Category:
General musings
Today is Veteran’s Day. Veteran’s Day was originally called Armistice Day, in recognition of the armistice that ended World War I. Promptly at the stroke of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns fell silent and the butchery of the Great War, the War to End All Wars, finally came to a close.
There is only one British veteran of World War I remaining, and he is 109 years old. It might be too much to ask or expect that he will see the passage of another Veterans’ Day. However, this morning, I saw film of him greeting and talking to British veterans of Iraq, just home from deployment there. Somehow, it seemed a fitting completion of the circle.
My father is 87. He is a member of what Tom Brokaw has dubbed the Greatest Generation. His peers, friends, and family members went to war to defeat the forces of Fascism. These men and women are dying off at the rate of 1,000 per day, and before long, there won’t be any World War II vets left, either. Similarly, Korean War vets are of the same generation, and usually only a few years younger, as the entire Korean War was fought less than ten years after the end of World War II. Korea is, of course, often called the forgotten war, and for good reason. It was a horrible, grinding war far from home where many Americans died in a proxy war against Communism.
Today, our soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will avoid ranting about the failed policies of the Bush Administration and instead focus on the sacrifices of these good men and women to whom we owe our freedom and to whom we owe our security.
Thank you to all of the veterans for your contributions to making America the country that it is today.
Scridb filter
I vigorously disagree with the politics of these authors. I particularly loathe the bozos that wrote the book that led to the swift boating of John Kerry in 2004 for subjecting us to another four years of corrupt incompetence, outright lies, and high crimes and misdemeanors by a regime that has done more harm to this country than any other in history. While I’m probably long overdue for a good anti-Bush rant, that’s not the purpose of this particular blog post.
As an author, I support the idea of writing for a profit and I support the idea of writers being paid for the fruits of their labors, even labors I despise, as I do these. This article appeared in today’s edition of The New York Times:
Conservative Authors Sue Publisher
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: November 7, 2007
Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.
In a suit filed in United States District Court in Washington yesterday, the authors Jerome R. Corsi, Bill Gertz, Lt. Col. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, Joel Mowbray and Richard Miniter state that Eagle Publishing, which owns Regnery, “orchestrates and participates in a fraudulent, deceptively concealed and self-dealing scheme to divert book sales away from retail outlets and to wholly owned subsidiary organizations within the Eagle conglomerate.”
Some of the authors’ books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, including “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” by Mr. Corsi and John E. O’Neill (who is not a plaintiff in the suit), Mr. Patterson’s “Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security” and Mr. Miniter’s “Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror.” In the lawsuit the authors say that Eagle sells or gives away copies of their books to book clubs, newsletters and other organizations owned by Eagle “to avoid or substantially reduce royalty payments to authors.”
The authors argue that in reducing royalty payments, the publisher is maximizing its profits and the profits of its parent company at their expense.
“They’ve structured their business essentially as a scam and are defrauding their writers,” Mr. Miniter said in an interview, “causing a tremendous rift inside the conservative community.”
Traditionally, authors receive a 15 percent royalty based on the cover price of a hardcover title after they have sold enough copies to cover the cost of the advance they receive upon signing a contract with a publisher. (Authors whose books are sold at steep discounts or to companies that handle remaindered copies receive lower royalties.)
In Regnery’s case, according to the lawsuit, the publisher sells books to sister companies, including the Conservative Book Club, which then sells the books to members at discounted prices, “at, below or only marginally above its own cost of publication.” In the lawsuit the authors say they receive “little or no royalty” on these sales because their contracts specify that the publisher pays only 10 percent of the amount received by the publisher, minus costs — as opposed to 15 percent of the cover price — for the book.
Mr. Miniter said that meant that although he received about $4.25 a copy when his books sold in a bookstore or through an online retailer, he only earned about 10 cents a copy when his books sold through the Conservative Book Club or other Eagle-owned channels. “The difference between 10 cents and $4.25 is pretty large when you multiply it by 20,000 to 30,000 books,” Mr. Miniter said. “It suddenly occurred to us that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance.” He added: “Why is Regnery acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”
In an e-mail statement, Bruce W. Sanford, a lawyer with Baker Hostetler, a Washington firm representing Eagle and Regnery, said: “No publisher in America has a more acute marketing sense or successful track record at building promotional platforms for books than Regnery Publishing. These disgruntled authors object to marketing strategies used by all major book publishers that have proved successful time and again as witnessed by dozens of Regnery bestsellers.”
