SEP-B-8
VISIT TO THE
FOR A SIMPSON COLLEGE TOUR AND TALK,
AND A LIVESTOCK TOUR CENTERED AROUND:
PORTER—AT THE BARN AND RIDING RING,
WATSON—THE NEWLY ADOPTED FOXHOUND,
CHERRY—THE CORGI THAT PLAYS BALL,
AND CIO-CIO THE CAT—
EACH HOUSED AND TRANSPORTED IN STYLE,
IN THE NEW HOUSE, RAM 2500 TRUCK,
TRAILETTE,
AND VETERINARIAN OFFICE
September 25—28, 2003
Indianola is hospitable to old hunting hound dogs who are past their prime in running, hunting, breeding, and just need a comfortable porch to crawl onto and snooze away some of their better days One of those is named Watson, a mellow old blooded foxhound covered with battle scars and creaky with past triumphs, and at age eight, the kind of dog that they would put to sleep rather than keep him on at the barn, whatever his prowess in siring pups or chasing foxes or showing off in the ring might have been in the past. Enter Virginia, whose livestock already ranged from small (Cio-Cio, cat-sized and only slightly larger, but much more energetic, the Corgi Cherry) and large (Porter is the second largest horse in the barn, second only to a 1600 pound eighteen hand Leo) and I got a chance to review each of the menagerie.
The star of the weekend show is Watson. He is a 69 pound, battle-scarred veteran fox hunter who has gone to foxhound heaven, now living in the lap of luxury and bathed in constant loving attention. He has gone from a barn with straw covered kennel floor to sitting at the foot of floral print chintz covered love seats. He is a “free dog” with a combination of veterinary visit bills and coming operations with the new supplies from dog beds to collars and leashes in excess of what I would pay for a trained bird dog. But, he is a lovable hound, with a reticent and baleful composure, and makes a good anchor to place on the porch or the floor to be sure that they do not get overturned by a high wind. Watson and I have a lot in common, in that we are both old hounds used to an ascetic outdoor life that will need kindness and affection to be rescued and brought indoors when it is too late for us to earn our keep in the hunting or the breeding. I should be so lucky as the elementary Watson!
This fits
into the context of a lot of new hardware and transport systems also: the new
Dodge Ram 2500 truck I heard before I saw it, as it approached the
The weekend
felt life a college homecoming weekend, as, in fact, we heard from
We made a
couple of shopping excursions for shelf racks for the garage and bookshelves
for the studio at a place called Mennards—a big wholesale-lots type warehouse
for builders—and remarked how it should be impossible for the rest of the world
to get along without a truck. It was
remarkably cool in
She loves her job and her students. She has a wonderful environment here in an independent teaching career in which she is flourishing. She has not even had a chance to think about her dissertation, for which she will have to go to the Iowa City Music Library to work on that in some future not yet scheduled. She is, as she has said to me, for the first time in her life. “on her own” and not dependent on anyone (as she really never has been except emotionally linked) nor making plans for any other agenda. That may change as she hopes it will a few months from now, but she has worked through the guilt of a failed marriage and has given herself time here to flourish with about everything she needs to be independent. She recognizes that she is not an independent “loner” type, and cannot do as well alone as I have for so long, but she is really enjoying this part of getting deeply into preparation for her classes and supporting her students.
I have had to go through my own adjustment to the accommodation of a very big impending change, but having done that, however successfully, I am maxxing out on the lonely independent part now, traveling more even than is usual, since my home base is blown away, and doing many gigs I cannot see myself doing when I have the kind of menagerie at home that Virginia has surrounded herself with, and a home base that requires lots of continuing input. So, some of my forward plans and schedules may have to be postponed, others put on hold, as Virginia is re-thinking her own life and what she wishes to be doing with it. I see this in the “Style-section-type” of the Post-equivalent Des Moines Register front page headliner stories about her, in that she left the fast track as a “world-class soprano” to settle in Iowa, around her part-time job-- now a full-time job—at Simpson, and the low-temperature “Love Story” that brought her to the Midwest. But, now the wheel has turned again, and what has changed in the circumstances of Indianola and Derwood may be a few months out of phase. That may be good in the longer term on each end and for both. But in the interval, there may be disruption of several plans in progress.