Newspaper Dog Photo Perfectly Nails Human/Dog Friendship

The front page of today's Burlington (Vt.) Free Press had a photo that to me captures perfectly the happy vibe when a dog/human relationship hums along nicely.

Some background: The phoot, by Burlington Free Press staff photographer Maddie McGarvey, shows the happy side of a tragic New Year's Day incident in South Burlington, Vermont.

Rufus, saved from a van fire by a heroic driver, sits with
companion Beth Kelly in their Vermont home.
Photo by Maddie McGarvey/Burlington Free Press

Gulliver's Doggie Daycare has a service in which dogs are bused to and from their companions' homes to the Williston daycare for dogs.

The driver, John Thamann, was bringing two dogs home when the van abruptly caught fire. The flames spread shockingly fast. Thamann frantically tried to free the two dogs from the flaming van. Despite his best efforts, in which his hands were burned and he suffered smoke inhalation, he couldn't save one of the dogs.

But he did save Rufus, the Labrador retreiver/boxer mix featured with her owner Bethy Kelly in McGarvey's photograph. The photo accompanied an article about the events written by myself and Joel Banner Baird.

The photo was taken after Rufus stayed overnight at a veterinarian's office. They wanted to make sure Rufus wasn't hurt by inhaling smoke. Turns out he's fine.

The photo was taken shortly after Rufus returned home. Here's what I like about it, and pardon me for overanalyzing. As you can see, the photo shows Kelly sitting on her comfortable looking couch, leaning forward with her arms around Rufus, who is sitting in front of her.

Kelly has that look of happy pride so many dog owners have. Rufus looks a bit embarrassed, but appreciative of the love. A green chew toy sits in front of him, suggesting fun. Kelly's couch and home looks comfortable, like the kind of relationship she, me and so many dog owners have with their pets.

Kelly is wearing fashionable, playful boots. She looks fit and happy. So does Rufus. It all suggests the two of them routinely bolt from the house at many random moments to go out and play. 

The photo, Kelly and Rufus just glow. The photo exudes the brightness dogs bring into our lives.

Fired Lunchlady at School Creates Larger Issue

A Missouri school lunchlady fired for giving  free lunches to a kid whose  family was struggling got her job back last month after some bad publicity for the school, but the story only highlighted a larger problem.

Dianne Brame said the kid's parents didn't do some paperwork for reduced fee lunches. When this happens, the kids just get a cheese sandwich and milk instead of a real lunch until the parents pay up. It's not enough food, of course, and it's embarrassing for the kids.

This lunch  lady lost, but regained her job after
sneaking food to a kid at a school

So Brame decided to sneak the kid a real lunch until the problem with the parents and the paperwork and the money could be straightened out.

According to a report from television station KSDK:

"This fall she notied the family of a fourth grader on the free lunch program hadn't renewed his eligibility and the child wasn't coming to school with money to pay for lunch. Brame says rthe boys' mother doesn't speak English and probably couldn't understand the paperwork.

Brame tells NewsChannel 5 the child was supposed to be reduced to a cheese sandwich and a carton of milk for lunch. But she worried he'd be made fun of by the other students."

Why do the kids whose parents can't or won't pay for lunch get that lousier lunch -just a cheese sandwich and milk?

Yeah, I get it,  the school district ought to get the money that's owed to them.

The approach seems odd, though. Let's punish the parents by starving the child, to ensure he doesn't do well in school and flunks out and doesn't become a self sustaining tax paying adult that we all supposedly want.

Then we'd really lose money.

Speaking of losing money, there's been another case of a weird firing in the news lately. Did you see this one?

A court last week upheld the firing of a dental assistant because the boss (or more precisely, the boss's wife) decided said assistant was too attractive.

The beautiful dental assistant didn't do anything to encourage the boss. No throwing herself at him, no giving him an offer he couldn't refuse, so to speak. She was just nice looking.

The dentist and his wife thought, I guess, that it's not a man's job to keep his own libido under control. It's up to women, apparently, to handle that. I guess we should make all women in the workplace where burkas to prevent men from losing control. Or why don't we just prevent women from working at all?

But what if a gay male employee thinks he'll lose control over the good looks of a male co-worker. I guess we have to prevent men from working, too, in case this happens.

Maybe nobody should work or have any contact with anybody ever because that migh get somebody hot to trot, and well, we can't have that, can we?

