It was a beautiful day in New York yesterday, perfect late August: 85 degrees and sunny, with a slight sea breeze.

I took Little Man to my favorite park in New York: East River Park.  I love it because is in my neighborhood, and it’s rarely crowded so there are a lot of places Little Man can play and roll around in the grass.  The City has been paying a lot of attention to the waterfront of the New Yorkest of rivers, the East River.  The views of Brooklyn from the new esplanade are incredible, and the Williamsburg Bridge stretches over my end of the park.

I used my much-loathed Samsung Memoir cameraphone, which was able to produce a few good shots.

These are all licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution:

I received a few e-mails from people wondering why I haven’t been blogging, and there isn’t really a reason.  I’ve been busy with work, I don’t have much to say and I’m in a creative rut.  I don’t enjoy writing about politics because of how absurd the national discourse is right now; it feels a little degrading to write when ‘terror babies‘ and U.N. conspiracies pass for mainstream issues.  If Jack Stuef and Josh Fruhlinger weren’t around, I don’t know how I would make sense of the right wing (Poe’s Law).  I’m in love with Jack Stuef.

Work is busy, though, and the few hours I’m not putting in at the office I am working on a story that’s been in my head for awhile.

I have, however, been keeping my Flickr Creative Commons photostream alive with randomness.  So, to fill the void in my political rants and meaningless observations, I include a few recent uploads.

COLD SPRING NEW YORK WITH SANDY ORDONEZ

If you are an old timer Wikimedian then you will remember the days when the public relations guru Sandra Ordonez was cutting her teeth at the Wikimedia Foundation in St. Petersburg.  Sandy and I have become good friends, and she and her husband José hosted a weekend retreat for various New York artists and intellectuals at their country compound in Cold Spring in the gorgeous Hudson Valley.

The property they rented for the summer has a main house, a four bedroom guest barnhouse, a boat house, and a private pond that you have to traverse by boat to visit the abandoned 19th Century graveyard that contains perhaps 30 graves.  All on their private property.

Above:  The boat house, with the main house in the background.  We were out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, nature and silence (except for our loud laughs and conversation).

Above:  Dave and Sandy in the abandoned 19th Century graveyard across the pond on the property.  There were about 30 graves there of people lost and long forgotten (until we were there).

Above:  Sandy and Maria laughing late into the night by candlelight.

Above:  The Little Man enjoying the flowers in the country air.

See more Cold Springs photos at my Flickr

FIRE ISLAND BIRTHDAY 2010

I was kind of surprised at how “racy” my sister said she found my Fire Island birthday photos.  Actually, both of my sisters found them…<ahem>…racy.  I asked the one why, because there are no shots of anything salacious like people fucking or doing anything other than dancing and having a good time.  She paused for a moment to think about it, and then she laughed and said, “Yeah, I know, but I guess it’s what I don’t see.  The mind fills in the blanks.”

Ha!  I was a saint and just enjoyed hanging out with my friends.  Here are a few more shots:

Michael Lucas, Nonie, Rafael Alencar, David Shankbone and Ernesto Altamirano at the Hotel Belvedere.

Michael and Nonie at the Belvedere.

I don’t know what we were thinking:  Judas carrying crucified Christ.

Michael, Nonie and Ernesto trying to catch fish on the Great South Bay.

See more of my Fire Island Creative Commons photos at Flickr.

LITTLE MAN & THE PIGEON

Finally, below are two shots of Little Man’s unrequited dream captured on film.  His lifelong goal, since he was little (he’s five and a half now) is to catch a pigeon.  He tries often, and never comes close to succeeding.  Then one morning we leave the building for his morning walk and right outside in our alcove is a pigeon with a broken wing.  Helpless, hapless, flopping about.  Little Man was so excited he could barely contain himself.  Alas, I did not let him realize his dream because it was not a fair fight.

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Little Man, now out of his winter depression, greets Ernesto.  (Creative Commons 3.0)

Every year as winter approaches, I notice a change in my dog Little Man’s personality. At eight pounds, he is a small guy in a big city and he has known nothing else but this city his whole life. That is, except for travels to my sister’s in New Jersey and our month out in Colorado, New York City to him is nature.

Yet every November to December he begins his winter depression.

Little Man is known in some Wikipedia circles. He has accompanied me on the New York City Wikimedia picnics, and he also illustrates a few articles. You can see him playing fetch on the campus of Colorado College on the article about fetching; he is being cradled by Ingrid Newkirk, the President of PETA, on her wiki biography; overlooking the city skyline on the roof of my apartment with fat activist/Big Beautiful Woman Kira Nerusskaya (photo, right, from a Wikinews interview); on a platform waiting for a train on a subway station article; on the Chihuahua page he is illustrating the aggression for which the breed is stereotyped (the story behind the shot is here); and on animal communication he is demonstrating the desire to protect a bone.

He used to illustrate evolution and selective genetics in this photo of him (and his friend Paco) next to a couple of Great Danes; although the image no longer illustrates artificial selection in English, it still does in Portuguese.

He appeared on the People’s Court in defense of a dog rescue.  Two elderly neighbors have keys to my apartment so that they can take him for company when I’m at work during the day.  He is not yippy, but a brawny little bruiser with swagger and lots of heart.  He is much loved in my neck of the woods.  I last blogged about him when he was in a rivalry with my sister’s dog Riley in Colorado.

