The Simplest Thing

It was, what I thought, an ordinary walk in every way: the air was cool but clean, the sky was wide, the park was entirely ours. Duncan plodded along beside me, uninterested in roaming far and wide in search of any scraps or stray balls that might have appeared overnight. He was content to walk beside me, a happy, showy, Broadway sort of strut in his step, head high, ears higher, a grin on his face as he breathed in the morning air and sunshine and exhaled warm clouds of breath. I talked with him, as I always do, unconcerned that he's "just a dog" and that people might think the conversation one-sided. I know better, though. He responds in ways that only people who live with dogs would understand: dancing around me if he approves, cocking his head if he likes something I've said, blinking his wide eyes an agreement. We talk and share and confide and who cares what anyone else thinks.

I was unaware that we were being followed. I was whistling––a Christmas song––in time to Duncan's footfalls when the walker came up quite suddenly behind us. She was a short woman, athletic-looking, with her hair pulled back and a faded purple band covering her ears. he had a skier's face, tanned and lined by hours and hours in the sun on a mountainside. But she was smiling and relaxed.

"I hope you don't mind," she said as she came behind me, startling me and ending my whistle quite suddenly. "I've been behind you for awhile now and I just wanted to tell you that that is one happy dog."

And then she was past us, her arms swinging at her side in the way that serious walkers have. I didn't even have a chance to respond, so I looked at Roo who was looking at her, his tail wagging, and patted his shoulder.

Yes, indeed. He is one happy dog.

Holiday Glee

Here is the annual holiday video Ruth and I made this year. Many of you have already seen it on Facebook but I thought I'd post it here, too, even though some of you felt Dunc didn't appear enough. I, of course, believe the entire world needs more Duncan in it, but we'll just have to be patient and see what next year yields.

Enjoy!

Grandma's Christmas Village

There is one place I would love to take Duncan for a walk, but we can only get there at Christmas and only because my grandmother––who loved Christmastime more than any other time of year, and worked tirelessly to ensure it was as magical for her children and grandchildren as it was for her––built it with her own two hands. You won't find it on any map for no roads leads there. The only compass that will lead you there is a willingness to open your heart–– if only for one day––and allow your imagination to see the world as you did when you were very small and new to the world.

My grandmother was a woman who always needed something to do, be it quilting baby blankets for each of her grandchildren, constructing magical hot-air balloons from mesh and yarn, redecorating the house every few years, fishing with my grandfather, and then finally assembling the Christmas village that took a decade to build, although I'm sure if she was she still with us it would have continued to grow and expand as all good places should.

While many people have a Christmas village none compare to Grandma's. She hand-painted every piece––all one hundred twenty buildings––and all of the snow-covered trees that filled it. At first it was only a few houses and shops, but over the years it grew and grew and finally my grandfather was summoned to build a mountain, which he did because he wanted to make her happy and loved her more than anything, even fishing and tying flies. Each year the mountain rose up, nearly six feet high, in their front room, comprised of ten street levels. It was wired so that each home lit up as though the occupants were gathering for Christmas dinner. The Dickensian street lamps in front of the houses glowed a soft orange and cast warm pools of light in the cottony snow at their bases. A vast night sky hung overhead with mirrored stars and a miniature Santa in his sleigh, with all the reindeer, flying overhead. Down below, at the base, a farmhouse and livestock looked out over a long train track that wound in a circle, around it. An electric train chugged across it, vanishing into a tunnel on one side only to emerge a few moments later on the other.

It was remarkable feat, the pride of all her hard work and hobbies, and each year when we arrived on Christmas day, she would take me by the hand and lead me into the front room to visit the village and show me all the new additions, not just to the mountain but to her entire collection spread throughout the house, from the crystal snowman and woman who ice skated to the bells she hung in the door that played the most magnificent Christmas songs.

