Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Ola
Sitting in the single most potent everyday example of magic, the space between dark shade and illuminating sunlight, Ola looks at the man behind the camera. A black and sable German Shepherd, the classic ears triangulated and focused on her surroundings are absent, being that she is lying in the grass of the backyard, the deck a brown-cropping of the mostly green field of view. Her light brown haunches are in the lower-right of the photo. Head is to the left and turned in our direction.
Even those people who have not had the fortune to be a dog’s alpha, the expression on her face will nevertheless provide a glimpse into our relationship.
Ola is smiling and her ears are relaxed to the sides. This simple, not-really-a-posture-but-very-much-a-physical-communication, conveys the un-qualified trust she possessed.
It is not a trust meant to allay fears or concerns, it’s far simpler than that. It is the knowledge that I would protect her in whatever she might need protecting from, both large and small.
The part of me that wants to say, ‘Yet she died. I did not protect her well enough,’ is the reason for the ‘smile’ in her expression. It says, ‘I know you better than you know yourself. We have each other’s back here in this moment and thats all that matters.’

Welcome to the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop. Hosted by Kristi, each week people from most ever where write, submit, link, read and share the experience of gratitude in such a variety of contexts and expressions that you will surely sit back and say, “Whoa! I never realized that the people in the blogosphere were so eloquent, loquacious, organized in thought and… err  eccentrically creative. Where do I sign up?”

Good news, you are a couple of clicks away from joining in.

1)  Una

Una sitting before the springtime battlefield.
Quiet on the front, ravening moss wounded and slowed for the moment. She has confidence we can deal with the new challenge.
In the center foreground of the photo, Una has turned her head to the left and is facing the camera. This posture affords us a plentitude of visual cues. (Had she not turned, we would have observed an upright, rounded off wedge with a shiny black coat, topped by twin triangles of ears.)
Facing us we see the light brown marks above her eyes and a dusting of silver along the bottom of her jaw.
In contrast to Ola, Una is pretty much black-on-black…’Has-anyone-seen-my-eyebrow-pencil?” Interesting to note that, in the family tree, Una is closer to the ground than Ola… despite her amiable personality and relatively diminutive, she shows less of the modifications (of breeding for purpose and appearance) that her larger sister demonstrates.

2) Phyllis

On their way out for a walk

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) work (It puts me out there, in my car, with lots of interesting things to look at and such)

Hopkinton Meeting House (c 1790)

5) Six Sentence Story. bloghop… fun with words, go there, read words, write words, it’ll all work out

6) Almira excerpt: (Backstory/context. Sterling Gulch enlisted in the American Expeditionary Force to go and fight in Europe towards the end of World War I. He was wounded the first time he saw action.)

1918 Arras, France

The dream is the same I’ve had since landing at Saint Nazaire. The part that makes it ‘that dream again’ is how it begins. I hear Almira calling me from across a field. I don’t see her because I’m not in that field, I’m working on something. In a blacksmith shop, complete with an anvil and bellows and a forge. From where I stand, I feel the heat from the forge but at unpredictable intervals a blast of frigid air stabs my face. There are shoes hanging from the ceiling, all sorts of shoes.

Hearing Almira’s voice change from greeting to alarm, I put down the hammer and walk outside. The blacksmith shop is clearly in a small town. There’s a sense of vehicles and people passing in the street outside the windows, but when I step outside, I’m standing in a meadow. Almira’s voice again, coming from a wooded hill in the middle of a wide-open prairie. She is backing away from something in the woods and trying to warn me of danger. The dream usually ends with a single clap of thunder, but of late, the sound is stretched becoming a howling, like hungry wolves in a winter’s forest.

On those nights I have the dream, a nurse always comes to stand next to my bed, touching my forehead with a cool, white cloth. There is no rise of daylight and there’s no sense of the approaching of night. I lie in a single bed with an army green blanket and stare at the lights hanging from the ceiling.

