Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
April 29, 2005 • Friday
Meet my family's Golden Retriever, Dakota.
Since joining our family in 1997, he has been one of the best Retrievers to be a Golden, but not one of the best Goldens to be a retriever; he always loved chasing anything you'd throw, but was reluctant to give it back.
Though he started slowly, Dakota became a great source of joy to my family. These are my five favorite memories of our buddy:
1. My family owns a lakeside house in North Branford, Conn. The house looks over the water from a small, steep hill, about 30 feet up from shore. During an evening snowfall in January 2001, I made one of my final visits to my family before leaving for a two-month trip to Australia. About five inches of snow covered the hill and the frozen lake. Spontaneously, my brother and I carried a sled to the top of the yard and began taking turns down the hill. We gained so much momentum that the sled glided 50 yards out on the ice.
On each run, Dakota followed. He ran next to the sled, panting, racing us down the hill. At the bottom, on the ice, he lost his traction and his legs spread in random directions as he tried to remain upright. Dakota was not a dog that would let gravity and ice interfere with fun, so he tried the descent again and again. He fell more times than not, sliding on his rear, or on his shoulder, or on his side.
Each time again he stood, gingerly, awkwardly, like Bambi learning to walk, and shook the snow from his fur. Then he trailed us on the ice, dashed back up the hill, and began the game again.
2. Shortly after Dakota joined our family, he vacationed with us at a beach cottage in Cape Cod. We hunkered indoors on a Friday evening, shuttering ourselves against a violent Atlantic storm. When morning dawned, the sun shone bright, the sky was perfect blue, and a gentle breeze rolled over the waves toward the sand.
My brother, sister and I walked Dakota to the beach and unleashed him. He ran, kicking sand in the air behind him, running circles of a hundred-yard circumference, chasing sticks, chasing gulls, chasing us.
I had wanted a Golden Retriever for years, and this was exactly how I imagined having one would be. A ideal morning with an ideal dog.
3. Though a typical Golden in most ways, Dakota was atypical in others: He hated riding in the back of my roofless Jeep. He buried nothing, ever. And even at two years old, he wouldn't go in water. The latter problem was unacceptable.
After my mother and step-father bought the lake house in 1999, my brother forced Dakota to learn to like swimming. He carried Dakota into the lake, farther off shore each time, and Dakota skittishly swam back to land. But before long, something changed: Dakota started to enjoy his retreats, and those retreats soon ceased. From then on, Dakota would swim whenever someone gave him the opportunity. (Whether the opportunity was deliberate was irrelevant. More than once a freshly washed and dried Dakota slipped from someone's grasp and promptly plunged back into the lake.)
Unfortunately for me, I didn't witness the success of the swim lessons firsthand.
The following weekend I was treading water at the end of the dock when my sister called to me from the house. When I turned, she released the hound. Dakota, seeing me in the water, hurried off the deck, sprinted down the hill, and, never slowing, ran onto the dock and launched head-first over me, landing six feet out into the lake.
Dakota rarely walked into the water from shore; he dove from the dock. And when Dakota swam, he didn't just swim in the same water as you. He swam with you. He rarely had more joy on his face than when sharing the lake with the humans he loved. When swimming, I swear that dog smiled.
4. Dakota and the lake seem inseparable. If an animal can be soul mates with a geographical feature, then it can be no less than destiny that Dakota befriended that body of water.
In January 2004, on a dark, moonless night, my brother and I skated onto the ice. Dakota and my sister soon joined us at the far end of the lake. I don't know how she discovered Dakota's love for towing, but I turned toward a laugh and saw my sister holding the dog's hips as he trotted along the ice, pulling her, on skates, behind him. We each took turns enjoying a ride, all the way back to the house.
5. We saved Dakota. I don't know what from, but he was in trouble – I believe as a product of a puppy farm and a neglectful pet store.
We adopted Dakota from the group that rescued him. He came to our home, but was reluctant to come into our house. Outdoors he was a furry vessel of vigor. But indoors he sulked. He found a chair to hide behind, a corner to cower in, a table to vanish under. He refused to interact with anyone, even the cats that, outside, he blissfully chased through bushes and around the yard. He lay motionless, expressionless, wary, weary and despondent. I don't know what trauma he experienced in the weeks before he came to us, but it left him unsociable and dysfunctional.
His first night in the house, I knew that the only way to truly rescue this dog was to love him. Though we did not discuss a collaborative effort, each person in my family embraced Dakota with continuous affection. Within days, all signs of sadness were gone. He came to trust us and to love us in return. He became a different dog – a saved dog.
Henceforth he led a life that was happy, playful, spirited and fun. Not only did he welcome affection, he craved it and gave it.
I like to remember how Dakota found joy from our family, and how he returned so much of it to us.
Dakota
March 1, 1997 – April 25, 2005
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April 22, 2005 • Friday
Yesterday I was working on an article about tennis photography, and I began to reminisce about a piece I wrote for Tennis magazine in 1997. It's one of my favorite published works from early in my professional career.
