THE BLACK DOG

A couple of days ago, the New York Times ran a 5” x 7” photo on its front page, above the fold. The story that went with the photo began on page 8. It was about the war in Ukraine.

Specifically, the story was about the need to find enough soldiers to continue the fight against Russia. When Russia first invaded Ukraine two years ago, there was no problem finding men to join the army. Recruits lined up by the thousands. Enthusiasm was high. Expectations were patriotic and upbeat.

But things are different now. The war has reached an apparent stalemate. Nearly 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 120,000 wounded. And many of the soldiers still fighting are exhausted and ready to go back home. Except they can’t go home because there aren’t enough fresh soldiers to replace them.

And so morale is low and the enthusiasm for joining the fight has evaporated. Many young men are avoiding the army or have fled to another country. The new recruits tend to be older men, not quite up to the physical demands that war imposes.

So there is talk of a draft. The army says it needs it. The civilians say they don’t like it. No one in the government is ready to take responsibility for instigating it. And so the dilemma stalks the countryside like a ghost over the battlefield.

The front-page photograph, taken by Tyler Hicks, one of the Times’ most celebrated photographers, shows two Ukrainian soldiers sitting under a lean-to, open-sided, make-shift shelter. The sky is gray. The ground wet and muddy. The field behind them flat and empty, with thin stalks of vegetation lining the edge of a kind of roadway.

And into this bleak scene wanders a small black dog. Homeless, wet, hungry, tentative, stepping through the mud, unnoticed by the two soldiers. His left leg poised above a puddle.

Neither soldier sees him, but they soon will. Do they have food to give him? Something warm to wrap around him to ward off the January cold?

It’s a minor miracle that the dog has survived this long. Pets have been left behind by the hundreds — perhaps the thousands — painfully abandoned by their owners fleeing from the front lines. Drones have brutalized the land and wiped out homes and schools and apartments and hospitals. Dead bodies lie scattered on the ground like victims of a plague.

And dogs, like this young fellow, wander through the countryside, hungry, afraid, cold and unloved. They are the leftovers of war. They once had homes. They once slept peacefully. They once thought life was good.

Now they know it isn’t. And in their disappointment and confusion, they wander through the battlefields and the empty villages, looking for the tiniest bit of food, the smallest comfort from strangers, the meanest shred of shelter.

Their lives used to be good, they think. They used to be happy. But then something happened. Something terrible.

The dogs wonder if it was their fault. Maybe they weren’t good enough. Maybe they did something bad. Maybe if they had another chance, things would go back to the way they used to be..

But wars never explain anything.

And so the black dog will always wonder what it was that went wrong and caused him to walk one day through the mud to ask one of the soldiers if he could stay with him for the night, or until the rain stops and the noise in the sky stays as quiet as a dream.

Breaking Time

It’s very quiet here in that part of the city where I live. It’s late-morning on a Friday. Yale students walk by my apartment on their way to classes and lectures. A light snow is falling. The thermometer outside my study window reads 27.

I am in pain, as I have been for the past three weeks. My upper back hurts from my aging discs and curved spine. I am lucky to get four hours of sleep at night. I sit in my reclining chair with a folded light blanket behind me for support. I sometimes use my heavy-duty moist heat pack to warm my back. I sometimes wear my support brace.

But most of the time I just wear my normal, relaxed inside clothes and let it go at that. When you’re old, pain comes with the territory.

Except when I have to go outside and do things. I met with my dermatologist yesterday for our annual look at my aging and sagging body. She said my skin looked fine. No signs of skin cancer, except for one small spot on my forehead that was pre-cancerous. So she dug it out and gave me medicine to treat it as it heals.

We set up an appointment for my next yearly exam. That will be February 27, 2025. I’ll be 87 then. Most of the people in the obituaries I check each morning in the local newspaper are dead by that age. I will have to beat their odds.

It is still snowing softly. But the snow is accumulating. I will have to go out later and brush the snow off my car. I will not drive anywhere. But I will be ready.

And then yesterday I stopped at the Honda garage and asked if they could fix a side of my fender that had popped out during the more serious snow and wind and ice a few days ago. I just dropped in, with no warning, no appointment. A mechanic came over, bent down and thought he might be able to fix it. He drove the car into the back, put it on a lift, looked at it from different angles, pushed and pulled and yanked, added a screw and fixed it.

