Day 4644 - 9/11

Has it really been 21 years since the towers fell? It seems like yesterday. I was sitting at the same kitchen table and heating up my breakfast in the same microwave I used this morning when I heard the news on TV. I spent the rest of the day mesmerized by what was unfolding. Could this even be happening? I had ridden the elevator to the top of the South Tower several times and The World Trade Center was a familiar sight when I went to New York on business. The world definitely changed that day and it did not change for the better.

Things may seem normal now, but I think we've just gotten used to all the changes. We are all more suspicious now. I don't remember going through security checkpoints when I used to fly to New York. You just went to the airport and got on a plane. You could even use your ticket to fly on a different airline if you found something that was more convenient. Hotels were much more affordable and I felt safe riding on the subway. Sadly, all that is gone.

When I go to the mall before the stores open on Sunday, a policeman opens the door for me and asks what I am doing. We almost always see police riding the trails on bicycles when we take Dawn on her sunrise walks. Most people in the neighborhood have security cameras now. I've grown to appreciate the added security although it doesn't really make me feel safe. 9/11 put an end to innocence and trust. I'm suspicious of everything these days. If the twin towers can fall while you are sitting at the kitchen table eating pancakes, what else can go wrong?

Luckily, nothing went wrong today. We had a pleasant sunrise walk with Dawn, followed by an equally pleasant breakfast. I went mall walking again and am slowly memorizing the names of the artists on display as well as the contents of the store windows. The mall is filled with things that nobody really needs. The objects on display all seem desirable though. I like looking at window displays. It beats watching squirrels chase each other in the park. 

The temperature was still cool when we took Dawn on her Sunday outing, so we went on a real walk instead of just letting Dawn out of the car to pee. Dawn enjoyed the walk, although I was lagging behind by the time we returned to the car. I guess I had an excuse. I'd already finished walking around the mall five times. On our way to get ice cream we stopped at the neighborhood Chinese restaurant to see what was going on. There was a sign on the door saying that the restaurant was closed due to an inability to find staff. This was sad. The young owners of this place had really put a lot of effort into making the restaurant successful. At least the ice cream store seems to be doing well. There is always a line at the drive through window when we go to get our cones.

When I was getting up this morning I found a tiny snake on our living room floor. How did a snake get in our house? The snake seemed harmless and I took it outdoors, but it was still unsettling to find a snake in your house. I found a very small lizard in the shower last week. I hope this isn't a trend. The ants are bad enough. I definitely don't want to be dealing with reptiles.

After the kennel change we no longer visit the Dalmatians on Monday. The dogs are doing well though. I don't know what's I'll do with the extra time. I guess I'll just go to the gym.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

4279 - 9/11

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since the towers fell. So much has changed and yet nothing has changed. I still sit at the same kitchen table where I watched the days events unfold that fateful morning. The kitchen TV is a modern flatscreen now, but it still sits on top of the same indestructible old Toshiba microwave. Spot had died in June of 2001 and I don't think we'd gotten Petey yet. We had just started getting involved with Dalmatian Rescue. I was still working and was very busy. I remember flying to Germany to work on an ad campaign for Siemens a few weeks after 9/11 and feeling that the world had changed forever.

We flew an American flag in front of our house for the rest of the year. Most of our neighbors did too. The country seemed united in a way that seems impossible today. There was a lot of fear in those early days.  I remember buying gas masks after the anthrax scare. They probably wouldn't have done any good, but they made us feel better for a week or so. Everybody was in favor of going to Afghanistan and kicking the Taliban's ass in those early days. It wasn't until we went to Iraq and completely ignored Saudi Arabia, which was always the elephant in the room, that people started having second thoughts about wars in the Middle East. Nobody would have ever believed that we would end up handing Afghanistan back to the very same Taliban twenty years later.

I wonder if we have learned anything during the past twenty years. The world is more of a mess than it ever was and our own country is hopelessly divided. Janet and I used to travel a lot and loved spending time in Paris and Barcelona. I can't think of a single major city where I'd feel safe anymore. I never could have predicted twenty years ago that my favorite place would now be a lonely mountaintop in West Texas. 

I used to go to New York frequently to edit television commercials. I had a lot of free time and visited the Wall Street area several times. Once I took the elevator to the observation deck on top of the South Tower. I took today's picture from the window of my room at the UN Plaza. I never ate at Windows of the World because I was young and couldn't afford it. Those times seem so long ago now. It's almost like I was living in a different universe.