The authors also say in the lawsuit that Regnery donates books to nonprofit groups affiliated with Eagle Publishing and gives the books as incentives to subscribers to newsletters published by Eagle. The authors say they do not receive royalties for these books.
“You get 10 per cent of nothing because they basically give them away,” Mr. Patterson said in an interview.
The authors argue that because at least a quarter and as much as half of their book sales are diverted to nonretail channels, sales figures of their books on Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of retail sales but does not reflect sales through book clubs and other outlets used by Eagle, are artificially low. Publishers use these figures when determining future book deals, and the authors argue that actions by Eagle and Regnery have long-term effects on their careers.
Mr. Miniter said that when he was negotiating a book deal with Threshold Editions, a conservative imprint of Simon & Schuster, he could have gotten a higher advance if BookScan reflected the true quantity of sales of his books.
According to BookScan, Mr. Miniter’s “Shadow War” sold 46,000 copies in hardcover, and “Losing Bin Laden” sold 36,000 copies in hardback.
Mr. Miniter, who spearheaded the legal action, said he became aware of the discrepancies in royalty payments while defending a separate arbitration initiated by Regnery over a canceled contract. Mr. Miniter said that during the arbitration, which is pending, he saw royalty statements in which it appeared that about half his books’ sales had not gone through stores, and that his payments for those sales were much lower than the payments for bookstore sales. He contacted other Regnery authors and learned that they saw similar patterns on their royalty statements.
Joel Mowbray, author of “Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security,” said he was particularly disappointed in Regnery and Eagle because they had so championed conservative authors. “These guys created the conservative book market,” Mr. Mowbray said. “Before them, conservatives were having to fight, generally unsuccessfully, to get books published.”
The authors, who say in the lawsuit that Eagle has been “unjustly enriched well in excess of one million dollars,” are seeking unspecified damages. But Mr. Miniter said, “We’re not looking for a payoff; we’re looking for justice.”
There are certainly plenty of opportunities for publishers to really manipulate the payment of royalties to their authors. While I despise what these men write and what they did to this country, I do hope that they get what they’re entitled to if they got screwed out of royalties they were entitled to.
Scridb filterEven I do things that are galactically stupid. Yes, I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true.
I drive a 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. I’ve had a lot of cars in my life, but this particular one is high on my list of favorites. I like its ride, I like the power of the V-8, and I enjoy driving it. It’s hard on gas mileage–these days, $50 won’t fill it–but that’s about all I can say negative about it. It’s already got about 75,000 miles on it.
Like most new cars, this one came with two keys. However, Susan lost hers about a year ago, meaning we’ve been operating with just one key. Well, somehow, some way, I managed to lose the other one on Sunday night, somewhere between the car and the time I went to bed. It had to have been lost here in the house somewhere, but I will be damned if I could find it. Susan and I tore the place apart last night. Literally and figuratively. And we still couldn’t find it.
An SUV without any keys is a very large and very expensive paperweight. And that’s what my Jeep was all day yesterday. After we realized we couldn’t find the damned key, it then became obvious that the only way to restore it to being a useful vehicle and not a very large and very expensive paperweight was to bite the bullet and replace the keys.
The keys, of course, are not the sort of keys one runs to Kmart and gets cut. Nah, why should I get off that easy? It all has to be done at a dealership. The keys include a computer chip, and once cut, they have to be programmed. What’s more is that they not only have to be programmed, the vehicle has to be there when they do it. Otherwise, the key will not work. When one’s SUV is a very large and very expensive paperweight and cannot be started due to a lack of having any keys, there’s only one way to get it to the dealership. That’s right, you guessed it: on the business end of a tow truck.
