Celebrating the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit: On an Outing to the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this post, I write about how I celebrated Lunar New Year and saw a rabbit, listened to a Mandarin-speaking docent talk about silver sculptures of the Buddha and watched an interactive dragon dance performance in the Great Hall.

A dragon dancer joins the line in the Great Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Dragon Dancers
from Long Island

As we said goodbye to one year and welcomed another, I celebrated Lunar New Year with @juky_chen. From stunning works of art depicting classic examples of the rabbit to drums and a dragon 🐲 dance, it was a truly unique experience that I’ll never forget.

My journey began with exploring some incredible pieces on display of porcelain and jade works depicting the rabbit. In galleries 208 and 211, a Mandarin-speaking docent spoke about different sculptures of the Buddha carved out of silver. Only sixteen examples of this Buddha exist, and the museum owns two. The highlight for me was seeing firsthand how much detail went into each item — something that can get lost in photographs or videos. It made me appreciate more just how much work went into creating them!

A museum docent talks about a
16th-century Buddha sculpture from China.

Next up were several interactive exhibits focusing on different aspects of Lunar New Year celebrations, including the dragon dance in the Great Hall, kids dressed traditionally, music performances, and much more. It felt like being part of something special as the museum filled with festive joy while everyone got involved in what they saw before them — all while learning more about this important holiday’s cultural background.

Finally, I ended my day by visiting the gift shop, where I found many items related to Lunar New Year festivities, such as fans, banners for decoration, and all sorts of memorabilia perfect for taking home as souvenirs or decorations for future years' celebrations!

Overall it had been an unforgettable day full of discoveries that will stay with me forever — it reminded me why museums are so important: without their presence, these precious memories would disappear over time, leaving us none wiser than when we arrived!

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Spring Break with Jambalaya and Friends and Why I Love Faces (and Portraits!)

What’s the best feature of the photograph? Portraits! Photos capture faces. And I’ve appreciated faces lately — especially during this recent Spring Break-cum-Easter time and so on.

I made jambalaya and fed it to a few friends to
celebrate that we're all vaccinated and can now
officially hang out together (and of course, that does
not mean we are lax with social distancing and mask-wearing). 

As vaccinations against Covid-19 are more widely distributed, people are congregating with each other to celebrate. While mask-wearing and general social

In Diversity Plaza in Queens
on a Spring Day

distancing guidelines are still in place, being vaccinated means I can hang out with folks I haven’t been with since March of last year. I saw my friend Michelle and her family, and I made jambalaya for a group of teacher-friends. By the way — the jambalaya was lit 🔥.

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Thinking About the Roman God Janus On New Year’s Eve

The Roman god Janus as depicted on an ancient coin.

New and old faces to anticipate the new year.

     The Romans had a god named Janus. He had two faces - one looking backward into the past and the other looking forward into the future. For me, the New Year represents this paradoxical view - looking forward and 👀 looking back.

To be Janus-faced is to face this contradiction.

     And this time of year it’s customary to reflect on a year gone by and to make resolve for the upcoming annual. Now whether you assert that the 2010s are for sure done with or not (yes, there is a controversy about this) - I feel like a new decade has begun (and I’m anticipating a ton of jokes about 20/20 vision and Barbara Walters).

Faces - familiar and novel - to ring in a new year.

Stray Comments On New Year’s Resolutions for 2020

• I want to walk more. That means 10,000 steps a day.
• Read more books this year.
• Write every day.
• To remember my resolutions throughout the year (but wait - I don’t recall last year’s resolutions!)

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Christmas Season Travel Report: A Balmy Winter Day in New Orleans (And It’s My Birthday)

<Why, hello!> she said. Just another balmy Winter day in NOLA.

     Today is a balmy Winter day in New Orleans. Mornings in this city feel hazy and not quite woken up. It’s a city of the nighttime and in the morning everyone’s either leaving a bar to go home or someone’s yawning and stretching, trying to come alive. Here are pictures I took of friends and me coming alive in this crescent 🌙 city. It’s also my birthday today. I’m forty years old. Or, forty years young — as we like to say it.

***

I’m traveling with two teacher friends of mine - Michelle and Lauren. They both convinced me it would be a good idea to celebrate Winter break and my birthday in New Orleans. So here we are at the Palace Café on Canal Street. 

