On a hike at Will Rogers I encountered a magnificent creature: my first horse.
I was awed.
After the horse disappeared, I stayed transfixed, staring at where it had been.
Finally we resumed our walk. Down the path and around a bend, we encountered a second one.
It occurred to me that every bend in the road offers the possibility of another horse.
Nearly a decade ago, Jamie Lee Curtis posed for an amazing photo spread in More magazine. The spread showed Jamie Lee first in her plain-Jane skivvies, then looking glamorous after thirteen assistants had worked for three hours on makeup, lighting and wardrobe.
Here we have a similar set of photos. On the left: Me and Magic looking glamorous. Below, the back story: raw footage of our preparation for the photo shoot.
The article accompanying the More photos quotes Jamie Lee as saying, "I’m trying really hard to take the veil off the fraud, to be real, to start with me."
That's what I'm trying to do as well. I don't want people to see photos of perfect Lambie and be discouraged thinking that my photogeneity is effortless and unattainable.
Enough about the deficit -- now here is a newsworthy story, from Australia. It concerns a dog named Bibi who is blown from a pier but saved by a heroic young man who happens to be at the pier to scatter his family member's ashes.
Bibi's rescue actually occurred almost two years ago, but news is slow to travel across the Pacific. Here's what happened:
Bibi, who is a Maltese / Shih Tzu mix, was walking on the Brighton pier in suburban Melbourne with his owner when he was blown into the water by gale-force winds. He tried to dog paddle back, but the wind was strong and for a while blew him even further from the pier.
A hero named Raden Soemawinata happened to be on the pier for a ceremony to scatter his grandmother's ashes into the Melbourne bay. Mr. Soemawinata stripped to his underwear (conveniently, he was a part time model), got into the water and swam Bibi to safety.
Bibi and his owner were both very grateful.
It seems I never published the above photo, taken early last summer.
The image, which captures well the gravitas with which my life is conducted, depicts me walking into the family room in the evening. You can see that I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. In tone it reminds me of the iconic photo of JFK and RFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Apparently he came while I was dozing on the sofa.
It was late in a hitherto uneventful afternoon.
A shrill sound split the air at a pitch audible only to dogs and to humans age 24 and younger.
Suddenly, computer and TV monitors were swarmed by images of scary men in threatening poses.
The world placed its hopes in the only individual who could combat evil of this magnitude.
Wearing his lucky ID tag, he set out to vanquish the enemies unknown.
A sports figure whom I admire starred last year in a Spike Lee documentary about his work ethic. Entitled "Kobe Doin Work," the documentary followed Kobe Bryant through a day in the life.
I've been inspired by that film to present this homage, which I call, "Lambie Doin Work."
While I was doing some sniffing work on the slope at the south end of the bluff, I happened to turn and look uphill.
My eye was caught by a disturbing vista of garbage.
Bizarrely, the garbage appeared to be growing out of a bush.
I hurried to investigate.
It didn't take me long to determine that garbage-droppers had been having a heyday at this end of the bluff.
Everywhere I looked I saw signs of their disrespect. Cans and cigarette butts were scattered plentifully around the area.
My mind turned to the late Lady Bird Johnson, who spearheaded the "Don't be a litterbug" campaign to beautify America. I felt grateful that Lady Bird was not alive to learn of this desecration.
But then it occurred to me that Lady Bird might have been a can half-full type of person -- someone who focused not on the trash but on the lovely views, the crisp air, the cliffs too far for litterbugs to reach with their hurled cans.
What would Lady Bird do?
Gifted with opposable thumbs, she would likely have picked up the trash. I didn't have that option. But I did have the ability to look at the can half-full, so that's what I did.
As a California coastal dog, I am drawn to the seafaring life.
A prime research source for me has been Margaret Wise Brown's classic book The Sailor Dog, which examines the very satisfying experience of a dog by the name of Scuppers.
Apparently all one needs to get going is a boat and a spyglass. A hat and a can-do attitude are also desirable.
The book also provides a song that I have adjusted so it goes, "I'm Lambie the Sailor Dog..."
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A dog can dream, can't he?
Sometimes I don't want to go home from the bluffs. Maybe there are more dogs or people I want to interact with, or things I want to sniff.
At such times, I channel Mahatma Gandhi, an exemplar of non-violent resistance.
Ferdinand, the title character in a book by Munro Leaf, is a gentle fellow who is not interested in fighting or playing like the other young bulls. He just wants to sit in the shade of a cork tree and smell the flowers.
I think about Ferdinand when people say to me, "Why don't you run and play like all the other dogs?"
