Ten Things We Cannot Do Without

1. Australian Cattle Dog

2. Thelonious Monk

3. Blintzes

4. The Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle

5. Pinot noir

6. Moleskine notebooks

7. KC barbecue

8. Gerbera daisies

9. The Well-Tempered Clavichord

10. The Big Sur Coastline

lagniape: 11. blogging

Friends

SAM--short-haired domestic, black, white, gray. A gifted editor. Used to belong to interior decorator. Hated snow. Fond of Kitty-Queen chopped kidney.
MAUDE--short-haired domestic, black, white, brown splotch.
ARMAND--short-haired domestic, treasured at first because he looked like Sam. Liked to hang out on roof. Had mood swings. A mean drunk when high on catnip.
MADAM OVARY--his mother.
BLUE-blue-tick hound, black, white, brown. Extraordinary nose, lovely bawl-mouth.
EDWARD BEAR--her son. Had charge account at Brownie's deli on La Cienega. Once bit deputy sheriff. Experienced serious moods. Ringing chop on track. Resounding baritone on tree. Holds some kind of record for having been treated to steak sandwiches by various patrons of Mom's Italian Villa on Cota Street.
JEDEDIAH STRONG SMITH--also her son. Good strong bawl mouth, excited chop on deer scent, deep baritone on tree with raccoon.
MOLLY--four-parter, black with brown trim. Great swimmer. Liked to carry huge logs. Grew increasingly impatient with the five o'clock northbound passenger train. Tended to snore at writers' conferences.
NELL--Aussie Cattle Dog/Aussie Shepherd--tawny brown with black flecks. One of the most consistently happy dogs I have ever known.
SALLY--Aussie Shepherd, Aussie Cattle Dog. A control freak. Likes to bury croissant pieces.
Preternaturally intelligent, good communication skills. Mind of her own.

Horse Latitude

1. A happy combination of a watering trough for horses at Parma Park and a chance remark by LK provide--provoke--the trifecta, the combination that will be perfect for this week's book review, which falls on the Golden Oldies side of the coin, which means a dip back into the past. Thus Faulkner's Spotted Horses, Steinbeck's The Red Pony, and Chapter XXIV of Roughing It by SLC, the iconic tale of the Genuine Mexican Plug Horse. Although I have in the past engaged in research related to the relative speeds of various horses over various lengths, I am not a horse person. These three tales, two pure inventions and one Twain reportage, could change my mind.

2. Another happy chance sent me down the lower part of Milpas Street, whereupon I passed the store that displayed the pinatas I was so pleased to see yesterday. Around the block and into a freshly vacated space to see that apparently the display is changed every day. Hot dog! Or should I say, Hot horse? Today's display, as you will note, includes a horse

3. Lovely discovery: Pure-bred Australian Cattle Dogs have a white blotch somewhere on their forehead. Said blotch is called a Morgan, supposedly after one of the pioneer breeders of the ACD. How do I know this is not an urban myth? I asked the man--an ACD owner--who imparted this information. Because, he said, my brother breeds ACDs and all forty-five of his current crop have Morgans; it is a sign of ACD authenticity.

Sally, he noted, is enough--half--ACD to have a Morgan, a sign that the ACD genes are dominant in her.

4. Haruki Murikami, an excellent novelist (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, etc) claims he learned everything he needed to know about writing from listening to music, and most of that is jazz.

5. A hungry customer approached the hot dog stand at the Yoga Center in downtown Santa Barbara. "What'll it be?" the attendant asked.

"Make me one with everything," the customer replied.

The attendant shook his head. "Can't do that," he said. "You already are."