"If there's one thing I can't admire it's an ungraceful exit. There's really no excuse, and just imagine what everyone will be saying about you, long after you're gone."

Nancy Clark
July and August

I never wanted to become one of those bloggers who use cyberspace as an arena for their personal pity parties.

My first blog, "Hopelessly Midwestern in Belgium," was a vehicle to share our expat experience with friends and family. Although it had some commentary on the difficulties of being an American abroad, that was balanced (I hope) by enthusiastic reports on our European travels.

After the initial rhapsodies—complete with pictures—about how beautiful Colorado is, "A Foothills Life" never had a clear purpose. Tiny pictures of the Rockies on a blog can't convey the scale of the mountains or the euphoria you feel after climbing to the top of a peak. And although each new skiing, climbing, or kayaking expedition is an adventure for us, writing about it and especially reading about it week after week seems like a waste of time.

In addition, recent blows to our bodies and souls have left us reeling. They occupy so much mental space that it's hard to keep them out of the blog, which leads us back to my dislike of blogs that are full of self-pity and whinging, as the Brits call it.

Which is why I'm officially retiring from my two-year stint as a blogger, effective immediately.

I never used to wear a helmet when I skied. But when we were at the big pre-season ski equipment sale at Denver's convention center last fall, I bought a no-frills black helmet that, to be honest, doesn't do much for my snow bunny self-image. "I'll just try it out," I told Jim. I continued wearing it mainly because it keeps my head and ears warmer than any ski cap I've ever owned.

That ugly helmet probably saved me from a concussion this morning.

I was skiing down an intermediate hill at Breckenridge, just minding my own business, when a tall, 20-something guy slammed into me from behind at high speed. Jim was further down the hill watching me, and said that he couldn't figure it out, because it was a wide hill and there was plenty space for the other (clearly experienced) skier to maneuver around me.

When I hit the ground, my helmet-encased head literally bounced from the impact. I didn't lose consciousness, though, and, aside from feeling a little sore tonight, I seem to be fine.

The puzzling thing is that, although my "assailant" stopped to make sure that I could get up, he never apologized for smacking into me. Have Americans lost the art apologizing for their actions? A topic for another day, perhaps.

In my ongoing, online quest to find employment, the following job titles caught my attention:

• Denial Specialist
• Executive Dog Walker
• Sugar Plum Fairy

(The last one reminds me of the current TV ad campaign for the Colorado Ballet. It features a balding, pudgy, hairy-chested guy in a low-cut leotard, tutu, and tennis shoes.)

We stopped at Starbucks en route to the Colorado Symphony concert last night, so blame it on the rare evening infusion of caffeine. When we arrived home, I jumped on the computer to read the Op-Ed pieces in Sunday's New York Times. As often happens, Frank Rich's column hit a nerve. As doesn't often happen, I decided to post a comment about the column on the Times' website.

Mr. Rich's column is at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08rich.html

If you sort the 600-plus comments on that column by Oldest First, mine is #365 on page 15. Or you can just read it here:

When I read that Timothy Geithner didn't bother paying his back taxes for 2001-2002 until AFTER he had been nominated as Treasury Secretary, I was infuriated. I didn't for a nanosecond buy his excuse for not paying his 2001-2004 personal taxes when they were due. That he didn't voluntarily pay his 2001-2002 personal taxes back in 2006 when the IRS notified him about the delinquent 2003-2004 taxes seemed, well, ethically challenged.

I also didn't buy Team Obama's claim that Geithner was the only man for the job. Another administration without a Plan B? Great, just great.

So I tried two avenues of communication to voice my concerns to that black hole otherwise known as Washington, D.C.

First, I e-mailed Max Baucus, head of the Senate Finance Committee, about my concerns. No answer, even though I clicked the "Yes, I would like to receive a response concerning my email" button on his website.

(BTW, Mr. Baucus, there are two (2!) periods after the preceding quote on the "Email about an issue" page of your website. Hire a proofreader! In the current economy, there are even more unemployed English majors than usual from which to choose.)

Second, since Team Obama kept sending me e-mails suggesting that I share my opinions about the transition and priorities for the new administration, I e-mailed that crowd about Geithner, too. No response.

Sigh. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," as my Belgian neighbors used to say. Moi, I'm going back to being an apolitical animal, and donating all my future time and money to the local animal shelter where I volunteer. At least the pit bulls act like they're listening when I talk to them.

