I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow

“When you are still grieving weeks and months from now, and others think you should ‘just get over it’ or say he was ‘just a dog’ — ignore them and call me.” — Chris

My friend Chris is someone I've known for years, and unfortunately haven't talked to in a very long time. Despite her timeless beauty she is an old soul, and was absolutely right.

Jake died a year and a half ago and, indeed, I still miss him. Just last night — half awake in the pre-dawn — as I rolled over I automatically listened for his snoring and gently felt for the dimple in the memory foam so I could position myself around him without waking him up. Then I remembered.

I hadn't planned on stopping blog posts after Jake died. In fact, I kinda thought posting might help me work through the grief. But when I tried, the pain was too sharp. And honestly, life did what it always does: swelled up to fill the open spaces…with chores and trivia, sure, but also with joy and love and happiness too.

Since that tragic day, some monumental things have happened, the greatest one being that Ku accepted my proposal of marriage. Followed closely by him moving in with me.

I've wanted to blog about these events, but every time I started to post I'd get wrapped up in the topic of my last post and the non sequitur caused by going from that sorrowful event to, well, anything.

I do this: I build up in my mind the significance of something, making it more and more insurmountable, such that I need to make just the most excellent move, the perfect step, or I can't possibly proceed. It's a source of frustration to me, and to many around me. And The Next Post had become yet another example.

Well, it's time to break that down. This post is far from perfect, but it's necessary. It's a transition, sure, but it's also an affirmation that Jake is not forgotten and still mourned. I miss him every day, but it's not brought my life to a halt. Memories of him make me smile every time I see another dog, or when I travel one of our usual walking routes. He was always pulling me forward, and he's doing so again.

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I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow	Song by the Soggy Bottom Boys

In Memorium: Jacob Elijah Stone (1999 – 2011), a Very Good Dog

"Well, at least we don't need to smuggle him into Hawaii now," I said. Or tried to say, as my voice cracked and a lump wedged itself in my throat.

See, I want to live in Hawaii. As an island, Hawaii does not suffer the scourge of rabies, and they believe their strict import regulations — requiring all incoming dogs be quarantined for a month — help protect them from the virus. A perfectly reasonable precaution, I'm sure. However Jake would never survived a month in isolation. And he'd been consistently inoculated against rabies, and thus wouldn't pose any threat. He simply couldn't be held to such draconian standards, so I'd hatched a plan: Ku and I would sail to the Big Island with Jake, then smuggle him ashore at night. With an aloha bandanna and a hibiscus blossom behind his ear, I'd pass him off as a native dog. Easy.

The first step in the plan was getting Ku certified as a sailor. I argued he couldn't leave the Navy without being able to sail a boat; to shut me up he began sailing lessons, which ended with a freak storm capsizing his rental craft in the Potomac River.

Also I'd need to buy a boat, something at least 40' and able to transverse the voyage from Santa Cruz to Hilo. Next I'd have to get Jake used to being on it, not an easy task given the innate hatred of water he'd inherited from his Basenji ancestors. (Not a dislike, a hatred. He'd never even had a bath, as my first and only attempt had left me literally scarred across the abdomen.)

So there were still challenges ahead, and other than taking sailing lessons Ku was less than helpful. He offered up useless trivia and pointless commentary: "It takes at least 20 days to sail from California to Hawaii, 40' sailboats go for 60 grand, and you get claustrophobic in Economy Class, let alone the hold of a sloop. Plus somebody's going to notice when a brand-new Basenji appears in Hilo. There's no way this can work."

But all my fanciful plans and far-flung dreams came crashing down in early October 2010. Jake had been putting on weight for a while, but in September, when he was getting his nails trimmed for a trip to Mendocino, the vet techs had noticed his abdomen had become pendulous in a way that suggested a number of possible chronic conditions. On that trip his bloating and lethargy were noticeable, as well as his nausea and vomiting. (Something he had in common with Ku, who got stomach flu on that trip. Good times.)