So, this morning, I did what had to be done. I had it towed, they cut and programmed new keys, and about an hour later, I drove off, the Grand Cherokee no longer a very large and very expensive paperweight. And, as I drove away feeling galactically stupid for losing the key inside my own house, our checking account was $322.70 lighter. Talk about an expensive lesson.
But hey, we now have two functional keys again, and I don’t expect the thing to turn into a very large and very expensive paperweight again any time soon…..
Scridb filterFor some time now, there’s been a thread going on the Armchair General forum boards on Pickett’s Charge. To date, there have been 121 replies to the original post, and there is a posted poll.
For the life of me, I simply cannot comprehend the fascination with the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge. Now, I recognize that this is the sort of thing that one often gets filleted for, but I’m going to explain my reasons for taking this position. Personally, I couldn’t care less about it. If I never heard another word about again for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t bother me a bit.
Tactically, there’s nothing interesting about it. I’ve walked it four or five times in my life, including several times with Wayne Motts, who is pretty much THE authority on the subject, and other than some interesting terrain features, I don’t find it interesting, and I don’t find it compelling. Not a bit. Strategically, it was gallactically stupid and doomed to fail. If you need evidence of that, take a good, long look at the frontal assault of the 5th Corps at the Deep Cut at Second Manassas. 12,000 Union troops made a direct frontal assault up a ridge line at a single spot, and they were repulsed with heavy losses. It was the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge in reverse, with the same level of losses and the same destiny.
Why doesn’t the attack at the Deep Cut get the same level of attention?
Why does the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble attack get so much attention when it’s quite clear indeed that Longstreet couldn’t have been more correct in his statement that no 15,000 men alive could take that position? I can understand why people who are descendants of participants are interested, and I suppose I can understand the fascination of the Lost Causers and neo-Confederates. Beyond that, though, I just don’t get it.
If you want to study a tactically and strategically interesting and important direct, frontal assault, study Emory Upton’s assault at Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864. It was novel, unique, and it worked.
From my perspective, if I never heard of this ill-advised and doomed from the start attack again, it most assuredly wouldn’t bother me a bit. I just don’t get the endless fascination with it when there are so many more interesting things to study.
Scridb filterMy old friend and mentor Clark B. “Bud” Hall, one of the founders of the Civil War preservation movement, was one of the speakers at the dedication of the faithful cavalry horse in Middleburg, Virginia. Bud has a home in Middleburg, and he is one of the leading authorities on Civil War cavalry operations, so it was entirely appropriate for him to speak at the dedication of the monument ten years ago. Bud was kind enough to share with me his comments that day, and I find them so moving that I want to share them with you.
Here they are: an appropriate tribute to the cavalry horses who sacrificed so much during the Civil War.
The Horses
“Here lies the steed with his nostrils all wide,
But through it there rolls not the breath of its pride.
The foam of his gasping lies white on the turf,
And as cold as the spray of the rock-beaten surf.”
Ah! The horses—the blacks and bays, the roans and grays, the sorrels and chestnuts that pulled Lee’s army from the Rappahannock to Gettysburg and back, and all the other horses that pulled and tugged at the wagons, at the batteries of artillery; the horses that carried the men, the unstabled horses and the half-fed horses.
Let my right hand forget its cunning if I forget to pay proper tribute to those noble animals that suffered so much for their masters. How often my mind goes back to that horse my mind’s eye saw coming across the field from the front at Bull Run with his sides all dripping with blood. He was a hero and coming back home to die.
The cavalryman and his horse got very close to each other, not only physically, but also heart to heart. They ate together, slept together, marched, fought and often died together. While the rider slept, the horse cropped the grass around him and got as close up to his rider’s body as he could get. The loyal steed pushed the trooper’s head gently aside with his nose to get at the grass beneath it. By the thousands, men reposed in fields fast asleep from arduous campaigns with their horses quietly grazing beside them, and nary a cavalier was trod upon or injured by his steed.
