Happy Holidays and New Year!

I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season. If gifts are your thing, I hope you got what you wanted. But mostly, I hope you were able to spend time the way you wanted: Alone or with family; at home or traveling; quiet or boisterous. Time is the most precious gift we have, and as we get caught up in our work and social standing and other responsibilities, time to do just what *we* want grows achingly scarce. I hope you gave yourself a gift of at least a little time, amid all the noise and lights.

Be smart and drive carefully tonight, and may 2008 prove deserving of the hope we invest in it here at the beginning.

politics, midtopia

Updates

I had all of Christmas week off -- and was down for most of it with various ailments, including the ever-popular stomach flu. I'm considering going in to work next week and asking my boss to convert those vacation days into sick time....

My Democratic in-laws gave me two political joke gifts: a Democratic Dream mug and a backward clock counting down the seconds remaining in the Bush presidency. (The Unemployed Philosophers Guild, where the mug came from, has a bunch of other fun political stuff. Like the Disappearing Civil Rights mug, Axis of Evil finger puppets and an Eleanor Roosevelt doll.

NO CAMERAS
Buhl, Minn., has decided against installing security cameras around town after enduring widespread scorn from the community.

A LITTLE CREDIT WOULD BE NICE
Didn't I say nearly the exact same thing a couple of weeks ago?

Buhl, Minnesota, Iraq, politics, midtopia

The return of Sean

Hey everyone,

I apologize for the nearly three-month absence here at Midtopia. I'm not dead, but I have been very, very busy with other things -- and not Halo 3, as has been rumored....

I was simply overwhelmed by a tidal wave of real-life commitments:

1. The start of another school year, which meant both more volunteering time and time spent helping the kids with homework;

2. My wife launching a new business, for which I've provided technical support and graphic-design help, as well as picking up more domestic duties;

3. Serious flux at work;

4. Getting ready to return to school for a Web-design certificate.

I've still got all of the above, but I've gotten something of a routine down now, so I can squeeze in blogging again.

I don't promise to be as prolific a poster as I was before, but there shouldn't be any more three-month breaks.

On to the good stuff!

politics, midtopia

Happy Birthday to me

I turn 40 today, and all I want for my birthday is intergalactic war:



Of course, it doesn't come out until Sept. 25, and I'd need to buy an Xbox 360 first -- it won't run on the Xbox already in my house.

But those are quibbles. I'm 40, dammit! Life's gettin' short!

video games, midtopia

Back in the saddle

I'm back from the Black Hills of South Dakota, having shaved my head, stood five feet from a (live) buffalo, poured a drink for Wild Bill Hickok, driven over a picnic table and sat outside the razor-wired fence of a Minuteman missile silo without being arrested.

I swear all of the above is true.

Four adults and four kids, we named ourselves the "Van Hellions" in honor of our trusty 15-passenger van -- and, of course, as a tribute to Eddie. Oddly enough, while we had an eclectic music selection -- ranging from Flock of Seagulls and Fleetwood Mac to Rush, Guns 'n' Roses and Nickelback -- Eddie was not among them. We mourned his absence.

We also attended the Corn Festival in Mitchell, S.D., eating dinner across the street from the Corn Palace while Weird Al Yankovic played inside. The weirdest thing about the Corn Festival is that it involved no actual corn.

Other highlights included a horseback ride through Custer State Park, touring a gold mine, driving the Needles highway, visiting Jewel Cave, Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse Mountain, and driving through the Badlands.

On the way back home we survived a night of overpacked horror at the Jellystone campground in Sioux Falls, jammed in cheek-by-jowl with hundreds of Labor Day weekend revelers. We thought the kids would like it; we'll never make that mistake again.

In the quiet hours I found time to read "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini -- a good-though-not-great novel that paints a vivid picture of pre- and post-Taliban Afghanistan, and life as part of the Afghan diaspora. Next on the list: "Thirteen Moons", the second book by "Cold Mountain" author Charles Frazier.

All in all it was a great time, and everyone got along great. We're already planning next year's trip -- probably a canoe-camping venture in the Boundary Waters.