Now I'm retired and would love to live in a world that made sense again. Lots of luck with that. I still think the primary problem is globalism. You can't just take hundreds of different cultures that have developed over thousands of years and just mix them all together. It doesn't work that way. I look for clues in the animal kingdom, but even ducks can be mean and nasty. Humans never were very nice and probably never will be. We have big brains but we'll never last as long as the dinosaurs. We'll probably do something stupid and be extinct in 300 years.

On days like today we always resolve to never forget. We do forget though. Often way too quickly. History is littered with momentous events we've totally forgotten about. I'm not looking for miracles here. I'd just like ten good years with no major problems. OK, let's be optimistic about my long walks. How about fifteen years?

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3914 - 9/11

I don't know about you, but I don't think I'll ever forget. I still remember the twin towers falling like it was yesterday. I was sitting at the same breakfast table where I eat today mesmerized by something on television that I didn't think was possible. As I ate breakfast today, it was very clear that a lot has changed in nineteen years. The weeks and months following the attack were probably the last time that all Americans were united about anything. There were no cries to defund the police. Our police and first responders were national heroes nineteen years ago. In our neighborhood, almost every house was flying an American flag. It was a troubling time, but I miss the sense of unity we felt then.

Of course it didn't last long. In retrospect, we should have just nuked Tora Bora when we had Osama bin Laden cornered there and called the score even. Endless wars in the Middle East didn't prove anything. Pointless wars with the lack of an end game actually sowed the seeds for a lot of the discord and unrest we are facing today. Each year as we celebrated the anniversary of 9/11, things just became more and more muddled. Senior citizens like my Dad had to take their shoes off at the airport and undergo invasive searches while absolutely nothing was done to restrict the travel of people who clearly shared the beliefs of bin Laden. A special department of the government with almost unlimited funding was set up to track the movements of these people. Nobody was arrested. It wasn't long before the NSA started tracking ordinary citizens as well. The war on terror was about as successful as the war on drugs. Basically, it was a total failure.

I wonder a lot why the country has become so divided. I think we have lost something special that my parents took for granted. The idea that our country was a great melting pot where people from all over the world with a diverse set of beliefs could come to Ellis Island, renounce their past and adopt a common set of values as American citizens was central to our national identity. This common set of values was what allowed my parents generation to win World War II. We were a tough, bad-ass country and we owned it. Nothing could stop us.

This didn't last long either. Our definition of diversity changed over the years and the whole idea of the melting pot was lost. Instead of adopting a common set of values, people were encouraged to keep their traditions, beliefs, and language. It took a while, but tribalism gradually replaced the melting pot. Now we are an extremely tribal nation where people's loyalties don't extend very far beyond their own tribe. I don't see how you can even have a country where the citizens are just a bunch of special interest groups.

I'm not really surprised that a lot of young people just want to scrap everything and start over. If I was young in today's world I might want the same thing. One of the few benefits of age is experience. I'm lucky to have experienced a world where nobody locked their doors at night. I grew up in a world where none of my friends had peanut allergies or autism and our Moms let us wander around all over town without supervision. I ate dirt, took family vacations in cars without seatbelts and grew up confident. It's hard to convey to a younger generation how valuable this was. Pretty soon there won't be anyone left who actually saw the twin towers standing. I've taken the elevator to the top of the South Tower and looked out over the city. It was a fun place to work when I was young. I took this picture many years ago from my hotel room in the UN Plaza. Times were good. I'm glad I had no idea back then what the future would bring.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3548 - 9/11

I'm still living in the same house, sitting at the same kitchen table, watching the same TV at breakfast as I was on this day eighteen years ago. I haven't forgotten. Memories fade though. With each passing year, more and more people will never remember this day as I do. They weren't here. There are young men and women serving in the military right now who weren't even born when the twin towers fell. I don't think these people and those who come after them will ever realize how much has changed.

When we were visiting The National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg recently, I remember thinking how little I really knew about World War II. This is understandable because I wasn't born until three years after the war ended. I never learned about all the sacrifices my Mom and Dad made. They didn't talk about those days much and high school history classes gloss over a lot of things. My Dad would have experienced this museum much differently. He was a Navy man and served in the Pacific during World War II.

