CSotD: Taking it all personally
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(Bliss)
Yesterday was a snow day, which is rare for someone who works at home, but we woke up to over a foot of snow and the dog was no more interested in going out than I was. So, after the plow had cleared our driveway, I went out once to run an errand and he went out a couple of times just long enough for what he went out there for.
The difference being that I have no particular need for exercise but he does, so I now have a Velcro dog pestering for attention and fussing about the house.
And the relevance to this juxtaposition is that, as a hound, he's normally very laid back and only pesters twice a day: When we first get up and he gets breakfast, and then twelve hours later, when it's dinner time.
Which makes him something of a service dog, because, like a lot of people who enjoy their work, I tend to get into the groove and there are many days when he starts fussing around and, after I've told him to leave me alone a couple of times, I realize that he's perfectly right and it's dinner time and maybe I should shift gears for the evening.
Fortunately, as for waking me up at night, our apartment is small enough that he can monitor things from the bed and so, being a hound, feels no compulsion to get up and patrol. And, specific to Bliss, we get up at four anyway, and, since that's his breakfast time, I don't have to worry about hitting the alarm and going back to sleep.
All of which is more than you need to know, but my point is that, while cartoons about dogs sniffing butts, peeing on fire hydrants and drinking out of toilets can be funny, the ones that really hit home are the truly observational pieces, and the cartoonists who base their cartoons on their own dogs give you a pretty good hint of what type of dog they own — toy, sporting, hound, etc.
My reaction to Steve Benson's cartoon, drawn in response to Trump's reversal of a ban on imported trophies, is a little more nuanced.
I'm not a hunter, but I grew up surrounded by them. For many of my friends, getting your deer was an important part of family economics, not simply a sporting issue, and it was a tradition that went back several generations, in some of their families beyond Columbus.
But that's one of the reasons I wouldn't take up hunting today: I live in the city, albeit a town of only 13,200 in a rural part of the country. No matter. I don't live in the woods and I don't have the relationship with the countryside that a hunter should.
For me to go into some strange woods and take a deer would be an intrusion into a cycle that isn't mine and where I don't belong.
This Real Life Adventures cartoon from 2001 particularly amused a coworker of mine.
He'd been shot through the throat a few years earlier by some city guy who felt anything that rustled in the bushes was probably a deer.
And to cross the ocean to an entirely other continent and take an elephant is exponentially more intrusive and inappropriate.
But here's where it gets more complex and less semi-spiritual: With the exception of parties led by corrupt guides, the animals being shot by tourists are not endangered.
When an elephant is legally hunted, it's part of game management and, while the species as a whole is under extreme pressure, sensible management of specific herds is part of preservation.
Also, it's a part of local economies.
Also, trophy hunters are assholes.
I recently found and reread Osa Johnson's autobiography, "I Married Adventure" about the early days of nature filming, and discovered that even then, in the days of silent, hand-cranked film, back when Africa was still wild and game was abundant and these safaris had to shoot food for their armies of bearers because you couldn't possibly bring enough along from the city, people who cared about animals had contempt for trophy hunters.
I'd rather see the import ban stay in place and more economic benefits go to ecotourism.
Have the rangers cull the herds as required and let the rich folks with Bwana fixations go abuse the porters on Kilimanjaro while the genuinely curious nature lovers can visit Treetops and collect their Big Five with cameras, not bullets.
Fortunately, I don't have to rant on this topic. I'll just show you Jimmy Margulies's cartoon and then provide a link to this editorial on the topic of refugee families and our sensitive family-values government and let you handle the ranting.
I do think this passage expresses things well:
The only principle at work, if it can be called that, is the idea that future asylum seekers might be deterred if they are convinced that the United States is actually a crueler and more heartless place than their native country.
At least Trump wasn't a disappointment. We knew what he was.
By contrast, the Francis strip is becoming a reminder of a sunny promise and how the papacy remains a case of "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 266 times, shame on me."
And now he's perpetuating a tradition of handing out sainthood as if it were gold watches. Pairing Pope Paul VI with Oscar Romero is the kind of phony "balance" that reinforces my decision to walk away.
Paul may indeed have presided over Vatican II, but he inherited it from John XXIII and threw on the brakes, issuing Humanae Vitae to reaffirm a tradition of not getting it.
Observant Catholics say of celibate clergy that doctors don't have to have cancer to treat it.
But I'm glad my oncologist studied cancer in greater depth than my priests did sex, with an open mind and a reasonably up-to-date attitude.
(Be prepared to hit stop at the end — I couldn't disable the autoplay)
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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