Sorry, no criminals today.
Actual dogs on this Dog Blog, yes. That I can do.
I have a small black dog with big brown eyes.
Her name is Sophie and she’s been with me for almost three years now.
I like to say I rescued her from the pound. But more days than not it’s she that does the rescuing. And it leads me to believe that a dog who consents to be a person’s friend gives a friendship that’s like no other.
I happened upon this fluffy pup at the Greenville Humane Society.
It was a busy Saturday in the puppy room. Kids and parents were giggling and gasping over tiny brown and white and yellow dogs.
But no one was looking at the larger black dog. The one laying quietly in her cage, perhaps wondering what others had that she didn’t.
But I saw her and lifted the latch of the steel cage door. I picked her up and she laid her little head on my shoulder and I’m almost certain she breathed a sigh of relief.
She does all the usual things that dogs are said to do.
Waits at the window for me. (I think all day she must lie there.)
Sits with me on the couch.
Watches whatever I want to watch on TV.
Appreciates a dollop of peanut butter any time of day.
Thumps her tail when we have our conversations. And we do have them.
Like the time we tried to solve the “who is letting their dog mess in our yard” question. Nothing came of it. Just Sophie’s brown eyes, filled to the top of her brown iris’ with as much confusion as I ever could muster.
For my birthday this year I decided Sophie might like a little brother or sister. Someone small and sweet and well, did I say small?
I know someone who has a miniature pinscher and so I decided upon one.
A Google search led me to the Internet Miniature Pinscher Service (IMPS.)
Luck led me to Dickens.
She had been put in a box and left at a humane society in another part of the state.
She was shy at first. Her chubby and shiny and black body would shake and she usually retreated beneath a blanket or under a bed. (A shyness Sophie simply did not understand. This Sophie who would make friends with a porcupine if nature would allow.)
But it’s been about two months now. She is spending less time under the bed and more time on my lap.
She’s warming up to Sophie. Sophie is learning to wait. And we’re all learning that a little time, a little extra love and a dollop of peanut butter do wonders for all of us.
The wonders of peanut butter
by Melissa Blanton
On friends with a purpose
by Lyn Riddle
Books brought them together. Breast cancer gave them a cause.
The Whine and Wine Book Club started meeting about three years ago, every third Tuesday of the month. It was as much a time for laughter and socializing as for discussing literature.
Then came the month they read a book by Jill Conner Browne of Sweet Potato Queen Fame, the franchise that offers help for every occasion such as raising children for fun and profit (yes, that is the name of one of her books).
Club member Jessica Traynham had arranged a surprise. She had e-mailed Browne and asked her to call during the meeting. And Browne did.
The women were so taken with the book, the woman, the night, they decided to start a Sweet Potato Queen chapter.
But Traynham and friend Juli Spann were not content to just dress up in big red wigs and costumes that made their you know whats much bigger than normal and march in Christmas parades.
“The fun can only go so far,” Traynham told Spann.
They settled on breast cancer awareness and called themselves the Ta-Ta Queens. Many Sweet Potato Queen chapters, including the original group, raise money for certain causes, but these Upstate ladies took it a step farther. They established a non-profit, the only Sweet Potato Queen chapter in the country to do so.
“We want to make a difference in our community,” Spann said.
They promote early detection and the importance of mammograms. They’ve joined with Race for the Cure and other events focused on breast cancer. They wear pink and have a 14-foot-long pink trailer for parades.
“Those big red wigs do make people notice us,” Spann said. “And that’s the point.”
Last year they staged their first fundraiser. It was at the Upcountry History Museum and about 150 people showed up, all by word of mouth. They made a little more than they spent, Spann said.
This year is a whole ‘nother story.
They are having the event at the Hilton Garden Inn. It’s A Royal Cotillion for Queens and Their Kings. Food, drink, auction, band.
And Browne.
Not only will the original queen attend the April 24 event, but she has waived her $15,000 speaking fee. And she’s bringing one of her crowns to be auctioned.
The reason is the group wants to do more than pass out literature and be big-haired pretty. They want to provide every woman battling breast cancer in the area – from those just diagnosed to those recovering from surgery – with The Royal Treatment Package.
“It will be full of things to make their life easier,” Spann said.
Tailored to individual needs, the package will include coupons, gift cards, housecleaning services, pillows to place under the arm during recuperation, information on where to get wigs or bras. Browne has also given them a number of autographed books to include.