I have two old friends from New Orleans, Tony, and André to share the day. That’s me in the middle of the photo. It’s refreshing to see familiar faces in a familiar city. I’m happy. Let me know in the comments if you can read my shirt. 

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Eating a Beignet in New Orleans: Classic Portrait Photography

A photo of a cousin’s friend eating a beignet at the Café du Monde in the old casino building in New Orleans’s City Park.

I was home for the Summer. We went to the Café du Monde in City Park 🌃. A kid eats a beignet with glee. One rule when eating a New Orleans-style powdered fried cake - always eat it with glee.

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A Lagniappe Of Dumplings At Xi'an's Famous Foods

Have you ever been to Xi'an's Famous Foods in the East Village (or their other locations)? It's stupid good.

A trio of my friends decided to eat dumplings on Saint Mark's. Xi'an's Famous Foods serves up a delicious spinach dumpling in a sour soup; it's fast, savory, and filling food. I was craving a heap of deliciousness,  and I had a tenner in my pocket. I was freelancing at the time — money was tight.

Spinach dumplings at Xi'an's Famous Foods

The eatery is small, and hungry weekenders (it was a Saturday afternoon) fill the space. Two thin, attractive men seated already had gotten up to leave. I offered to dispose of their plates since I was already adjacent to the trash bins.

"Hey," I said, noticing the blonde hadn't eaten the remaining four dumplings that sat green and plump on his plate. "Are you going to eat that? I'll eat it." 

The guy, nonplussed, said "sure," and he and his companion, both wearing crisp white shirts and chinos departed the restaurant.

I ordered a second round of dumplings, and one of my friends suggested we walk down Saint Mark's and ask people dining on the sidewalk to give us their food.

Yeah, we didn't do that, but the lagniappe of dumplings and a carbonated apple fizz soda was my delight for a day in the East Village.

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Journal & Rant: Eating Dinner at the Lan Café

One night in the East Village for dinner I ate at the Lan Café with some friends.

Eating Dinner at Lan Café
The sanguine salute Sham gives is accompanied tonight with a warm cup of tea and a smile. To fancy a cup of tea is a prelude to friendship. An exchange executed with grace and humble style; cooped together in his tiny East Village apartment, Steve and I, along with Srngara, his wife, and Nitai, their son, quibble about theater, Krishna, and whether the Lan Café is the best vegetarian restaurant in Manhattan. Or anywhere. Steve says drinking their freshly squeezed carrot juice is like drinking a garden.

Stones of Erasmus does not purport to be a food column. So I do not claim an argument for culinary taste on these pages. But I feel compelled to write about the Lan Café.

The waiter greeted us with pleasant monosyllables. "Good," "Everything," "Yes?" "No." Then a few choice two worders. "Of course," "You like?" "Heh heh."

The "heh heh" was for Steve who said the food tasted like kissing Woodrow Wilson's wet lips. That was meant as a compliment.

Vegetarian Dishes are Palatable (Yum-Yum)
I should say, along the lines of a food critic, the Vegetarian Shrimp Papaya Salad is doubly sweet and spicy without a hint of overindulgence. It's made from pieces of vegetarian shrimp with a healthy dose of bean sprouts. The sauce makes the dish.

The kitchen staff prays a mantra over every cooked meal.

The dining room is intimate which encourages conversation with other guests. Two couples dined next to our boisterous table. Across from us a group of New York intelligentsia dined while chugging Brooklyn Lager.

When people popped in to check the place out, Steve would opine, "Come in. This place is the best restaurant in Manhattan." The lady next to me wondered if Steve was being paid for every promotional sentence he uttered.

And for Dessert? Something Carrot-y.
When Nitai tasted my carrot juice (like drinking a whole ripe carrot) his eyes widened and he danced a jig. A kid dancing a jig is enough for everyone in the place to stop what they're doing and stare. He told the captive audience (the other restaurant-goers) that the carrot juice was "soooooooo goooooood" but, he said, "it just needs some chocolate on top." I told him chocolate would spoil it. Nitai didn't seem to agree.

Who can argue with a six-year-old? A woman crooned, "Oh, he's so cute." I waited for her to say, "Can I take him home with me?" People do not talk like that.

We walked home with freshness in our bellies and guava candy in our mouths.

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Location: East Village, New York City

A Little Bit of Poetry: "Poem for a Trieb"

In this post, I present a poem I wrote inspired by a night of Scrabble where I felt the tug and pull of friendships and a desire to break through the mundane.