Believe me, I understand how having a mammogram can raise a woman's anxiety levels. Ever since my mother died of breast cancer at 47, just 16 days after her diagnosis, the disease has loomed in my consciousness, charging up to the forefront as my annual mammogram approaches.

So I appreciate the idea behind the "spa-like atmosphere" that seems to be the rage among breast cancer screening centers. The center I visited yesterday for a mammogram looked a lot like the day spa where Ali and I had facials last October, right down to the New Age music and the subdued lighting.

But when I asked the technician how long it would take for the radiologists to read the film and get back to me with the results, her response was, "Two to three weeks." Two to three weeks?!!

I'd be willing to trade those lovely sofas, floral arrangements, and recent issues of Town & Country for plastic chairs, old National Geographics, and speedy reports from the radiology team. Ten minutes of pretending that I'm in a spa doesn't make up for two-plus weeks of worrying.

And the room with the Siemens Mammomat (a laundromat for boobs?), a high-tech digital imaging machine? It was colder in there than it was outside in the parking lot.

From an elderly gentleman I stopped to chat with while we were both walking our dogs—his a bouncy, white toy poodle named Abby—on Ralston Creek Trail, which winds through our neighborhood:

Watching the dogs excitedly sniffing each other and the fascinating-to-dogs-only smells around them, he gestured at the trail and said, "Yup, this is Abby's Information Highway."

There's not too many things in this world that scare our son, who started skydiving in high school. But when I described seeing skiers and boarders speeding across a mountain lake near Frisco, Patrick's response was, "Geez, THAT'S dangerous."

I don't know, paraskiing looked like fun to me. Besides, you don't need to buy a lift ticket.


More paraskiing pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/Paraskiing

John Updike died today.

When I heard the news, I was transported back some 30 years to a small classroom at Case Western Reserve University. The building was so old that the afternoon sun shone on hardwood floors as Updike read his poetry to a tiny audience.

The writer was on campus to see an old friend, a professor at CWRU. I don't know why he read only poems that day, and not selections from his better-known novels or essays. Although I saw in the Times obituary that John Updike was a tall man, I remember his features as rather elven, his eyes twinkling, his skin flushed and rough with psoriasis. For a famous writer, he seemed shy and profoundly pleased by our response to his work.

I vividly recall Updike's tender reading of his poem "Dog's Death." This prosaic account of the sudden loss of the family puppy contained one hauntingly luminous line:

Saturday afternoon, we headed back down to the National Western Stock Show to watch the "Stock Dog Trials (Intermediate Sheep)." We'd never seen herding dogs in action, except for one late fall afternoon when a young Merlin, our first Bouvier des Flandres, tried to round up a flock of Canadian geese.

"Intermediate" was a gentle overstatement of the herding capabilities of most of the border collies in this round of trials, which involved three sheep, one dog, and one dog owner in a large arena. Each dog had to herd the sheep through a gate, around a post, and into a pen in four minutes or less, following the voice, whistle, and/or hand commands of its owner.

We watched the competition for two hours, and perhaps two dogs made it through the entire sequence. Many more were DQ'd for biting the sheep; as the announcer commented, it's pretty hard to claim innocence with a hunk of wool hanging out of your dog's mouth. To be fair, though, some of the sheep trios sent into the arena were more sheeplike than others, i.e., they huddled and ran together as a 12-legged unit, making them easier to herd. One collie drew a group of sheep that included an animal with an independent streak. This particular sheep kept running off in an entirely different direction than the other two, leaving the young collie clearly flummoxed.

---

On this final weekend of the show, the traditional ranchers had departed with their cattle, leaving the stockyards to specialty stock: Miniature Herefords, Texas Longhorns, Scottish Highland cattle, and Tibetan yaks.

The Miniature Herefords looked just like their full-size counterparts. The Texas Longhorns were impressive, but ill-tempered: One stuck his head through a slat in his pen and butted me with one of his horns while I was taking pictures. (I couldn't help but wonder, as Carrie Bradshaw would say, if that was karmic payback for all the mean things I've said about a certain Texan over the past eight years.)

The Scottish Highland cattle (affectionately known as "Highland coos", "shaggy coos", "toffee coos", or "hairy coos" in parts of Scotland*) appropriately bore the red hair of their native countrymen.