While I enjoyed the time away from all forms of media, I'm glad to be back and will resume my regular blogging schedule soonest.

politics, midtopia

Still breathing

Hey all! I'm still here, but as noted in an earlier post, I've been really busy getting ready for the start of a new school year, planning some end-of-summer vacation and running a fantasy-football draft.

Speaking of which, my team for this year looks like this:

QB: Carson Palmer
RBs: Steven Jackson, Brandon Jacobs, DeAngelo Williams and a bunch of backups
WRs: Reggie Wayne, Hines Ward, Calvin Johnson
TE: Antonio Gates
K: Matt Stover
DEF: Denver Broncos

It's a 10-team league (really sort of a 9-teamer, since one of our owners went nuts and drafted all Patriots this year). But I like my chances.

In addition, this week a whole bunch of daycares were on break, so we had a neighborhood full of kids at our house -- on the days we weren't looking after sick daughters.

And on top of all that, my wife just quit her job to go into business for herself. So we've been scrambling to work through all the steps to set up an S corporation and get her going.

Phew! Tomorrow we leave for the aforementioned vacation, a weeklong camping trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Four adults and four kids in a 12-passenger van.... we'll see how that works out.

Anyway, I'll be back and posting after Labor Day. See you then!

politics, midtopia

Dog days of summer

BTW, I'd like to apologize for the slow pace of posting this week. Besides preparing for some upcoming camping trips and the start of a new school year, I'm currently in the midst of running a fantasy football draft. Time and brainpower usually spent blogging have been diverted to deciding whether Reggie Wayne is worth a high third-round pick (answer: yes).

It might be slow next week, too. And in three weeks I'm going on vacation to South Dakota and won't be posting at all for a week. So bear with me until a regular posting pace resumes in September.

politics, midtopia

Perspective

I tried to go over and see the downed bridge yesterday, but the police have blocked off access to all the obvious observation points. Which seems a bit misguided, given the hundreds of thousands of people who have some personal connection to the bridge, if only from driving over it thousands of times.

Meanwhile, Just to keep things in perspective, consider this: A bridge collapses in Minneapolis, killing at least five people and (it was thought at one time) as many as 30. It gets intense international media coverage, including television coverage from as far away as Japan.

Then yesterday, a train derailed in Congo, killing 100 people.

It merited a 10-line brief in my paper's world roundup.

For local media, it makes sense to focus on local events. And given that the bridge collapse occurred here, it makes sense that my paper would obsess over it. But I'm pretty sure the treatment would have been the same regardless. And I'm sure other papers had extensive coverage of the bridge collapse and the same short brief on the Congo crash -- if they mentioned it at all.

Again, for national media, it makes sense to pay more attention to homegrown events than things happening overseas. And for everyone, it's easier to get interested in stories where there is plenty of riveting video.

So this isn't an attempt to bash the media. But at the end of the day, 10 or 20 times as many people died in what must have been a horrific crash in Congo. Our local tragedy doesn't even begin to compare.

Count your blessings.

disaster, Minnesota, midtopia

Close calls

Frankly, I'm not in much of a mood for blogging today, as the Twin Cities absorbs the loss of the 35W bridge and the deaths of at least four and probably a couple of dozen people.

Traffic moved pretty well this morning, thanks to the state essentially turning an alternate highway into a freeway by turning off the traffic lights and blocking access from side streets. A new bridge will probably take two years to build, so they're also looking at longer-term fixes like turning road shoulders into extra lanes and things like that.

It seems like the bridge just got old and fatigued, and frequent inspections, while noting some issues, failed to spot the problems. Which may simply be a comment on how hard it can be to spot a weakening bridge.

One of my best friends from college normally is on that bridge around that time, commuting home. After the bridge fell, his wife spent a frantic hour or so trying to locate him, but the cellphone network was overloaded and she couldn't get through. Finally she sent her brother over to his office to look for his car. They found it; he had gotten stuck in a conference call. The bridge collapse and Twins game letting out meant he didn't get home until late into the night, but that was far better than the alternative.

Over at Centrisity, a friend of Flash's was on the centerspan that fell into the river. She's fine, but flip on over for a picture showing her car.

I work just a few blocks from the river. Later tonight I'm going to walk over and take a look.

Update: Added links to some of the information above. Meanwhile, the fingerpointing has already begun.

disaster, Minnesota, midtopia

Highway bridge collapses in Minneapolis

The Interstate 35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed tonight, right at the end of rush hour.