The author as a teenager —in Mandeville, Louisiana
at Georgette Pintado's house on Live Oak Street (with Amy and Jeff).

---

I never venture to believe in avatars anymore
for they seem too
much like
superheroes,
like Jesus,
in his benign human nature, divine,
so I dismiss the idea of divine blood,
vouching for more a raw libido, exhausted
breaths, numbing existence,
mere existence —
The funny thing is
that
I

… when the coffee table
is cleared and Brian
sets up the Scrabble board,
David and Juniper
are determined to win,
so they joined in the fight to
beat us —

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"Voice II" Mailed to Keizersberg With a Nod to the Times Picayune

Credits:
Keizersberg is a small Benedictine monastery in Leuven, Belgium; also home to students who go to the Catholic University. And Stella Artois. The mural of the Omega Christ on the bottom right was painted by Dom Gregory DeWit, a Dutch monk and muralist. The mural can be found at Saint Meinrad Archabbey. Voice II is by the American Artist George Tooker. The newspaper clipping is from the Travel section of The Times-Picayune. A librarian meets her philosophy pal at the steps of the stad huis in Leuven.

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Poem + Image: "Lane"

girls in a gay bar
hold his hand
on the dance floor

image credit: detail of Rembrandt's painting, The Jewish Bride snapped by koe2moe


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Me, describing him

"when I look at him now —

face scrunched into the shape of an oval —

he thinks with his jaw set"

— me, describing him

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Poem: "I never knew how to date"

At the ballpark, the stadium swells with people,

but
I never knew how to date.
I only knew the camaraderie of a slap on the back,
a troubled smear on the cheek,
an intimate pantomime of swelled emotion.

I never knew the arcane rituals,
the runic scripts, the book of love –
never knew the caress of the cheek,
the hand on your face
before.

Never put to rote the rubrics
of subtle peck and pay the bill
before.
Only spontaneous embraces
like best friends at supper.

Sloppy kisses over sloppy joes.

Daubed anxiety
Doggerel verse
Silly adolescence clamoring for whatchamacallit and nachos,
pulling your pigtails,
mommy.

I am like a kid getting married in the street.

I am bereft of courtship vocabulary,
the “how do I take your hand” svelte.

The “When do I call for a date?” anxiety.

How do I undo your pants,
Meet your folks –
Do I call you at work?

Should I hold your hand during the national anthem?
Or do I clap your back?

I am like the boy playing grown-up in the playpen,
dressed up like Donna Reed,
My plastic skin peeling

and during the ninth inning your child stares
Eating a nodog
I had bought ten minutes before.

Awkward smiles and nonchalance,
No runs batted in and take me out to the ballgame.

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Obligatory Bathroom Selfie: "Refresh My Face"

Greig posts an obligatory bathroom selfie.

Hey boys and girls! I was in the bathroom at the Bulldog on Magazine Street in New Orleans and decided to not only post this picture but to let you know what we're talking about at my table: Always remember to floss after you eat. Remember, it's imperative to eat garlic with every meal. Also, when withdrawing money from the ATM, turn off your car to reduce carbon emissions.  

- Posted from my f*&%!ing smart JobsPhone

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Photographs of Friends: Ruby On Fridays (Not Ruby Tuesday, and Some of the Pictures Are Not Ruby)

I took pictures of friends recently when we all hung out.

Ruby, a former colleague but still a friend — not as in Ruby Tuesday — frequents the city of crescents.

The flare of red: "Aphrodite on a half-shell."

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Celebrating My Friend Tony's Birthday Party at "Corks and Canvases"

Tony was surprised and feted for his birthday: everyone created a painting in his honor: a coffee cup fleur-de-lis.

Mae chooses to be inspired.

Andre works diligently.

My painting: ying-yang instead of fleur-de-lis:

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H is for Home

Parts of the drop ceiling in my apartment fell in the kitchen.

Is it trite to speak of home? Cliché, maybe. But, home resonates. At the moment my home is in disarray.

Case in point: last night, plaster from the ceiling crumbled and fell in hard portions on the kitchen linoleum. I did not wake up from the din, but I was startled in the morning (in between brushing my teeth and finding a perfect maroon tie) to find the kitchen bespectacled with jagged chunks of plaster. "Is there a rodent in my attic?" I asked myself, half startled and half bemused.

