Monday Letter

Harry and I found a giant dog on the freeway a few days ago. He was trotting along the median like it was a quiet country road on a sunny day. We slowed, I opened the door, and he got in. Just like that. The dog was fine. We were fine. It was both miraculous and no big deal. It’s funny, I sat here right now for 20 minutes trying to come up with that description, trying to recall the traffic, the chest pounding hysteria, the fear that any move could be the wrong move, him trotting between speeding vehicles, head down sniffing, his long legs jangly and unpredictable, me saying oh my god, oh no, while cars whizzed past or fantailed to a stop causing a huge pile up on Interstate 2 where it merged with the Interstate 5 right by the double exit to Glendale East or Glendale South. But it wasn’t like that. The feeling of all that other stuff was there, and in truth we did stop the car, get out, and call to him, but it wasn’t chaotic or hysterical or frantic. It was simple. There wasn’t much thought in it. I mean except for the thought that a dog should not be on the freeway. After that, we did all the things, went to the vet to scan for a chip, posted on social media, hung signs, called friends who know about rescues and fosters and all the rest and yes, there’s more to the story and I’ll keep you posted if you’re interested, but that’s not why I’m bringing it up. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Bacio with a sunburned nose.

First I wanted to say thank you and welcome to the new subscribers, and thanks to those of you who recently became paying subscribers. I am thrilled and amazed by your cheer and presence even though I still haven’t managed to find a way to post on the same day and time each week. Not having a groove has been my groove (to re-answer one of

Eleanor Anstruther

’s 8 Questions) so I just wanted to say that your continued interest means a lot to me. I would love to be more consistent with my posting schedule but that’s how it is right now.

I was thinking about this because I got a note from Substack recently about having written 200 posts and I wondered how that was possible, I always feel a day late and a dollar short (as my grandfather used to say) and I felt badly about not posting brand new material every week, sometimes on Thursday, sometimes on Sunday, sometimes both, at 6 am on the dot, and it weighed on me, in addition to the other larger things, worldly, personal and even mythical that weigh on me. Which brings me back to the giant dog. If you are like me you will have an unusual experience like the one on the freeway and think well, this dog came to me for a reason, it is a sign of some kind, and you will google significance of the appearance of a dog, and try to add your own complicated story to it. The same one you add to everything. But you don’t have to do all that. Sometimes it just happens that way.

Still. I believe in the miraculous, how could I not? After noting that I had written 200 Snaps, substack suggested that I repost the story below, a story that I originally wrote almost 10 years ago about America’s 2 favorite pastimes: baseball and anxiety, two things, coincidentally, looming large in my world right now.

I don’t really care about baseball, but being American, it is in my DNA. And I also live walking distance from Dodger’s stadium and on some nights can hear the games, the cheering and other sounds, traveling through the trees in Elysian Park straight through my window. So I am reposting the suggested Snap to show you that the miraculous once-in-a-lifetime kind of home-run that I wrote about then, happened again this past Friday. Sometimes it just happens that way.