They were so faithful and unfaltering. When the bugle sounded, they were always ready to respond, for they knew all the bugle calls. If it were saddle up, or the feed, or the water call, they were as ready to answer one as the other. And they were so noble and so brave in battle. They seemed to love the sound of the guns. The cavalryman might lie low on the neck of his horse as the missiles of death hissed about him. But the horse never flinched, except when struck.
Lo! As we should, we build monuments for our dead soldiers, for those we know, and for the unknown dead. So with the ultimate sacrifice of our lamented fallen honored upon their noble deaths, is it not also just that we recall their valiant steeds? What would you think of a monument some day, somewhere in Virginia, in honor of Lee’s noble horses?
What could General Lee have done had all his horses balked in unison? Nothing! Then all honor to Lee’s horses, which pulled and hauled and fought and died that this might be a very great nation.
“The good black horse came riderless home,
Flecked with blood drops as well as foam;
See yonder hillock where dead leaves fall;
The good black horse dropped dead—
That is all.
‘All? O, God! It is all I can speak.
Question me not; I am old and weak;
His saber and his saddle hang on the wall,
And his horse is dead—
I have told you all.”
With eternal thanks (and apologies) to Trooper George Baylor, his poignant lines have been somewhat revised.
Clark B. Hall
Middleburg, Virginia
Well said, Bud. Well said.
Scridb filterI own the complete run of Gettysburg Magazine, all 37 issues. For those keeping score, at two issues per year, that makes 19 years’ worth of magazines. It’s the ONLY magazine that I’ve EVER purchased where I’ve kept every single issue, including North and South, where I sat on the company’s board of directors for a number of years. To date, I’ve had something like eight articles published in the magazine, including three on John Buford. I’ve been in the last two issues in a row, and I just submitted another article on the Battle of Funkstown for the July 2008 issue earlier today.
There was a gap of seven or eight years there where I didn’t submit anything to the magazine due to pesonal conflicts with Sweet Old Bob (“SOB”) Younger. I swore that as long as Bob was still alive, I would not submit so much as a single word of my work to the magazine. Once Bob died, I started submitting articles to the magazine again.
The following was posted on the Gettysburg Discussion Group today:
Lew and I received a letter from Andy Turner, Publisher/Editor of The Gettysburg Magazine today. After thanking us for our support of the magazine, he writes that “we have more articles on hand than we’ve had for many years, which certainly bodes well for the future of the magazine…I can plow straight ahead in an effort to make the magazine the best it can be.
The magazine, since its inception, has never been a money maker. It has almost always broken even, but never been profitable. I believe the financial future of the magazine lies in subscriptions. My goal is to be able to continue the magazine without advertising. To do that, we need to increase the number of subscribers.
The subscription rate has remained steady for many yars now at about 1,500. I find it hard to believe that in this entire country there are only 1,500 people who would want to subscribe to this magazine. This is where we can use your help. If every subscriber could get one new subscriber, it would go a long way to securing the future of the magazine. It could be a friend, a
fellow Round Table member, or even the local library. Every subscription helps.
For more information:
www.gettysburgmagazine.net
email: gettysburgmagazine@yahoo.com
937-667-6737
P.O. Box 1311
Dayton, Ohio 45401
I strongly support what Andy Turner, the new publisher of the magazine, is doing, and I want to encourage any and all of you to consider subscribing, as Andy requests. You will get approximately 150 8 1/2 x 11 pages chock full of good information, great maps, good photographs, and not a single advertisement. As far as that goes, it’s money well spent, and you won’t regret it.
Please support Andy’s efforts to keep the magazine free of advertisements.
Scridb filterI usually try to keep my personal politics out of this blog. That I am a Jewish, liberal-leaning Democrat is no secret, but I usually don’t rant about politics or religion here. This time, however, I just can’t help myself. I apologize for doing so.
I heard about Ann Coulter’s anti-Semitic rant on Donny Deutsch’s CNBC program today for the first time. When I read it, I was absolutely horrified:
NEW YORK Appearing on Donny Deutsch’s CNBC show, “The Big Idea,” on Monday night, columnist/author Ann Coulter suggested that the U.S. would be a better place if there weren’t any Jewish people and that they needed to “perfect” themselves into — Christians.