So far, fatalities and injuries seem miraculously light, but that may just be a function of lack of information. It seems unlikely that there wouldn't be a substantial number of fatalities.

I don't use that bridge in my commute, although my wife drove across it twice earlier today. But we're all okay as are everybody we know.

Hope for the best.

Update: This is a major traffic artery. Tomorrow's commute is going to be a mess. And since it could take a year or more to rebuild the span, the Twin Cities are going to be a traffic mess for a long time.

disaster, Minnesota, midtopia

Fly like an eagle

Everybody of a certain age has a bald eagle story.

I spent six of the first eight years of my life in Buffalo, N.Y. Growing up there, the bald eagle had almost mythic significance to my young mind because it was a symbol in more ways than one. Not only did it represent our country; it was vanishingly rare. You never saw one except on television. It wasn't like cardinals, for instance, which are the state bird of seven states precisely because they're everywhere. The eagle's very scarcity added to its mythology, as well as providing a potent lesson in environmentalism, conservation and the fragility and interconnectedness of life.

In the summer of 1976 -- another interesting piece of symbolism, being the bicentennial year -- my family moved to Wisconsin, far closer to eagle habitat. And as my brothers and I grew older we started making annual treks to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota.

There we finally caught glimpses of eagles in the wild -- huge birds, black wings outstretched, seemingly headless because their white skulls often blended into the brightness of the sky as they circled far above us. Each encounter was a moment of awe and wonder. Merely seeing the puffy shape of an empty eagle's nest, high up in some ancient dead tree, was enough to provoke excitement. It was almost like spotting a Yeti or a Sasquatch -- finally meeting up with a legendary but seldom seen king of the wild places.

I attended college in Minnesota, in the Twin Cities. But my glimpses of eagles remained confined to the still-frequent trips to the Boundary Waters.

When I was 25, our parents took us on a trip to Alaska. One day we decided to go deep-sea fishing. We arrived at the dock and piled on to the charter boat. As it eased out into the channel leading to the ocean, I saw them: eagles, dozens of them, perched in the trees lining the channel. Juveniles, adults, pairs and singles. They were there for the same reason we were: fish. And they were there in droves.

The fishing was awful, at least for me: I caught one tiny rockfish, which appeared to have been hooked accidentally as it ignored my line. But the fishing expedition turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip, thanks to the eagles.

My career took me around the country, to places like New Jersey and Florida. The latter is another eagle-dense state, but I didn't see many there, since I spent most of my time in urban areas. Several years later, though, I landed a job back in the Twin Cities, and we returned to Minnesota.

We first lived in Minneapolis, which had lots of sparrows but no eagles. But we drove back and forth to Wisconsin a lot to visit my parents, and increasingly spotted eagles circling far above the highway. We thought that was cool, a small sign of the comeback we'd been reading about.

Then we moved to the western suburbs, pursuing a better school district and more affordable housing. We found ourselves surrounded by lakes and wetlands -- and eagles.

Now, despite living in a densely populated suburb, we see eagles every day. A nesting pair lives a couple miles from our house. Another lives somewhere in the opposite direction; I see them overhead in the morning as I drive my daughters to school and day care.

To me and my wife -- raised during a time when eagles were on the brink of extinction -- this is endlessly amazing. We never tire of seeing them, craning our necks or pulling the car over to the side of the road merely to watch.

Our daughters like eagles, too. But they don't understand our fascination, and they likely never will. They see eagles every day. When we go to the Minnesota Zoo -- a not-infrequent occurence -- we always attend the bird show, where they get to see a bald eagle up close.

They like it when I point out wildlife as we drive along. But I've lost all credibility with them as far as eagles are concerned.

"Look up there!" I'll say.

"WHAT? WHAT?" they'll ask excitedly, squirming around in their seats to get a look. "What is it?"

"A bald eagle!"

"Oh." They'll immediately stop squirming and go back to annoying each other.

So I'm very happy that the bald eagle is officially back from the brink -- removed yesterday from the federal government's list of threatened species. And I'm glad that they plan to continue managing the eagle population so that it doesn't end up back on the list -- even though that appears to means that the Minnesota man whose lawsuit prompted the action still won't be able to develop his eagle-infested property despite winning the suit.