At eight pounds, he loves heat almost to an extreme.  No matter how piping hot the fresh-from-the-dryer laundry is, he burrows into it like a mole.  If the radiator is wheezing, he sits on the shelf over it.  Summer makes him happy, but fall makes him…confused.

He sits inside the apartment at the window, and the sun through the pane makes him think it is so warm outside, just like in July.  So he begs and begs and begs.  He becomes restless if I don’t take him out.  I relent, knowing the moment he steps outside the brisk front door of the building, his ears will go down and he’ll immediately sit to show he won’t move until we turn around.

We go through a month of this before it sinks in: no more sunshine and squirrels to chase through the leafy grass.  It’s winter, and it’s cold.

In December, Little Man falls into discontent.  He no longer yearns to go outside, but he stirs.  He doesn’t know what he wants but he knows he is bored in the apartment.  Playing with me only takes an hour.  He wants to see what is happening on the block!  He wants to patrol.  Yet, not in this weather.

So as the snow falls, so does Little Man, staring from his shelf at the window that sits atop the steam radiator warming his stomach through the wood.  Wondering, when will it be comfortable to search for the squirrels through the leaves?

Until that time arrives again–if it arrives again, he frets–he cloisters in caves of blankets.

Yesterday morning former model and downtown lounge chanteuse Lisa Levy (of Psychotherapy Live! ), Little Man and I were on The People’s Court.  I thought to bring my camera to do photography for Wikipedia, but then decided against it.  I assumed that the use of any recording devices and cameras is verboten.  That doesn’t usually stop me from trying, but I also had Little Man with me and I didn’t want to worry about him, expensive camera equipment and my part on the this reality television show.

The Case – Claire Lieb vs. Waggytail Rescue

Waggytail Rescue is a Chihuahua rescue organization that I fostered and adopted dogs through.  It’s run by one of my best friends, Holly DeRito, who is well known in New York City dog circles for tireless and selfless dedication to saving dogs.  The dogs Waggytail takes in–mostly Chihuahua mixes–are rescued from kill shelters.  There is a flat $250 adoption fee that is a donation.  Waggytail barely makes ends meet. They often cover gargantuan medical bills to get animals to a point where they are healthy and can be adopted.  One 14 pound dog I fostered had been raped anally by a man.  Kill shelters don’t take care of these kinds of medical bills; they just kill the dog.

The dogs are traumatized if not by abuse, then certainly by the experience at the shelter, which reeks of death and sounds of anguish to a dog. When a person adopts a dog, it is not a commercial transaction.  Most people get this.

Claire Lieb adopted Waggytail dog Chiquita, and signed an adoption agreement with short, easy to understand representations.  One stipulated she was making a donation, not buying a dog.  A dog rescue is a place people go to find a pet that somebody else hurt, didn’t love or irretrievably lost.  Ms. Lieb and Chiquita didn’t work out, so two weeks later Ms. Lieb returned the dog.  Waggytail offered to help find a new dog, but Ms. Lieb apparently discovered a “free” dog through a friend and so she wanted her donation back.  Waggytail refused; Ms. Lieb sued.

The People’s Court scene

Ms. Lieb was a sight to behold.  I would not have been surprised if she didn’t make it through the night.  Her ill-fitting wig was gray and bulbous, like a hair hat.  The crackling sparkle of the polyester was jarringly juxtaposed atop a face so chaotically caked with make-up that it didn’t look as if Ms. Lieb applied it, but instead fell face-first into it.  The woman she was accompanied with, though, wore none and had the figure of a hockey player.

The most fascinating part of this Anthropology project was her eye-make up.  Large swathes both under and over each eye, as if she had taken 1960′s robin’s egg blue eye shadow on the her index finger and thumb and then rubbed at her eyes to smash the make-up into her face.  At one point when she looked up quickly, angered, she resembled a celestial baglady raccoon.

Ms. Lieb was also not the only Lady of the People’s Court with an ill-fitting wig. It was a great discovery:  People still wear wigs!   It was awesome!

Lisa Levy, who is heavily involved in Waggytail, had Holly’s Power of Attorney and represented our side.  Little Man was there as a Waggytail dog on behalf of Chiquita (the dog Claire Lieb did not want).  I was a witness, but there was no need to call me to testify about the adoption process.  It was an open-and-shut case:  you can’t expect to receive a charitable donation back.  A dog rescue is not a commercial enterprise.

The one dramatic episode in our case was that we didn’t have the signed adoption agreement that she signed – it was at Holly’s mother’s house in Pennsylvania where she stored Waggytail records last month, not thinking she would need any of them urgently.  So Judge Marilyn Milian was angry about that.  She even called a recess!

When we went back, I told Lisa we have to give them some more theater.  “Give them some crazy” and “think Ricki Lake” and “nobody’s watching daytime TV”.  It’s supposed to be entertainment as well as arbitration.  So Lisa went back and started bang-bang-banging her hand on the podium when she spoke with an emotionally shaky voice!  It was excellent.  Judge Marilyn told her to “take it down a notch.”  It was great.

People in the audience were asking whether Little Man is available for adoption.  And the bailiff, Douglas Macintosh was really hot.