Went to the Cambridge, N.Y., Memorial Day Parade this morning with Maria and Red. It was Red’s first parade, and he wasn’t crazy about the cymbals or drums. Got some nice shots though, and will put them up later on Facebook as a photo album.
On Memorial Day, I light a candle before dawn and I think of all of the many people in my country and in the world who die, suffer and survive war. I wish they had not died, been injured, separated from their families, traumatized, sacrificed to the barbarism and violence of their fellow human beings, mostly men. I wonder why the people who preach peace have been so marginalized and trivialized and dismissed. Why they are never in Congress beating their fists on their desks or on cable news arguing with the left or the right. The Dalai Lama and some lonely Quakers talk about peace and maintain their vigils but nobody seems to be listening to them or hearing their powerful messages.
First, I honor the dead and those who fought and returned, they went for all of us. Then I think how wonderful it would be to have a Peace Day in America, where we honor alternatives to war, the people who save lives by fighting for peace. It seems an old idea, a fading chant from the 60’s, but it is a big idea to me. Our media has little interest in it, war is so much more profitable all around. I think of it every Memorial Day. It is not just for Buddhists and Quakers and true and equally outshouted Christians, it is a universal idea. I think the biggest political idea in the world for me is feminism, and one of many reasons is that women seem to grasp other ways of problem solving and political idealism than killing machines and sacrificing the young to the hoary, greedy and bankrupt ideas of the old men who rarely go to wars but have so many good reasons to start them.
Tomorrow marks a bit of landmark in my writing life. I will publishing my 26th book “Listening To Dogs: How To Be Your Own Training Guru.” The book, which will sell for $2.99, will be available anywhere digital books are sold or purchased – Amazon, Ibooks, BN.com, on the Kindle, Ipad, Nook and Kobo, on computers and smartphones. This is my second e-book original, the first my agent and I are publishing together. It is a part of the future. So, clearly, are paperbooks. My next paper book “Second Chance Dog: A Love Story” will be published by Random House this November.
Increasingly, I am taking over responsibility for discussing and promoting my own work, a new evolution in the modern writer. I will use the blog, Facebook, other social media. It is a brave new world, this book will cost much less than a cup of coffee in many places. If you love reading, books, and dogs – or any animal, really – this might have some real appeal for you. I will be airing a podcast on “Listening To Dogs” tomorrow and holding week long discussions on Facebook and the blog. The book is an important philosophical statement for me, it is a cornerstone of my philosophy of living with and training dogs. It is an empowerment book, meant to discourage people to depend less on experts and become their own training gurus. This book will not give you the perfect dog, you will have to do that yourself. And that’s the idea – nobody can figure out how to train your dog better than you can.
The training culture is a catastrophe, peddling ever expensive books, methods and videos that make a lot of money for the creators, but don’t seem to result in too many well-trained dogs. Dog training is fundamental and simple – our forebears had no problems with it – and we are losing touch with the idea that we can do it ourselves, using common sense and our own instincts and self-awareness. I look forward to this book coming out, to promoting it’s sales myself, to seeing how this complex and mesmerizing new kind of media can work for writers who are willing to change. As readers of this blog know, I am willing to chance. So come back tomorrow and we’ll kick off a new kind of book in a new kind of world. Thanks for being here.
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