My dog Jade
While walking the dog yesterday, we struck up a conversation about writing and being a writer that proved once and for all that DOGS REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW TO WRITE!
She turned around on the end of her leash and looked at me with that woeful you-don’t-feed-me-enough look on her little well-fed face. “You know, I was reading your blog today, and I think I know how to make you a well-known writer and best-selling author.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “Since when do you know anything about being a writer or marketing fiction?”
“Well, you do remember that I wrote a couple of blog posts for you already.”
“True. But I can’t afford to do that again. You type with your tongue and it leaves the keyboard all sticky. I haven’t gotten it truly clean and working properly again since that last time. If you are asking to write another post, you can forget it.”
“Well, sorry about that. But I do think I know how to make your writing more popular with a bigger audience.”.
“Oh? How could you possibly know that?”
“Hey, talking dog here! That has to count for something, doesn’t it? Don’t you think people would be amazed to learn about things from a dog’s perspective?”
“Nobody’s going to believe I have a talking dog. That isn’t something within the realm of what is normal. They are all going to think I am just a crazy old man.”
“Well, you are a crazy old man. I can’t help that. But what if you told stories from a dog’s perspective? You know, things that only a dog could’ve come up with?”
“Oh, like what, for instance?”
Why does the neighbor’s dog always smell like burritos?
“Well, you know that more than half of what a dog perceives about the world she gets through her sense of smell?”
“Okay…”
“Like that spot on the grass over there. Boy dog. Handsome border collie… ate three hotdogs about four days ago. Ooh! He smells perfect!”
“You’re talking about poop smells again, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes. But I can also tell you about the pigeons that were in that live oak tree there yesterday.”
“Oh? What color were they?”
“I don’t know… gray maybe?”
“Bird doo. You are smelling old bird poop! You want me to write about poop more?”
“Well, no… not exactly. But if you could tell your stories through the sense of smell more… that would be unique and different. People would like that a lot because it’s never really been done before.”
“You do understand that I can’t use my laptop to write smells? There are no words I could use that will automatically put smells into the reader’s nose.”
“Well, but if you could invent one…”
“According to you, it would be mostly poop smells anyway. Who wants to sniff that?”
“It would make your blog more popular with dogs.”
“But dogs don’t read!”
“How do you know for sure? You believed me when I said I read your blog today.”
“Well, you certainly got me there. Now, don’t we have some important business to take care of?”
“Yes, but… You see that squirrel over there?”
“Yes, so?”
“So one day soon, I’m gonna eat him!”
Catch a Falling Star 
Free to Be Naked
I managed to finally return to Bluebonnet Nudist Park on Saturday. It was a Memorial Day weekend crowd, so I got to meet a lot of naked people. Of course, I only saw one kid the whole time I was there, and he looked to be high-school-aged. So, don’t let the first picture in this post fool you. Most nudists at the park were closer to my age than the girls in the picture.
But it was freeing of spirit to actually gather around a swimming pool and have an all-you-can-eat hot-dog lunch with 50-plus other naked people. I can’t explain why that strange alchemy can work. But it does.
Having been around nudists at different times for the majority of my life, I can honestly say I have observed nudists to be happier people than the rest of us. Of course, that is a generalization, and not true of every individual nudist. But they are comfortable in their own skin and connected to the natural world the way most of us are not. I found that most of these people knew they were nudists since childhood. Like me, if their families did not already embrace being nudists, they sneaked off to the woods when they could to get naked in nature.
Am I alone in thinking that this is not a mental aberration, but rather, a natural instinct that was trained out of us (or in my case, almost trained out of us,) in childhood?
I don’t have any pictures from the nudist park to post, so I use the usual collection of innocent-seeming illustrations and pictures to add a sense of beauty and youthfulness to the idea of going to a nudist park for recreation. You know its not really the way the pictures show it. I am not the exhibitionist-sort of nudist whose whole desire is to be seen by the world naked. I, for the most part, am a solitary nudist. Not too proud of my lumpy, wrinkled, and sore-covered carcass so that I am obsessed with others seeing me, but also not ashamed of my corporeal self to the point of not allowing myself to be seen nude by other like-minded nude people. Most of my nudism occurs when I am alone in private places where only peeping Toms and computer-camera hackers can see me. I am, however, proud that I have now been to Bluebonnet twice and have a membership in AANR (American Association for Nude Recreation.)
While I was there, a journalist who writes books on American culture used in sociology research at the college level, was there taking pictures and interviewing folks. He spoke to us, confessing that it was the first time speaking to a group of naked people, and also his first time speaking to a group while naked. He explained that he was recording and documenting interesting and important social organizations in an area only 100 miles wide, but stretching from the Mexican border to the Canadian border through the middle of the US. He felt that there were important things to learn about American life from the Bluebonnet Nudist Park just as there were to learn from the Dallas Police Department which he had scheduled for the upcoming week (and he specified he would be wearing clothes for that next part.) Even though I was there for his research, I did not get asked to sign any consent forms for photographs or interviews, so I will not be in that book of his in any way.
I am definitely more confident now in identifying myself as a nudist. I never embraced the idea of actually being one while I was a school teacher in Texas. Texans are suspicious of even letting a Democrat be a public school teacher, let alone someone who purposely goes to a public place with no pants on. I know I have lost Twitter followers and Facebook friends who found out I was actually a nudist. And I feel like I may have lost some of my WordPress followers over it as well. They can’t take seriously someone who walks around with no clothes on.
But my answer to that is… Who in the heck takes Mickey seriously anyway? Get real!
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