I only have one picture of the World Trade Center. It was taken out of my hotel window at the UN Plaza. I used to stay at this hotel when I worked in New York. Although I have never lived in Manhattan, the city was frequently a destination during my ad agency days. I've walked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I've taken the express elevator to the top of the South Tower and looked out over the city from the rooftop observation deck. When I watched the towers fall while eating breakfast at our kitchen table I felt like the world I was familiar with was ending. In retrospect, this feeling was surprisingly accurate. The world hasn't been the same since.

I'd like to see a day when the country is unified again the way we were the day after September 11. We're a long way away from that now. When you look at the divided country we've become, it almost seems like the terrorists won. Hopefully, we will find our way again and discover a way to come together. Tribalism and petty bickering is slowly destroying us.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the state of the world. Day to day life is challenging enough for me. Today, Janet and I started to clean out the greenhouse so repairs can begin. What a lot of broken stuff I've managed to accumulate. Instead of fixing old lawn mowers, it was easier to just buy new ones. I kept the old mowers though, thinking that some day I might get the urge to fix them. This same perverse logic is why my storage warehouse is still full of old, obsolete computers. If I lived in the country and had a lot of acreage, there's a good chance that every old car I ever owned would be covered in rust out in the front yard.

The long awaited successor to the Land Rover Defender has finally arrived. What were they thinking? After Toyota completely botched the reintroduction of the iconic FJ40, its almost like Land Rover couldn't wait to say "hold my beer." I loved my old Defender. Not so sure about this complex, high-tech replacement.

I doubt that it matters. After we finish fixing up the house and yard, I won't be able to afford a new car anyway. At any rate, life goes on. I did my five mile walk this morning. I drank my fruit smoothie while watching TV pundits talk about 9/11 and then wrote a letter to my sister. Next year I'll probably do exactly the same thing.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 3183 - 9/11

Pretty soon September 11 will be like December 7. Babies born in 2001 are entering college now. It's just a matter of time before this day becomes a page in a history book instead of a shared memory for an entire nation. Pear Harbor was real for my Dad. He fought in World War II. 9/11 was real for me. I took this picture of the twin towers out of my hotel room window in the late 1970's when I used to fly from Seattle to New York to edit commercials. I enjoyed my periodic visits to lower Manhattan back then. Anyone could walk around the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and it was always exciting to take the express elevator to the roof of the South Tower and look out over the city. I always wanted to eat at Windows on the World but never got the chance. It was a little pricey for a young advertising copywriter.

Sometimes I think the terrorists won. The world is not a friendly place anymore. We have become hopelessly divided on just about everything. My Dad spent several years in the Pacific during World War II and there was a clear and decisive victory. We've spent decades fighting in the Middle East and accomplished nothing. I don't have a lot of hope for the future. If we can't collectively agree on anything, it's going to be very difficult to fix anything. It's interesting. People used to spend a lot of time envisioning utopias. Now, we've replaced these utopian futures with dystopian calamities. Science fiction used to be about how we were going to reach the stars. Now, it's mostly about how we're going to die.

We didn't get off to a good start this morning. Dash pooped in the bed again and when we took him to his vet appointment, he didn't want anyone to even get close to his feet. Our very patient vet was finally able to trim Dash's nails, but it wasn't easy. Hopefully, we won't need to do this again for another two months. It's kind of alarming how easily Dash bleeds now that he's on Plavix. We were super careful about avoiding the quick, but several nails still bled a bit. I wish we'd come away with a good solution for ending Dash's loose stools, but there are too many possible causes. Dash's age, the meds he's taking, and his multiple illnesses all contribute to the problem.

I was glad I was able to walk Dash before our appointment this morning. By the time we left the vet, it was already starting to rain. The rain continued off and on for the rest of the day. We had a short power outage, but the lights came back on again before I was able to file a report. I have no idea why the power went out. There was no wind and the rain was just a gentle shower. Even though the outage was short, I still had to reset all the clocks and automatic timers. Just about everything has a clock in it these days. Even the thermostat and the coffee maker needed to be reset.

Dash doesn't want to go outside because it is raining. This increases the odds that he will poop in the house tonight. I've thought about placing puppy training pads under him while he sleeps. This worked with Dot when she became incontinent but I'm not sure if we'd have any success with Dash. Dash is still mobile enough to move around at night while we're asleep. He can poop just about anywhere.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2818 - 9/11

With each passing year the world seems to pay a little less attention to 9/11. I was surprised to learn that almost 20% of the US population wasn't even born when the twin towers fell. Do these people even understand how much the world changed that day? It's been sixteen years now. I wonder who will remember when another sixteen years has passed.