“Humor helps in any situation,” Spann said.
They intend to ask doctors to offer information about the package to patients and their families, who in turn call and request one.
Spann said it is especially gratifying when a cancer patient tells her “You made me laugh.”
Everyone in the Ta-Tas has been touched by breast cancer. One is a survivor. Others have aunts or cousins, mothers or sisters who have battled the disease.
And at every appearance something touching happens.
At one, a woman asked one of the members to go with her to her next appointment.
“She wanted one of us to go hold her hand,” Spann said.
And one of them did.
Well hello there
by Melissa Blanton
Oh blogs.
Personal rant? An opportunity to actually listen to that motherly advice from one’s youth: If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all.
Or a wise mix of both.
I’m sure I don’t know. But I plan to find out with this, the first of perhaps a few Dog Blog posts.
Today? Criminals, no one ever said you had to be smart to be one…and yes, all that’s listed below happened within the Greenville city limits over the past week or so.
Like the potential car thief probably shouldn’t buy a lottery ticket any time soon. His luck was in short supply when he pried open the door of a Saturn parked in a lot off Grove Road. Too bad the car had actually broken down in the lot.
Someone reported a 2005 Hyundai Sonata stolen from downtown. Turns out someone calling himself the car owner’s friend had actually just moved it to a different location
Church vans – they’re apparently not sacred. One was parked in front of a Missionary Baptist Church and now it’s without a battery…presumably after the thief realized a rock to the steering column wasn’t getting him anywhere.
Folks at one Lowndes Hill Road home may actually be glad for the frigid temps of late. Someone stole the air conditioning unit.
Then there’s the woman who left the Walgreens on Laurens Road, opened the door of her Ford Explorer only to find a strange man sitting there. He thought it was his car he told her. Problem No. 1 with this story: Her car was gold. The car he drove away in – after being shooed out – was gray.
These folks must be building a house. Why else would someone steal a stove, heat pump and the always-handy breaker box?
Keep your friends close. That’s what one crime victim learned last week after a male acquaintance knocked her in the back of the head. He got cigarettes, eyeglasses and some cash. And now a lot of folks know his nickname – Ray-Ray – his neighborhood moniker, now preserved here, and on an incident report for years to come.
Photography happening at the zoo
by Cindy Landrum
It only takes a trip to the zoo.
A trip to the Greenville Zoo or the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia costs a few dollars compared to a few thousands of dollars for a trip to Tanzania.
The animals at the zoo are often better photographic subjects because they are in better condition since they don’t have to fight for their food or find shelter.
At zoos, you are more likely to get the animal in the right pose or even see the animal at all.
Some tips:
Go early or stay late. The best light for photography is in the early morning or a couple hours before sunset. The animals are usually more active in the morning when it’s cooler. Save the indoor exhibits for photographing in the mid-day when the light is harsh.
Focus on the eyes. The eyes are the focal point and they must be in focus.
When shooting through the fence, get as close to the fence as possible. Use a telephoto lens and zoom in as far as you can. Shoot wide open, using the largest aperture (which actually is the smallest numbered f-stop) to get a shallow depth of field. Even if the fence is visible in your photo, it won’t be as noticeable.
When shooting through glass, change your angle of view until most or all of the glare disappears. If you have to use flash, it’s best to use it off-camera so you can hold it at an angle.
Be patient.
Staying true … to what?
by Joan Herlong
Just when I thought our first lady had broken the mold by not “standing by her man” while he blathered on about his breach of trust, she writes a book and cashes in on her family’s pain.
In her media blitz ad nauseum this week, Jenny Sanford mechanically relates the pain she felt when her sons read their father’s steamy (more like smarmy) e-mails to the Other Woman in Argentina that were published on line.
That kind of pain is understandable. No kids should ever read scarring-for-life tripe written by their dad. No parent should ever be thrust in the position of having to explain their spouse’s infidelity to the family.
But if that was so agonizing, what makes Jenny think that her sons will benefit from reading about their father’s personal and formerly private foibles, known to their sainted mother only by virtue of marriage? I soooo don’t care about Mark Sanford’s worry about his growing bald spot, his sexual naiveté, his world class penny pinching, his second hand gifts, his insistence that expensive gifts (that he gave) be returned, or his desire (I cannot resist irony) as a newlywed to bunk with his brothers at the farm instead of with his bride.
