Quitting: Must Love Dogs

By Suzanne Danforth

December 27, 2007 6:00 AM

We are going to the dogs this week, reader, to the dogs and to love. I'll save the details for later, but I have fallen in love and I think (I hope!) it is reciprocal. It's so much nicer when it is reciprocal, don't you think?

First things first; the dogs. I am quitting dogs, wholesale. Every last damn one of 'em. They are all up for sale or adoption. Just e-mail me and soon after you will have a black furry bundle on your doorstep. I will even include medications, food and a long note about who they are, what they like and whether they hog the bed or curl up tight at the bottom.

You already know Atticus. My Atticus is a nervous Nellie and is having some trouble adjusting to our new life in Western Massachusetts, hanging out with friend Marya. Although Marya has one of the last one-acre fenced-in parcels of land near downtown Northampton, Atticus is nothing if not stealthy and he has figured out ways to breach the fence. This causes me great consternation and paranoia and fits in which I am sure he has left to go on a long journey home to Portsmouth.

He also tries regularly to assert himself as "top dog" of the pack. This invariably involves a toy and behavior that looks anthropomorphically as if he is lording his treasure over the other dogs. And let me tell you, the other dogs don't like it. They are forced to save face with the only means possible; by retaliation with teeth and lips drawn back and the most threatening barking they can muster.

Phoebe is a nearly 2-year-old black Labrador retriever who weighs 95 lbs. Phoebe is the lone non-rescue dog. She has enjoyed a comfortable life free of uncertainty and maltreatment and, in this new cancer situation, she is like a child who knows something is wrong. But because she has been protected from the underbelly of life, Phoebe's ultimate vibe is, "How bad can it be? Let's play soccer!"

Abby belongs to my sister and her children. She is a small cocker spaniel who tonight is resting in the emergency veterinary clinic in Portsmouth after ingesting many many chocolate kisses and Dove bars and going into the requisite cardiac distress. Abby is a snuffer, a gobbler who munches first and asks questions later. Abby appears dumb and smelly, but she is a little Einstein when it comes right down to it. The X-rays of her belly showed not one bit of tinfoil wrapping from all those kisses. This finding was bolstered by the prodigious amounts of tinfoil wrappings littering my sister's kitchen this afternoon.

You see, the living room furniture was re-arranged to accommodate the Christmas tree, and Miss Abby found a way to hop from here to there to the counter where, voila!, the chocolate was waiting. Just for her.

Luke is also a nervous Nellie. Luke is Abby's brother and counterpart. Luke also loves to eat like the cocker he is, but Luke's sense of right and wrong is more sophisticated than Abby's. I am sure Luke was paw-wringing and trying to talk Abby out of her choco-fest, alas to no avail. Luke shivers and moans when his Abby is away from him, and I expect it will be a long night at his house tonight, for the humans.

Joni is the next door neighbor. She gets so happy when Atticus I come home for our brief visits that you could just die watching it. But Joni is a jumper. She's young, and although she knows she is not supposed to jump, she just plain can't contain herself at times.

Now, let's talk about love. I have known Keenan for about a year. I have felt fondness for him to this point, but in the past few weeks I have fallen downright in love with him. He is a big guy and he has seen troubles in his life. His modus operandi is to ask for nothing, absolutely nothing. Although there is a way he can enter the house independently, he always waits to be invited inside.

When tensions rise, Keenan doesn't try to nose in, or offer an opinion. Nope. Instead he will step outside for a breath of fresh air. When I am sad, he silently appears to comfort me. When I fall asleep on the couch, he will quietly wake me and lead me to bed, where he climbs in beside me and positions himself so I can hold on to him. He sighs deeply and says nothing and just lets me know he is there. Keenan, a Newfie-Lab rescue, has won me over.

He is the only dog in my life, this week, who is not up for adoption or sale.

We all hope you had a good Christmas. Just kidding about the adoption or sale of the dogs, by the way. They are family. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Life Change

By Suzanne Danforth

December 20, 2007 6:00 AM

Curl up, reader, on the couch with a cup of steaming tea, a small reading lamp to illume your reading material and just the lights on the tree twinkling in the background for ambience.

