Walking the dog

So I'm walking the dog, as befits my temporary role of dog custodian.

This is something it seems I spend half my waking hours doing (Smokey likes a lot of miles), and the mind, as you can imagine, wanders. I'm thinking of my own (non-existent) dog. The dog I might own, were I stupid enough to own a dog. It would be a beagle, I think--I'm a sucker for beagles--and I would call it Grasshopper. Which is nice, 'cause you can choose either a boy or a girl beagle and the name works regardless.

"Come, Grasshopper," I would say. "Sit, Grasshopper." Smiling all the while. Occasionally I would hold its bony little head in my hands, stare into its limpid brown eyes--whatever that means--and explain the Tao of Poo to the dog. Or something.

I like that.

And then there's this:



The photography is problematic. But the process continues forward. Tomorrow, now that I have fifty or so annotations under my belt, I'll take Big Paul down to west 41st Street where one can find, although it's not as obvious as it might seem, the front door of the New York Times.

I like to capitalize the "The."
You do?
Sure. It adds to the grandeur of the thing.
The power and the glory--all that business.
Exactly.

I wrote a note to Krugman, just as a courtesy. The responding silence has been deafening.