In Memoriam: Renee Good and Alex Pretti

 

Renee Good and Alex Pretti now have Wikipedia pages about them. Well, not about them. About their deaths. Their pages are titled "The Killing of...." These are detailed accounts of what happened to each of them at the hands of ICE  and Border Patrol agents.

Those pages are not really about Good and Pretti, not their lives or their personalities, not what a great mom Good might have been or how Pretti was well-liked among the doctors and nurses he worked with. Just how they were shot, what brought about the circumstances and how they both died in the street as people on both sides of this domestic terror looked on.

Can you imagine? You get up one day just like any other average human in this country, go through your normal morning routine, whatever it may be--coffee, a shower, a kiss goodbye to your loved ones--and you exit home, never to return. By end of day, reporters, journalists, law enforcement agents, are scanning all your social media, swiping your photos and posting them--the ones that make you look great, the ones you wish had never gotten 'out there.' Your friends and co-workers and family members are being interviewed. "Tell us about...." While your body lies on a slab in the morgue. 

Within days, your name is being used in a slogan. "Be Pretti Good." It's all over social media. You are vilified by some, heroic to others.

Because they know you only by that one act. That one moment when you made a decision to participate instead of sitting on the sidelines. You didn't expect you were offering your life. You didn't expect you were giving up all your dreams for the future. You didn't expect it would break the hearts of those who love you. You just thought it might make, on that one day, a tiny difference.

What is the most heartbreaking for me about those Wikipedia pages is that these two individuals are defined there by what happened to them. Not by who they were. Not by their hopes and dreams and aspirations. Not by their day-to-day lives. Alex Pretti had a dog. Just like me. Renee Good loved to sing and write poetry. Just like me.

Whether you see them as villain or hero, they were, in truth, just like me. Just like you. I hope to heaven you see that. See them.

Pupdate

 

As is evident from the above photo, Miss Maudie was not at all happy with her vet appointment on Monday. We really just went for vaccinations, but the doc had to check her out first, and someone in the room (I’m not naming names, but there were only three of us in there) snapped at the good doctor who had been so gentle and careful with her. Oops. Thus the muzzle for everyone’s safety.

We did get those vaccinations, finally, but before that, the doc and I had a long chat about Maudie’s left hind leg. When she had her first vet appointment a year ago, I had the vet who saw us at the time x-ray her leg because I noticed that every third bounce in her gait was a skip—as if she had a peg leg. That vet (who no longer works at this hospital) examined the x-ray and found nothing.

This vet found something. (Shout out to Banning Veterinary Hospital in Banning, California, for keeping that digital x-ray as part of her chart so we could quickly pull it up and look at it together. Dr. Sobotka (who worked patiently with my spicey dog, bless him forever) stared at that x-ray for many long moments before finally saying, “I think I see the problem.”

He pointed to a shadow on her left femur that I would never have been able to discern, comparing it to the opposite leg.

“She has an old injury here,” he said. “Unfortunately, since it healed on its own, there’s nothing we can do to fix it.”

It’s okay. I didn’t cry. Well, not then, anyhow. And anyway, I already suspected as much, watching her run, knowing that she had clearly been kicked in the past. (See my post of December 17, 2025.) But I had to ask, so I did, if the injury would be consistent with someone kicking her. Yes, it could have been that, he told me, his voice as sad as my face probably looked.

Whatever. We already know that someone threw this dog away after they were cruel to it. Karma is a bitch. Not my dog, though. She’s a little sweetheart. (Even if the vet tech did have to enlist help from the back to hold her down so they could immunize her. Sheesh!)

I gave Maudie an old older lady name because it is my intention that we will grow old together. So we’re starting on that journey together, both having leg issues. Dr. Sobotka suggested massage for Maudie’s leg, encouraged our hiking (yay!) while warning that one day (like me) she would begin to have some pain from arthritis in that spot, at which point we can start her on some meds to help with that. We take one day at a time, and after every hike I will be scrutinizing her gait to make sure we don’t attempt anything too rigorous for her. We’ll be fine.