I will remember, but I doubt that it matters much. My generation is no longer in charge. If you are my age, you may think you are still relevant, but the torch has already been passed. I hope that future generations will eventually develop an appreciation for history. From what I see, they don't care much about history any more. History is important and you can't just re-write the past because some of it might embarrass you. I will always remember when John Kennedy was shot, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and when the twin towers fell. These weren't dry events in a history book for me. I was there.

I wonder how long it will take the media to forget about Hurricane Irma? They've already forgotten about Harvey. It's astonishing what a short attention span we have these days. It's almost like the evening news has become a circus. Every Channel had a reporter in a raincoat standing out in the middle of the hurricane, but nobody is reporting about the wildfires on the West Coast at all. I didn't hear much about that huge earthquake in Mexico either. Maybe this is normal, but it seems strange to me.

I have time to think about such things because all I do these days is make pathetic attempts to repair things around the house. Today I got up on the roof with a pole saw and trimmed a lot of low hanging branches. The next time we get bad weather, some of these branches were sure to fall. I probably saved about $300 by doing the work myself, but I'd much rather be busy writing or designing websites, so I could pay someone else to do these dirty jobs.

I wonder how long it is going to take for Dash's dewclaw to start growing back. Every time I take his cone off, he starts licking his paw. It doesn't help that he always used to lick his paws anyway. It's just a habit, but it's a very bad habit right now. The wound needs to heal and scab over. This will take a while. I hope it doesn't take as long as it took my dog bite wounds to heal. Dash and I will both go crazy if that is the case. For the time being, I've resigned myself to taking his cone on and off a dozen times a day.

I guess I need to resign myself to losing work to millennials. Another website I created is being redesigned by a team of millennials. It hurts my feelings, but I would have done the same thing when I was younger. I wasn't shy about taking work from older creatives back in the day. Oh, well. What goes around comes around and time just keeps on marching on.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2463 - 9/11

It's hard to believe that it's been fifteen years since the twin towers fell. It seems like yesterday. It's even harder to believe that after all these years, we still aren't any safer than we were then. Two wars and thousands of lost lives haven't made much of a difference. World War II was much shorter from beginning to end than this weird war we're fighting now. Part of the problem is that this has never been a war between nations. It is a clash of civilizations.

You've got part of the world living in the Twenty First Century and another part of the world living in the Fourteenth Century. The Western world should have never allowed itself to become dependent on oil from the Middle East. Middle Eastern countries have been fighting among themselves for thousands of years, but if we didn't need their oil, we would never have needed to get involved. To me, this whole notion that we are one world with a common purpose has been disastrous. I've never been a big fan of globalization. A lot of little countries, each independently moving along at their own pace and living according to their own agenda would be better for everybody.

I met my sleep goal for the first time since I started wearing fitness trackers. I was amazed that I got over eight hours of sleep last night. I woke up once during the night, because Dot had to go outside and pee, but after that, she was relaxed and slept until well after 8 AM. It will probably be a long time before this happens again. Tomorrow, Janet gets up at 5 AM to get ready for work and the dogs wake up shortly after because they know she fixes their breakfast. We've usually completed our first morning walk before 6:30 AM. Getting up early would be fine if it weren't for the fact that I always go to bed late.

Maybe the extra sleep helped my coordination. I shot baskets at the gym better than I have for a long time. I'm not very good, so getting five free throws in a row is a big deal. This success made the rest of my workout seem bearable and I briefly contemplated going to the gym more than once a week. There are often a lot of nice cars in the parking lot when I go to the gym on Sunday. Today I parked between a Bentley and a Porsche Panamera. I tried to guess who the rich guys were while I was walking on the treadmill, but nobody looked particularly successful. There were just a bunch of tired, out of shape old men doing the same things I was.

The world has certainly changed in fifteen years. I didn't think I needed to go to the gym fifteen years ago. I wasn't as healthy as I thought though. I had Hepatitis C and didn't even know it yet. The world wasn't as healthy as I thought either. My business was still pretty successful in 2001 and I remember flying to Germany for a business meeting about a week after 9/11. The airport was filled with soldiers and everybody on the plane seemed nervous. I knew that the world had changed, but I had no idea that the repercussions of that day would continue year after year, seemingly forever. If you had told me than that in 2016 the European Union would be on the verge of collapse, that tribalism had replaced nationalism, that it was next to impossible to find a good job, and that the United States would have two candidates running for president that the voters generally hated, I wouldn't have believed you. Lord knows what will happen next year.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 2096 - 9/11

I left the house this morning fully intending to try the new restaurant. I came to an intersection where if I turned left, I would be headed toward the new restaurant and if I turned right, I'd be on my way to my regular place. The left lane of the cross street was bumper-to-bumper cars as far as the eye could see. The right lane was practically empty. I turned right and headed back to familiar territory. This is probably how I found my Friday restaurant in the first place. If I turned left, I would pass three schools on my way to the new restaurant. In the other direction there were no schools and very few cars. I always tend to follow the path of least resistance.