After the Mendocino trip I took him back to the vet for a battery of tests, including an ultrasound. The blood work was maddeningly inconclusive, but the ultrasound showed him to be filled with fluid, and the specter of dark spots on several internal organs — most likely cancer. The vet attempted a procedure to obtain and culture a bit from one of the masses, but there was too much fluid. The attempt left Jake weaker than ever and with a bruise covering a quarter of his body.

Ku's good friend Alice was visiting the second weekend of October, when Jake was scheduled to see a veterinary internist. So all three of us went with him to the specialist. Still bruised, he wasn't doing well, but the internist was upbeat and positive as she said she'd get a handle on the situation. She and her skilled radiology tech would get a sample to culture, and figure out how to drain the fluid. We'd should have a treatment plan soon, she said.

Her outlook was markedly different when she returned. The ultrasound revealed metastatic tumorous masses on his liver, kidneys, spleen, and encircling the vena cava, the major vein that empties into the heart. She said the prolonged bruising from the earlier procedure suggested his liver was already failing so he wouldn't well tolerate another surgery to drain the fluid, and the bloating was pressing on his lungs, making breathing difficult, and his stomach, so he couldn't eat more than a small amount. She prescribed diuretics, though she said they probably wouldn't help him expel the abdominal fluids, which she believed were blood by-products left over from the tumor scavenging nutrients directly from the vena cava.

In short, she said he was at the end stage of cancer and should be euthanized now.

Back home, Jake dozed on the couch as I wept inconsolably about all the things we'd never do. How he'd never be the farm dog on a coffee plantation in Hilo, how he'd never again visit my folks in Iowa, how he'd never again stroll through his beloved Lighthouse Field, marking every other tree. Ku tried gamely to comfort me, and Alice stoically pulled together a meal so we could think about something other than Jake.

I figured I'd wait a few days — until Ku and Alice left — to make any final decisions. In the meantime, I filled the prescriptions on the off chance they'd make a difference.

Though he was born 25 August 1999, Jake came into my life in early 2000. I'd decided to get a dog and had been enamored with Basenjis — a medium-sized African hunting hound, noted for howling and yodeling instead of barking. In addition to contacting local breeders, my brother Todd (who was living with me in Santa Cruz at the time) and I would stop by the local SPCA to see what kinds of dogs were available. My bungalow is too small for a large breed and I didn't want a toy dog, so I wasn't too enthusiastic about all the pit bull and chihuahua mixes that seem to overrun Santa Cruz County.

But one day we happened upon a cage labelled "M, Basenji mix" with nary a dog in sight. While all the other cages had irresistible puppy piles or older dogs at the gate with their best hey-come-spring-me prances, this pup was hidden in the crate, warily eyeing the people passing by. With some coaxing a small black puppy, with white feet and a chest blaze, crept cautiously out, and after a few minutes was playfully grabbing at the hat I'd pushed through the chain-link.

Apparently his first family had named him Pepper, which wouldn't do at all. I rechristened him Jake while filling out the SPCA paperwork; later he was given the full name Jacob Elijah Stone, as everyone needs a middle name so they know when they're in trouble.

Todd and I brought him home and showed him the bungalow and the back yard. He seemed pleased, though he was probably just glad to be out of the shelter cage. We played with him for a bit then I headed out to buy some dog food. Todd and Jake were playing in the living room when I opened the front door and Jake immediately made a break for it. I put out my foot to impede his path; he deftly leapt over it, bounded across the front yard, and was down the sidewalk in seconds flat. We ran after him, which he took to be an exciting new game. Jake ran down to the end of the block, turned left, and headed for downtown. We chased him to Cedar Street where he thankfully turned left again instead of crossing the busy street. We caught up to him in the parking lot of the dry cleaners, scooping him up before the car pulling out had a chance to run him down. He licked my face, as if to say we should play the chasing game some more.

Over time, Jake came to understand he had a home. And that everything in the home was his. Each bed and couch was fair game for napping, every part of the back yard was suitable for marking, and all items that came out of the refrigerator, off the stove, or out of the oven were to be inspected, preferably by sampling. Anyone entering the house with any sort of goods were sniffed in a way that would make the TSA proud.

In exchange for his dominion, Jake guarded the house diligently…unless, of course, he was napping. Naturally knocks at the door or peals of the doorbell were cause for barking and hullabaloo, but ultimately those were people and people were my responsibility.

Jake's full fury was reserved for the truly life-threatening menaces: squirrels, rats, opossums, and raccoons. Clearly these plague-bearing, food-stealing, couch-inhabiting monsters needed to be repelled virulently with the full range of Basenji howls and growls, especially at 03:00. The tree-shrouded fence on the North side of the house was a handy elevated transit line for these creatures on their way to and from downtown dumpster diving. Often Jake would spy them through the living room window, usually when I was on the couch next to the window, watching TV. He'd leap into my lap then up onto the couch arm to bellow at the creature, his head just inches from my right ear and back legs planted firmly in my crotch. Once the offending vermin moved out of view, Jake would leap off the couch, and — paws scrabbling for purchase on the wood floor — fishtail around the couch, dash through the kitchen and dining room, dive through the dog door, sail off the back porch, and bound halfway up the fence.

He was a brave dog. Truth be told, he was 25 pounds of totally-convinced-of-his-superiority…until he was in over his head and yelping for rescue. But 'til that tide turned, Jake was as brave and bold as any dog could be. He treed dozens of raccoons, frightened scores of opossums into motionlessness atop the fence (which always, eventually, fooled him), and chased off hundreds of squirrels. He even had a couple of standoffs in the back yard, which ended with him being carried back into the house with a let-me-at-'em attitude that would make Scrappy Doo proud.

Because of the regularity of these late-night adventures, I'd become habituated to waking when I heard the dog door flap, in much the same way mothers can sleep through a marching band but hear their baby whimpering. One night I heard the odd sound of the door tentatively flap, flap, flapping, which was unusual as Jake normally went out for a while before coming back in. Concerned, I sat up and noticed Jake was still in bed with me. The door flapped again and Jake and I exchanged a look. You could almost see the wheels turning in his mind: "Wait...if I'm here and you're here..." Before I could grab him he was out of the bed and running toward the door with an ominous growl. By the time I reached the back yard with flashlight in hand, there was no sign of the trespasser. But little paw prints on the porch suggested a raccoon kit was unwisely investigating the dog door. The barbarians were repelled because they didn't know how to work the gate.

As he got older, his fervor faded a bit, but his vigilance never dimmed. Back in September, while I was in Philadelphia, Jake was being watched by his favorite sitter, Heather. They were both asleep in the early hours of the morning, when some drunk came onto the porch, looking to duck the remainder of a fight that had left him bruised and bleeding. At the sound of an uninvited interloper, Jake went on full alert, hackles raised, barking and howling as Heather called the police. All the commotion, along with her asserting the authorities were on the way, convinced the stranger to depart quickly. Despite being riddled with as-yet-undiagnosed cancer, Jake guarded his house once again.

And bravely, stoically, Jake faced his cancer, too. I started him on the two prescribed diuretics and a low-dose of painkiller. And against all expectation, he rallied! Within two weeks of the specialist's dire prognosis Jake had lost six pounds of excess fluids, and with the bloating gone he could eat again, and breathe easier. He became more active and we resumed long walks along the river and out to Lighthouse Field. October turned into November, which gave way to December. I tried to fill our time together with walks and couch naps and afternoons on the porch.

But this was indeed borrowed time; the diuretics kept him from bloating back up but weren't impeding the cancer. He started refusing food, pushing me to find more enticing meal options for him. Thus it was that I — vegan for the last 6½ years and vegetarian for 11 years prior to that — discovered there is a whole section at Trader Joe's with prepared meats. I'd never paid attention to that wall before, and Jake was delighted to sample prosciutto.

Jake remained stable enough for me to dash back to Iowa for Christmas and then a family trip to Orlando the first week of January, though Heather noted he was starting to eschew any food with pills in it. As January went on, he became more suspicious of his food. Every ball of brie or nugget of liverwurst was examined for pills, and when he found them he stalked off in disgust. Without the painkiller he was slowing down, and without the diuretics the swelling returned, though not as bad as before. And he was rapidly losing muscle tone, a result of tumor growth.

On February 2nd I noticed he was starting to jaundice, a sign of liver failure, and was clearly in pain. By the 3rd even the whites of his eyes were yellow and he was shaking most of the time. He hadn't eaten in days, his fur reflecting his spine, his ribs, and his hips in drastic detail.

So here's the deal: he's totally there for me, every day, every time. He's totally devoted to me, without question. I am his provider, his master, his world.

And in exchange, I take care of him. I have to do right by him. I have to help him navigate a world he doesn't really understand, keep him safe from dangers he can't quite comprehend, make the calls that are above his pay grade. He shouldn't hunger on my watch, nor thirst. And he damned sure shouldn't suffer. Which means the time comes when I need to make a call that will spare him further pain. I have to work the morbid calculus that balances the plucky fighter with swollen abdomen against the organ failure and seizures that are on the way. And when the thought of euthanizing my faithful companion makes my tearful breaths as ragged and shallow as his, I need to steel myself; he lived his life for me, now I need to repay the debt.

So on Friday, 4 February 2011, at 16:30, the vet came to our house. Jake hadn't moved from the couch the entire day, until he saw that white coat come through the door. He went out back, patrolled the yard one last time, then came back in and put the cares of this world behind him.

I don't know if there's any more to Jake's journey, if there's a special realm where he chases gazelles all day then waits on the porch for me to join him. But I do know I'll keep his memories alive within me until the end of my days. And I ask anyone who knew him to remember him from time to time as well.

How terribly strange to be seventy.

Yesterday I was walking Jake along Beach Street, which goes right by the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. We passed a gentleman who remarked "now there's an old friend" as he looked at Jake.

Sure, Jake's getting a lot of grey these days. He's just turned ten, which is purportedly 70 in human years, and he's looking a bit, well, distinguished. And while I don't want to focus on him getting old, I certainly appreciate the idea that he's an old friend. He's been through much with me: a couple of roommates, a couple of cross-country trips, nine band reviews, one bike race, numerous vet visits, and more than a thousand walks.

I'd like to think Jake's anonymous commenter was remarking on the long and rewarding life Jake's had, and not just his grey fur. While he can still be a challenge, there's not a day with Jake I don't treasure.

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"How terribly strange to be seventy."	Lyric from the song Old Friends by Simon and Garfunkel

Here I stand and I'm waiting.

Today was Jake's tenth birthday! We celebrated by going to dinner at Café Limelight here in Downtown Santa Cruz, as we've done for many of his prior birthdays. For a dog, Jake's eaten at restaurants a lot. I'd reckon he goes out to eat at least five times a year, so he's had at least 50 dining-out experiences.

Yet for all that, he's still not comfortable just waiting to be served. Rather, he knows there's food about so he spends the entire time intently focused on when and how a meal will appear.

Dining out with a dog means eating on patios. I've yet to find an establishment that allows dogs inside; you're always out on the patio or deck, away from other patrons. The best places, like Café Limelight, bring you water in a dog bowl, and have options on the menu just for the pets. Limelight, for instance, has a plate of sliced roast turkey just for dogs. (It helps that the couple who own Limelight are pet guardians themselves.)

Anyone who's dined out knows there's a routine to table service. First there's the seating, greeting, and menu presentation. This is followed by the water service, then the drink order. When the drinks arrive you order the starters or the main courses. Between ordering and food service, there are usually a couple of table visits to refill the water or refresh any complimentary items like bread or chips.

Well, from the moment we sit down at a table, Jake locks onto whomever approaches, convinced they have a bowl or plate full of food for him. At Café Limelight, the tables on the patio face the door, so Jake spends all him time there staring at the main door, waiting for someone, anyone, to bring him food. Every person who comes through that door is, quite literally, a potential meal ticket, and Jake eyes them like they're the last of the good leads in Glengarry Glen Ross. When the long-awaited plate of turkey arrives, it's devoured in under a minute, with more time spent looking for wayward scraps around the plate than was taken eating the actual payload.

Even the check is a source of confusion, with Jake eyeing it as if it were another course. The clearing of the table, though, just like at home signals the end of the meal. As the dishes are removed, Jake finally relaxes a bit, patrolling under the table to find any dropped bits then, at last, coming to rest by his backpack in preparation for the walk home.

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"Here I stand and I'm waiting."	Lyric from the song Waiting by Chris Issac

Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!

The morning of the Fourth of July, I attached a steel flagpole bracket to the front porch of my house, so I could fly the American flag proudly on our Day of Independence.

Afterward, I looked up and down my block, but mine was the only flag I could see. I knew that two blocks down in front of Fire Station #1 there was a flag flying, and two block in the other direction there'd be a flag in front of the Louden Nelson Community Center, but mine appeared to be the only American flag on a residence that I could see.

Perhaps my neighbors didn't have flags. After all, it's been eight years since most anyone around here has had any faith, let alone pride, in their government. Or perhaps they couldn't fly a flag, as many of them are renters and don't have the right to attach a flag to their house or apartment.

No matter. My personal admiration for the Obama administration was enough to inspire me to proudly raise the Stars and Stripes, and there could not have been a more beautiful day to do so. The sky was clear and blue and the temperature was mild; a perfect day to sit on the porch with Jake and offer a hearty greeting to the passersby.

Addendum: after reading this post my friend Gregory chided me, saying I should "fly the flag regardless of whether or not you support the particular Commander In Chief currently in place. I think it's particularly important to remain patriotic during the troubling times in America while we work to make it better." And he's right.

In my haste to finish a blog post, I used the Obama administration as a shorthand to represent the social and political awakening taking place in the United States during the past couple of years. It was a lazy characterization, but worse it left the wrong impression. I raised my flag on the Fourth of July not because I support only this specific CINC, but because I am so proud that people across this nation are electing responsible representatives and demanding accountability from officials, and I believe the current administration is encouraging and supporting this resurgence of citizenship.

In the most literal sense, a flag represents a country; a marker used at multinational gatherings. But when you, an individual, raise a flag it's no longer a simple marker, it's a proxy for your own patriotism. It becomes imbued with your beliefs about citizenship, governance, rights, and responsibilities. And if the country doesn't currently match your beliefs, flying the flag is an inspiration to you to work for the greater good. (This is also why many people find it so offensive to see the Confederate flag flown, as they don't want to believe there are people in the US currently striving to divide the Union and enslave parts of the population.)

Therefore, I should have been as eager to raise my flag last year or the year before as I was this year. It should have been as natural as studying position papers, donating to progressive candidates, canvassing loved ones, or any of the other things I've been doing to help America reach her potential.

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"Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!"	Lyrics from America the Beautiful — words by Katherine Lee Bates, melody by Samuel Ward, covered by Mannheim Steamroller (and countless others)

Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather.

A month ago I potted some plants, including cilantro. Normally I don't do well with plants, but I've been making an effort to keep these watered.

Well tonight I made a batch of salsa and thus had occasion to harvest some of my flourishing herb. I'm amazed at how much the cilantro has grown in just a month; here's a shot of the plant after I cut about a half-a-bunch's worth off the bottom. It's already two feet tall, and showing no signs of slowing down.

The cilantro was the perfect touch in a batch of restaurant-style salsa, giving it a fresh snap of flavor. The salsa's easy to make and the secret, taught to me years ago by my buddy, Tony, is to parboil the tomatoes and jalapeños before blending. This keeps them from turning rancid in a couple of days, and keeps the salsa from becoming too watery.

Tonight, for instance, I parboiled two roma tomatoes and three jalapeño peppers. (Use roma tomatoes as they have less pulp, once again helping avoid watery salsa.) Don't let the water come to an actual boil, and stop when the tomato skins peal. For an added depth of flavor, I add a handful of peppercorns to the water.

While the produce was parboiling, I stripped the leaves off the half-bunch of cilantro and put them in the food processor. Then I pulled the tomatoes and jalapeños out of the peppered hot water and put them in the processor. Next I poured in a 15-ounce can of "fire-roasted" crushed tomatoes — yep, that's why there were only two fresh tomatoes. I like to use a mix of fresh and canned, and the roasted ones have a nice smoky note. Finally I added about a quarter-teaspoon of chopped garlic (just used the stuff in a jar if you have it) and some salt and pepper.

Pulse until it looks like what you want: not too chunky and not soup. This particular ratio turned out great, with a bit of heat but not too much. I mushed up an avocado and added three spoonfuls of salsa for a quick-and-dirty guacamole, which made a fine dinner accompanied by blue-corn chips and paired with a 2005 Beaujolais Villages.

Oh, and not that I wanted to turn this blog into some sort of HGTV special, but since I mentioned my recent gardening efforts, I figured an update on the poppies is in order. As shown in the picture, the California poppies I potted a month ago are now in glorious bloom! Each pot is thriving and they seem to take turns bursting forth with flowers. Which reminds me...they're probably due for some water...

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"Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather."	Lyric from the song Scarborough Fair/Canticle by Simon and Garfunkel

The talking trees are silent in a noisy way.

We got our trees today!

A week ago I noticed that squares had been spray-painted on the sidewalk in front of the parking lot next to my house. Inside the squares was the notation "tree." I was quite excited by the notion we might be getting some new trees on our block; sure enough, this morning three trees arrived on a flat-bed truck, along with a crane to lift them into place.

A crew cut away the concrete sidewalk, dug a hole, and put the young trees in place. They placed three trees along the face of the lot, one at each end and one in the middle. (The trees were placed on the Center Street side of the lot; the Cedar Street side has trees already.)

The foreman says the trees won't grow too tall and hit the power lines, but rather should fill out nicely. They will definitely add some beauty to a dull stretch of block. And give Jake something new to anoint.

It's cool the city had budget for this.

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"The talking trees are silent in a noisy way."	Lyric from the song The Singing Sea by Tulivu-Donna Cumberbatch

Let Our Garden Grow

Potted the remaining California Poppy plant today. I also picked up some cilantro and rosemary that were on sale and potted those, too. I'm hoping they all will be easy to grow, given my indifference to rigorous gardening methods (read: inability to water regularly).

I put the pots up on the back steps so they will get more sun. I'm hoping this placement also makes it difficult for Jake to pee on them.

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Let Our Garden Grow	Song by The Bad Plus

Doddering Shuffle.

Driving home from work last night I was listening to my iPod shuffle. Jake was sleeping; despite all his attributes he's rather indifferent to music it seems.

The shuffle is currently holding 280 ska songs. I leave it set on shuffle mode and let it wander through the range of first-, second-, and third-wave ska on-board. Sometimes it plays successive songs from the same artist or group, but last night it did something odd: it played the same song twice in a row.

First it played "Meat Dance" by Slow Gherkin off the split CD Invisible Tank. This caught my attention because it's a more up-tempo cut of the song, released in 1998, that I hadn't heard recently.

That was immediately followed by the original cut of "Meat Dance" off the 1995 comp This is Raj...and This is Ska. Weird. Out of 280 songs, what are the odds the shuffle would play two version of the same song, one right after the other.

Even stranger is that I randomly Autofill my shuffle from my ska library, currently holding 681 songs. (Raise your hand if you didn't thing there were that many ska tracks in the world. Now put your hand down; you look like a fool sitting in front of a computer with your hand raised.)

So out of the random Autofill where only a third of the songs will be selected, these two tracks made it into the shuffle, then while being played randomly, they end up back-to-back. (Well, technically back-to-front, but that's not the expression.)

If I didn't know better, I'd say the Universe is trying to tell me something.

Made in China.

The house rebelled recently.

I came home after a not-so-great day at work, and while I was changing I noticed the sound of running water in the bathroom, which was odd as I don't normally just leave water running all day. Investigating revealed the toilet was no longer shutting off when the tank filled, and the excess water was pouring out the overflow valve. The shut-off mechanism appeared to have simply failed at some point while I was at work.

Wanting more light to inspect the innards of the toilet tank, I pulled (in retrospect perhaps a bit too vigorously) on the chain of the ancient wall-mounted light fixture in the bathroom. The light snapped on with a fascinating new sound which, it turns out, indicated it will never turn off again. So now my bathroom featured never-ending water and light. Great.

