Music, Dog Daze and the Santa Season

I play recorder regularly with great friends, and I present two of them to you, with great joy! we play all kinds of early music, no, not the Beatles, early meaning Renaissance and medieval and, if we feel really modern, Baroque! I took pix today, but was very sad indeed to find that the husky dog who lives in friend's house, and whom I planned on having right there in the middle where the space is, is no more.

since we were last there, three weeks ago, dear Nico, a 12 year old husky, was found to have an inoperable mass and was euthanized. Very very hard for the owner -- the lady in the green sweater -- but definitely right for Nico. We used to love his company as we played, shoving our stands around and howling along with the fire whistle! and now and then if he didn't like our choices, withdrawing to the other room, all on his dignity. He had a wonderful life with Jeanne, and it's just too bad that dogs simply don't live long enough. So we honored him with a space in the middle of the pix.

His predecessor, Felix, another husky, was the idea behind the name of our, then, quintet, the Felix Five! this is something recorder players do, give themselves fancydancy titles, since our music is strictly for our own pleasure. Somewhere I have old fashioned print pix of the Felix Five from years ago. One of these days they will show up, along with the 4,589,343 other pix somewhere waiting to be organized. Along with the Euclidean Trio, heh.

Speaking of dogs and other friends: When Andy was forced by his health to retire from his petcare biz (second retirement, first was from a prestigious research post in chemistry, this man has no false pride!) I made a nice collage of pix of many animals he'd cared for.

We both had petcare bizzes, which I created and organized then spun one off to him one to me, separate enterprises. But some things we both did, one of them being to get pix of pets to put in their files so that if, God forbid, one got lost or loose, we had a picture ready to rush about and shove at people gasping, him, have you seen him, etc. Anyway, once he retired, I took a lot of pix, made a collage and hung it in the kitchen where he could enjoy it. and with any luck, you'll see it here.

What I originally planned to say in here today, but dogs get in everywhere, was that our little town has a nice Christmas ritual, which consists a few days before Christmas of marking the season. The first time I encountered this, I was scared rigid, since it consisted of all kinds of official vehicles, sirens and lights going, swerving round into the cul de sac I used to live on, and I wondered gads what disaster can have happend to bring ALL the emergency vehicles out at once. I ran to the window to find out if I had to evacuate, scream, faint or what, and there down below on the back of the fire truck: Santa, waving happily at me and wishing me Merry Christmas. Oh. Okay. Not an emergency. Fun for little kids -- throwing of candy to them, etc.

This was before 9.11 which changed our lives totally and permanently in this part of the world -- neighbors and friends died that day, my petcare biz vanished when corporate travel vanished, much hardship all around, obituaries for months and months of young kids who had worked in the Towers, whose remains were finally found and identified, 700 people from NJ died. It permanently scarred all of us for emergency signals.

Anyway, now, when we hear the sirens and see the lights, if it's in late December, neighbors now assume it's Santa! we've learned this stuff. But one of my friends across the street commented that it's going to be really hard to get our attention if anything actually does go wrong, since we'll all say, oh, it's only Santa, not to worry!

Anyway, just to say to all of us, folks, whatever we're dealing with, and in this household with the latest medical findings for Handsome Partner, we are dealing with a great deal, I just want to say: whatever happens, it's okay, honest. It's only Santa!

Huge holiday greetings and joy and fun and playtime to all of us.