Grandma's death was the hardest thing I have ever endured and although my heart broke the morning she passed, I could not help but wonder how Christmas could ever be the same. The village was divided up among her children and grandchildren, never to be complete again. My portion, though, means more to me than anything else I own, and when I assemble it and turn on those lights I can't help but imagine trudging through its snowy street with Duncan, stopping in the cafe for a cup of hot chocolate, hearing the bell on the door ring when we enter the pet store, smelling the warm coffee and deep woody scent of the bookstore, listening to the bells toll in the church steeple that rises above the duck pond where the geese flock. Duncan's tags would jingle on his leash like silver bells and no one would mind my whistling "The Carol of the Bells," my favorite Christmas carol, as we peeked in the shop windows and waved to the people inside their warm, cozy homes as they draped garland on their trees or placed the star on top.

 

This is my seventh Christmas without Grandma but looking at my piece of the great village she created and sitting in the dark with Duncan while I envision our walk through it, has kept her Christmas spirit very much alive. Sometimes, in the house she painted with her address, which sits front and center, next to the big tree that lights up with a hundred tiny bulbs, I imagine I can see her there, back in the kitchen making divinity and fudge, preparing the dill bread she knew I loved so much, wiping her fingers on her apron at the sight of me outside her window.

"Merry Christmas, Curtie," she would say.

"Merry Christmas, Grandma," I would beam as we leaned in to hug and kiss each other on the cheek.

And then she would take me by the hand, pull me inside and lead me around to see the red and green and golden magic she loved so much.

Merry Christmas, Grandma. I miss you.

Christmas Be Illin'

And now, as promised, the latest road trip video, starring Ruth, Duncan, and myself! Enjoy!

Merry Christmas from The Crew

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Home for the Holidays

I can not conceive of any other place to spend Christmas than in Pocatello. As beautiful as Michigan Avenue is during the holidays, with the big FAO Schwartz window and all the lights on the trees and in the windows, or downtown Denver, with the Civic Center remade in every color imaginable, the capitol building glowing green and red, Pocatello is magical to me because it is so simple, as though George Bailey could run down any of our streets while Ralphie Parker gazes at his Red Rider carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle (with a compass in the stock) from one of the many display windows. The lamp posts that line Main Street and Arthur in downtown are still wrapped in garland and wreaths and the buildings look as though they were made especially for this time of year. People smile as they hurry along under the wide green awnings and I never feel quite as self-conscious whistling Christmas music here as I do elsewhere. The snow can render our narrow streets almost impossible to navigate with any speed and you can forget about parking, but I never feel the hustle and bustle of Christmas here like I do in other places. There is a serenity to Christmas in Pocatello that feeds me and makes me return year after year. Duncan and I have spent a great deal of time driving her streets and walking the road outside my mother's home admiring the lights and the silence, the soft jingle of bells that ring each time a door is opened and closed again, sitting in front of the fireplace in love with home more than ever before.

I suppose, though, that home is wherever my dog and I can sit together and enjoy the world, happy with the gifts we receive but also with those we give.

Twenty-One Days

While most of the rest of this country has been counting the days until Christmas, literally killing each other as they vie for the best deals, I have been counting the days until the sun begins blessing us with its light earlier, longer and later. While Christmas carols have been serenading the masses, my ears have been focused on the music of the seasons, listening to the low, ghostly call of the owl which sits high in the trees and watches Duncan and I pass beneath in the darkness. Lights and ornaments have popped up almost overnight, on nearly every house, in all the windows and at each intersection. As magical as they seem, its been more incredible to watch the moon, now a crescent, pass through Sagittarius, Venus and Jupiter impossibly bright and close to one another, watching like anxious lovers. They move cautiously together, never meeting but close enough, it seems, to lean in and kiss, if only briefly. They are millions of miles apart, and even the constellation they dance through is made up of bodies which only appear to be neighbors.

