Month: November 2024

My Wingdog

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Hamish Macbeth
Photo Pualani K.

There are service dogs that guide the blind and service dogs that can detect when their person is about to have a seizure, these wonderful dogs can even be trained to take care of their person during medical events and stress related events.

My dog doesn’t fall under the category of a service dog, or an emotional support animal ( even though he sort of does both things anyway ). None the less, my dog sees things for me that I can’t.

I am not visually impaired, I don’t have health issues.  The thing is I am a really very bad judge of character, which means that the people I let close to me do me dirt, the people I  think I can’t  actually trust  turn out to be great friends. It’s a blindness all the same and my dog helps me through it.

Hamish has a good sense about people, I can tell right off the bat by his demeanor if this is a person I should talk to, be around or trust.

I’ve noticed that there are people Hamish  loves being around- you can see it in his body language, in his eyes, the way he brings them toys and watches their faces when they talk to him. He literally shivers with glee.

Then there are people he sort of hangs around and just keeps his eye on.

He will interact with them, he is friendly, but there is something about the ways he keeps his eye on them that I suppose hearkens back to his bloodline. I’ve never used him for hunting, but I’ve had hunters offer me top dollar to breed him because his raw talent is that obvious. With training, he’d be a great hunting dog like his Dad Leroy and his Grandma Mocha and his Mom and great grandparents too.

You’d never guess by his carefree spirit, but Hamish comes from a long line of champion hunting and tracking dogs.

So he will keep track of these people until they leave- his attention span is scary long. That means if you show up on his radar you are going to stay there until you leave the room. If you show up again he will act the same way.

I’ve learned to give those people that Hamish feels like he needs to track a lot of  space.

And when we are out and we run into strangers that he has an issue with,  he isn’t that subtle- he’ll stand, do that pointing thing that tracking dogs- right at them – and then he will turn and want to walk away.

He doesn’t lead me on his walks, but when he calls time I always listen to him.

My instincts suck, but Hamish Macbeth’s do not.

In dog I trust.

Hamish Macbeth
Photo P.C. Knapp

Nobody’s Queen

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She was nobody’s Queen, she was not a princess.

Hatshepsut was Pharaoh and she was King of Egypt.

Politics being politics since time began, her reign was wiped from the history of Eygpt upon her death and her Stepson took the throne.

The reason was politics- pure and simple.

Short story is, her stepson, Thutmose III in her reign and far beyond  was  regarded as a great warrior, military commander, and military strategist. He was under her command at the time and it seemd to be a situation that suited them both.

When he took the throne it was far more important to establish him as a Pharoah, as God and Hatshepsut would have understood that. She had been his coregent- and Gods were not descendents of their coregents.

He didn’t remove her from History out of hatred or sexism, politics of the day did that and it’s worth reading up on.

What I want to write about today is this, if I could speak to one historical figure it was be Heshepsut.

Hatshepsut, was the female king of Egypt (reigned as coregent c. 1479–73 bce and in her own right c. 1473–58 bce) who attained unprecedented power for a woman, adopting the full titles and regalia of a pharaoh.

Hatshepsut had a daughter named  Neferure  and there is an empty tomb built into a cliff that is believed to be her daughter’s tomb.

When Howard Carter found it, all that was in the tomb were , bits of bone and scraps of wood and Neferure name on the wall.

I watched an an episode on cable about the re-discovery of this tomb-  a team of archeologist went back to explore the tomb. They had to find a ladder to climb up to the tomb and just after they got inside a colony of bats flew out at the archeologists . They were pretty freaked out. I’m surprised nobody ran out of the tomb and plunged to a messy death.

I think that the tomb was unstable too  and the film crew and the archeologists got their shots and hot footed it out of there talking about the instability of the tomb all the way down the ladder.

Anyway, that’s the excuse they gave for the short visit.

Ha! Unstable my foot, they were afraid of the bats.

So t his is what I would ask Hatshepsut-

that thing with the bats flying out at the camera crew-

that was you , wasn’t it?

Because had that been my daughter’s tomb, the tomb of a young woman who could have been King of Egpyt one day- like her Mother- I’d have set bats out on anyone disturbing her sleep. In her sleep after all, she can dream about who and what she could have been.

I’d want her to have that.

Neferure or Neferura (Ancient Egyptian: Nfrw-Rꜥ, meaning The Beauty of Re) was an Egyptian princess of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. She was the daughter of two pharaohs, Hatshepsut and Thutmose II.[1] She served in high offices in the government and the religious administration of Ancient Egypt.

The Devil You Say

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Hamfatter is a real word and it is really in the dictionary.

It has it’s very own definition and someone took time to record it’s history.

But the funny thing about this word is that nobody is sure where it came from.

Hamfatter just popped up, shoved all of the other words off stage and made us talk about it.

I can picture the staff at Merriam Webster elbowing each other in the halls after staff meetings and giving each other the stink eye in the break-room after hotly debating the word Hamfatter before entering it into their system and giving the word Hamfatter it’s special place in the dictionary.

Think about it, this non-word still manage to make it  into our vocabulary despite the fact nobody knows what it actually means or where it really came from.

Hamfatter is a devilish word,   so from today on I intend on making it a part of my  day to day vocabulary and using it often.

I like devilish words.

RDP Monday: HAMFATTER

October Is With Me

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My favorite month of the year is any month that ends in ” Ber “

September

I like September because it is full of my promise- September is my Spring time.

September  has cool mornings and warm-ish evenings. It turns some leaves gold and red and if you have a garden your pumpkins are full and orange and ripe. On some weekends you can still sit outside and read a book or barbecue. September is a tease and it’s sort of sassy.

What are the months like me going to bring? It asks. A little pleasure, a lot of pain?

Tell me I will insist.

Not on your billy September says every single year.

October

What can I say about October?

October is my Muse, it inspires me and  when I explore cemeteries or I take my dog and my Jeep off road and I think we might be lost and it’s getting dark I don’t feel like me and Hamish are really alone because October is with us.

After all, October is with me in May, why would it not be with me on those lost roads?

Andrew Wyeth

November

Sometimes November shows up with a little snow, sometimes it shows up with a lot of rain. Sometimes the days are warm and Sunny.

November is unpredictable, its like it’s testing me, asking me- are you ready for December,  Anita?

I will always answer yes.

Are you sure? It asks again.

I don’t know, I finally confess. I don’t really know.

John Atkinson Grimshaw –

December

The dark, the snow, the cold, the ghosts- I have worked all year to make it to December. I’ve earned every glorious second December has to offer.

1911-1914 “Australasian Antarctic Expedition,”
   Australian photographer James Hurley