But it was the Tibetan yaks that I fell in love with. Smaller than wild yaks, these domesticated animals are, one owner told me, mellow and friendly. They're so sweet, in fact, that many people keep them as "pasture pets." The adults are imposing and exotic looking.


If I had the space and the money for a "pasture pet," I would have adopted the four-month-old yak on the right, who had the curly, shaggy coat and shoe-button eyes of my Bouviers, and the calm, cheerful demeanor of the Dalai Lama.

* Wikipedia

From today's Denver Post, as part of its continuing coverage of the National Western Stock Show:

One of the biggest stock show scandals was in 1972, when it was discovered that the grand champion steer, Big Mac, was not a black Angus but a white Charolais. Shoe polish and paint and conniving Iowa cattlemen-owners were the culprits.

For two weeks in January, Denver returns to its cowtown roots.

We're in the midst of the National Western Stock Show, which draws cattle ranchers from as far away as Maryland and Saskatchewan. There's a stock parade through downtown, rodeos, the Colorado Fiddle Championships, and lots of what my brother referred to as "cubby hats" during his brief, improbable Western phase as a toddler. (Footwear note: Real ranchers favor boots with a rounded toe and a low heel over the pointy-toed, high-heeled numbers.)

Although other livestock get brief turns in the show's spotlight, the stars here are the beef cattle, huge beasts with impossibly long eyelashes and breed names such as Hereford, Black Angus, Red Angus, and Limosin. ("They're big, they're black, but you can't rent 'em for your high school prom.")

You can purchase a whole bull, featuring a sign which would be equally useful for those who still believe that Iraq had WMD's.


Or, you can see Larry or Trent for a little bull-to-be.

Our books reflect who we are and who we have been . . .

Alberto Manguel
The Library at Night

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The books that I loved most last year (listed in the order in which I read them) fell into one or more of the following categories:

A. They were peopled with characters ranging from mildly quirky to wildly eccentric.

B. They generated in me a mix of admiration and pure envy at the author's ability to turn a phrase.

---

She concentrated her separate thoughts darkly, because if anyone was expecting her to become the wind beneath their wings, they could jolly well look ahead to a fiery crash, no survivors.

Nancy Clark
The Hills at Home

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C. They made me snort with laughter.

D. (Mildly embarrassing) They were non-fiction "dog books."

• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Jonathan Safran Foer)
• The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)
• One Good Turn (Kate Atkinson)
• The Yiddish Policeman's Union (Michael Chabon)
• Good Dog. Stay (Anna Quindlen)
• The Used World (Haven Kimmel)
• Grace (Eventually) (Anne Lamott)
• Forward From Here (Reeve Lindbergh)
• Wit's End (Karen Joy Fowler)
• The Monsters of Templeton (Lauren Groff)
• Dog Years (Mark Doty)
• The Library at Night (Alberto Manguel)
• July and August (Nancy Clark)
• The Hills at Home (Nancy Clark)
• Woof! Writers on Dogs (ed. Lee Montgomery)

---

As it was, they would often come upon her in odd unfrequented corners of her various dwellings, spectacles on the end of her nose, notebook and pencil beside her. [The Queen] would glance up briefly and raise a vague, acknowledging hand. 'Well, I'm glad somebody's happy,' said the duke as he shuffled off down the corridor. And it was true; she was. She enjoyed reading like nothing else . . .

Alan Bennett
The Uncommon Reader

It didn't seem like a big deal when I hit a patch of ice and fell skiing at Arapahoe Basin ("A-Basin" as it's known to locals) on New Year's Day. I picked myself up, finished that run, and even did one more before before calling it a day.

By the time we got home, though, I couldn't straighten my right arm or bend it enough to touch my shoulder. And there was that teeny-weeny matter of excruciating pain, which is how we came to spend nearly four hours in the ER on the first day of 2009.

There was too much swelling around my elbow to get a clear image, but the docs said that the pattern of swelling on the X-ray was indicative of a fracture of the radial bone. Depending on what the orthopedic specialist says when I see him on Tuesday, I could be off the slopes for over a month.

In the meantime, I refuse to let Alison have one of my newly prescribed Percocets for her residual aches and pains from skiing. (She's 25, for God's sake, how many aches and pains could she really have?) I also wish that there had been a little less ice and lot more powder at A-Basin on Thursday, so that my landing could have been as soft as Patrick's was at Keystone last Sunday.