dream ranch

OK, so we were hiding in the walk-in closet.

But it was one heck of a lightning storm and these things turn Coop into a panting, shivering, heavy-coated, tri-color mass of terrified Australian Shepherd. Probably what turned him into a stray in the first place — before he ended up at the animal shelter, all cut up by what I guessed was barbed wire.

This one sat right on top of us tonight, the latest in many in the 9 years since Coop moved in. A bolt hit close by and I smelled something burnt when I reopened the windows at 11:30 p.m.

It was a little stuffy in there — fortunately, the electricity and the AC were knocked out only for a minute — and there’s no escaping the thunder, but the closet is the only place in this house of big windows and no curtains where we can escape the lightning flashes. Cooper occasionally takes refuge in the adobe fireplace but it was no good tonight. My friend Isabel Sanchez had just sent me a roll of super-hero duck tape — apparently after reading my incisive entry on duck tape earlier in this blog — but even that wasn’t going to get us out of this jam.

I figured the best thing was to take shelter in the closet. I know some dog experts say don’t elevate their fears by doting on them, but Coop calmed a little. At least I got the trembling stopped. Fortunately, I already had a sneak-preview of a piece by my friend Peter Katel called up on my iPad and I read that through the storm as Coop burrowed in by my side.

And, so on to my amateur climate change theories — or maybe just climate weirdness. Anecdotal evidence so far this year: Snakes out a month late after that cool and super-wet May; summer-like clouds and storms starting a month early.

Academics will dispute this. I’m just saying. This is my experience from boots on the ground and butts in the closet.

Click on the little folder dealy-bob in the upper left hand corner for a “tag cloud” of previous posts.

Obituaries today for the famous editor John Carroll opened a window for me on late chapters of traditional newspapers and newsrooms.

The lede on the Washington Post obituary said this: “John S. Carroll, who guided the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky to Pulitzer Prizes and who was considered one of the most distinguished and inspiring newspaper editors of his time, died June 14 at his home in Lexington, Ky. He was 73.”

The New York Times led with this: “John S. Carroll, a widely admired newspaper editor who restored the reputation and credibility of The Los Angeles Times in the early 2000s even as he fought bitterly with the paper’s cost-conscious corporate parent, died on Sunday morning at his home in Lexington, Ky. He was 73.”

The sixth paragraph of the Los Angeles Times obit said this: “Carroll, a courageous editor whose instinct for the big story and unrelenting focus on the craft of journalism guided the Los Angeles Times to new heights, including a record 13 Pulitzer Prizes in five years, died Sunday in Lexington, Ky., of Creutzfeldt-Jakob, a degenerative brain disease. He was 73.”

Both the Post and the New York Times went on to note one of Carroll’s best-known critics, David Simon, writer of the much-praised TV series The Wire and a Baltimore Sun police reporter who left the paper during Carroll’s reign.

This led me to read about David Simon. I came across a long piece by Mark Bowden, published in The Atlantic in 2008, called The Angriest Man in Television.

Bowden acknowledged that he was a friend of Carroll and that Simon had big criticisms of his story in The Atlantic. Bowden is critical of Simon.

I’d recommend reading each of these stories.

I came away admiring Carroll and fearing there are few like him left in the business.