This reminded me of the Dr. Who episode called "Turn Left" where Donna Noble has to go back in time at a critical moment and convince an earlier version of herself to turn left at an intersection to reverse a chain of events that was going to destroy the world. I don't think turning right at my intersection this morning will cause anything drastic to happen, but it did make me wonder how today would have turned out if I turned left instead.

I probably made the right choice. I didn't have time to experiment today. When I got back from breakfast, there was barely time to take a quick shower and check my e-mail before it was time to take Dot to the cancer center for her Ultrasound scan. The oncologist said that the tumor was stable and not growing, so it was safe for Dot to discontinue her chemotherapy. She agreed that Dot looked stronger and wants us to monitor Dot's condition with a follow-up Ultrasound scan every two months. Sounds good to me. I'm really encouraged to see that Dot is getting stronger again. Admittedly, we're taking baby steps, but this is so much better than seeing her slide even further downhill.

It was a very different day fourteen years ago. We hadn't met Dot yet, but she was a very young puppy on the verge of becoming lost and abandoned. I hadn't started blogging yet and wasn't eating very healthy either. I'll always remember looking at the kitchen TV in stunned disbelief as I watched the twin towers fall while I ate a plate of French Toast floating in a sea of maple syrup. I would soon learn that I was on the road to diabetes and needed to change my ways. Watching the Today Show while eating that big plate of French Toast was the end of innocence in so many ways. The world has never been the same since. Dot found Janet and I through the Dalmatian Rescue organization and her story had a happy ending. I don't think the world was as lucky as Dot. We are still facing almost all the same problems we faced on September 11, 2001. Two wars certainly didn't help much. In retrospect, we should have left dictators like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi in place. They were the only thing keeping a population of zealots that were still living in the Middle Ages in check. We've opened Pandora's box, and as the world descends into chaos, I'm not sure that anyone has a plan to close it again.

I certainly don't have any solutions.  There are too many of us on this planet and we keep making more. We are consuming the planet's resources at an alarming rate. Some of use are living in the twenty first century while others are still living in the fourteenth century. This can't end well. It really shouldn't be surprising that I prefer the company of dogs. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if that giant asteroid hadn't wiped out the dinosaurs sixty five million years ago. Maybe the dinosaurs would have done a better job of things.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1731 - 9/11

Every year at this time, NBC re-broadcasts the September 11, 2001 Today Show in its entirety. Every year I continue to watch this broadcast while I'm eating breakfast and I'm just as horrified as I was on the day I saw the events unfold on live TV. Thirteen years and several wars later, terrorism is still just as much of a problem as it was then. It's sad. As long as we continue thinking that the terrorists are just a few bad apples in a generally good basket the problem will never go away. The real problem is that a big chunk of the world is still living in the Middle Ages. Do we have the resolve to address the problem the way a Winston Churchill or a Harry Truman would have? I doubt it.

I managed to get one of yesterday's missing websites reinstated on a new server and back online toward the end of the day. Now I need to do the same thing with five more domains and we'll be back where we started. I'd like to think we'll be back where we started anyway. The reality is that there are probably dozens of little inconsistencies that I'll need to resolve in the days ahead. I know I'm going to have to re-write some online forms. Just about every hosting company seems to handle these things differently.

Dot had another good day at her physical therapy session. She can consistently do a twenty minute workout now and each week we increase the speed of the treadmill slightly during her interval training. I know that Dot would rather just take a long nap, but this is very good for her. Her muscle tone is improving and I honestly don't think any of our dogs were this strong at Dot's age. Her vet is pleased at how quickly the Incurin is starting to work as well. Dot has gone three days without an accident now. After two weeks we can start gradually reducing the amount of Incurin she receives until all she requires is a very low maintenance dose.

