QUESTIONS AND A SHOW OF WISDOM

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. 
 — Naguib Mahfouz, writer, Nobel laureate (1911-2006) 

I ask a lot of questions. Women ask more questions than men. Ergo, women are wiser than men? I think there might be some merit there.

Just when you think you have your writing day under control, up comes a monkey wrench (Block that metaphor!). 

I was just about finished with my thirty-minute walk at the Sodom Reservoir (see above), when I received a telephone call from my mother. I figured she was calling to discuss further Christmas plans having spoken to my brother David the night before. No, she was calling from the Emergency Room at Downey Community Hospital having been attacked and bitten by the neighbor's pit bull. She needed five stitches on her left index finger.

As she was walking out the door to teach her last Monday morning yoga class of the summer, the neighbor's dog, jumped up on her porch, menaced and barked at her, then bite her. Keeping her wits about her, she remembered The Dog Whisperer had said it is important to keep calm in the presence of a mad dog. After she screamed, she sat motionless on the front step thinking someone would come out of the house or be walking down the street and help her out. But no. The dog barked in her face, menaced, and nipped at her for about 45 minutes before it was distracted enough for her to find her house key, unlock the door, and get inside.

This is a sad thing. No one wants to have to put someone's beloved pet down. But, no one wants their 86-year-old mother to be menaced and injured on her own property. And if it had been a child the dog attacked, who knows what would have happened.

So, this story is still in progress. My mother is okay, if shaken and shocked. The neighbors will get rid of the dog. 

Found a path on the other side of the reservoir.

My friend Lyz Ward had a calendar she designed in Wired. Look here!