Listen for the sounds of the season; the silence of snowfall, Tchaikovsky, boots stomping off stubborn bits of snow in the back hall, perhaps even distant sleigh bells in the chilly night.

Did you have a favorite holiday game when a child? Something you can resurrect now that will capture an innocent feel for the season? Something that will serve to remind you of what is (and by implication what is not) important?

One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is sitting in the darkened living room in front of the tree and making my eyes blurry, so that each light took on multiple soft points, then making them even blurrier until the tree dissolved into a soft riot of multicolored stars to wonder over. With a quick release of my ocular muscles, the tree would snap back into focus and then I could do it all over again.

My column this week was going to be about quitting cut trees with which to decorate our living rooms. I wanted to propose a new type of holiday tree farm in which digging up the tree and planting it in a bucket, rather than severing it from its stalk, becomes the norm. I envisioned dragging trees-in-pots into homes (not much more trouble really than how we do it now), and back out to the curb when the holidays were over.

They would be safer and more fire-proof because they would be alive and rooted, not withering toward an end. The greener or more landed among us could plant them in our own yards come spring. Or I'm sure a cadre of reducers, reusers and recyclers would crop up to prowl curbs on trash day to rescue the still living trees and direct them for planting elsewhere.

In my mind's eye, quitting cut trees gave me visions of discounts from retailers for returned trees, busy nursery workers sprucing up trees for re-sale or planting and of course more trees in the world.

But it is not trees I have been thinking about these past days. In my world right now, things are down to elementals; information that is even more basic than what day is it, what month or what season. I have literally lost track of those things. I know when it is dark, or light. I know when it is snowing and when it has stopped. I know when we are getting low on pain killers or anti-anxiety pills and where to get more.

You met Trigger, my good friend Marya, several columns ago. Marya has been challenged with something few of us will ever need negotiate in life. A week ago, she was given a foreseeably short life expectancy. She seems to have turned up with a rare and random aggressive mutation. The first diagnosis has been partially retracted because of in-depth molecular staining results that suggest something potentially better than what it appeared to be: late stage pancreatic cancer.

We are hoping for something (anything) else right now and on the day you read this, she will be back in Boston in front of her team and waiting to hear, again, what is causing all these troubles and what can be done about them.

Whatever this turns out to be, it is being met head on with similar strength by a random aggressive cohort of friends, neighbors, boyfriend, family and an amazing medical team in Boston.

In November, I was lucky enough to quit my life (aka job) in what I thought was going to be an attempt to be a writer. While I know I will do that someday, I think what I really left for was to be free to spend more time in Northampton with Marya, and her dogs (Phoebe and Keenan) and her birds (Larry and three unnamed parakeets).

The fight here may be titan but it is expressed mundanely day to day in the form of pill counting, finding pharmacies that carry Schedule I narcotics, vacuuming, playing with dogs, feeding birds and finding ways to remain calm. Hikes help, and despite the nasty stupid things littering the inside of Marya's body, when her pain is controlled she is still a stronger and heartier hiker than me.

And so off we go. I don't know the day, but I do know it's snowing and it's time to find my boots and coat, because it's beautiful out there and no doctors need to see her today.

Atticus has had a little trouble adjusting and managing the stress coming off his mama, but Rescue Remedy is helping. He is settling in. Send him doggie anxiety tips at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Buy Local

By Suzanne Danforth

December 13, 2007 6:00 AM

Author's note:

Dear Reader,

Quitting, the column, is morphing. Kind of. The column has already changed once; the series began in late July and was originally dubbed Trying to Quit. This changed to Quitting for several reasons, none of which can clearly be recalled at the moment. The Quitting theme will not change and Suzanne will surely update you from time to time about how her struggle with butts is going (owing you at least that) but the Quitting focus is going to expand. We may need to talk about quitting habits other than smoking; quitting thoughts, things, traits or pastimes.