It led Deutsch to suggest that surely she couldn’t mean that, and when she insisted she did, he said this sounded “anti-Semitic.”
Asked by Deutsch whether she wanted to be like “the head of Iran” and “wipe Israel off the Earth,” Coulter stated: “No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament.”
Deutsch told E&P’s sibling magazine, Adweek, today, “I was offended. And then, and this was interesting, she started to back off and seemed a little upset.”
Asked to gauge her reaction, Deutsch said, “I think she got frightened that maybe she had crossed a line, that this was maybe a faux pas of great proportions. I mean, did it show ignorance? Anti-Semitism? It wasn’t just one of those silly things.”
A transcript, provided by Media Matters, follows.
*
DEUTSCH: Christian — so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?
COULTER: Yes.
DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?
COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?
DEUTSCH: So I should not be a Jew, I should be a Christian, and this would be a better place?
COULTER: Well, you could be a practicing Jew, but you’re not.
DEUTSCH: I actually am. That’s not true. I really am. But — so we would be better if we were – if people — if there were no Jews, no Buddhists —
COULTER: Whenever I’m harangued by —
DEUTSCH: — in this country? You can’t believe that.
COULTER: — you know, liberals on diversity —
DEUTSCH: Here you go again.
COULTER: No, it’s true. I give all of these speeches at megachurches across America, and the one thing that’s really striking about it is how utterly, completely diverse they are, and completely unself-consciously. You walk past a mixed-race couple in New York, and it’s like they have a chip on their shoulder. They’re just waiting for somebody to say something, as if anybody would. And —
DEUTSCH: I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with that at all. Maybe you have the chip looking at them. I see a lot of interracial couples, and I don’t see any more or less chips there either way. That’s erroneous.
COULTER: No. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you’re lying.
DEUTSCH: Oh, because of some Seinfeld episode? OK.
COULTER: But yeah, I think that’s reflective of what’s going on in the culture, but it is completely striking that at these huge megachurches — the idea that, you know, the more Christian you are, the less tolerant you would be is preposterous.
DEUTSCH: That isn’t what I said, but you said I should not — we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or —
COULTER: Yeah.
DEUTSCH: Really?
COULTER: Well, it’s a lot easier. It’s kind of a fast track.
DEUTSCH: Really?
COULTER: Yeah. You have to obey.
DEUTSCH: You can’t possibly believe that.
COULTER: Yes.
DEUTSCH: You can’t possibly — you’re too educated, you can’t — you’re like my friend in —
COULTER: Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion, but you have to obey.
DEUTSCH: No, no, no, but I mean —
COULTER: We have the fast-track program.
DEUTSCH: Why don’t I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can’t believe that.
COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.
DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, “Let’s wipe Israel” —
COULTER: I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention.
DEUTSCH: “Let’s wipe Israel off the earth.” I mean, what, no Jews?
COULTER: No, we think — we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.
DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn’t really say that, did you?
COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we’re all sinners —
DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued — when you say something absurd like that, there’s no —
COULTER: What’s absurd?
DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I’m going to go off and try to perfect myself —
COULTER: Well, that’s what the New Testament says.
DEUTSCH: Ann Coulter, author of If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, and if Ann Coulter had any brains, she would not say Jews need to be perfected. I’m offended by that personally. And we’ll have more Big Idea when we come back.
[…]
DEUTSCH: Welcome back to The Big Idea. During the break, Ann said she wanted to explain her last comment. So I’m going to give her a chance. So you don’t think that was offensive?
COULTER: No. I’m sorry. It is not intended to be. I don’t think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to, you know, live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that’s why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don’t believe our testament.
DEUTSCH: You said — your exact words were, “Jews need to be perfected.” Those are the words out of your mouth.
COULTER: No, I’m saying that’s what a Christian is.
DEUTSCH: But that’s what you said — don’t you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic —
COULTER: No!
DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You’re an educated woman. How do you not see that?
COULTER: That isn’t hateful at all.
DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought.