I assume I’m on some drug, because I always remember that I forgot to ask her name and where we are, content to stare into her face, framed in a blonde halo.

“Lieutenant Gulch, can you hear me?”

I hear my name, but the person speaking is short, balding, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and is not a beautiful woman. I supposed the drugs don’t always work as well as they’re supposed to, so I tried to close my eyes.

“Lt. Gulch, wake up! We need to move you. And your cooperation is really gonna make this go smoother.”

I decided that if I don’t open my eyes, things will go back to the way they’ve been since…. well, since I started having the same dream over and over and sometimes waking up to a beautiful nurse.

“Nope. Can’t do this to me, I need to get this ward transported outta here.  As the cops in my neighborhood used to tell us, ‘You’re coming along, whether you want to or not’.”

Maybe it was the tone of his voice, which had none of the poetic cadence of dreams, so I opened my eyes again and stared at Captain Tribianni. At least that’s what the name tag on his shirt pocket maintained.

“Better! Let’s start with the stupid questions and then I’ll tell you the plan and I can get on to the next soon-to-be-discharged patient.”

He pulled a metal chair from somewhere to his right, sat down, crossed his legs and stared at me,

“Come on! Gave you a clue there… say something and I won’t have to put a notation on your chart that will require less from you now but will cost you too much when you get home.”

His raised eyebrows looked sincere, so I said, “OK, doc. Let’s do the easy parts first. I’m leaving this place. That’s neither good nor bad until you tell me where I’m leaving to…”

“Fair enough. You’re leaving and heading home. The U. S. of A. Long boat ride, but from what I see on the chart here, you’ll survive the trip. You’ll have company, the War is over. You slept right through Armistice Day! Now that you’ve passed the first test by not asking me any disturbing questions like, How soon can I re-join my outfit, lets deal with the really tough subject…”

“How bad am I hurt?”

“Give the man a kewpie doll! I’ll give it to you straight. You have all the parts you came over here with, it’s just that some don’t work so well. You get to walk out of here and you can sign for your stuff, provided you’re left-handed. Your right hand is going to take time to get back to being as useful as it was when you got off the boat. So, wait, don’t ask! I’ve given this talk 13 times today already.

You’ve been down here in the Caverns in Arras for a month and a half. Mostly because of the damage the mustard gas did to your lungs; although the shattered right arm was also part of the reason. What makes you a lucky man is that down here we’re able to prevent influenza from completing the job the Germans started on you. You missed the worst of it. So, we’ll get you thinking about moving around a little. Then, we’ll tell you to start moving around more. You’ll start to hate the head nurse, but he’s used to that, it tells him you’re getting better. Then, in about 3 weeks, we put you on a truck that’ll take you to a boat that will return you home. Then the real hard part begins.”

“No, that won’t be a problem for me. I have a wife who’s waiting for me.”

The doctor got up and, after tapping me lightly on the knee with the chart, walked to the end of the bed and hung it on a hook at the foot of the bed.

“One thing, doc. The blonde nurse, when does she come on duty? I want to say thanks for her help.”

“Don’t make me put a note in your chart, son. All the female nurses shipped out 2 months ago, their skills were more needed in the front-line hospitals, frankly this place is a storage facility. Haven’t seen a woman in 6 weeks.”

He watched my face more carefully than he should have, given I asked such a simple question.

“Oh. never mind. Must be mistaken.”

He nodded, more to himself, and walked away.

7) Sunday Supplement

8) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE  If anyone is out there with what they believe is a sincere desire to get into the bloghop game but feel what they have written is not what they think it is, send it in as a comment. I’ll post it right here at #8. With full attribution and ever thang.

9) Non-winter weather today. It was not, as Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, at all ‘frightful’.

10) Secret Rule 1.3 (“… the completion of a list of Ten Items is, even in its anticipation, something to be grateful for; so, op.cit. that bad boy and enter it right down there at Number 10!” [“…. ibid, y’all”]

music vid