If I don’t care, how could her four sons really care, or benefit, from this exposure?
Saint Jenny says she wrote the book “for her sons.” What therapist in their right mind would suggest telling your children the intimate details of your marriage and/or about their father, let alone in a book for all the world to read (and buy)?
She reveals that her then fiancé insisted that their marriage vows be amended to omit faithfulness. But that’s not news. What’s news is that Phi Beta Jenny AGREED to the edit. (I think I might retract my previous assumption about her being the brains behind his throne, but then again, everything is relative.)
Speaking of marriage vows, we need to add a fiduciary clause to the standard version. Edit out that nonsense about obeying (as my Reason for Living and I did) and put in fiduciary guarantees.
Think about it. If your lawyer learns confidential, personal things about you during the course of your lawyer/client relationship, he or she can NEVER reveal that information to any third party without your permission. That’s also true of your accountant, and even your realtor. Seriously.
Marriage is so sacrosanct, that it makes pundits parry, priests pontificate, and politicians pander. But if it is so special, so blessed, why it is acceptable for a “wronged spouse” to make the private nuggets of a marriage public grist for their money mill?
If my Reason for Living were to kick me to the curb, he has already promised he won’t even the score by writing a tell-all book about how I routinely scorched dinner, left shoes everywhere, and routinely counseled our children to tell obnoxious peers to go to hell. (They never would listen to me, though.)
Even the “marriage privilege,” as it’s known in legal circles, is eroding. No one can be compelled to testify against their spouse, but it is becoming more difficult, on a state by state basis, for someone to prevent their spouse from testifying against them in court if their spouse wants to.
At this point, even my comatose friends are more aware of the sad and sordid details of “the Sanford affair” than they ever wanted or needed to be. That’s one of the consequences of a public demolition of the marriage of two people who chose the sparkle of life in the public eye.
But the private details gleaned from the comparatively happy days of a marriage should remain just that: private. If you share the intimate details of your marriage with others, you forfeit intimacy.
Jenny Sanford pleaded for reporters to respect her, and her sons’ privacy during the immediate aftermath of Governor Sanford’s stunning and stumbling public confession. All well and good, bravo.
In a bizarre turn, she’s now tired of privacy. Like her estranged and strange husband, she likes the limelight, seeks it. She says writing Staying True was cathartic for her (but then again so is writing nasty emails, and then hitting delete instead of send – or so I’m told).
We are supposed to be inspired by her memoir, the final act in their tragedy where she “stays true” to her principles, to her sons, and to her faith.
I don’t buy it. I have no intention of buying it (nor will I buy Elizabeth Edwards’ screed). When it comes to underwriting things that undermine the privacy of marriage, I pinch my pennies even more tightly than her hapless ex ever could.
Break out
by Cindy Landrum
Guess what this is.
Nobody gets hurt.
That’s what happens when photographers break out of their comfort zones and experiment with something new, former professional jazz musician turned nature photographer Tony Sweet told a group of nature photographers meeting in Greensboro, N.C., last weekend.
While many nature photographers prefer a literal style of photography, Sweet incorporates the improvisational, spontaneous and abstract nature of jazz into his image.
Sweet, who has been named a Nikon Legend Behind the Lens, uses a slight movement of the camera to give a landscape image a painterly feel. He uses a Lensbaby to give a flower shot a soft, mostly out-of-focus look. And he uses computer software to turn a blasé, otherwise pretty unusable image into fine art.
And he makes it work.
I’m sure many of the photographers who attended the Carolina Nature Photographers Association annual meeting will be inspired to try something new or use a technique they’ve never tried before because of Sweet’s presentation. I know I will.
After all, in the digital age of photography, a press of a button on the back of the camera erases all evidence of experiments that don’t work.
And, as Sweet says, nobody gets hurt.
South Carolina’s giving spirit
by Susan Simmons
I remember, back when the infamous “you lie” soared above the president’s voice in the U.S. House chamber, thinking: “oh please, oh please, don’t let that guy be from South Carolina.”
The fact that such a fear would instantly leap to mind was almost as discouraging as learning that the dread, alas, was justified.
The same sinking feeling arrived with my morning coffee two weeks ago when the latest blunder from our lieutenant governor headlined every website I visited.
