Cravats (and other things that happened today)

Cravats, eh? Not quite a topic that one usually writes about in the early 21st century. Well, here's how that came about: the majority of my work gear is from op shops--Goodwill, other thrift stores, second hand places in cities I go to, online thrifting, and so on. It's environmentally more sustainable and, more importantly, cheaper. 

The reason I bring this up is because today (Wednesday) is a day I don't teach. I usually end up doing some writing, contemplating cleaning my place (contemplation doesn't often turn into action), and doing chores. Today, I bagged up a bunch of clothes, shoes, etc and took them to the local Goodwill. 

While there, this happened: 

Me: Oh, I'm going to drop off a big bag of stuff and not actually browse.
Also me: There's a shirt that comes with its own cravat. For $1.90. Come home with me, my precious!

[I'm wearing it to class at the next cool (temperature-wise, not otherwise) day as it's a full-sleeved shirt.
I may be more excited about the opportunity to tie my own cravat than is seemly.
*filed under: academia has its issues but being able to wander into work in 19th century (earlier?) gear is definitely a plus]

It was also a day during which the NYT claims the President placed Chad on the travel ban list against the advice from the State Department and DoD; The president himself gave an unfathomable (Is that the accurate term here?) response when asked why Sudan was dropped from the list; aid remains slow to reach Puerto Rico; next year, the US will accept the lowest number of refugees in almost 30 years; som kind of law means we'll never find out what happened to the policeman who mistakenly arrested James Blake (and slammed him to the ground) and, for work, I came across this "Visualising violence" special issue of Global Discourse that I've bookmarked to read over the weekend.

National Security class tomorrow at 8am. The topic is non-violence so let's see how *that* goes. 

Escapes (and perceptions)

Since I moved to this town, I foster dogs. I think it was the 6th? 7th? foster that I ended up keeping. She had little/no hair due to various skin illness issues, had a bit of her ear chipped, and was terrified of everything. In the 3 years I've had her, she's grown her fur, is a tiny wee killer (two skunks, numerous small rodents, a possum, an attack on a deer, half a cat, many squirrels), and is massively curious about everything. The shelter listed her as a German Shepherd but there's no sense of "oh, hey, I quite like my human" in her. None. Humans exist to feed her and take her for walks/runs. She is also an escape artist/runner. I live in a house with no fenced yard and so I try take her on walks or put her on a long leash so she can run about in the big park in my back yard. As I am mostly sleepy, generally in my own world, type person and Dog is always "Kill NOW. What can I kill?", there's many times she's run off/escaped.

Today, I think was Dog's most epic escape (so far) (there's time) (my heart might not take more inventive escapes well). Taking advantage of slip in the ice/snow, she did a runner. I went around calling her name. No noise. No sound. Nothing. After scouring pretty much the whole neighborhood, I heard a whimper from near the House of Horror*. Turns out Dog had gone underneath HoH and got stuck. Of course, this didn't prevent her from trying to sniff/explore/etc so we ended up in a situation where Dog was fairly deep underneath this falling down/half fallen down house, it was getting dark and I knew the folks around there wouldn't do well to having some random woman wandering around in their territory.

So, of course, I did the sensible thing. I went home, got my mobile and rang the Fire department to ask for help.

Hahah-no! I crawled under the HoH, expecting any moment the house to fall down OR someone to shoot us, grabbed Dog, took her off her stupid leash and then, grabbing a wriggling Dog like a rugby ball, got us out of there. I walked almost a mile with 35lb Dog in hand. For much of this time, Dog was convinced she had to escape NOW and was wriggling like an eel.

We got home safe, I poured myself a stiff drink (whiskey. The good stuff) and I thought about the incident. If this were New Zealand or Nepal, I'd have tried to ask for help from one of the people whose houses were near the House of Horror. I'd have gone and knocked on their doors. But since this was Southwestern USA, I didn't. Not only didn't I go knock on neighbor's doors, but all the stories we read about strangers shot in garages, driveways, and so on came to mind. The whole time I was crawling under a falling-down house, I wasn't as much worried the house would fall on me or that I'd get a scrape (and probably end up with Tetanus--could still happen!) but that someone would notice the noise and start shooting. I was terrified to the extent that my arms and legs were trembling. This fear is, of course, more about me than about how the people here "really are". I"m sure the folks here would have helped too (maybe) but I didn't even feel I could ask them. There's a different kind of self-making when I am in SWVA than when I am in Nepal or elsewhere.

*House of Horror is a falling down house that exists at the end of my lane. Around it are abandoned/occupied trailers, a campervan, and various pickup trucks. The one time I was near there, a bearded gent came out and told me to "keep your daw-ug away from here" (this was in Year 2 and the dog was Harold, an adorable scamp of a thing) and I've never been back/near since.