I go down to Baylor for another blood test tomorrow morning. I'm hoping that this new lab work will give me the ammunition I need to discontinue my Statin drugs. I don't like the side effects of statins, but if my liver panel comes back normal, I'm sure all my doctors will want to continue them. Statins and Niacin are much more effective at controlling Lipids and bad cholesterol than anything else on the market.

I got two new writing assignments today. I haven't done a lot of writing this summer, so it will be nice to have a change of pace from all the website work. I've got a big photo shoot scheduled for Saturday as well. I'm glad the dogs are getting better now. A month ago I wouldn't have had the time to do these things.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1366 - 9/11

I wonder how long it will be before the "We will never forget" tributes that honor this day are forgotten themselves. I'm already seeing fewer flags flying at half mast and the once ubiquitous wall-to-wall remembrances on the major news networks have been replaced with a few short feature stories that are interspersed between segments about Syria, forest fires in California, and the upcoming Floyd Mayweather-Canelo Alverez fight. Sadly, a quick Google search will garner just as many conspiracy theories about 9/11 these days as thoughtful tributes.

The events that shaped my life are slowly being forgotten. Do a search for November 22 and you will find more articles about the upcoming Xbox One launch than about the Kennedy assassination. Even though I remember the day well, it is ancient history to a majority of the population. The last time I visited Dealey Plaza on November 22, I noticed that the conspiracy nuts selling books about what really happened were growing very old and the crowds were quite sparse.  Jeez, the Apollo astronauts are senior citizens now and Woodstock memories have been replaced by Burning Man memories. It is almost inevitable that 9/11 will eventually be forgotten as well.

I don't think I'll ever forget that fateful morning when the towers fell twelve years ago, but it could happen. I've certainly forgotten plenty of other important things already. I can't even remember close friends birthdays anymore without the help of Facebook. I did remember to go to the Dallas Business Alliance breakfast meeting this morning. I still find it difficult to get up this early, but I'm already finding these meetings interesting.

Wednesday is quickly turning into the busiest day of the week. With a breakfast networking meeting in the morning, Dot's physical therapy sessions in the afternoon, and dog training classes in the evening, it's hard to find time to do anything else. Not surprisingly, I didn't finish any of my writing assignments today, but I did find time to set up a test Wordpress site on my local server. So far, configuring the server correctly has been a lot more difficult than working in the Wordpress environment. Wordpress is a lot different than building a site in Dreamweaver, but I'll figure it out eventually. Since this is probably the only new thing I'll have to learn this year, it would be embarrassing if I can't master things fairly quickly.

I just got my car back and now Janet's Land Rover has to go to the shop for repairs. The air conditioning abruptly quit working today and it's still pretty hot outside. With such terrible repair histories, you might wonder why we're so fond of these cars. Sometimes I wonder myself.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1001 - 9/11

I wonder why the bad memories are the most indelible? While many of my most pleasant memories have faded away, I'll never forget the day the dogs and I were attacked by another dog and Dash was almost killed. I still vividly remember hearing six shots right outside my front door back when Janet and I were first dating, as police shot and killed an intruder in the neighborhood. Although it was many years ago, it seems like yesterday when I sat alone for 45 minutes in the mortuary with my Dad shortly after he died. 9/11 is like this for me. On a Tuesday morning eleven years ago the unthinkable happened and I will never forget it.

That fateful day changed our lives in ways that most of us still don't fully appreciate. An innocence was lost that morning that I don't think will ever be recovered. That was the day that privacy became an anachronism as well. We don't even question the cameras on every street corner now. We don't question being poked, prodded and scanned at airports. These intrusions have just become part of life as we know it. The two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't really accomplish much, but they did set the stage for something much more effective.

Robotic drones were developed that quietly observed everything and just as quietly eliminated the bad guys one by one. Nobody seemed to mind the drones. They have been so successful that they are starting to be used domestically. The border patrol uses them. So do some police departments. As technology improves, these drones will continue to get smaller and more sophisticated. There will be a day when the drones are as small as mosquitoes and will be used to quietly poison their victims. No bombs required. I have mixed feeling about all this. I like the idea of being able to selectively and almost invisibly eradicate evil, but it puts a huge responsibility on the folks flying these things. We are still human. One day, a distraught controller will go rogue and use a drone to kill his ex-wife and then everything will start to unravel.

