“Edward H. Lehner, a New York lawyer, legislator and judge who, as a state assemblyman in the 1970s, helped pass a groundbreaking ‘pooper-scooper’ law … died on Sept. 9 in Brooklyn. He was 93.” (NYTimes/Sarah Lyall)
It is wild to me that the principle that dog owners should pick up their dogs’ poop was controversial as recently as when I was a teenager.
Lehner suggested using a disposable plastic bag attached to a pole to pick up the poops. But honestly it’s not a big deal. Just wrap your hand in a plastic bag and pick up the poops. You won’t die. It’s not even gross, not really. Wash your hands when you get home and don’t handle food or a beverage until you do.
As a judge, Lehner blocked Donald Trump, then just a real estate developer, from seizing control of the Empire State Building in 1999 and denied a home buyer’s claim “that he should have been informed, before making a down payment, that the house he was purchasing was infested with poltergeists. (The decision was famously overturned when an appellate court ruled that ‘as a matter of law, the house is haunted.’)”
We are still struggling to heal Minnie’s ulcerated eye. She won’t eat with the Elizabethan collar (aka “cone of shame”) on. She has done so in the past, but she has forgotten and has now decided it’s impossible and she stands next to her food looking confused.
Until today, we took the cone off her to let her eat, but that meant she was un-coned for 60-90 minutes per day and free to scratch at her eye and rub it on the ground. No wonder it isn’t healing. It should have been obvious this was a bad idea.
I tried putting the food on a flat plate and elevating it on a footstool, about a foot of the ground. Nope.
So I took the cone off her to let her eat while I supervised her from a distance of less than three feet, to be sure she didn’t scratch at the eye.
Because she is a senior dog with kidney disease, we feed her three times a day. Also, I’m giving her eyedrops four times a day. I have gotten very good at giving the dog eyedrops. I feel pleased with myself when I do it quickly and efficiently, less so when I dribble the eyedrops on her face. Notwithstanding those feelings of pride at a job well done this is not a skill I ever wanted to acquire. This is going to be how we do things for another week, then hopefully she’ll be healed up.
This afternoon at the vet, when it was time to bring Minnie home, I just lowered the cone to face-level on the dog and she stuck her head right in it. The vet-tech was impressed. I acted nonchalant as if this was not a surprise to me.
The Interview: Chris Rock Has Been Thinking About Forgiveness [David Marchese / The New York Times]
“Rodeo Drive and Skid Row are in the same city, probably eight, 10 miles apart. In a lot of ways, America’s like that: very rich, very poor. We live in a world where either you order shit or you deliver shit], and you really don’t want to deliver [expletive], you know?”
Also:
You don’t really realize if you love somebody until you have to forgive them. I can enjoy myself with just about anybody. It’s when somebody tests you, when somebody betrays you, when somebody lets you down and you still want to be around them – that’s love. I have a friend that’s going to be nameless that might have gotten canceled. Another friend of mine was like, “How can you be friends with that person?” I was like, “If you’re only friends with your friends when they’re good, they’re not your friends.” If you’ve got a bunch of people that are only going to be there when you’re good, you have no friends. That doesn’t mean condoning abusive behavior; you can reprimand your friends. That’s also part of friendship.
Despite the headline, Rock genially but firmly cuts off questions about the Will Smith slap. He says he has said everything he is going to say about the subject, and wishes everyone well.
Jamelle Bouie: I cannot emphasize enough that the president has pudding for brains. youtube.com/watch