Urban Walkabout

As I've mentioned, Muzzy and I made resolutions to walk more and be more adventurous. On New Year's Day, Dog Park was only one stop on a vigorous urban walkabout. Here are some of the sights.

We cut through Dog Park and headed down to the creek.

There's been tons of erosion. Live Oaks used to hold the embankment together, but over the past few years, several have collapsed into the creek, leaving only torn roots. The water was surprisingly clean.

We decided to climb up the embankment to the east side of the creek. Below a view of Dog Park from under that tree.

The building that backs up to the creek and Dog Park is the Texas State Library. It is a very mysterious building. The door makes two ominous statements: "Authorized Access Only" and "No Public Restrooms." (!!). So don't make any attempt to enter this building. What exactly goes on inside, I'd like to know.

Even the parking sign says, "Tsk, tsk."

Our urban walk continued, along Shoal Creek and then on to the new sidewalks on 45th Street.

Here is the view of Dog Park from the 45th Street bridge. Parkers know that Crazy Guy lives dangerously close to here. I knew that I was taking a risk. In fact, as I was snapping this shot, he revved his fancy, black sports car out of his driveway and tore down the street. That is as close to CG as I want to get.

A lavender wall on 45th Street.

A sign on an nearby neighbor's fence. She's not kidding with this sign. She trains Dobermans. Occasionally, she conditions them by riding her bike while a Dobie trots along beside, tethered by a mere cloth leash. They both sneer at us mutts as they cruise by. Inside, Muzzy and I shrink a little.

Why our street, two-blocks long and dead-end, rates two signs, I'll never know. No one can ever find our street. The extra sign isn't really helping flag people down. Almost every week, I find a driver stranded in our neighborhood. "How do I get to Mopac?" is the plaintive cry. I feel so powerful, holding another's fate in my hand. "Ha, ha, ha. You can't get there from here."

Thanks for walking with us.
-z

The Literary Dog: The Principles of Uncertainty

Over the holidays, I had the good fortune to curl up with an excellent book, Maira Kalman's The Principles of Uncertainty (The Penguin Press, 2007). Kalman is a prolific illustrator/artist whose work appears regularly in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Her preferred format is to ruminate on a "big idea," such as "The Pursuit of Happiness" and to run with it. (Click here to see her last installment on this idea, in a blog she did for the NYT. It's wonderful. You'll never think about George Washington the same way again.) She rarely approaches the big idea head on; instead she lets readers tag along with her as she goes through life, reading, eating, traveling, and observing the world, all while the idea hangs around in the back of her head, shaping her thoughts. Her writing is essentially a series of journal entries, the words scrawled in a loopy script, that introduce or complement big, bold, color-saturated illustrations.

The Principles of Uncertainty is like peeking into Kalman's diary at her worries and concerns over a one-year period, from May 2006 to April 2007. She reads obituaries, travels to Israel, explores the streets of New York, visits Paris and sleeps in a big pink bed. She loves hats, old people, cake, and all things pink. She thinks a lot about her family, especially her recently deceased mother and relatives who made it through the Holocaust and those who did not. Mostly she worries. She's a New Yorker, after all. They do that.

I discovered three images in the book that include dogs. The dogs are mostly props; they are adorable, but they hardly figure into Kalman's contemplation. My personal feeling, of course, is that Ms. Kalman might worry a great deal less (or at least about more specific, resolvable things) if she had a dog, or even if she painted dogs more often. It's merely my observation. Nonetheless, her book is a treasure. I read it too fast, skipping ahead and ahead to see the next glorious image. It deserves a look or two, especially on a cold, gray day--which is in our immediate forecast, so bundle up.

The text for this one goes: "The woman is very ill. Her little dog never leaves her side." I like his big, rabbity ears and how he stands protectively on the bed. What happened to him, I wonder? Kalman doesn't say. Maybe the woman had a miraculous recovery, and she and the dog take long walks every day. I like that; a happy ending.















This one is a detail from an illustration called "Part 6. Julie and Vickie." Julie is a tall blonde human in a little black dress.  But, this is Vickie. She seems right at home in her mod pink chair. Oh, to be a urbane little dog.














(The images above appear on pp. 51, 242, & 291 of Kalman's book, which I found at the Austin Public Library. Go ahead. Click the link and order the book. Enjoy!-z)

Dog Park, 01/01/10

It's a brand new year, a shiny new decade.  I decided to start them both off right by walking to the Dog Park. New Year's Day was  bright, breezy, and cold. As Roma snoozed in a patch of sunlight in our back yard, Muzzy and I snuck out the front and covered seven-tenths of a mile to Park. We met only few other happy souls—no one we knew well enough to talk to. Mostly we enjoyed the sunshine and the curious sensation of walking vigorously in Austin without sweating. Here is some of what we saw:

Happy New Year, everyone. -z