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Friday, August 4, 2006

Airing of Dogs

Posted by on August 4 at 14:57 PM

I thought I recognized the name of the author of the NYT travel article Annie Wagner mocked just now. And Amazon.com confirms that yes, indeed, I do recognize David Laskin’s name.

David Laskin is the author of a great book about The Partisan Review (and Mary McCarthy, Edmund Wilson, Robert Lowell, Jean Stafford, and Elizabeth Hardwick, and their various doomed marriages) called Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals.

He’s also the author of the sentence: “Nobody walks more than three blocks in Seattle, except to air the dog or power around Green Lake.” (It just had to be repeated.)


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Bizarrely, I read that book and liked it.

I can't help it, I kind of like "air the dog".

I don't mind "air the dog" either. If you "air the dogs," is that doing it barefoot? My problem is with the sheer vacuity of the proposition--many many many Seattleites walk much more than that, duh. Check out Olive Way or any Avenue in Belltown on a weekday commute, or Seward Park or Discovery Park or Alki on a Sunday afternoon. The number of people "power-walking around Green Lake" is simply unknowable, but there sure as shootin' are lots of people walking there who are not "power walking." Why is this sort of broad-brush garbage tolerated in travel writing? At least he didn't use the loathsome first-person plural variant: "We Seattleites like our lattes smooth and our tires knobby." That's the way the Brewster-era Seattle Weekly often wrote. And that new Metropolitan Magazine thing. Speak for yourself, is my response.

Fixo, they're not power-walking, they're powering. Mmm.

Isn't "airing the dog" a way of saying "taking your shoes off to let them dry out?"

Personally, every time I hear that I think of dog tossing, kind of like Aussie rules dwarf tossing.

Look, most of those dogs are so small they can't help but be tripped over, so maybe someone kind will just juggle them so they don't get injured ...

He never met me. When I was still in town I'd walk up and over Queen Anne Hill - that's from Fremont to Lower Queen Anne - and back. When my daughter was born I'd take her in the stroller over that route. She usually fell asleep.

Then again, I'm wasn't a native.

OK Annie. Got me good. Where did I get "power-walk" from "power"? But my point, my point still stands, no?

Maybe the author only saw or spoke with people who read Seattle magazine. Because they seem like 3 block walkers who air their dogs.

When I was a baby my Mother lived in Madison valley (back when it was the ghetto) and she would put me in the stroller and walk all the up Madison and all the way downtown and back.

Strangely enough I now live in Madison Valley years later and I walk up the hills and wander for blocks on end.
But I don't know how one goes about airing out a dog.
(we usually wash it if it smells funny)

Tennis stars photos here: <a href=http://tennisstars.info>Tennis Stars</a>

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