That this intolerant bitch doesn’t get that she’s bigoted, hateful, and thoroughly anti-Semitic is absolutely flabbergasting to me. I can’t begin to imagine that she doesn’t see anything wrong with her comments. I think that the thing that bothers me the most is the incredibly condescending tone she adopts. For an educated person, it’s astonishing. She needs a .45 caliber bullet to the brain.
Maybe–and I can only hope so–this time she’s gone too far. I can only hope that this will be what it takes to cause people to FINALLY disregard what this bitch says. Why people think she has anything worthwhile to say–let alone to listen to–stupefies me. I don’t get it.
Perhaps she needs to spend some time as Osama bin Laden’s whore. That’s about all she’s good for.
Again, I apologize for allowing my personal politics to creep into this blog, but I just couldn’t sit back and let this pass without saying something about it.
Scridb filterHere’s a hat tip to Brooks Simpson, over at Civil Warriors for bringing this one to my attention.
It would appear that some neo-Confederate die-hards have gone ahead and formed their own (unelected) Confederate government, and that they are trying to secede once again. I guess they didn’t learn their lesson the first time.
Here’s their mission statement: The Restoration of the Confederacy is a movement of the people from the bottom up and not the top down. This is not a political movement in regards to political parties, but an action of resistance and insistence upon the liberation of our nation and the departure of agencies and personnel of the United States of America whom we shall endeavor to maintain friendly and neighborly relations, one nation to the other. But, the unlawful occupation of the Confederate States of America must cease.
If you want an especially good laugh, read the Mission Statement of the Department of State, which indicates that its primary mission is to negotiate a peace treaty with the government of the United States in order to end the occupation of the Confederate States by the U. S. government.
They also say, “The CSA is not bound by laws and rules established by the Occupying nation, the U.S.A. since they lack jurisdiction over the territory of the South who did not surrender nor sign any treaty with the Federal Union.” And funniest of all, they find that the members of the League of the South, a bunch of lunatics in their own right, have committed treason against the Confederate States of America. I was literally laughing out loud as I read this gibberish. My guess is that the closest thing to a law degree that any of these imbeciles has is watching lots of episodes of Law and Order.
They claim that they constitute a valid and functioning government separate and apart from the United States government or the governments of the states that allegedly make up this new Confederacy. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in my lawyer’s mind, that constitutes treason. It certainly meets the dictionary definition of treason: “Treason is any attempt to overthrow the government or impair the well-being of a state to which one owes allegiance; the crime of giving aid or comfort to the enemies of one’s government.”
The whole thing would be hysterically funny if these people weren’t serious. And they are, apparently, as serious as a heart attack. As a consequence, they scare me. Perhaps they need to understand, in a very real and demonstrative way, that plotting to overthrow the lawful government of the United States is a felony called treason, which is punishable by death.
Scridb filter2007 has been a horrible year for us. It’s just been one unpleasant thing after another. Because of Susan’s being laid off, we didn’t get to take a vacation this year. Now that things are better, she’s got a new job and can’t take vacation time yet. Talk about a Catch-22.
On top of all of it, I am absolutely swamped–buried–with legal work. From one perspective, that’s a good thing, because it ensures cash flow, but on another, it’s hitting me with more at a time when I’m already feeling tired and burned out. I REALLY need a vacation…..
Scridb filter
Augie came to live with us in January 1996. He was just over six weeks old, and he weighed about 8 pounds. He was a gorgeous honey-colored golden retriever puppy. The breeder had nicknamed him Bubba because they thought it suited his personality. His mother was small, only about 50 pounds, and his father was a grand champion showdog.
Our first golden was named Caesar. It suited his personality. We decided to stay with the Roman emperor theme, so we named the new puppy Augustus, Emperor of Olde Orchard, which is the name of our neighborhood. We called him Augie for short, although the name Bubba stuck with him, and, because he was like a giant teddy bear, we also called him Bear. We got him because Caesar was very destructive during the day when we were at work because he was bored. We figured that if we got him a playmate, it would stop. And that’s exactly what happened. The two of them were attached at the hip from the moment we brought him home.
