| 28 February 2006 Cave Canem Visiting the digital equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles was not the last thing I wanted to be doing at the end of a trip. That would include a deployment, or something delicate and potentially nasty in my old professional life. I was just tired from the road, and still simmering about the Transportation Security Agency, and what we have lost. Passing through a moderate-sized airport was the key, I reasoned. If it had been Dulles or JFK, they never would have caught it. But during the examination of my carry-on bag they found something they didn't like, the shadowy outline of two Bic disposable lighters. They had made it through security on the outward leg of the trip, but that was in Washington, where it is busy. I am really not sure what the rules are these days, except that we seem to be quite good at disrobing on command, taking off our shoes and producing our laptops and taking off our jackets. The tall woman in front of me was down to her chemise by the time we got to the metal detector. I don't know if they got her lighter or not. I vaguely recall that it was shoe-bombers like Richard Reed they were after, the tall deranged-looking man who tried to set fire to explosives concealed in this sneakers. Stripping the smokers of their lighters and matches was going to make us safer. I contemplated that issue in the lounge in the spawling transfer airport. It has ventilation to the outside air, the only place in the sprawling transfer airport where you can smoke inside the security perimeter. It is a money machine with a one-drink minimum. They cheerfully provided me with all the matches, since the TSA was confiscating them at security. I love this country. I traveled efficiently, if without joy. When I got back to Big Pink I discovered that the cable monopoly had shut off the controller box that sits atop my television. I tried a phone call, heart sinking, to inform them that my account was in good standing, and they cheerfully agreed. They said they could help me in a couple of days, if I agreed to be home sometime during the working day for a few hours to wait for delivery. Alternatively, I could take the box back to the customer service center for instant gratification. On my way to the car, I was puzzled to see the Dog People out en mass in the park-like area on the far side of Big Pink's parking lot. The sun was lowering, and the thin rays of the dog-end of February illuminated them and their pets. They seemed to be looking off toward the garden apartments across another parking lot. I goosed the accelerator to propel my little car across the speed barrier, and negotiated the rush hour on the secondary streets. Presently I found myself in line with the people who produced wrinkled currency to restore their service. They did not look at all embarrassed. Waiting, I felt exactly the way their money looked. Wrinkled and soiled. They spaced out their bills, I imagine. By the time I had done my transaction and received an identical box to the one that died, returned to the building, determined the correct settings for line-in, line-out, and crawled back under the set to find the power outlet, it was full dark. The box only took a few minutes to set itself up, and I was able to watch the second iteration of the national news. I sorted the mail that had piled up while I was gone, advertising straight to the trash, magazines to the stack that I will read someday, bills to the small pile that sits by the computer for action. I listened to the news with half an ear. There was saber rattling across the Straits in China, and more controversy over the Dubai Ports deal, and the latest explosion in Iraq. Someone had blown up the mosque where Saddam's father was buried. I had no idea who would care about that, or even that the former despot had a Dad. Granted he was a Sunni, but it hardly seemed like an act of equivalency for the Shia's Golden Dome. Maybe it made sense, because it was in Tikrit, in the Triangle where the people still love the old dictator. But it is hard to wrestle sense out of civil wars, where they start and what outrage will bring the end, and not another beginning. The last object in the stack of mail was a flyer from the desk, an internal memo from the Community Manager to the residents. It was serious. The memo was addressed to Big Pink's dog owners, which theoretically does not include me. The former marital dog used to come to visit fairly frequently, and I was thankful I could walk him without violating some rule. I have traveled with dogs, hiding them in hotel rooms where the odd whimper could result in a compoaint, and summary ejection. But the dog visitation lessened over time, as had contact with my ex. Cave canem, the old Latin admonition to "beware the dog" had faded from my normal day. But in the time that the dog was with me, walking around the perimeter of the building at all hours, I had a chance to meet all the dog players. The marital dog never got off the leash. There were too many good smells out there, and I had no confidence that he would come back if he got loose. But there were other canines, better behaved, who could be relied upon to come back when called, and my dog looked at them wistfully from the end of his tether. Since the building converted to Condos decades ago, the owners decreed that it would be “pet friendly.” That meant cats, of course, but they are mostly silent and do not walk. For canies, life in small spaces tends to favor the small, yapping-dog breeds, I don't know what other species of fauna live in the Building. When I lived in California, there was a fellow down the street who had a Kimodo Dragon. Periodically he would take the long reptile with the flicking tongue and the cold dead eyes out on a special harness, and frighten the local children. I have never seen anything like that on the elevator, and I am hoping that Big Pink harbors mostly cats and dogs. I am not worried about the fish. Thank God for the thick concrete walls. The flyer announced that the Condominium Board was hoping for cooperation in modifying our collective behavior. I'm an amateur social scientist, as all old military men tend to be. I spent a long time learning to try to modify people's natural proclivities. I never had much luck, though it got easier after they ended the Draft. The behavior in question was use of the common area behind the building, and between the garden apartments. They have recently gone Condo as well, and apparently the owners are ready to flex their muscles. Big Pink's Board got an official letter from their Association, informing us that if we were not “good neighbors,” and kept our dogs leashed at all times and all of their excrement picked up neatly, Big Pink's canines would be banned from the area. The County Animal Control had already been notified, and periodic raids had already been conducted to enforce the leash law, and issue summons over the dog-shit problem. This was so important that the flyer ran two pages, a shocking allocation of resources. I read all the way to the end, right to the paragraph that explained the County had established special reservations where dogs might be let free to run inside fenced areas. I suddenly understood why the dog people had looked so defiant standing there in the dying light, facing across the grassy area, dogs at the ready, looking toward where the anonymous letter writers lived. This was bad. I knew the dog owners were going to stand up for their rights, and assert that the County had no right to strip them of their liberty, or their right to use private property that only technically was not theirs. The situation definitely reflected a loss of civility. That is how the letters always start. It could be the beginning of something else, a law-enforcement presence on the property. People watching and taking notes. Another reason to look over the shoulder, wondering what is legal. Maybe it is the first step on the road to a sort of Hatfield and McCoy feud, or maybe even a civil conflict. There are others that have started with less emotion. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |