Some months back, I watched Ken Burns’ remarkable series about country music. It was like a graduate course about the origins and evolution of this kind of music in the United States. I actually took notes. So many performers over so many decades were described, with videos of them performing, wearing outfits that were almost…

You can tell from the title of this blog post that I am a dog lover. The first dog in my life was a Kerry Blue terrier, who came to my family with the name Cheer. I was seven years old, and she was the only dog we ever had. Actually, the breeders where we…