But I'm sad that my daughters will never share our sense of wonder at their existence. They'll grow up bemused by their parents' eagle fixation, never quite understanding the experience that underlies it.

Still, it's a good problem to have. Welcome back, bald eagle. May you soar for many years more.

conservation, bald eagle, politics, midtopia

I'm back

The prodigal blogger has returned.... but not from D.C.

Thanks to weather and a couple of computer crashes at the FAA, Our flight to Washington National was canceled less than an hour before it was to depart, leaving us standing at the gate. No other flights could get us into the area in time for the funeral, so we just scrapped the trip and went home.

The next day we cobbled together a four-day getaway to Duluth and the north shore of Lake Superior (a lake so deep that even though the surface is 600 feet above sea level, the bottom is more than 700 feet below sea level).

We stayed at a waterpark one night and a lakeshore cabin for two. We visited some friends of ours, toured the ore freighter William A. Irvin (a sister ship of the Edmund Fitzgerald), took a boat tour of Duluth Harbor and visited Split Rock Lighthouse. We also spent a lot of time on the beach hunting for banded agates and geodes and feeding seagulls.

Also did all the time-honored cabin activities like grilling, playing cards and reading trashy novels.

I'd say I'm tanned and rested, but the north shore rarely gets above 60 degrees this time of year and vacationing with two small kids is rarely restful. But we had fun, and it was great to get completely away from things -- including the Internet -- for several days.

Anyway, it may take a few days for me to get back up to speed with posting. Bear with me, and I hope your summers are off to good starts, too!

Duluth, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Going to D.C.

Blogging will be pretty light over the next five days. Me and my family are flying to Washington, D.C. for my grandmother's burial, followed by a few days of sightseeing.

The kids are pretty young, so while we'll make a visit to the Capitol Mall I probably won't be able to satisfy my inner political geek and watch a Congressional session. Mostly we'll be visiting things like the National Zoo, Colonial Williamsburg and (if my wife is feeling generous) a Civil War battlefield or two.

We're getting back Wednesday, so look for posting to resume Thursday.

Meanwhile, feel free to treat this post as an open thread if you've got something you want to discuss.

Update: Bumped this to the top of the blog so it wouldn't get lost.

politics, midtopia

Greensburg update

In response to my "Memories of Greensburg" post, I've gotten a couple of e-mails from people who think they know the people I describe. I will be tickled to death if that turns out to be true. The Internet is a fabulous thing.

Meanwhile, the town's meteorite has been found, buried in the rubble of the museum that housed it, as residents returned to salvage what they can.

Greensburg, politics, midtopia

Remembering Grandma

My grandmother died last weekend. With her death I have no more grandparents, and my parents become the oldest living members of that side of our family.

She was 94. She'd had dementia for years, so her death frankly was more of a relief than anything else. The Grandma we knew has been gone a long time, and we did most of our mourning long ago.

She and my grandfather lived most of their adult lives in Houston. He was a federal mediator, resolving labor disputes at places like the Johnson Space Center. She was mostly a stay-at-home mom, active in school and the church.

Beyond that she was a Daughter of the American Revolution, tracing her ancestry back to a man who served as a captain in the Revolutionary War. She was also a very fine person.

I'm heading down to my parents' house this weekend for a memorial service. Then in June we'll all go out to the east coast to bury her in her native Virginia, next to her husband, at Pohick Church -- yep, George Washington's church.

May she rest in peace.

politics, midtopia

Memories of Greensburg

Saturday morning, I woke up and went downstairs to start making breakfast. Sleepily, I turned on the radio to listen to the news. My head was in the refrigerator when I thought I heard the announcer say that Greensburg, Kansas, had been destroyed by a tornado.

I popped my head out of the fridge and listened some more. Yep, a gigantic tornado had indeeded practically wiped the town from the map.

I live in the Midwest, and I'm used to stories about a small town here and there being heavily damaged by wind or tornados. A few years back, heavy winds took apart St. Peter, Minn., and the grim joke around here is that God hates trailer parks, because they seem to get hit so often.

But Greensburg was different. Because I've only been to Kansas once, and Greensburg is the only town in the state (besides Dodge City) that I actually visited.

In June 1989, I had just graduated from college and bought my first car. I was at loose ends, trapped in professional limbo. The five-month Armor Officer Basic Course didn't start until November, and I still held out hope of landing an active-duty slot, so there didn't seem to be any point to starting a civilian career just yet.

So in July I headed out on a road trip to celebrate graduation: West through South Dakota to Mt. Rushmore, then down through Wyoming and Colorado to Rocky Mountain State Park, then to Oklahoma to visit relatives, and back up through Missouri and Illinois to see my parents in Wisconsin before returning to the Twin Cities. I brought a tent and camped the whole way to keep costs down.

I had to cut through Kansas to get from Colorado to Oklahoma. My initial impression of the state was that it was hot, dry and flat, an impression reinforced by the severe drought that hit the region that year. Kansas has a whole series of manmade fishing lakes, and my plan was to use them as campsites. I stuck to that plan, even though most of the lakes I found were entirely dried up.

Then I hit Greensburg.

At this point, I'll switch to quoting from my diary entry of that day, edited to leave out juvenile musings and at least some tedious detail.

"SUNDAY, JULY 30, 1989

I intended to take 183 south just outside of Greensburg, but decided at the last moment to go on into town to see 'The World's Largest Hand-Dug Well' and a Pallasite meteorite.

The well and rock were both mildly interesting, although I declined to pay to go down into the well, contenting myself with peering into it from above.

On the way through Greensburg I had seen a sign for another fishing lake, and decided it might make a good place to camp. This time the lake was actually there, and though there were no facilities the price was right: free.

I pulled in and parked in the shade of an elm tree. It was by now probably 2 p.m., and far too hot to do anything. I pulled out "The Civil War" [I was reading Shelby Foote's three-volume series] and started reading. It soon became too hot even for that, so I made a run into town to buy some Gatorade and started running the car occasionally to get some air-conditioning.

When it had cooled off a bit, I went out on a nearby pier to watch the people around me. Apparently the lake was a popular social center, because people of all ages drove repeatedly around it, cruising.

Pretty soon three girls came walking up -- Leabeth, 16, Venus, 13, and Samantha, 7. They were supposed to meet a couple of guys there on the pier, and while they waited we started talking.... [Leabeth and Venus] told me about drinking, defying their parents, and boys, more or less in that order. There seemed to be nothing to do but hang out, swim, drink and party. Both seemed to accept the fact that they were not leaving Kansas.

After waiting for probably 45 minutes, I offered to give them a ride wherever they needed to go. We piled into the car and were off.

Things were going normally until I took a railroad track at slightly high speed and got momentarily airborne. I don't think I did any permanent damage, but it inspired them to show me 'Piss Road,' little more than a dirt track out in the middle of nowhere. That posed further challenges to my suspension, as well as lodging dirt and grass all along the underside of the car. We survived it, however, and finally I dropped them off, returning to camp much worried about my car but otherwise in a good mood.

Once back, I set up the tent and ate dinner. As I ate a carload of women pulled up t the pier and sat on it for a while, talking and watching the other cars. When they left I waved at them.

Taking my diary, I wandered out to the pier to finish the day's entry before dark. Soon two of the girls from the car came walking back, looking for a lost earring, and we started talking.

Tanya and Estileda (who was from Honduras) both lived in Pratt, had both graduated from high school this year and were both going to college in the fall. Tanya was interested in accounting, while Estileda was looking at human resources.

Seeing my diary, they asked if I was a writer, and we talked for awhile about college, Kansas and Minnesota. Then having failed to find the earring, they said goodbye and left.

The bugs on the pier were becoming intolerable, so I retreated to the trunk of my car. Several more cars -- filled with males, this time -- passed, and I got rather thorough lookovers from them.

Presently Tanya and Estileda returned, explaining that they had found the earring and asking if I wanted to go cruising with them. Having never been, I said yes.

We took off and went cruising, which consisted of driving all through Greensburg -- 'a retirement community', they called it -- while fiddling with a balky radio. Tanya, who was driving Estileda's car, was quite talkative; Estileda was far more shy and quiet.