When I took this picture of the New York skyline looking out my hotel window at the UN Plaza in the mid-1980's, the world was a simpler place. I wish I could go back to those days. I was much less cynical when the twin towers were full of life. I couldn't afford to go to Windows on the World, but I liked to ride the elevators to the top of the towers and look out over the city. The last time I was in New York, I just looked down at a deep hole and mourned.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1000

1000 days ago, I became a blogger. I didn’t really have much to say, but I was determined to say it anyway. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was convinced that if you looked at the ordinary closely enough, it would become extraordinary.

Day after day, I recorded the trivial and the absurd in my life. Even in the beginning I knew that a blog needed pictures. Each evening I showed you a different Dalmatian. They all had spots and looked very similar, but I understood they were completely unique. I knew these dogs. I had photographed each of them and had helped to find them homes.

The watches were different. I didn’t find homes for the watches. They found a home with me. I collected them all. The reason you see a new Dalmatian and a new watch every day is quite simple. I have lots and lots of pictures of both. Since I’m a visual person, I instinctively knew that every watch and dog I showed you told a story. I wasn’t so sure about my days.

On the surface, my life is extremely boring. If you were a fly on the wall, watching my daily routine would be like watching paint dry. At least that’s what I thought at first. I wondered why anyone would even bother to read this blog. Lets face it. Not much happens.

People did begin to read however, and I began to discover that even the most uneventful existence is full of mystery and nuance. The simple act of writing things down has allowed me to see things I normally never noticed. Maybe it wasn’t such a boring life after all. I had built a little business that had survived for almost 25 years without going bankrupt. I had learned to understand what goes on inside the heads of dogs. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, I was still alive.

Without the trail of breadcrumbs the blog now provides me, I probably would have already forgotten that I’ve been interviewed twice by the local news during the past 1000 days. I’ve been featured in ads for Paypal and was even flown out to San Francisco for a big photo shoot featuring two Dalmatians and me. Honeybees built a huge hive in our roof one Summer and threatened to invade the house. Another Summer I shot a video about a goat that became friends with a Great Dane for the National Geographic Channel. You may have seen it. There have been cancer scares, tornado alerts, sick dogs and much more. Through all this, I never missed a day. I posted on the same day I had surgery. I kept posting through power outages and computer failures. Hell, I had a story to tell. It was a good story too. You could even make a good case that I’d been leading a pretty interesting life after all.

The blog has taught me that almost everything you do has implications. The Dalmatian pictures have made people more aware of Dalmatian Rescue and the importance of saving these wonderful dogs. Dot and Dash now have dozens of new friends from all around the world.

Amazingly, the pictures of watches on the blog have actually made me a little money. As a result of my daily watch pictures, I am now considered a watch expert in certain circles and have written more than 300 articles and press releases for major brands like Fortis, Eterna and Versace. Who would have thought?

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. On September 10, 2001 I had no idea of what was going to happen the next day. If the blog has taught me one thing, it is this. Even after 1000 consecutive days of posting, I still can’t tell you what is going to happen tomorrow. You’re going to have to just keep reading.

Cleo is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 635

I was looking through some old Ektachrome slides the other day and was surprised to discover that I'd taken several pictures of Engine Company 18. I used to do a lot of work in New York in the 1980's and I must have taken this picture of the historic West Village station while I was walking from my hotel to the recording studio. Who would have known then that Engine Company 18 would become a specialized HazMat unit known as Squad Company 18 in 1998 and subsequently be put to the ultimate test a few years later on September 11, 2001. Squad Company 18 lost a huge number of firefighters for such a small station on 9/11. When I look at this photograph, I can't help but think that the world will never again enjoy the innocence it felt when I walked by this station on a cool morning in 1985.

When all my other memories have faded, I will still remember the day President Kennedy was shot, the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, and the day the towers fell. These are days that changed history forever. I think the changes set in place by 9/11 aren't over yet. Today's economy has something to do with 9/11. The Arab Spring with its unprecedented fall of dictatorships has something to do with 9/11 as well. History is funny. It's hard to see it when you're right in the middle of it. Maybe in thirty years or so, we'll have a better idea of what opening this particular Pandora's Box has brought us. I just wish we could somehow recreate the sense of unity and determination we all felt on September 12, 2001. If we could do that as a society, we could accomplish anything.

I don't know how to make sweeping changes. I don't think anybody does. That's why I stick to small things. I try to help dogs and avoid being a burden to others. That's about it. Today we took the dogs to the dog park. We did some laundry. We reflected on what we saw on TV. Tomorrow will be a brand new day.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day