Oh, and one last suggestion from the doc (after I inquired): Maudie needs to lose weight. Yep. This little chowhound has gained eight pounds in one year. So much for using treats to help socialize her. We will cut back on everything, and I promised the doc that when he sees us next year, we’ll both be five pounds lighter (insert grimace here).

Now if I can just get my neighbor next door to stop giving Maudie bacon….

After the vet visit. Poor baby!

2026 Here We Go

 

I’m not one to make a big deal of the calendar flip—or actually, I guess, calendar renewal, as I pull one from the wall and replace it with another Black Cat calendar from Willow Creek Press. (Yes, I know I have a calendar on my phone and on my computer, and no, I don’t use them. I love standing in front of 30/31/28 blocks of time with a pen in my hand and organizing my days.)

Nor am I one to make New Year’s resolutions. (Previously, I had the same resolution every January 1^st: Turn my mattress over. But we don’t turn mattresses anymore. We rotate them. And we’re supposed to do that once a month. I try.) However, I do want to make a couple of changes in 2026, so I’m going to resolve to do so by putting them here in writing for all the world to see (or, probably, the thirty or so people who will actually read to the end of this post).

So here we go:

1. I resolve to post to my blog once a week every other week. Even in the year that I started the blog—which was, like, seventeen years ago, holy cow!—I didn’t post every week. But I was still teaching then. Life on the mountain was idyllic but busy, and I only had weekends to compose posts. Now I have more time at home, but I’m working on multiple writing projects, so I’m still busy. Anyway, doesn’t matter—I’m determined to post more often. There, I said it.

2. I resolve to play my guitar every day. Strange as it may seem, this one is way, way harder. Right now, I’m sitting at my computer desk in the dining room. My guitar is approximately seven feet away, sitting on a stand, ready to be picked up and played. But Jenny is sitting on top the writing desk by the window, gazing out to the street, watching the rain fall and hoping to see a bird hop onto the porch. If I pick up the guitar, she’ll leave me and head for the bedroom. So will Maudie, who is lying on the floor nearby. No matter how quietly I play, for some reason, the big wooden box with strings makes them anxious.

Also… and this is harder… I have lost a great deal of the tonal quality of my voice. “That shouldn’t matter!” I hear you protest. No really, it does matter. Singing now… is often heartbreaking. As we age, our voices lower and we lose the elasticity in our tissue, which means our vocal cords (which are actually flaps, not cords) cannot stretch the way they did when we were young. For me, this means that, while I may pick up my guitar and play an old tune, I may not be able to sing it.

Here's the truth: I learned to play the guitar when I was fifteen because singing brought me comfort at a time when I was clinically depressed. At that age, I was yet to realize how much of an emotional outlet writing can be. Singing was my form of self-expression, and when I was alone, which was often, I sang constantly. I learned to play not because I loved the guitar, but because I loved to sing. I still do. I sing to Jenny and Maya and Maudie constantly. But those are simple, silly songs. Not my old classics—“Sunrise, Sunset.” “El Shaddai.” “Danny Boy.” “Suzanne.” So many Peter, Paul, and Mary songs. So many Dylan songs. On rare occasions I will listen to the professional CD I made in 1982, and I am astounded at the quality of my voice back then. If I had known that I would one day lose it…. Sigh….

Therefore... I just haven’t been playing the little mahogany acoustic guitar I so happily purchased when I retired. I had so many hopes and dreams then…. Well, some of them have come to fruition. Maybe if I play my guitar every day and gently push those vocal flaps into doing some calisthenics, I will come a bit closer to what I was once capable of. (Calisthenics: from the Greek: kallos, meaning beauty and sthenos, meaning strength.) At the very least, I will regain the callouses on my fingers from chording.

That’s it. Just those two resolutions. So… meet me here again in two weeks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go play my guitar.