On our way to dump our Christmas tree Saturday afternoon, we picked up a stray dog. A small, female pit bull mix, it was clearly a run-away — skittish and young and fairly well fed. Baltimore may be the nation’s capital for pit bulls. This one was wandering through our neighborhood and, for a moment, came up to us then darted away as we loaded our dried-out tree into the car. When we spied the dog minutes later, scampering along the sidewalk, its tail between its legs, Jill insisted I pull over. She had brought a leash and a couple of dog biscuits.

The pup was so frightened, it peed as Jill cornered it. A couple of passersby helped us get the leash around its neck. The dog was growling and cowering. Then I did the Dog Whisperer routine and took control, acting with full confidence and pretending that nothing was wrong and we were going to walk. The pup yelped but complied. When we got to Jill’s CRV (a little 4-wheel drive), Jill made some room in the back, pushing the tree aside. The pup looked interested. I scooped up the dog and deposited her inside.

We drove to the SPCA. But they wouldn’t take our stray. She was too wild. Apparently the pup had been tied in someone’s back yard, maybe being readied for breeding or worse. In any case, it was thoroughly unsocialized and frightened of people. “Oh, she’s so fearful!” the SPCA vet said. She sent us to Animal Control. When I reached over to reassure the pup, she growled and shrank away. Never mind that she had accepted my comfort earlier.

Jill named the dog Sulky because the dog seemed inconsolable. She wouldn’t eat anything we offered her. Sulky calmed a bit as we drove. But, then, before we arrived at Animal Control, in downtown Baltimore’s back bay, she got car sick. She heaved and heaved. She had probably never been in a car. Animal Control’s parking lot was packed on this Saturday afternoon. A place like that is both disheartening and encouraging — we witnessed adoptions and drop-offs. One guy brought a big, beautiful all-white American bull that had been tied to a fence for three days. “I got fed up watching it sitting out there and waiting for somebody to take care of it,”the good neighbor said.

A kind Animal Control employee came out and talked to Sulky for a few minutes. “Don’t growl,” she scolded the dog. Sulky did not take kindly to another attempted leashing. But eventually she yielded and was led away. We bid her a sad farewell.

Before the day’s end, we dumped our tree at the recycling center, where it will be ground into mulch. You’ve never smelled as lovely a smell as ground pine trees. Those piles of trees got me thinking about dogs. We have two at home. And two cats. All of them shelter animals. Too many dogs and cats in the world with too few homes. But, I guess, you already knew that.

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While shopping for grapefruit in Safeway this morning, I was surprised to hear — drifting from speakers in the ceiling — Black Sabbath’s “paranoid.” Not a copy of the Goth heavy metal hit. No, ma’am, the original, with manic Ozzy Osbourne shouting, “People think I’m insane because I am frowning all the time!”

If you came of age before, say, 1985, you should find this astonishing. Remember the grocery store of your mother’s day? For those of you too young to remember, Muzak was the only offering in public places. It was all instrumental copies of the hits, usually done in syrupy violin orchestrations. If there was guitar, it was cleaned up and toned down, the palest version of the original, sounding like granddad’s idea of “sexy.” Oh man, it made for painful listening! Whenever I found myself within earshot of Muzak, I felt tormented and I think I better understood how much pain the mentally impaired suffer when they hear hateful voices in their heads.

Muzak, and its imitators, served corporate America and illustrated a disdain for popular taste. Truly, it was insulting to hear what they did to the music. It’s analogous to a corporation taking over the National Parks and killing, then stuffing all of the animals and doing it badly, and then setting up those badly stuffed animals in the forest for the tourists to view—and claiming that this is THE wildlife experience.

No doubt, other youngsters like me vowed to change Muzak when they got old enough to make a difference. The result is that, for years, I’ve been hearing — in grocery and department stores — music I like. Real music performed by the original artists. But not until today had I heard Ozzy Osbourne. So the world changes. That old heavy metal has got some rust on it, so why not? Soon, we’ll be hearing post-thrash hip-hop with all the f**ks and c**ts bleeped out.

If you’re lucky, getting older is about staying flexible. I’m a lot more relaxed than I was at twenty,  mainly because I have a better take on what can and cannot go wrong and, really, most things aren’t as bad they may seem at first glance. This week, for example, I returned to work after the holiday break only to discover that my bosses had removed all of the garbage pails from our offices. Cut backs. The absence of trash pails saves the janitorial staff from having to open all of those offices to retrieve all of that garbage. My secretary said, “Just think of the exercise you’ll get walking to the trash can down the hall!”

Those of us who remember the luxury of having a trash pail right there beside our desks – we will be replaced, in time, by those who never had the luxury. That’s how the world changes. All those people who thought Muzak was a great idea, well, they’re dead and gone, probably. And maybe right now, some kid is walking through a grocery store and squinting up in distaste at the music he hears spilling from the ceiling speaker: “What is that heavy metal garbage?” he’s asking. “Man, you must be joking!”

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I used to laugh at people who still had their Christmas decorations up in April. But, older now, I understand how that happens. Who wants to take down holiday decorations? I resist it every year until Jill compels me to start. Actually, she starts, then I follow. She started yesterday. Putting up decorations the first week of December thrills me with the season’s promise — receiving gifts, celebrating frequently and to excess, and eating anything I want because no rules apply until after New Year’s.

Taking down the holiday ornaments kills that festive mood with a sudden finality. The now-unadorned rooms are stark reminders of new business in the same old world and it seems we’ll have to wait awhile until more fun comes around. New Year’s resolutions loom. Jill has asked me to clear the junk off of the treadmill in our basement. I’m resolved to take the vitamin supplements my nutritionist brother sent me. And maybe this year I’ll learn how to operate my smart phone fully.

Holiday story 1: Shortly before Christmas, we passed a sidewalk Santa clanging his bell and shouting holiday greetings in front of Sam’s club in one of Baltimore’s suburbs. Jill, a counselor at Healthcare for the Homeless, said, “That’d be a good job for one of my clients.”Then she did a double-take and said: “That IS one of my clients!”She’d been trying to track him down for weeks. (The homeless are hard to track down, as you can imagine.) She talked with him for ten minutes. And he promised to come in for his next appointment.

Holiday story 2: Jill and I went to Philadelphia for a couple of days after Christmas. The minute we drove into town, I wanted a Philly pizza. Cold-calling restaurants from internet listings on your smart phone is like playing Russian roulette. Still, I phoned the likeliest candidate and ordered a large pepperoni to go. When we arrived at the pizza place, it was a hole in the wall, popular for slices, not full pies. We soon learned why: they offered only extra large pizzas. One quarter of the pie filled a large pizza box. The server stacked one quarter pie on top of the other, two per box, and we walked away with the equivalent of four pizzas. So we drove around and looked for somebody who could use a meal. We found three unemployed men sitting on a bench in front of an old brick building that could have been an employment agency. I rolled down the window and called, “You guys want some pizza?” Who doesn’t want pizza?

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