Once again, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart nailed us: “Oh, South Carolina, you just keep on giving, don’t you?”
We do. We are blessed with an embarrassing riches of leadership devoted, as Stewart said, to making sure South Carolina “gives more than its fair share” to the nation’s comedy writers.
Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, however, is a special case, uniquely gifted at “getting his mouth in place quicker than his head,” as Francis Marion political science professor Neal Thigpen noted to The State newspaper.
Bauer speaks so fast and so enthusiastically “it’s almost like a Gatling gun,” Thigpen said. And like a Gatling gun, there’s not much left but smoke and flame when he finishes raking his targets.
So it was when Bauer decided to attack the dependency culture created by welfare. He equated giving free school meals to poor children with feeding stray animals – a mistake, he told a crowd in Fountain Inn, because “it encourages them to breed.”
He now says that’s not what he meant – but listen to the audiotape on YouTube. Here’s the pertinent quote:
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you have to do is curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
What is clear, after listening to several of his post-disaster spins, is how completely that last sentence applies to Bauer.
Even “taken in context” – the refuge of every backpedaling politician – what he said is awful.
No question, we need to “break the cycle of generational poverty and dependence,” as Bauer insists is what he meant. No question, poverty and low parental involvement are linked to low test scores.
But what Bauer said – and has not apologized for – is that we shouldn’t feed the poor because they will breed mindlessly like animals. And like animals, they need their betters to curtail and control them.
A politician who talks like this – who does not grasp how profoundly demeaning it is – is not capable of the kind of leadership necessary to inspire the people of this state to even attempt to solve the problems Bauer is so proud of himself for recognizing. In fact, he makes a genuine conversation about them impossible, because he’s framed the issues so offensively.
Thigpen, the Francis Marion professor, told The State none of this matters, that Bauer has a “fanatical following” who will “forgive him almost anything and stick to him like glue.”
I don’t understand how that’s possible. Surely the state that keeps on giving has finally given enough. Surely South Carolinians are ready to put an adult, not a Gatling gun, in the governor’s mansion.
Dum spiro, spero. While I breathe, I hope.
On giving teachers the help they deserve
by Lyn Riddle
I received an e-mail from a teacher the other day. She portrayed a world we don’t normally see.
Teachers working 50 or more hours a week (paid for 40). Grading papers at home. Meeting with parents after school. Buying supplies not only for the classroom but also for children who can’t afford them. And that includes clothes, book bags and Band-Aids.
“Ask anyone with a teacher in the family and they know,” the teacher wrote. “It is just wrong to think we work 8-3.”
The teacher said make no mistake. She is grateful for her job, but anyone who thinks teachers are overpaid – like our legislators who think teachers should not be paid for days students are not in school – should go get a teaching degree and see for himself what it’s like.
“Those built-in 10 days we have in our contracts when students do not attend school are only the ones for which we get paid,” she said. “All the days during the summer, weekends, etc., are on our own time. We get no overtime, but we do what we do because it has to be done.”
She worked eight days this summer with no pay. She gets $250 a year for supplies and estimates it doesn’t cover a tenth of what she truly needs to teach properly.
But she has a bigger point: public education represents the future of our state, a state that invested hundreds of millions of dollars to get Boeing to built a plant near Charleston.
“Shame on you!” she wrote. “Investing in children and our public education system will provide a highly qualified workforce.”
She said she provides love and counseling and performs negotiations that would impress the United Nations, nurses wounds, seen and unseen, and teaches.
“I worry every day if my students are getting enough to eat when they aren’t at school, cry when they have to move again because their parents have to move for lack of employment, and sometimes am the only person there for them at awards day or parent/teacher night,” she wrote.
She also takes classes that she pays for. If professional development days are eliminated, it removes not only the opportunity, but also the incentive for teachers to learn and grow in their profession.
“Of course, what am I expecting? Do I think that politicians can afford to do without their staffs or something?”
But she’s not just complaining. She has suggestions:
Stop the sales tax holiday, which generally saves a family no more than $30.
Make awards programs such as Palmetto gold, silver, SAT award, teacher of the year every other year, not annual.
Give the $250 supply money to first and second year teachers and science teachers who often buy lab supplies themselves.
Make judiciary, legislative, corrections and other state employees pay for professional development themselves.
Cut or reduce the Education and Economic Development Act to eliminate expensive mandates.