Going from the ramshackle that is my apartment, to the structure of school, I enter another home: a weird conglomeration of bells and roving students, lecturing professors, and due dates, exams, lunches and recess. School is a strange form of home that merely serves as another version -- but for me, a strange anodyne -- and I cringe to confess this fact, because one's vocation is not supposed to be one's home.

Do I find myself grading papers, only to look at the clock notice it is already six o'clock?

This is the tragedy of home as school. Alas, my life is fail. Or, as one of my students would say, "Epic Fail! I hate my life!"

So, today, to rectify this unhappy occasion, I set out to spruce up my "home" and make sure next week I will not end up sleeping at my professor's desk.

My task before me is to make my home the same as it was in August. I notice the pile of dishes hidden beneath the shorn plaster. I notice books unread. And OMG! I have to complete those homework assignments and finish reading those essays.

I stop for a second, in the middle of writing this first installment of an alphabiography, which I have decided to impose on myself as an assignment -- I figure if I am making my students complete this project, I might as well do the same — I have until October 15th — eeekkk and I probably have loads of grammar and spelling mistakes. Is there anything here that is home? True home? Not artificial or cliché home? The sound of the streetcar whizzing by frequently and hurriedly? Is it the fresh pot of coffee I worship every morning — to quote Anne Sexton -- "All this is God, right here in my pea green house."

Home is an unhurried thing. Is it metaphysical? Probably not. Is it the edifice of a house? Or is it the collection of a family? The association of friends?

I know one thing is true: home is unequivocally the evocative longing to diminish the alone. It is the wish of the solitude to unite with the One. It is the prayer of the worshipful to unite with their God. It is the hope of the teacher to successfully complete one more successful assignment; it is the proper buttering of the toast; the perfect rendering of prose into poetry, the sublime nature of one's hope (albeit striving) for ? ... and that is where I stumble ... lost again in the mystery of home.

I do have one final concrete image for those out there who detest abstract thought. The apple pie Americans who need a palpable definition. Home is where the heart is? Home is on the range. Home is for breakfast. Home fries. Homie. Dog. G. Out.

Life Lesson: Home is what you make it. Ahh, isn't that trite enough? But, I think I will go and wash those dishes (yeah, right he says).

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Pita Pit on Mag has great customer service, et. al.

Boys, and girls, get your gyros and eggs wrap edibles at Magazine's finest establishment: the Pita Pit. Now, I know I am biased because Ryan works there but you can just suck my left kneecap if you don't like my product placement. Airplane Ryan G-Dog is the only one allowed to call me fagasaurus.

Now for my girl Taryn at PJs: here she is writing the next big novel. She tells me it is about a naive flight attendant who gets flak from her boss and takes refuge on a crazy, romantic mis-adventure in Paris. I cannot wait to read the finished copy Taryn!
Taryn is actually a novelist. Don't let her make you believe that she is a UPS employee.

Now the funny part is Ryan (Airplane) is not really a Pita Pit employee but rather an iconoclastic social critic who reads Lacan with the same voraciousness as a pissing horse.




This photograph is very good: it shows my two cousins, Zack and Elliot playfully fighting.

Hey Zack: you will make a great daddy one day!



Hey Elliot: one day you will have guns too!



And last but not least: here is Jonathan getting ready for his big interview. He recently got a job at a Credit Union and I thought he would think it sweet that I posted it here because he has been such a diligent reader of this blog. Thanks, John!

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Photographs: "Eugene, OR"

Eugene, OR
In this post, I showcase photographs of people I know and not know from Eugene, Oregon.

Phoenix's Kids

Ruy Hiding

Chagamland

Crystal Falls

Water Lily

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Jocks and Goths

Jock or goth — geek, nerd, slut, queer, poser, wimp, shrimp, hippie, prep, emo — or in Shakespeare’s day, “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”; walk into any high school in the United States and you could probably pick out any of these above mentioned categories — even the Shakespearean ones.  Or, if you are not versed in the taxonomical nomenclature of your average high school student, talk with one.

Luke Bernard (note: some names and identifying characteristics have been changed), a high school student in a mainly white, upper-class suburban neighborhood, told me about the gangstas, the wiggers, the nerds, the geeks and the posers at his school.  He said, “The gangstas in my school are the rough, tough black people.  They buy the knock-off versions of the coolest brands and wear them for awhile and when they’re bored, they get a new pair.”  He then told me there are a few goths, if any, and no one wants to be called a queer.  He did say there are, “the wigger kids.”  According to him, these are white kids who try to act gangsta.  “Some pull it off well,” he said, as if a proud thespian performing Shakespeare.