Frigid Funnel Clouds on Lake Champlain, Vermont

Today, we had a blast of Arctic air in Vermont. Temperatures fell through the single numbers toward nighttime lows well below zero

Steam rising from Lake Champlain
tries to form into a funnel
in frigid weather Wednesday

The cold air blew over the, relatively speaking, warm water of Lake Champlain, a lake still unfrozen due to what was a fairly warm winter up until now.

This kind of weather always creates interesting steam clouds, mist, swirls and whirls over the lake. Sometimes you even get waterspouts or steam devils  in this frigid air.

That sort of happened today, when brief funnel clouds spun up over the lake. These aren't dangerous, like spring or summertime tornadoes. First of all, nobody in their right mind would be out on the lake on a bitter day like this.

Cold air funnels or steam devils don't really have strong damaging winds in them, so they'd do little damage aside messing up your hair if they hit you. And cold air funnels almost never come ashore to cause any kind of land-based gusts

What the funnels do well, however, is make one stay on the shore of the lake and marvel at their beauty, even though the icy north wind is turning you into a giant popsicle.

A brief video I took today of the funnel, or funnel attempts, is below:





And here's another, slightly longer video I took, same scene. Camera was shaky due to a long lens, and you sometimes lose sight of the funnels, as it was hard to see what was most interesting while I was running the video camera:

A Dad's Sweet Reaction to Christmas Puppy Surprise

A fun, brief video is going around of a man's reaction when he looks into a car and discovers his Christmas gift. A puppy!

Apparently a previous family dog had died recently after 15 years. The guy's wife and son decided the dad was ready for a new dog.

Looks like they were right, judging from the Squee!! video below. Perfect reaction, sir!

Bonus points to the family for getting a rescue dog  from the shelter.

"Prostitute" Web Site is New Way to Make Internet Evil

You gotta hand it to the large population of creeps on the Internet. They never stop finding ways to be evil.

The latest example is a site called Potential Prostitutes. According to BoingBoing, the site purports to list women who are prostitutes. But any woman can be labeled a "prostitute" on this site. All someone has to do for reasons maybe involving revenge, is submit information about the woman in question, and the site puts them up.

Taking things a step deeper into evil, the site operators will allow people to have their names and information removed from the site, but only if they pay a hefty "removal fee." Judging by how creepy this looks, I'd bet operators of  "Potential Prostitutes" won't scrub information on people who do submit money.

There's really no end to how many sites can pop up. People would just hack into anybody's Facebook, email or anything else, invent a "crime" these innocent people committed, put that information up, and screw up lives of people trying to find jobs, or keep families happy. (We know employers Google all of us when we apply for jobs, certainly these sites would pop up on the HR Department's radar)

The optimist in me says that so many of these awful, accusatory web sites will pop up that nobody will take them seriously, and you'd like to think would be employers, spouses, etc. would want more proof than what's on  a creepy web site.  

Still, people will be fearful enough of these sites to send hard-earned money to these criminals to have themselves removed from the sites.

The pessmist in me is that we will all have to pay some sort of "tax," paying money to shadowy scam artists to scrub a whole bunch of awful lies about us online. Or, we keep the money and hope nobody believes the crap that's out there.

And what of people who appear on these sites who have been convicted of prostitution, sex offenses, or anything else?

You do the crime, you do the time, goes the adage. And that's good. But what if somebody does something stupid when they're 17, get a conviction., but then 10 years later are totally on the straight and narrow?

These web sites would continually punish them, long after the statute of limitations expires, or even long after the criiminal record has been wiped clean by the courts due to continued excellent behavior.

Apparently, it's hard to find the people who would run web sites like "Potential Prostitutes," because they don't exactly advertise who they are, and they operate in countries with weak law enforcement or libel laws.

I generally don't like the idea of vigilantism and on line revenge. But there are plenty of "good guy" hackers out there who are adept at finding people who do things like create "potential prostitute" sites on line.

The "good guys" can probably give the evil web site operators a taste of their own medicine, and put their names, addresses, locations, employers etc. on line for all of us to see.

We Sent 2012 Away in Finest Way: Dinner at Pistou

I'm not the type to splurge. I need to economize, save money. I've vowed to try to redouble those efforts in 2013.