We drove around until 10 p.m., talking and having a good time. Then we ran into some friends of theirs -- Kristina and Sarina -- on the main drag and pulled over to talk. Pretty soon other cars had pulled over and for a while a lively social gathering was underway -- although I missed most of it, being confined to Estileda's back seat. I learned a lot about small-town high school life: sex ed, or rather the lack therof (this is a mighty Baptist community), drinking, boredom, etc. Pratt Community College lets you major in rodeo!

This went on until nearly 11:30, when Kristina and Sarina left, stalked by three stray kittens that had wandered by. Tanya and Estileda drove me back to the lake and we said goodbye.

The night was beautiful. Overhead was clear sky, but all around on the horizon were clouds and repeated lightning strikes. I watched for a while, then fell asleep. I woke once, when a tremendous thunderstorm broke overhead. The deluge went on for a long time, and I listened and enjoyed every minute of it.

Kansas may be harsh, but I've grown to like the people."

That was 18 years ago, and the girls I met are all adults now. Tanya and Estileda would be 35 or so; even Samantha would be 25. They may not even live in Greensburg anymore. Nonetheless, I hope that they and everyone they know are safe, and that the town finds a way to rebuild. They might have been teenagers, but they gave a much-needed dose of friendliness and community to a stranger on a lonely trip. I'll always appreciate that.

Greensburg, politics, midtopia

The high price of animal shelters

Two years ago, our oldest cat died. A year ago, so did our second. Both were elderly; their deaths were sad but not unexpected. They're buried together in the woods in our back yard.

Four weeks ago, we decided it was time to have cats around again. So we visited several local shelters and finally adopted a pair of 3-month-old female kittens: a feisty short-hair calico and an affectionate black domestic longhair with extra toes on its front feet. I'll post pictures later when I get time.

We believe in adopting from shelters rather than buying purebreds for both humanitarian and economic reasons. And while we've always been sort of opposed to declawing -- my wife calls it "cutting off their fingers at the first knuckle" -- we reluctantly decided to have them declawed because we both work and wouldn't be able to spend the necessary time teaching them not to shred the furniture.

What floored me was the cost.

The adoption fee for each cat was $150 plus tax. That included a bunch of veterinary care prior to adoption, plus free microchipping and spaying afterward.

Both had colds -- a common ailment in shelters, where animals live in close proximity to each other -- so a vet visit and some antibiotics cost $50.

Declawing was another $200 apiece -- no charge for the extra toes. They also got their distemper boosters.

So four weeks in, we've invested more than $800 in these two "free" cats.

Declawing was a choice, of course. And the fees in the Twin Cities are far higher than those at shelters out in the country. But that's a staggering amount of money -- and it doesn't even include things like food, litter boxes or litter.

I understand that shelters need to cover expenses, and I don't begrudge them or the vets the money. We love the cats -- even if they keep us awake at night with their playing, or by jumping up on the bed and purring in our ears -- and can afford the cost.

But it has set me to wondering: At what point does the cost of adoption start interfering with their mission to save animals? A lot of families that might otherwise make wonderful homes for abandoned animals simply can't afford to spend that kind of money on a pet. Are the shelters dangerously narrowing their customer base in a pennywise, pound-foolish fashion?

Those thoughts came back to me after reading about research in adoption psychology. This refers to a growing trend among animal shelters to study the psychology of shelter animals, as well as that of people who give up pets and those who adopt them. The idea is to not only match people with compatible pets: the goal includes discovering why owners give up pets (in hopes of reducing the number of abandoned animals) and to develop shelter designs and training programs for abandoned animals that will make them more adoptable. The overall goal: greatly reducing the number of animals euthanized every year.

The article is flawed. It starts out strong, then devolves into a lightweight story about the author's decision to adopt a dog from the shelter he's writing about. But it makes some sobering points:

1. Of the 4 million dogs that enter animal shelters in the United States each year, half are euthanized.

2. The most heartbreaking scene was the description of the shelter's "disposition team", which has the emotionally wrenching job of assessing new arrivals and deciding, on the basis of a few minutes' interaction, which animals get sent to the adoption kennels and which get sent to the canine Treblinka of the euthanasia room.

