweat within the first 15 minutes. I mean, Abby and I took Bella for a walk of less than a mile this morning at 9 am and were drenched halfway through.
So I was casting about in my mind for things we could do indoors that would be active and not be something they had done before when it hit me that a tour of OIA would be fun, active and interesting.
Here are some photos I took today while touring OIA with my 3 oldest grandchildren.
In order of their birth from right to left; Mikey, his sister Heather and their cousin Abby.
Heather and Abby with Snow White in front of the Disney Store.
Mikey, Heather and Abby in front of the Fantasia wall design at the Disney Store.
Heather and Abby in front of the Spongebob wall design.
More Disney. I had to explain to them that Disney, Universal and Sea World all had stores at the airport for tourists who forgot to buy a relative or friend a souvenir when they were at the parks.
In front of the fountain by the Hyatt hotel. Mikey said he’d love to live at the Hyatt and come down to the terminal each day for breakfast, lunch and dinner and to buy electronic gear at the shops, lol.
Posing with Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man!
In front of the Shrek wall design. I teased Mikey that his hair was cleaning Shrek’s right nostril.
Mikey said, “I’m holding Mickey’s ear!” so of course Abby had to hold Mickey’s nose.
We all had a good time touring OIA and the grandkids found out there was a lot more to the airport than planes.
After leaving Orlando International Airport we stopped at CiCi’s Pizza for, what else, PIZZA!!
On last Monday night’s WWE RAW show and Thursday night’s WWE Smackdown show, they played this song with a video montage tribute of clips from the career of the late “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. It fit perfectly with his pro wrestling career.
When I went searching for the song I came upon the original music video, which perfectly illustrates the “What goes around, comes around” philosophy in a positive way.
It has become one of my favorite songs.