    Candace, a girl from the same neighborhood spoke to me about the skaters.  They are to be found in the nearest abandoned parking lot, with affixed decals on their boards which promote a favorite band or political expression (“Bush Sucks,” exclaims one).  “Skaterz,” as one boy from the inner city of New Orleans, told me, “Get a bad rap cuz people, mostly cops are looking to arrest us.”  In one recent issue of Skateboarding magazine that he holds in his hand, there is an advice column on how to evade the police if the cops catch you doing an ollie on public property.  The mag advises the best way to avoid the police is to run when you see them and hide in a secure spot. 

    And then there are nerds.  Luke told me that a nerd is somebody who is not able to socialize with other kids and desperately tries to make friends but no one wants to be friends with them.  “Not even the skaterz?” I asked.  “No.  There is one girl — she is so sheltered that I don’t even try to talk to her.  She is trying to be someone she’s not.  The geeks —”  I asked him to explain what a geek was: “anybody who plays too many video games.  They talk about it a lot.  To the unaided eye me and my friends would be considered geeks.”

    The geeks know HTML code better than they know about sex and the nerds sit around discussing World of Warcraft or The West Wing.  The wimps and shrimps are bludgeoned because of their lack of height and the preps come to school with collared shirts with insignia emblazoned on their lapels — purchased by their yuppie parents. The emo kid wants to slit his wrist because his girlfriend dumped him and the poser is like a chameleon who wants to be who he’s not.  “You’re a poser,” Luke explains, “when you say you’re a goth.  Or when you have to tell everybody you’re cool.”  Greg, a senior in high school, said that the queers limp their wrists and exclaim, with mucho drama, “O My God!”  But apparently, not all gay teens are so demonstrably limped wristed.  Greg is mentioning merely one possible of homosexuality among men.

But Luke, Greg, and Candace are no different from most of us when it comes to labeling others.  When I was in high school, I was dubbed a nerd, because I liked to read books — but I didn’t see myself that way.  I just like to read books.  I imagine that is true for the guy who skates.  He likes to skate.  Or the girl who cheers on the football sideline.  She likes to cheer.  But I understood, even as a kid that there is an entire collection of labels conveniently used to pigeonhole people into little boxes, especially in an environment where the true search for self is squashed.  Or, worse — killed.

   Whether it be a Dilbertesque office space, the virtual geography of MySpace or a shiny Sunday School, there will be the vast and vicious panoply of name calling and storytelling.  The kindling sticks and rough stones hurled to hurt are rampant in our society; and we all feel like abused Holden Caulfields.  If we have been name called as a child, we cannot help to remember it with a certain sense of bitterness.  And as adults, we may use different labels than the current generational code, but the idea is the same.  Whether you are a square or a fag, the exclusionary nature of name calling is a rather territorial penchant human beings have, originating probably from our primate cousins.  Have you ever seen Chimpanzees make fun of each other? 

    Whether it’s nature or nurture, I don’t know, but we perceive others through a preconceived framework that neatly sizes up our world comfortably and securely.  We make up stories, some urban legends, some truth, some blurry on the dividing line between reality and illusion so that our worlds can appear less complicated than it really is.

    The perceptions our stories are based on are preconceived schemes stored like templates, like cookie cutters in the brain.  The brain processes external stimuli by applying learned labels to distinguish one thing from another.  This way of perceiving the world is talked about in psychology as Gestalt theory.  Red from black.  Fat from skinny.  Ugly from beautiful.  And Jock from Goth.

    From these basic forms, we can know that a leaf is a leaf based on all the leaves we have leafed through.  We know Luke as Luke because he is imprinted in our mind as a schemata.  If Candace gets a facelift — even a slight facelift — or gets new glasses, the schema shifts and we do a double take when we see them.  “Hey, Candace, is that you?”  “Yeah, it’s me!”  “Oh!  Didn’t recognize you with the rhino rims!”

    What happens to these monikers, such as jock or goth, is that they develop into messy, but powerfully persistent narratives.  Some of the stories we conjure up about other people are harmless.  Some of the stories we create are attempts to understand ourselves.  As Luke, above, mentioned about the posers.  We create identities as a way to search for our own.  Like the Twain tale about a prince who dressed up as a look-a-like peasant to see what it was like to be poor and insignificant.