But, as a last hurrah, I decided to treat husband Jeff to a four course dinner at a restaurant called Pistou in Burlington, Vermont. The place had been recommended to me, but I still had little idea what I was getting into.

Logo for the great Pistou restaurant,
Burlington, Vermont

The place is expensive, by my standards, anyway. But I took the chance. The food had better be good. Jeff deserves the best. Don't blow it for me, Pistou, I thought.

Thank goodness everything went way beyond expectations, and gave us a nice sendoff to 2012.

I'm so used to and disappointed and overwhelmed by American restaurants, no matter what ethnic cuisine they offer. There seems to be some law that U.S. restaurants must offer diners an enormous pile of food that's about the size of a leaf pile under a 100 year old maple tree after foliage season ends.

This is apparently called "value." The food might be mediocre, but there sure is a lot of it, so quit your bitchin' you fat diner you!

Pistou's portions weren't big at all. Satisfying, yes, but they didn't need five gallon pails for each serving. Normal sized plated did fine. The restaurant went for flavor over filling us up at the pig trough.

The New Years menu at Pistou was a four course affair that opened with oyster in a cream sauce, then scallop in another sauce, then ribeye in yet another sauce, and for dessert, goat cheese of all things, in guess what? A sauce!

Well, OK some of the sauces were actually purees, but why get technical?

You didn't know what Pistou would serve you until you actually entered the restaurant and they informed you with a small list that accompanied the huge wine list they put in front of you.

Wine lists are daunting, so it was with great relief that they gave us the option of letting them choose what wine they would serve with each course.

You could see into the kitchen from where Jeff and I were sitting and I was stunned at who was cooking. Children, really. They were young men, a bit scruffy, probably in their early 20s. They looked like a trio I'd meet at some college frat party.

But there were no fraternity hijinks in the kitchen, no sir!  These guys were serious. And knew what they were doing. While many 20 year guys can't boil water, they deftly mixed ingredients in a way that beautiful aromas wafted into the dining room. 

This was promising.

Then the first course came out. Oysters.  I hate oysters.

Somehow with the puree they were in, I actually liked them. I don't like the slimy texture of Oyster. But with the other ingredients,  I found myself not gagging over oysters. A first!

And since Pistou is such a nice restaurant, with such nice staff and nice fellow customers, it was a relief not to cause a scene like that.

Next, the scallop dish came out. Just a single, large Maine scallop, sitting atop another complex, delicious puree. 

The puree was delicious, the scallop was prepared perfectly. But when you combined the puree with the scallop, it became the best bit of seafood I've ever had.

Next came the ribeye, again served with a puree. Same delicious experience.

They told the ingredients they used in these dishes,   but I can't remember them all. And I thought it would be gauche to whip out my reporter's notebook a pen and tape recorder and conduct wide ranging, noisy and demanding interviews in the middle of the dining room.

The wine they chose for us was, to my palette, so-so when sipped as independent units.  But when you had some with the course it was paired with, it was perfect.

 The takeaway: Pistou put Jeff and me in exactly the right mood to say goodbye to 2012 and hello to 2013.

The downside to this whole experience: There's no way I can make anything a tenth as good in my kitchen as I had at Pistou.

Should I Be Ashamed That I'd Already Seen the Top 50 Viral Videos of 2012?

I discovered to my horror that in one respect, at least, I've become one of those people who live their life entirely on line.

I say this after noticing one of those  "Let's Look Back at 2012" items came out, and it was the 50 best viral videos of 2012. The scary thing: I'd seen all but maybe three or four of them over the course of the last 12 months.

A still from one of the top YouTube videos of 2012:
A duckling going for a jog with its friend, a guy

There they were. The talkers  I'd come to know and love. The frumpy middle aged woman who witnessed a fire and described the scene to the local news team. Or more precisely, described how the cleaning guy had seen her tits.

There were the twin babies bopping along to their dads' guitar playing. The woman who didn't know how long it would take to go 80 miles if she was traveling at 80 mph. the dog on the trampoline, the cat on a turntable, the duckling running, DMX singing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," the ghost in the elevator. All of 'em.

Gawd, that list looks like the rantings of a madman, no?

All this means I spend wayyyyy too much time on line. And I probably will in 2013, too.

Now I'll show you the 50 Best Viral Video video, which shows little snippets of the popular items.

How many of them did YOU see during 2012?