Make all state employees take a furlough.
There were several more, but the picture she is trying to paint is clear: school districts are a shapeless entity without a face, easy targets for state-mandated cuts.
The faces we should see when we talk about reducing school funding are of those teachers in the classroom and the children who look up to them.
Here’s how she put it: “I am a teacher because I love children and I hope that what I do in the classroom inspires my students to do greater things in this world.”
On taking the positive route
by Lyn Riddle
Dexter’s on the side of the room, lying down.
Freddie’s beside him, sitting regally.
Across the room, Gracie clearly does not know what to make of those two. She a bichon frise. And she’s wearing a pink sweater.
Dexter would have trouble sitting comfortably in the back seat of a car, he’s so big. He’s a 130-pound Great Dane on his way to probably 185 pounds. After all he’s seven months old. His paws are the size of a mayonnaise jar lid.
Freddie is a standard poodle and has the face of an expectant child.
They are at Speedy Paws for obedience training with Sue Conklin, who just won a national award for an essay she wrote about training with kindness.
“She’s better than the dog whisperer,” said Angela Blaugher, Freddie’s owner. “It is happy training, and Fred responds well to that.”
Blaugher says her friend brought an old dog believed to be untrainable to Conklin and six months later it was easy to live with.
With a little liver biscotti or Z-filets chicken, Conklin has these dogs eating out of her hand, literally and figuratively.
She learned it all from horses. She and her husband managed a thoroughbred horse farm in Pennsylvania for nine years. They trained in the way of the horse whisperer, gentle, consistent and positive.
When they left that job she went to a local PetSmart, prepared to be a groomer. Shortly she was the trainer. She’s been in business for herself – the Puppy Nanny – for six years in South Carolina. She’s trained 2,000 dogs – or rather their owners.
But she always had a story she wanted to tell. The story of Pam and Ginger, the subject of the essay judged among the top entries to the Association of Pet Dog Trainers contest. Ginger, a greyhound, lived with Pam, who raised and showed the breed for 20 years. She was no stranger to dog training, obviously.
But Ginger. She was a work all her own. She was afraid of a leash. Not a great trait for a show dog.
“She would run into her crate and hide with her butt facing the door,” Conklin wrote.
Pam was using old-school techniques, choke chains and pops that just backfired with Ginger.
Conklin went to Pam’s home and decided the way to get Ginger to accept the leash was with a clicker and some cheese. Conklin clicked, Ginger responded and earned some cheese.
Conklin put the coiled leash on the table. Clicked. Ginger looked at the leash. Got cheese. Then they spread the leash out, held it, held it close to Ginger, touched her with it. Ginger got some cheese. Finally Ginger put her head in the leash loop. Herself.
“Clicker training had saved her relationship with Ginger,” Conklin wrote.
Ginger was going to be a show dog. She was to be entered in the Greyhound Nationals.
Then one day not long before the contest someone left the door open at Pam’s house.
Ginger ran out, into the street and was hit by a car.
“Pam and I were devastated,” Conklin wrote.
But the good that came was a friendship for Pam and Sue as well as Pam’s conversion to another way of training.
In the years since Pam has trained three puppies that won Best Puppy at the Greyhound Nationals. She’s trained AKC champions, too.
“When she gets advice from handlers who think that she should crack down on her dogs more, she tells them that she has tried that and it didn’t work,” Conklin wrote.
And then she tells them about Ginger.
Winter
by Cindy Landrum
The short days, biting winds and more-often-than-not gloomy skies just make me want to hibernate.
My first inclination is to grab a blanket and a book, and pass the time on my couch until the first wildflower blooms.
Instead, I grab my camera. OK, sometimes I have to force myself to grab my camera and head out in the very weather I tried to escape 25 years ago when I moved to South Carolina from Wisconsin.
Why? Because I have found winter a wondrous season for photography.
It’s the one season color takes a back seat.
Instead, shape, texture and tones go to the forefront.
Winter is a season that promotes seeing because its natural color range is so limited.
I have found it to be a perfect time to go black and white. It may take a little practice to get it just right because the camera’s meter will naturally underexpose snow. Filters can help. Polarizers can deepen skies and add pop and contrast to clouds, while graduated neutral density filters can help images with large tonal ranges.
It’s amazing how winter changes the landscape.
It’s enough to get me, a winter hater, out of the house.