It will evolve as we go on together. Everything does.

Something is afoot this month of December, reader. Are you experiencing it, too? The axis has slipped. The calendar page alone tells me a holiday is nigh. The Long Night Moon, December's full moon, occurs on the 24th, and it is already reminding me of a cold bright moon of some years ago.

Hopefully your December is moving along a more predictable and cheerful trajectory. Whether it is or it isn't, in Quitting this week, I entreaty you to quit commercial buying for the holidays and, instead, buy local.

The mission may not be an easy one to accomplish. Big box stores and familiar logos litter the national landscape. The massive buying power associated with such mammoth size results in lower prices, to be sure, but that is paired part and parcel with compromised quality.

There is a political lyric writer in town, Charkee McGee, who penned the words to one of the Leftist Marching Band's wildly popular and most-oft requested songs. The song is a growl-y version of the 12 bar blues standard Night Train and it chronicles the myriad reasons why we should not shop at the big box retailer that begins with a W and ends with a Mart.

The economy of words required to write good lyrics eludes me, and so I will instead attempt to wax eloquent on the reasons why your dollars will do the most good and be most welcome if spent right here on local goods and services.

There are Twelve Days of Christmas, 24 tiny doors to open on the Advent Calendar, Three Kings of Orient and Three Entrepreneurs of Occident that we will highlight here as an alternative to big box commercial holiday buying. Our Seacoast entrepreneurs include a Peddler of Scribes, a Land Keeper and Invasive Species Avenger.

Our local Peddler of Scribes is Tom Holbrook over at the RiverRun Bookstore (www.riverrunbookstore.com). I can often be spotted downtown dragging bags or boxes of second hand books through Commercial Alley and into SecondRun bookstore. Most times, I drag more second-hand books back out to my car, but sometimes I take the credit option and I step giddily over to RiverRun for crisp new books and the knowledge that I am supporting a local independent bookstore.

My heart went fully to RiverRun this summer, when the ubiquitous wizard book was released at midnight in July of 2007. My niece was focused on acquiring the tome from a large book seller in Newington because of the market saturation hype for the midnight release. Weeks before the event, I found myself repeating the words "RiverRun" in one breath, followed by "independent local book seller" in the next. Because she is an adolescent, I was ignored.

On the appointed night, we arrived at said commercial bookseller at 10:30 p.m. to find madding crowds. I entreatied her to allow me to call RiverRun, Holbrook not only informed me that there were plenty of copies and no madding crowds, he assured me I would have my purchase in hand by 12:15 a.m. The implications of this were great: I could be home in bed by 12:30 a.m.

Along with getting a $5 credit as a thank you for purchasing local, that is exactly what happened.

Our local Land Keeper is Rebecca Emerson, proprietor of Creek Cottage Gardening, a landscape and decorating design outfit that puts the charm in charming (www.creekcottagegardening.com). You can spot Emerson around the region in an overlarge truck with "Garden" proudly proclaimed on the license plate.

Even better, you can be sure that the most fetchingly decorated houses in town are the handiwork of Creek Cottage Gardening. Should you pass a house festooned with live garland, trees dotted with red and gold ornaments and plentiful sprigs of holly lining the perimeter, chances are Emerson, along with her support staff, is the responsible artisan. Emerson is available not only for decorating, but clean up and pack up, as well as for winter garden design. Best of all, come spring, she will prepare your yard for the sublimity of the height of summer.

Our final entrepreneur is Invasive Species Avenger Dave Kellam, owner of Phragwrites (pronounced FRAG-right-ease). Phragmites (careful there, different word) is an invasive reed threatening the North American wetlands because of its tendency to choke out native plants and animals. Kellam collects the reeds by hand from infested local wetlands and returns home to fashion the tubes into writing instruments.

Check out the rhyming extravaganza on Kellam's Web site (www.phragwrites.com), and if you own a business, you must get the Lighty Phragwrite Gift Jar instead of those boring old corporate pens emblazoned with your logo. Do the environment a favor and Kellam will in turn donate a portion of annual profits toward the invasive species battle.