Augie grew into a 105 pound barrel chested guy. He was huge. He was also the only golden retriever I’ve ever seen with absolutely no interest whatsoever in retrieving. I think he figured it was beneath his imperial dignity.
Instead, what Augie wanted was to be loved. We sometimes called him Bubba the Love Sponge, not because of the idiot shock jock, but because he was like a sponge. He just sucked up the love. His favorite thing to do was to sit next to us on the couch, lean against one of us, and get loved. He would be in heaven. He was the embodiment of unconditional love.
He was a Stepford dog. There was nothing he hated more than being corrected, so we usually only had to tell him not to do something once, and that was that. He was big, gentle, sweet, and the most loving dog in the world. He was also a big fraidy cat. He would not go down the steps until he was almost six months old and 60 pounds. I used to have to carry him down. Finally, one weekend while I was off at Gettysburg, Susan and her mother coaxed him down the steps with bits of hot dog, and that resolved that.
He absolutely adored cold weather and snow. His favorite thing in the world was to lay out in the snow, just enjoying it. We used to refer to cool weather as bear weather. We found it very difficult to get him to come inside when it was bear weather. He just wanted to enjoy it. Another favorite thing of his, as you can tell from the photo, was sitting at the gate to our back yard, just watching the world go by.
Augie was a real Type-B personality. He was very laid back, and definitely a follower. However, when Caesar died, it fell upon him to become the pack leader, even though he wasn’t really suited to it. Other than his bad hayfever allergies, the cataract he developed in one eye, and the bad arthritis that he developed as he got older, we were always really lucky with him–he was always very healthy. He also got very hard of hearing as he got older, but Susan and I were both convinced that some of that was a convenient excuse not to come in out of the bear weather. He would just pretend he couldn’t hear us calling him. 🙂
A couple of weeks ago, he suddenly lost interest in his food. He vomited, and there was grass in it. He’d had gastritis previously, so we figured maybe he was having another attack of gastritis. The next day, he was fine. He was eating, and drinking, and even playing a bit with Aurora and Nero. Everything seemed okay.
This morning, he ate his breakfast, and went outside. He seemed to be okay, so I went to work. When I got home from work, he was laying down, and he’d vomited again. I got the dogs outside, and he just lay down on the ground. That wasn’t like him at all. I brought him in and he wouldn’t eat. He just lay down. I got him to eat a cookie, but that didn’t stay down either. He was obviously in distress, and in my heart of hearts, I knew it was something serious. When I carried him out to the car, I could tell that he’d lost at least 10-15 pounds in the past few weeks, as he was much lighter than I’d remembered in a very long time.
We took him to the emergency vet clinic tonight–they’re open 24/7/365–and they told us what we feared the most. He had advanced cancer, and he was bleeding internally. They gave us two options: risky surgery and chemo that might have bought us six months, or putting him down. Neither Susan nor I could bear the thought of putting him through an ordeal like that at his advanced age, especially if it would only buy us a few months, and even then, nothing was certain. That left us with no option but to put him down.
They gave him an IV and hyrdrated him a bit, and he was up and walking and his tail was wagging, and for a few minutes, it was like he was okay again. But we knew it was temporary. We spent a few minutes with him, snuggling and petting and loving him, and then the vet came in, and he left us quietly, gently, and without suffering. As I would have expected of him, he went quietly into that good night. He just lay his head down and went to sleep. He’s now in heaven with Caesar and Cleo, young and healthy again.
We’ve now lost all three of our original pack of goldens. That’s now three of them in the last three years. Fortunately, Nero is 2 1/2 and Aurora 1 1/2, so hopefully, we’re going to get a break from this for a few years, because the pain is intense. I know we did the only thing we could for Augie, and I know it was truly merciful, but it is incredibly painful and incredibly difficult. I’m cried out and feeling emotionally drained just now. I’ve literally just lost a best friend, and it hurts. A lot.
I know I will see him again some day. For now, though, I miss him already. Sleep well, Augie. You’re missed by Susan, Nero, Aurora, and me. You will always be in our hearts.
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