I was very grateful and asked him how much I should pay him. He said, “no charge. Just think of us when you need service.” I told him I’d been bringing my car to this garage for the past 17 years. It’s a Honda dealership and I actually bought my car there.

And then I gave him fifty dollars in cash. He didn’t look at the amount, just shyly put it in his pocket. I asked him his name. “Robbie,” he said. We shook hands and then he walked back into the garage.

I always carry more than a hundred dollars in cash in my wallet. So it was easy for me to give him a generous tip. But people tell me — people of all ages — that they pay everything by credit card nowadays and seldom carry more than a few dollars in cash. That is another modern trend I find dehumanizing.

My citizenship card is way out of date. I don’t believe in most things that people do. Our new robotic life style is just too mechanical and antiseptic for me. I still feel most comfortable in a world where cash can still pass from hand to hand.

But there are still a few other holdouts. A small restaurant here in the city that only serves breakfast and early lunch refuses credit card payment. If you’re going to eat there, you’ll have to pay cash. It’s called “The Pantry,” which itself is a word from an earlier time.

No one today buying a house or a condo wants to see where the pantry is. There is no pantry.

There is no broom closet, either, no vestibule, no attic. Modern times have refined out of existence human touches of cultural character. People today prefer streamlined and expensive market values, with a work-out space for the electric bike.

No cash, no pantry. Life today is just another streaming service. Life used to be about character. Now it’s about speed. I still turn on my radio. I still drive a 17-year-old car. I still remember the day before yesterday. I still send birthday cards.

But for most people, there is no yesterday, only today. And today is more a three-dimensional imitation called Artificial Intelligence than it is a guy named Robbie.

Maybe you have to live up north near the woods of Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine, where loons are still free to howl and people still carry axes and syrup still flows out of trees and in the summer, the moon covers the landscape like it did a thousand years ago, when the deer thought they heard something stir.

Covid And Then Some

He had gotten all his shots, going back to February 2021, when Covid first appeared as an international menace. He got three shots that year: two in February and one in September.

Then he got a booster in April 2022 and another in October. And this year, he got yet another Covid booster shot in October 2023.

Plus, he got shots to ward off the flu and some other viral villain RSV or some-such.

Two months later, he came down with the actual Covid disease. .

He thought he had the flu. He felt lousy, and after a couple of days, he went to see his doctor to find out what was what.
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The doctor swabbed his nostrils and gave the swab to his assistant to test. The doctor called him two hours later to say he had tested positive for Covid. The doctor called the pharmacy to order Paxlovid.

He picked up the prescription himself, wearing a mask to protect the rest of the world from his filthy infection, and took three tablets twice a day for five days. Paxlovid helps you get through your Covid infection easier than usual, and is supposed to protect old people and people with other medical issues.

He is 86 years old and has coronary heart disease. Paxlovid is designed for people like him.

Except there’s a catch. Evidence suggests that Paxlovid can also provoke a “rebound” in some people. Which is to say, you can get a touch of Covid yet again, after you’ve finished with the first dose.

So you get Covid after taking all those yearly booster shots. Then you take a medicine that helps you get through the Covid infection you mysteriously contracted, despite the boosters. The medicine helps you navigate the infection safely, except then it can provoke a rebound.

So that after you’re cured of the first dose of Covid, you get a second dose of Covid thanks to the helpful medicine you were advised to take because of your vulnerability.

That’s what he’s been living with for the past few weeks. He hasn’t gone on his daily two-mile walk in 21 days. He may try to walk a mile later this afternoon. He drives his car in the early morning to feed the birds.

They say it will probably rain or snow tomorrow night and into Sunday.

He is re-reading Don DeLillo’s novel, “Falling Man,” a deeply unsettling novel wonderfully written, about the immediate after-effects of 9-11.

He was healthy back in those days, flying to Paris 16 times over a four-year period. He stayed in the same small hotel each time near the Place de la Bastille. He had a neighborhood, French friends, an English-language bookstore nearby, owned by a beautiful and smart Canadian woman named Penelope.

There was no Covid in those days.

And he was nowhere near 86.

Today, he feels more distant than ever from the world passing by outside his window. The world is going to places that no longer interest him. He feels it is on the wrong track in just about everything it does.

He tested negative yesterday and two days last week.

By today’s standards, that’s good.

In today’s narrative, Negative is the new Positive. Up is the new Down. Out is the new In.