Helen Peppe Writer and Photographer

Click! Click! Click!

2012-01-03T22:07:00.000-05:00

Threes are significant in my life: I often think how great it would be if I had only three things to get done in a day. Juggling my life would be fantasy-like manageable. I take full responsiblity for my decisons however. For example, I used to have three dogs, the ideal number, which I know because when I had two I wanted another. Three were so much fun that I adopted a fourth. Now that I have four, I often reminisce about what it was like to have two plus one. Because of my special relationship with the number three, this will be my last post with a triplet-word title, and it should not go un-noted that it is my third attempt at blogging, and it is the third of January.

I began to consider the number three more seriously when I noticed the conflict between the negative "three's a crowd" and the positive menage a trois, specifically the repeated references on the sitcom Two and Half Men. How can there be the undesirable third wheel if the third sex partner is such a desirable boon? And two and a half men? It's clear the show features three males, all child-like, which is the opposite of Lionel Richie's song that features one female who is three times a lady. But if a man goes once, twice to the end of a metaphorical rainbow with a lady, wouldn't consistency of language call for "thrice" on the third trip?

Teaching my son portraiture last August, I noticed that Alex fired his Nikon D200's shutter not thrice but in groupings of four, which sounded odd to my three-canaled, three-ossicled ear. "Peculiar," I commented, and tried his four count method as an experiment, but by December when I photographed Shona Michaud's Australian shepherd Heelside Race You to the Top in Minot, Maine, I'd reverted naturally back to firing in threes. Called Nevis for short, this Aussie is named after Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Scotland and the last of three mountains in a race that is routed through three countries. This ambitious dog is named perfectly, so perfectly that I had to stop firing my camera in triplets and watch first in surprise, second in admiration, and third in wonder: surprise at this Aussie's determination, admiration for his strategies, and wonder about threes, not only for their significance, but as the ideal number. Ask any juggler.

Go! Go! Go!

2012-01-01T02:08:00.000-05:00

Tonight, the eve of a new year, ripe with beginning in a way that can't compete with spring, the time of true rebirth and growth, I opened eBay to pictures of weights, a stability ball, and a Polar heart rate watch with the words "Commit to a New You" headlining the page. What's wrong with the old me? I thought, instantly offended because eBay's marketing department assumed I was fat and unfit. The weights were even a light three and five pounds, as if some Internet profile had informed the advertisers that I was too old and weak to lift tens and fifteens. I clicked out of the site, unwilling to search for a new seller of Lindt's dark chocolate bars, the reason I'd logged on, and closed my laptop with the hope that a few eBay employees might experience a blast of disappointment in failed marketing strategy.

An hour later I sat at a takeout dinner of Thai food, and my son's girlfriend, having read my "Now! Now! Now!" post from yesterday, asked, "You don't really mean that, do you? About not making resolutions?" To convince me how I was missing out Katie listed her own resolves: 1) complete a marathon, 2) train for a triathlon, 3) run at least four days a week, 4) lift weights, and 5) get married. "Want to swim with me?" she ended, her young eyes bright, and her young body bursting with energy, not much unlike Bella, the fawn boxer of my recent photo shoot. Instead of feeling inspired to swim in a pool that groups of small children and seniors had peed, spat, and dripped mucous in, I felt like she, too, was saying I was fat.

"I don't have time," I answered quickly, remembering how Bella had encouraged fun activities in dog-speak, not soul-sucking drama like middle-aged naked women in the YWCA locker room.

"That's the point," Katie said. "You make the time."

If I could actually "make" time, I'd be selling minutes like nobody's business. I didn't say this, though, not wanting to crush her youthful idealism, but time can't be stolen, taken, or made. It isn't even really possible to divide it. Time does what it wants just like a teenager, regardless of the power I try to wield.

So, back to the lessons dogs teach: Not Bella this time, but Heelside's Crankin Rankin Reel, Shona Michaud's Austrialian shepherd. As I photographed him, I marveled at how Rankin ignored basic laws of gravity and time. He leaped and raced in a life's-so-wonderful style. And as he returned everything I'd given him, dropping it gently at my knees where I knelt on the frozen ground, I did not feel that Rankin believed I should eat less chocolate and exercise more. When he looked into my face, his head tilted softly to the side, and his muscles ready for now, I felt this dog believed we should cut back on the planning, the bemoaning, and the wasting of time, and simply Go! Go! Go! before all time runs out.

Now! Now! Now!

2011-12-30T23:24:00.000-05:00

In this in-between week of the year where people say goodbye to the past and hello to the future, I thought I might deny the dreary concept that I am falling behind in all that I want to accomplish. I might even forgo New Year’s resolutions, forging recklessly ahead without a list of resolves. Why risk reasons to be disappointed in myself later for not living up to my idealistic goals? And for those of us whose birthdays fall in January—yes fall, just think if there hadn’t been hands to catch us at that last push—the month can be dreaded for its reminder of age or welcomed for the prospect of receiving those few Christmas gifts that thrifty and organized family members set aside for the upcoming celebration. I choose, this year, to ring in my age, to think of 45 with joy instead of words that sound like they originate from the Tasmanian Devil, regardless of how many times my nine-year-old asks if I will still be alive when she is 45.

Bella rescued me from the soul-sucking end-of-the-year-birthday-doldrums a few weeks ago on a sharply cold Saturday morning at Hinckley Park in South Portland, Maine. Bella reminded me that, unless it’s time for her raw meat patty, which might be any moment, that time, as a topic of consideration, is inconsequential. Bella is a boxer I photographed with her Weimaraner dog buddy Gordon, for her owner Jennifer Luc Lariviere. She raced to me and away from me, she danced on her hind legs, and struggled to make herself sit so she could earn her treat, she bounced, zig-zagged, and danced with delight at me, at Gordon, at Jennifer, at the trees, at the puddles, and at a ball she didn’t even want. Bella even loves life when it chases her and nips her on the butt in the form of a furry mixed breed who wasn’t quite as enthusiastic with his walk in the park.

Bella, packaged in fawn fur, reminded me to stop worrying about the mud and spit on my water-resistant pants, the dog poop wedged into the treads of my insulated boots, and the mountain of work at home. “That work,” she seemed to say as she twirled on her flashy white legs and slung drool from her black velvety lips, “will always be there.” She didn’t add carpe diem, as she is only a year old and a dog trained in obedience not in influential ancient poets, but said with wiggly-butt energy,”Have fun now. Now! Now! Now!”

So anything less, minus the slobber on my knees, would be ignoring the wise advice of a Canis lupis familiaris and falling behind in all that I want to accomplish.