Be-Mused — Karen Templeton

I found him curled up on the landscape rocks in front of a neighbor’s house, two doors down. He was too frightened to come to me, but I could see he was a real sweetie, anyway. A dish of leftover cooked hamburger later, he’d eat out of my hand but wouldn’t let me touch him. Still hungry, he let me entice him into our back yard, where he’d be safe, with bits of roasted chicken (one way to clean out the leftovers in the fridge). The cats can’t decide if they’re fascinated or pissed, but they are definitely keeping an eye on him through the windows. Occasionally we hear a low warning rrrrrooowwww from behind the draperies. Although several inches taller, the dog doesn’t weigh as much as they do.

So far, I’ve put up signs and registered him with three different online animal search places — white, wire-haired, some kind of terrier mix would be my guess. He’s wearing two collars, one with an out-of-date rabies vaccination tag, the other a flea collar. He’s feeling better now that he has food in his tummy — he’ll let us pet him, and I picked him up with no problem — but he’s still too out of it to wag his tail. Poor little guy.

I would keep him in a heartbeat, but the cats, not to mention the husband, might not be wild about that idea. So here’s hoping somebody’s looking, and that they look in the right place.

I know I vowed to stay away from controversial subjects, since the last thing I want to do is alienate readers. However, my guess is that those who find my reaction to the following offensive aren’t going to much like my books anyway, so no great loss.

At first I thought the flyers in their plastic bags lying on driveways all over the neighborhood were your typical roof repair or yard work solicitations. Then I looked closer, and my brain nearly exploded.

“In fifty years, whites will no longer be a majority in this country!” the flyer said, then went on to state that the influx of other races and nationalities was turning this country into a ” third world slum.”

For my blood pressure’s sake, I stopped reading after that. But what really got me is that many of these flyers sat in front of houses owned by people whose ancestors had been in these parts looooong before the non-Spanish whitefolk ever even thought about calling New Mexico home. Like, oh, the vast numbers of Indians who own most of the land surrounding Albuquerque, and whose traditions, culture and art account for a goodly chunk of our tourist dollars. Not to mention the Hispanics who’ve been around nearly 500 years. Last time I checked, I don’t live in a slum.

I won’t mention the group’s name here (won’t give them that much credence), but I did read up on them in Wikipedia and discovered that their post-Katrina relief efforts were only extended to white families.

Pass the barf bucket, please.