Breaking News from Ginger - About Trump Colluding with the Russians and Putin

Breaking News from Ginger
About Trump Colluding with the Russians and Putin

I have written scores of essays about my two dances with death. One dance was the result of a traumatic brain injury and the other was due to cancer having gotten outside the prostate. In both cases, I successfully lead death in both our dances. While I would not wish to go through either again, I benefited from them. I came alive.

I am not the only person to have done the dance and benefited from the experience. There have been many like Randy Pausch, Steve Jobs, Miguel Cervantes, Kurt Vonnegut, Oliver Sachs, John Donne, Alan Seeger, John Kennedy, Steve Biko, Carl Sagan, Abraham Lincoln, David Hume, Mahatma Gandhi, Saul Alinsky, Henry David Thoreau, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexander the Great, and Tom Brokaw. That list of people and I stared down death, at least for a while. Doing the dance causes people to realize their finiteness, not just intellectually, but in their gut. It changed them, and it changed me. I am radically different than I was before either dances, even though I thought that I was alive back then.

That is merely the backstory to this essay, which is about Ginger. A couple of days prior to last Christmas, I drove to Home, PA to pick up my Irish Setter puppy. I picked her up when she was two months old and weighed nine pounds. There I was with a puppy who I named Ginger, which was the same name as my first Irish Setter.

Ginger means a great deal to me. Much of my life is spent writing, teaching, and going on long walks around the lake with Ginger. She is the love of my life. Since at 74, I am not interested in breeding her decided to have her spayed. However, the vet mentioned whether I wanted to have gastropexy done during spaying her. Deep-chested dogs like Irish Setters, Dobermans, Labradors, etc. can flip their stomachs over causing a condition called bloat. Bloat will result in the death of a dog in a very short time unless a vet surgically turns the stomach back to the correct position. Even then, dogs can still die and/or have a very painful recovery period.

I decided to have both the spaying and gastropexy done at the same time. I took Ginger in the morning and was scheduled to pick her up that evening. However, the vet called in the afternoon to say that Ginger was suffering pain related to the gastropexy. The vet wanted to keep her overnight as a precaution. The next day, I went and picked Ginger up from the vet.

Everything seemed well until the following day. I took her back to the vet and got some additional pills. Nevertheless, during the two weeks prior to removing the stitches, Ginger was at the vet nearly every day and once twice.

None of the post-op conditions were life-threatening from the perspective of the vet, and she is fine now. However, I was scared. Having danced with death twice, my sensitivity level was on steroids. Fortunately, things slowly started to return to normal during her post-op period. We would go on short walks. On one of our walks, a neighbor said that the cone Ginger was wearing to avoid messing with her stitches looked like a lampshade.

When we got home, Ginger said, “What did the neighbor mean about my cone looking like a lampshade?” I merely blew off the neighbor’s comment as an attempt to be funny. Ginger wasn’t amused.

However, for some reason, Ginger didn’t seem to like the cone and often chewed portions of it. She was also able to distort the perfect cone’s shape. I’d tell her that it won’t be long before the cone would be removed along with the stitches to resolve her issue with the cone.

One of the rare days that we didn’t have to make a trip to the vet, Ginger watched me as I taught online. After a while, Ginger seemed to want to talk. “You have written about doing the dance and how that changed your Weltanschauung. While neither surgical procedures were life-threatening, the world is different than it once was. I see and hear things differently than before.”

I inquired about what Ginger meant because neither procedure related to her eyes or ears.

“Well, I know that, but the cone acts like a satellite dish. I can pick up sounds from deep space millions of light years from Earth.”

I told Ginger that I couldn’t believe that the cone functioned in that manner. She was wearing the cone merely to keep her from pulling out her stitches.

“I’ll research cones on the Internet sometime, but I do pick up sounds and some images. It first happened when we went out to your dock. I was confused but didn’t mention anything to you at the time. You would have probably taken me to the vet. However, the other day while I sat next to you as you worked, I could tune in and got both a clear image and sound from deep in the Andromeda Galaxy. That galaxy is a neighboring galaxy with the Milky Way but is twice the size as ours. My chewing on the cone acts like a tuning device. After a couple of weeks, I became quite good at picking up signals from outer space.”

What did you hear and see from the Andromeda Galaxy?

“Well, Donald the Dumb isn’t primarily colluding with the Russians or Putin. They are secondary to the major influence on him.”

I asked about what Ginger found.

Ginger continued, “I found this character named D.O.W.M. from a constellation in Andromanta. D.O.W.M. talks with Donald the Dumb usually early in the morning before he starts his tweeting, which would mean around 3:00am. I saved this picture to show you."

Donald the Dumb’s colluder

I looked at Ginger’s picture of D.O.W.M; it was creepy. As I gazed at the photo, I pondered to whom I should send this picture. Perhaps, the Special Counsel Robert Mueller should see this photo.

Ginger dissed sending it to anyone in Washington, since Donald the Dumb would fire that person like he did with the former FBI Director Comey. Besides, our fake president would merely call this fake news.

Ginger knows that I love teaching art history. Therefore, I mentioned that it is interesting that D.O.W.M. was residing in the Andromeda Galaxy. I couldn’t contain myself from dissing Donald the Dumb...again. Andromeda was a Greek legend, which is about Andromeda being victimized by Neptune’s threatening to sacrifice her. Donald the Dumb victimizes women also. Fortunately for Andromeda, Perseus saved her despite Neptune’s ill-will.

Andromeda

Finally, Ginger and I ended our conversation regarding finding out about colluding primarily with D.O.W.M. and to a lesser degree with the Russians and Putin. As I was putting on Ginger’s collar for a walk, I remembered a question that I had forgotten to ask Ginger. What does D.O.W.M. mean?

Ginger replied, “Oh, that is just an acronym for Dirty Old Wealthy Man.”

On Seeing the Light