The article was part of a special anniversary issue of Tennis that focused on the "best of" the previous ten years. My piece covered photographs submitted by some of the top professional tennis photographers in the world, telling the stories behind how each image was made.
I hardly ever mention it on this website, but I've also done a fair amount of photography work in the past decade, including shoots at pro tennis tournaments in the United States and Australia. When I was working on the article for Tennis, I had met only one of the photographers I was interviewing. Since then, I've developed friendly relationships with several of them, including Caryn Levy, Fred Mullane, Michael Cole and Michael Baz.
Also mentioned in that piece was Carol Newsom, another person I became friendly with over the years. Unfortunately, Carol, the first female photographer allowed to shoot at Wimbledon's Centre Court, died of cancer in 2003.
When I launched this website, I included a clip of the aforementioned article in PDF form. But I wanted to add a text version, which is faster to download and easier to read. So I took a break from my work today to type the old story into Word, format it in an HTML document, and upload it to the site.
The article is titled "Shooting Stars."
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April 21, 2005 • Thursday
For some of the more unique blogs on the Internet, I have to recommend checking out those of the residents of McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
Stories of nights that last months, sunsets that last hours, and temperatures frozen below zero. With some cool (ha!) photos thrown in, too.
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April 18, 2005 • Monday
An article of mine, "A Courtless Tennis Program for Countless Kids," appears in the new issue of Racquet Sports Industry magazine.
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April 13, 2005 • Wednesday
Sometimes the line between good literature and uncarefully constructed contrivance is not all that fine.
This week I started reading the novel The Da Vinci Code. The book has a nice font.
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My friend Ilene Wong, a writer and urologist in California, has started a blog. The goal, in her words, is "to get my sorry ass writing again."
Ilene has a writing style that's witty and intelligently humorous, which I'm sure will come through in her blog. Her first effort is the story of how she became interested in urology.
(5/15/05 Note: Link has been removed, as the blog has been privatized for professional reasons.)
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April 09, 2005 • Saturday
I just finished reading What Einstein Told His Cook, by Robert L. Wolke.
The book was cooked up (ha!) from Wolke’s food science column for The Washington Post, and is presented in a question and answer format.
Some sample questions: Why does vanilla extract taste terrible but improve other foods’ flavor? How does a microwave heat chicken? Why will leaving the refrigerator door open make the kitchen warmer?
Some sample answers: Foods that need to be marinated “overnight” may also be marinated during the day. A cup of coffee contains more caffeine than a shot of espresso. There’s no such thing as low-sodium salt — it’s a marketing gimmick.
For the answers to the sample questions, and for the questions to the sample answers, you’ll have to read the book. It’s worth it, for cooking buffs, science nuts and anyone in between.
(Tangent warning!)
If you read this blog yesterday, you may be wondering how I finished a 360-page book Thursday night and a 320-page book this morning.
No, I’m not one of those people who reads 10 books a week. I have important things to do during the day. And I work sometimes, too.
The answer is that I’d already read about 310 pages of What Einstein Told His Cook before I started reading Killer Angels.
I’m usually in the middle of about three, four or even five books simultaneously. Most of them are short-story collections, or column compilations, or writing tutorials, or other books whose formats make it easy to put them down for stretches of time. Those are the books that I read between the novels and the non-fictions that I read uninterrupted. In other words, they’re transition books, and they can take some time to get through.
What Einstein Told His Cook was a transition book for me. I’d read 20, 40, 60 pages between reading other longer texts. To read the whole book took me about three years.
Three of my remaining transition books are Rope Burns, by F.X. Toole, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace, both of which are collections of short stories, and Mirth of a Nation, a compilation of humor essays by writers such as Dave Barry, John Updike and Jay Jennings.
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April 08, 2005 • Friday
Last night I finished reading the Civil War novel Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara.
The book is a historical fiction account of the Battle of Gettysburg. The novel starts on the afternoon before the battle begins, when a Confederate spy first sees the Union army organizing to pursue Southern troops that have invaded Pennsylvania. The novel ends three and a half days later, with an evening storm flashing lightning and pouring rain down on fields and hills layered with American soldiers killed in action.
While I'm not a fan of Shaara's writing style, I can attest that he crafted a riveting tale of one of the United States' most tragic and historic moments.
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CNN.com reports that Spanish physicists have etched a silicon chip with the first paragraph of Don Quizote in type so small that "the whole 1,000-page book would fit on the tips of six human hairs."
Where are my reading glasses?
For more information, see " 'Don Quixote' paragraph fits on a chip."
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April 05, 2005 • Tuesday
On April 22 the U.S. Postal Service will officially release a postage stamp depicting and honoring writer Robert Penn Warren.
Warren — poet and author — wrote 1947's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the King's Men. Warren also won two additional Pulitzers for poetry, the only writer to ever do so.
The stamp is being released in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Warren's birth.
For more information, visit USPS.com.
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