On a night like tonight, when the snow was soft and wet underfoot, making the most wonderful crunching sound as Duncan raced circles around me through it, stopping every few minutes to throw his body into it, rolling and folding it around him like I do the comforter, sheets and blankets on my bed, I wonder if I'm alone in not giving a damn about the holidays while I look toward bigger and more profound events, or are Duncan and I just bodies which only appear to be close, circling the night and never quite making contact?

Blow: The Undoing of a Musical Genius

As previously mentioned, and well-known by everyone who knows me, even if only slightly, I am a whistler. It's the one musical talent I inherited from my grandfather, who taught me everything I know about it by simply telling me, "Put your lips together and blow." His lesson, while not the most detailed, and which certainly omits quite a lot about the actual technique of whistling, was a valuable one, and one I have practiced daily since that very first whistle, standing in his garage on Reed Street in Idaho Falls, back when I was no more than five years old. While not the best whistler--I'm certainly no Cartter Frierson!––I am pretty good, especially in the morning. At work. When no one seems to like me. Long years I have entertained the idea of cracking into that great untapped Whistling Market, recording and releasing an album of favorite whistles. I envision a world where farm fields in upstate New York will overflow with the muddy and sometimes nude bodies of tens of thousands of America's youth, who've gathered for a four day music festival of world renowned whistlers, like Frances Bonifazi, Fred Lowery, the Great Roger Whitaker and Mike Riston, a Whistival, if you will, a place where we can meet free of shame, unafraid to practice our art without fear of retribution. But alas, that day has not yet come and so I dream alone, whistling as I work, sending my call out into the world in hopes of attracting others like me.

Like many talented musicians, I am haunted by my art. I spent much of last winter with Arthur Fiedlers's "Sleigh Ride" banging around inside my head, demanding I purse my lips and belt it out at the top of my lungs, or tongue, or whatever it is whistlers like me use to craft our music. "Sleigh Ride" refused to let go of me and still occasionally sneaks up on me when I least expect it. About all I can do in those moments is let it out, over and over again, all day long. Sometimes I whistle the melody, sometimes the harmony leaks out (which is interesting because, unlike my friend Jen, who can harmonize to a fart, I can't pick one out to save my life), and sometimes I attempt a grand symphonic discourse and end up with a strained tongue and chapped lips, which, if you're one of the Whistling Ignorant, is the worst thing that can happen, like writer's block, or a bad hair day.

I do have my standards, those tunes I whistle over and over and over again. There's Für Elise, which I do first as Beethoven intended, but on my second trip through I jazzify it and transform it into a snappy little number you could bebop along with. Then there's "I'll Be Seeing You," which, for three years, drifted over the campus of Lake Forest College late at night as I walked back to my room keeping my eye on the moon, or if there was none, on the halos which glowed around the lamps which lit the paths. There's also "Recipe for Making Love," by Harry Connick, Jr, which is just plain fun on the lips. But of course, as an artist, I must constantly push myself, which is why I've gotten pretty good at whistling "Lose Yourself," by Eminem. I would, after all, hate to be pigeon-holed as a performer of nothing but pop standards. "Lose Yourself" was my version of Dylan going electric.

I hate to admit it, but Summer can be just as dangerous for earworms (those tunes which get stuck in your head) as the holidays and that damn Feidler tune. It's only crept up on me the last day or two as Duncan and I have strolled the park and even on the edges of Lilley Gulch. It starts off innocuously enough but before you know it, it's lodged as firmly as a twin absorbed in vitro. It only appears during the hot Summer months, and typically only within earshot of places where children gather, children with money in their pockets or grown-ups who can be pestered for money.

That's right. It's the ice cream truck with that damn ice cream truck song that every person in this country knows by heart. The damn ice cream truck has crashed my whistling party and made a mockery of the tunes and voices which play constantly in my head. Even Duncan, who normally isn't phased by anything on our walks, other than the hopping-away of a rabbit or a screaming squirrel, has started whining when we walk the park. Or the lake. Or down Leawood. I'm hoping that when my vacation starts next week we can get up into the mountains where there's nothing but peace and tranquility. And Für Elise, of course.