There are many other local business that could use your business this season. Make the commitment, it makes a difference.

Suzanne is back out in the western part of Massachusetts for the time being. You can write to her about time or being at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: No Avoiding Public Food

By Suzanne Danforth

December 06, 2007 6:00 AM

It happens every year during the holidays. That's right, 'tis the season of public food. Even if commercialism were to up and disappear from our culture and abscond to the islands, I would know the holidays arrived simply because of this phenomenon. Public food ranks right up there with Christmas-decorations-next-to-Halloween-candy as an early sign that the holidays are on their way.

I spotted public food just today. Watch out, it's everywhere. Public food makes appearances at the doctor's office. It beckons to you from mom and pop retail operations and turns up on every last reception desk in the city. I am quitting public food this year (and gifting locally, but maybe that is a topic for next week).

Public food is hard to resist, and it knows it. Public food laughs in the face of studies demonstrating that caloric restriction results in a longer life span. Public food knows all about the equation between less food and a lower body temperature. Public food knows, in its heart of hearts, that no one really wants to be cold and hungry for the sake of a few more years. I can play that game; I am eschewing public food this month (bless me).

Public food has a year-long background presence and comes in many forms. Starlight mints qualify as public food, although they are evocative of absolutely nothing suggestive of starlight. Andes mints? Yup, public. Even though I suspect they were invented by a guy named Andy who decided to get fancy on us. Even those little pastel colored candies usually found in a dish with a spoon (and which have a cringe-worthy nickname unprintable here) are officially listed in the government database dubbed the National Public Food Registry (www.NPFR.com)

But at Christmas time (Oh!), at Christmas time public food comes out of hiding and runs smack into the middle of the town square, where it does a jig for all to see on the brickwork in front of the North Church.

During the month of December public food is elevated to an entirely new level. It strives to achieve 'public food as art form' status by showing up at all the coolest places in town, including at Le Club Boutique, the Nahcotta Gallery and of course the Button Factory open house. It hobnobs by rubbing shoulders with locals and visitors, the comfortable and the impoverished, the breeders and the non-breeders alike. Indeed, it endeavors mightily all month long to be public-food-everyman.

During the month of December, public food even rousts itself out of bed in the morning and (gasp) goes to work. Only during the month of December, however. Public food wouldn't think of making an appearance in a radiology suite in, say, May.

Before the politically correct police make a traffic stop, I offer an aside. I don't mean to be exclusive of other traditions by referring to the Christian incarnation of the month ahead of us. I am simply used to calling the season by that name. I could easily sanitize and call it any of the following: holiday, season, jubilee, fest or gala. Alternatively, I could take the inclusive tack and refer specifically to Hanukkah, Rohatsu, Ramadan, Kwanzaa or Yule. With the exception of Rohatsu, there is a gift giving expectation.

And where there is a gift giving expectation, one is sure to find ...; public food. Public food and gift giving go hand-in-hand and have a long and well documented history. In fact, they go back together as far as the mists of antiquity. There is some evidence (fossilized of course) that early Lucy in the caves put out a dish of pebbles for guests to munch on during an ancient celebration. Unfortunately, the fossil evidence also shows that the party was crashed by a wooly mammoth with really big feet and an appetite for proto-humans. Oh well. Sad, but at least this early hostess informed the scientific record as it relates to public food.

And so, public food will prevail this year, as it has in years past. There is, however, one contemporary and burdensome worry when it comes to public food. Although baseball season is over, contract negotiation outcomes are in the news. And I fear that one of our very own BoSox'ers is going to encounter major challenges this season.

Poor Curt Schilling. How will he manage to make it through this month's random weigh in? Can Curt even pass by public food, do you think? And what kind of public food do you think is left out for the masses in his world? Lobster? Coq Au Vin? Caviar? What will he do without that extra $333,333 if he goes up by even a quarter of a pound?

And quarter pounds count, let me tell you.

Suzanne used to look forward to public food all year long. Not so much any more. Detail your preferences to suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.