3. While the main reasons for surrendering dogs are understandable -- biting, aggression, chewing on furniture, inability to house-train, moving, loss of job -- many are downright frivolous and reflect a shocking emotional disregard. Among the examples cited in the article: animals surrendered because they were "boring", or the owners were going on vacation, or the family had bought new furniture and the dog's coloring didn't match.

The most interesting argument the article makes is that pets are being forced to adapt to a changing human culture that they were never bred for. Most dog breeds were developed for specific outdoor purposes: herding, catching rats, hunting. These jobs not only selected for energy and intelligence, but were usually performed in the company of people or other dogs.

But our population is far more urban and suburban these days, and in many families the adults all work -- and work long hours. So those dogs are now forced to endure long days alone in a house or apartment, with the boredom and loneliness relieved only by the arrival home of their humans -- who after a long day of work are often too tired or stressed or busy to deal with the needs of their canine companions.

The article cites some successes -- including one here in Minneapolis, where "socialized" puppies were far less likely to be returned after adoption. Another training program in New Hampshire cut the euthanasia rate in half, while in Ohio an aggressive spay/neuter program has helped cut euthanasia by 40 percent while reducing the number of abandoned dogs by 16 percent.

Still, I was left wondering if there are any real solutions, or if the ethically numbing reality of animal shelters are simply the way things are. As long as adoption is expensive; as long as people have unrealistic expectations of their animals; and as long as substantial numbers of people refuse to have their animals spayed, there will always be more abandoned animals than there are people to adopt them. And that means there will always be disposition teams separating the lucky from the unlucky.

It strikes me that there is plenty of room for either states or private foundations to get involved here. I see a two-pronged approach.

1. A subsidy program to reduce the cost of adoption, thus broadening the base of potential adopters;

2. An aggressive education, subsidy and (perhaps) enforcement program to encourage widespread spaying/neutering of pets. Working with vets, say, to offer pet owners a one-year discount on vet services if they get their pet neutered (with the state picking up most of the difference). Or shelters requiring that anyone dropping off a litter of kittens or puppies must get the mother spayed. Or cities requiring spaying as part of their licensing process except for licensed breeders. The idea is to make spaying the default choice, so that it occurs unless the pet owner is highly motivated to avoid it.

Then, perhaps, shelters can do more of the sheltering part of their job and less of the emotionally numbing work that comes from serving as a triage center for society's carelessness.

Update: Picture of cute kitties added.

pets, animal shelters, politics, midtopia

Thin on the ground

I'll put up several posts later today, but in general posting will be light this week. It's spring break for my daughters' schools, so I'm going to be home playing with Barbies, going to the zoo and other parental things.

I'll make sure to keep my picks list in the sidebar updated, so feel free to check out the fine posts I've highlighted there. And I'll be back up to my usual posting pace next week.

politics, midtopia

Bad omen?

I know news photographers have to work really hard to get new and interesting pictures of shuttle launches. But perhaps this guy worked a little too hard.

The caption:

A vulture sits on a pole near the space shuttle Discovery at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-B Monday morning July 3, 2006 in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Workers inspecting the shuttle's external tank discovered a crack in the insulating foam. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

That's right. On a day when everyone is wondering if we can get the shuttle into orbit and back down to earth safely, we get a photo juxtaposing a vulture with the shuttle.

The launch was scrubbed twice this weekend, and now they've discovered a crack in the foam on the big external tank. They're still hoping to launch on July 4.

Which reminds me of the other crass shuttle-related imagery I've encountered. Way back in 1985, I spent a summer in Germany. One day some friends and I went shopping for fireworks. Among the items we purchased was a large bottle rocket with a little space shuttle on the top. Light it, step back, and watch it climb into the sky and explode.

I thought it was kind of funny at the time, a poorly thought-out tribute. Then two years later Challenger did it for real.

I still find this stuff morbidly funny. I've always had a weakness for gallows humor, which came in handy in the military. But I recognize poor taste when I see it.

Good luck to NASA and the astronauts.

Update: The shuttle launched safely, with no apparent damage from falling foam.

Challenger, astronauts, Discovery, shuttle, NASA, politics, midtopia

Camptopia

I'm heading off on a camping trip with the family, so I won't be posting for several days. Meanwhile, check out the excellent posts at sites like Donklephant, the Moderate Voice and the Reaction.

politics, midtopia