Taunt

This one little rabbit, this class-clown of a coney, a gutsy little bugger, has been gunning for Duncan for days now. I've seen him huddled along the fence between the apartment and Bowles. He waits for my ambling dog, waits until Duncan is almost upon him and then springs straight up and dashes off across the lawn. If my life was a cartoon there'd be loud sound effects accompanying him, a SPRONG and a puff of smoke as his feet leave the earth along with a KA-ZING and a trail of dust as he speeds away in manic little zigs and psychotic little zags.

Tonight, though, the little beast ratcheted it up a notch, as if the challenge of waiting until the lumbering oaf was almost upon him wasn't enough. I'm not quite sure where he was but both Duncan and I missed him. We walked right down the middle of the yard, me whistling that damn "Sleigh Ride" song again (read: still), Duncan pulling on his leash, crossing back and forth in front of me, checking out the brown little calling cards of all the dogs in the neighborhood. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and looked down to see this damn little show-off hopping along right beside me, no more than three feet away, moving only slightly faster than me until he was just about dead even with Duncan, who, as usual, didn't notice him until I said, rather stupidly, "Hey... !" Only then did he look up and over his shoulder at me and right into the prancing little face of the world's cockiest hare, who immediately pulled his SPRONG KA-ZING routine and took off in frenetic little hops toward the safety of the shrubs. Duncan, suddenly oblivious to the leash and collar he wears whenever we're out, rushed after him, pulled on the leash until his feet were yanked out from under him, went down in a gagging, choking heap, jumped back up and dragged me right along with him.

We never caught him but I'm telling you, one of these days I'll open a can of Fudd on his butt, let go of Duncan and see just how far he gets. No fear, though; Duncan doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He'd probably just lick him to death.

Blow

I'm a whistler. I can't help it. There's not a musical note in my body, except for the one that springs up when I put my lips together and blow. My grandfather can play harmonica and guitar, has dabbled with the banjo and has a brilliant voice, as do my uncles. Christmas at my grandparents always concluded with everyone gathered together in the living room playing and strumming and singing and although I gave it my best shot, I'm just not good. And yet, somehow or another I inherited the whistling gene, probably from grandpa, who does even that well.

I spend most of my day whistling, either along with the songs on my iPod, or to the tunes that run through my head. I cover all sorts of music, from classical to jazz, to songs I morph from one to the other. Jazz seems to be my favorite, but sometimes I even run through songs from my childhood (a couple of favorites were taught to me by my grandmother, "Joe Cogan's Goat" and "I Had a Little Dog and His Name was Jack"). Most mornings I wake up with a song already running through my head and I spend the majority of my shower time whistling them over and over, except, of course, while I'm brushing my teeth when not even a virtuoso whistler could manage a tune.

For the past few days the only song I seem capable of whistling is "Sleigh Ride". Nonstop, all day long. I worked hard yesterday getting rid of it, going so far to whistle "Mickey," by Toni Basil, an act of true desperation. Nothing seemed to work. Not even other Christmas tunes, like "Winter Wonderland" or, God forbid, Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" (I sang first tenor in high school so I tend to whistle the really high part). It seemed hopeless until this morning when I awoke blessedly free of the damn thing, went to work, whistled my way through The Beatles, some Depeche Mode and Cure, even Eminem.

It was tonight on our walk, though, when things once again took a turn for the worst. We walked down Bowles to Jay and toward the elementary school. Not far down the dark, residential street someone had put up their Christmas lights and before I knew it, before I was actually aware I was even doing it, that damn Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops tune was racing through my head and blowing out from between my lips. I got a couple of bars in before I stopped––startling Duncan, who was investigating a low shrub––swore loudly, stood and stared at the house, which glowed with a thousand points of blue, shook my head and realized the season was upon me and there'd be no turning back.

Tonight I finally accepted and embraced my inner "Sleigh Ride."

It's going to be a long month. Long indeed.