    Other stories we tell are more dangerous.  The dangerous narratives are those conjured out of fear and ignorance.  Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinosfky chillingly demonstrated the dangerous narratives people create in  their documentary for HBO, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills, about three teenagers in a provincial Arkansas town who were convicted for the murder of three children in a secluded river bed, ostensibly, because they were satan worshippers and dabbled in ritualistic sex and murder.  The modern-day Salem Witch trial found the boys guilty without substantial physical evidence, but a strong, powerful narrative convinced the jury they were guilty.  The truth was they were “Goths.”  The kids wore black and listened to Metallica.  But this was enough for the town to pronounce them guilty.

    Stories like the Robin Hood Hills murder describe the powerful force of narrative and the way that it replaces truth as the convenient litmus test for who is innocent and who is dangerous.  The childhood ditty, “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” not only is false but belies the fact that words can not only hurt but strung together into a powerful enough story, can play into the generalities we construct to make sense of our world, into myths that are ultimately destructive.

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Eulogy for My Dog Maggie: 1990-2006

Maggie on a walk

When my dog Maggie died, I wrote her eulogy.
     When a girl reaches that age of sweet sixteen uncertainty, my girl has reached the age of mortal certainty, her skeleton worn out from a teenaged span of use, her gauzy eyes barely seeing, her ears clotted with wind, her matted hair uncombable — she sits in the living room panting, refusing water, wagging her tail nevertheless.
     She was a Humane Society special. $50. That’s what she cost. Including her shots. Nick was 9. I was 11. Brad was like 16. Brad, Nick and I picked her from a mixed bitch’s litter, the babies all scrunched up beneath her teets, we picked the one — eyes still kinda closed — who had the personality we were looking for, independent but lovable.  Mom was concerned, “How big is she going to get?”  The vet assured us this dog could be a house dog (She ended up being an outside/inside dog).  She was a Springer Spaniel mix; we didn’t meet the father. And the mother is a strange memory -- because why would I remember her, the dog who bore my baby when I myself and my family would become a mother to this mutt? Maggie is the name we gave her after severe brainstorm in the living room.  We called her many titles over the years.  Fat girl, we called her. Pretty girl. Morga. Maggie. Morgus. Thing. Baby. Hey, baby. Mooga. Maggie Roselli. Maggie the Magnificent.
     Her first night, we were afraid she would "let loose" all over the house, so we put her in the bathroom and shut the door. She cried all night. I slept in the top bunk, being older — and Nick slept on the bottom. Both of us heard Maggie’s cries. She hated being by herself. Even till the end. She hated it. She would prove to be a dog who followed you wherever you went. Just to be with you. So she wouldn’t be alone.
     She would get on a kneeboard in the Tchefuncte river just so she would not have to wait alone in the boat. She followed Nick and I to the bus stop — and sometimes attempted to get on the bus!  She went with me into the woods and we got lost a few times.  We were off the beaten path; we had gone into the woods to eat blackberries; I turned to her — as lost as she was — “Maggie, where are we?” She just looked at me, crushed chlorophyll frescoed into her face.
     We finally got out of the woods, onto a country road a few miles from the house.  She didn’t complain.  And just a few years ago — in her later years — she followed Zack and I to town.  It’s a long walk to town but Maggie insisted she come along.  When we got to the river she walked down the algae-covered concrete steps and got soaked; she loved it.  But when we got to the hamburger shop near the main drag and I tried to get Maggie some water from the clerk, Maggie wanted to get inside into the Air Conditioning.  Her tongue was panting so painfully, that it almost reached the ground.  But I wouldn’t let her.  She looked like a sea hag come from her morning bath.   She waited behind the paned glass door and at the first moment she got she squeezed past a customer and showed up by my side.  She scared a lady exiting the restaurant. “Get that thing away from me!”  I have to admit, inadvertently, Maggie looked menacing.  I pretended she wasn’t my dog, but when the owner asked whose dog it was, Zach turned me in, “It’s his dog,” pointing directly at me.  I picked up Maggie and cradled her sloppy wetness to my dry shirt and walked out.  We called a cab; they charged a canine tax.  Bastards.  Zach loved it.  So did Maggie.  I don’t think I let Maggie follow me on my walks ever again.