I cut the water to the toilet and, with the aid of a potholder, removed the light bulb from the fixture. At least things were stable until I could get parts. I went into the kitchen to make dinner and enjoy some Big House Pink. It was a complex recipe: open can, pour soup into Pirex, cover with cling wrap, poke holes in wrap, put in microwave. The oven light came on, but that was the only normal thing it did. The soup wasn't rotating in the chamber, and the oven made an ominous low rumble and grind. I quickly pressed Stop, then tried again. Same ominous low rumble, and by now I could feel the radiation pouring out of the appliance and metastasizing every abnormality in my body.

That was it. Clearly I needed to wander the house, shouting obscenities at everything that wasn't working. Oddly enough, that didn't fix anything, but it did convince Jake to go hide on the bed until I was done.

Thus it was I headed to Crapitola the following weekend to get what I needed to put the household back in reasonable working order. First stop was OSH, where I learned the part I needed for the toilet has the rather improbable name of "ballcock." (I assume it was an old plumber's joke gone wrong.) Then I searched for new bathroom wall fixtures, but couldn't find any suitable. So I tracked down a pull chain switch so I could attempt to fix the existing fixture. It was about then I noticed that both the ballcock and pull chain switch, along with every light fixture I'd looked at, were made in China. Curious, I wandered OSH and found a surprising number of items for sale were also made in China.

Then it was across the street to Sears for a microwave oven. They had a nice, basic, little oven on sale for $49. Sure enough, made in China. As was every other microwave oven they offered.

My friend Mark had tried, several years ago, to avoid buying anything made in China based on his concern over their apparent disregard for human rights. But he'd eventually given up because, it seemed, some things were just no longer made outside of China. Judging from my experience shopping the other weekend, nowadays most things aren't made outside of China.

Now I've never been a protectionist, but I'm starting to wonder about just what, in fact, America does for a living. And I'm not the only one. Even globalization fanboy Thomas Friedman is noticing a disturbing imbalance in U.S.-China trade, as he said in his column of 20 July:

"So many U.S. dollars and jobs are flowing to China, it is becoming politically and economically unsustainable for the Bush team."

For a man who thinks unfettered global trade is the bee's knees, he's certainly worried about one specific trade deficit. Beyond the sheer financial implications, Mr. Friedman acknowledges a point that many have been making lately, and that I tried to make to my friend Todd just last week:

"While we have been focused on 9/11 and Iraq, China and America have become, in economic terms, Siamese twins."

But why would this be an issue? Why would the current regime be waiving their Iraq hand in our faces while their China hand is up a sleeve, out of sight? The August issue of The Progressive postulates an answer in their editorial 'The Bush Plunge:'

"[Bush] and Cheney and Rumsfeld understand that the world economy runs on oil, that Saudi Arabia's supplies are peaking, that the House of Saud is unstable, and so Iraq, with the second largest oil reserves in the world, is 'vital.' By controlling Iraq's oil, the United States also can have more leverage over the Pentagon's enemy on the horizon, China, which now desperately needs to import oil to keep its economy chugging."

While it's tempting to dismiss this idea as liberal folderol, do note how similar it is to the "Tiananmen-Texas Bargain" Mr. Friedman attributes to Steven Weber of the Institute of International Studies in Berkeley, to wit: China offered their middle class steady economic growth in exchange for voting rights, growth fueled by the U.S. trade imbalance that allows China to underwrite vast amounts of our debt.

So, what can save the United States, besides a dubious and costly war in the Middle East? Lately many talking heads, including Mr. Friedman, have opined that China needs to revalue their currency, the yuan. And that's exactly what they did last Thursday. No longer pegged at a fixed rate against the U.S. dollar, the yuan will now "float against a basket of currencies," as the BBC said in their indubitably British way.

So now it's all good? Everything's going to be OK? Well let's not forget the concerns about human rights that had my buddy Mark checking labels a few years back. And the fears of environmental damage spurred by China's breakneck industrial growth. However, recent events in China suggest the very large and ever-more-informed populace is deciding they won't be sacrificed to their government's economic dreams. Riots are said to be sweeping the nation as the Chinese seem to be less willing to tolerate government indifference and corruption.

But where are we on buying Chinese goods? Listen, if I had all the answers, I wouldn't be penning a blog, Lone Gunmen-style, at almost Midnight on a work night. Besides, I need to fix my toilet.