Tubes Of Fur

Photo courtesy John Worsley, whose dogs them are

One cold rainy spring, Dave was working a Memorial Day shut-down at a paper mill in a damp, dreary coastal Washington town, and unbeknownst to him, back in Portland it was ninety degrees and not raining for the first time since forever, and every single person in town was out soaking up every sunny minute of it, frying burgers, and slamming PBRs, and generally carrying on. And when Dave emerged from the mists and came back home, everyone on the street was burnt to a crisp. He thought there'd been a nuclear event.

It was just about that disconcerting for us last weekend to walk downtown like it was any other day and stroll into the Park Blocks. What we saw didn't make sense. It was as though while we were sleeping everyone in town but us had been issued the top half of a dog.

Or a Corgi stroll.

What it actually was was a Corgi Walk. There were so many people walking around with Corgis that the occasional Regular dog looked all wrong. I have always imagined Corgis were bred specifically to be visually appealing. It's not possible to ignore a Corgi walking away from you. You might not have previously thought of yourself as a dog butt aficionado, and then those fluffy pantaloons go bopping by and it's all over but the trip to the breeder.

I further assumed that Corgis were developed right around the time of the invention of the coffee table, when Labrador Retrievers proved to be a disaster to the onion dip.

Photo by John Worsley

Actually, however, Corgis are no recent thing. There are two main kinds of Corgis: Cardigans and Pembrokes. Originally they were called the Cardiganshires and the Pembrokeshires, but that got shortened too, of course. The Cardigans are the older breed, having turned up in Wales as early as 1200 BC. They come in a variety of coat colors and button up the front, and they have long tails carried low, because there are no options for Corgis to carry anything high. Many of the Pembrokes have been bred to be tailless or have been whacked into that condition as puppies. Ostensibly this is to keep their tails from being stepped on by whatever they're herding, although I suspect at this point it's more for the fluffy bopping pantaloons effect, which is indeed compelling.

Photo by John Worsley

Even my beloved Vikings had Corgis, as it turns out, and brought them to Wales once they'd gotten the horns bred out of them. Basically Wales has been Corgi Central since before the Romans invaded the Ordovices, and doesn't that sound painful? And they were not bred as speed bumps or ottomans as one might expect, but as herders, first of cattle, and later of sheep. Sheep, in fact, are reliably flustered right into their pens by even the sight of those skittering tubes of fur. And if they aren't, they are subjected to a good heel-nipping.

In fact, corgular nippage is the only plausible explanation for the recent case of a sheep falling off a mountain in Northern Ireland, because sheep are known for their grippy feet. Nevertheless one did fall some distance a few days ago, fortunately escaping serious injury by landing on a boy.

Sit?

So Corgis are durable and healthy dogs. Even the scourge of hip dysplasia is unknown among Corgis because they do not have actual hips, but just a toe assemblage on a stout stem at each corner. They had become something of a rarity until Queen Elizabeth took a fancy to them. She was presented with her first Corgi in 1933. His name was Dookie, and why not?

Nowadays they are enjoying renewed popularity, as evidenced by the Corgi Walk. They are friendly and loyal and have a reputation for being easy to train. You tell a Corgi to Sit and it does. Or we think it does. It's hard to tell.

Keeping It Up

Issa, of Alberta Coop Grocery

"Organic" is one of those words that picks up connotations like a co-op hippie picks up odors in the bulk spice aisle. It's a word you can brandish. Or scoff at. It's loaded. So let's review:

Organic does not mean "sort of brown and nubbly." It does not mean "smelling like patchouli oil." It does not mean "more expensive." Okay, it does, but only because someone else is picking up the tab for the cheap stuff, in fertilizer run-off,  groundwater contamination, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and algae plumes. Most of all, it does not mean "associated with liberals."

Okay, it does.

But that's the nature of things that become buzzwords, however legitimate they may be. People start reacting to them without a lot of critical thought. For instance, I have a visceral and bad reaction to the phrase "family values," even though I think they are a good thing. Our own family values elevated Scrabble and backyard badminton and summer cookouts with colored aluminum tumblers full of lemonade and walking in the woods and rolling logs for salamanders and putting the salamanders back and replacing the logs and singing in the choir and eating at the same time every night and getting put to bed with a chapter of The Wind In The Willows. Also, we were supposed to get good grades and not be racists.

"Sustainability" is another buzzword you hear a lot lately, and it's one of my favorites.  Unfortunately, a lot of people hear someone going on about sustainability and all they conclude is "that person doesn't want me to ever have any fun." And that's simply not true. We sustainability people want everyone to have lots and lots of fun! Only with Scrabble sets and backyard badminton. We think that should be an easy transition from blasting an ATV all over the desert or gouging up a mountain trail with a motorbike. We like Scrabble. We think you will, too.

So "sustainability" is another one of those words that is beginning to provoke a backlash, especially among fans of unrestrained capitalism. But it shouldn't. It passes no judgment and chooses no sides.

All "unsustainable" means is: you can't keep it up. You might find a politician who will tell you he can keep it up forever, and even provide evidence on Twitter, but trust this: he can't.

There are all sorts of things that are not sustainable. For instance, suppose you get in on the front end of a Specklebutt Corgi boom. You buy a matched set of Specklebutt Corgis for $500 and pretty soon you have another eight Corgis to sell for $500 per, and willing buyers snap them up in hopes they can turn them around at $1000 a pop. This happy circumstance plays out for a few more generations and then the bottom drops out of the specklebutts, and a sorry spectacle it is, too. Corgis are unloaded for free with crate on Craigslist. It's unsustainable. It can't be kept up.

Or say someone finds a huge underground reservoir of prehistoric Corgis in a kibble cave. They are enormous. They are brought up topside a few at time where it is discovered that they have great value as draft animals with their short, massive limbs. Two of them can pull a train by themselves but their antique balls fall off in the modern atmosphere and they cannot reproduce. Nevertheless, prehistoric Corgi futures soar, and the animals are hauled up as fast as they can be hauled. The potential seems endless, but it is not. There are only so many of them. Eventually people will have to figure out how to do without ancient Corgi power, but in the meantime, trainers and Corgi-yoke manufacturers are pulling down solid wages and brokers are making a killing. There's no incentive, in an unrestrained market, to leave any of the proto-fidos down there. And why, the brokers ask, can't we just figure out what to do after we've run through all the dogs?

No reason at all, if we weren't going to be nose-deep in Corgi shit by then.

So when Mitt Romney says, as though this is a good thing, that he will do everything he can to get the last dog out of the ground, I'm going to vote as hard and as often as I can for his opponent. His position is not sustainable, economically or in any other way, and a grown-up would know that and plan ahead. I don't care what the man straps his own dog to.