Most of my friends are people who have read Robert A. Heinlein at some time in their lives. For many it may be nothing more than Starship Troopers, or Stranger in a Strange Land. For others it may be the juvies, Starman Jones, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, or even Podkaine of Mars. Quite a few will have searched out and read just about everything he has ever written. I’m not quite there, but what I’m short on is generally not in print any more anyway. But that’s not really important at the moment.
Any writer who has been writing a while, at some point comes up with some sort of a timeline for the stories that he’s written. Heinlein was not really different. You will find the timeline in the compendium Expanded Universe if you are interested. One of the things he did in the timeline is described or predicted what the political climate of a few periods of time would be like. In that, we are close to the end of the ‘Crazy Years.’ As many I know would comment, “I hope so!” That’s not really the purpose of the time line though. For that we need to go to ‘Time Enough for Love.”
In TE4L we are introduced to the character Lazarus Long. Lazarus has been around for a while. At the beginning of the book he has decided that he’s been around ‘long enough.’ But that doesn’t sit well with others, so he ends up in a hospital, surviving the situation. One of the discussions that comes up is that the rest of humanity could learn from what Lazarus could tell them from experience. Lazarus scoffs at this, and points out something that as near as I’ve been able to tell is absolutely true. His response was that Humanity as a group does not learn from what anyone says. Humans as individuals in general, do not learn at all. When Humans do learn, it is not through the tales told by someone else, it is through their own experiences. And even that is exceptionally rare. He did agree that having something to try gave you a working starting point where you might have a better chance of learning something, and the end result was the Notebooks of Lazarus Long.
Notebooks of Lazarus Long appears within Time Enough for Love, and if I recall also at least in part in Expanded Universe. However the treasure is to find the stand alone book of the Notebooks of Lazarus Long, which ends up in a somewhat odd format. If you can find one intact, they did something a little bit different with this compared to most science fiction. Notebooks is sort of like a book of quotes. Some of these seem self evident, ‘Always store beer in a dark place.’ Others have a humorous bent, “Be wary of strong drink, for it can lead to shooting at tax collectors… …and missing.’ And there are several with specifically romantic intents, ‘Rub her feet.’ and ‘I came, I saw, She conquered! – the original latin seems to have been garbled.’
The one that seems applicable to me tonight however is ‘When the time comes, and it invariably does, a man must be prepared to shoot his own dog. Turning it over to someone else to do does not make it easier or better. It makes it worse.’
At some level the quote can be applied to almost any activity where there is a distasteful element to completing a task, or ensuring the survival of the group. No one wants to shoot their dog. But there are many reasons one may have to. If a dog gets infected with Rabies, it does not matter if that dog was the gentlest of creatures before, it will have to be destroyed. The thing is that Lazarus or Heinlein was not talking about dogs specifically. He was referring to pretty much any pet, animal or otherwise.
People talk about Pet Projects. And some of those end up being things that would be best killed off, by the person who thinks of it as theirs.
In any case, there are problems for many people today with “shout your own dog.’ At the very least if you live in most major cities today, shooting your dog is liable to result in an ‘unlawful discharge of a firearm’ charge being levied against you. In many places it is also difficult or impossible to find a place to bury your dog. In the greater view this is equivalent of rigging things so that you can neither do the job that is your responsibility, nor are you allowed to take care of the mess.
In most places the solution is to take your dog to a veterinarian and based on quality of life observations, the veterinarian may work with you to put your dog to sleep, and then either the ashes from cremation can be returned to you, or they can be cremated in a communal cremation with no ashes returned.
The time came for Mindy to go. There were some signs that she might recover, but I didn’t expect her to fully recover, and what recovery she was making very well could have been a temporary situation. She was also in some pain as she would put no weight on her left rear paw. I did not see any damage to the paw itself, no obvious thorns, or broken toenails or the like, but in combination with her inability to go up stairs on her own, I suspect that there was pain in her hips or elsewhere. Walking was a labor for her, as was getting up. No more the four paws extending as one movement and we’re walking along. First came the struggle to get up on the front paws, almost impossible to accomplish on hard surfaces, then a major struggle to get up on the back legs.
And no, having someone inject a sedative, then a general anesthetic to put your dog to sleep is not better. But at the moment it was the best that I could do for her.
So after approximately 10 years and 3 months, it is just me and Nicholas again. He is old as well. He was 3 when I adopted him in in October of 1998. That means he is 14 now. So he is closing in on the end as well, but for now still has plenty of life left in him.
Nick and I went for a walk today. He was bounding where he could, at the end of his lead. Investigating Goose droppings, and enjoying the attention.
My favorite experience with Mindy was one time when we were visiting my dad. The cat in the house had either been playing with or ignoring a mouse that was annoying to my dad. She may have even brought the mouse in, she had been known to do that in the past. Mindy and I were in the family room, I think I was reading, she was just laying there near me. Suddenly she leapt up and tore into the kitchen. A couple of moments later she walked back into the living room. I had seen the mouse run along the wall into the kitchen, but figured that as quickly as she came back that the mouse had escaped under a cabinet or the stove, and thought nothing more of it for a while. About an hour later my dad walks into the kitchen to discover that there is a dead mouse on the floor. While neither of us attempted to do any sort of an autopsy, there was no obvious damage, such as a broken neck or anything. The cat in the house was totally black, and Mindy as a black lab cross at the time was the same coloration. We figured that the mouse saw Mindy and died from shock at the sudden increase in size of the cat.
So why is this my favorite? Hunting dogs and cats that go after small creatures tend to be fascinated by laser pointers. Nick is no exception, and most people have learned that with their cats and other dogs. Mindy never took the slightest interest in laser pointers. Either she was blind to the light, or more likely she had learned at some point that it was not a good idea to chase after such a spot. But from a good 15 feet away she heard or spotted a mouse, and responded the way we would like all our cats and dogs to respond to a threat to the household.
I’ll leave with that. This story has taken a rather odd route for some readers. I don’t happen to agree with some of Heinlein’s positions. But I will admit that there is value in working through some of the ideas and learning from the experience.
Words 1483 words so far this month 7546
