That old quote came to mind last week when 17 people were gunned down at a Florida high school. This young man who had been expelled from the school a year earlier mowed his former faculty and fellow students down. The images that came out of the massacre have the [...]]]>

Publisher Jeff Roland

That old quote came to mind last week when 17 people were gunned down at a Florida high school. This young man who had been expelled from the school a year earlier mowed his former faculty and fellow students down. The images that came out of the massacre have the whole country in mourning. A week has almost passed and if you’re like me, still grieved for the families and students.

I can remember in the 80’s the pain and grief we felt as students at Sheffield High School when we lost two of our student body to accidents. My friends Todd Mussard, who died in a motorcycle crash, and Sharon Pace, who died in an automobile accident, were taken from us and the community as a whole. Let me tell you it hurt. So I cannot imagine the dread times 17 that must have befallen this school in Florida and that entire community.  These 17 deaths were not accidents. It was cold-blooded murder. This week, the young gunman’s lawyers are trying to avoid the death penalty with a guilty plea. Will one more death help anything?

We seem to forget these people as statistics. We hear 17 die in a School shooting, the mainstream media seems to treat it like a plane crash or something. But these were 17 daughters, sons, fathers, people with hopes, dreams, plans, and loved ones. Many had been accepted to various colleges and universities. They all had qualities that made them special like my friend Todd’s wit and sense of humor or my friend Sharon’s infectious smile that would light up an entire room.

I’m not saying take guns away.  I’m saying let’s prevent this from happening again and have a conversation on the system that allowed this kid to buy an AR-15. Kids should not have to think about surviving high school.

There seems to be a disconnect with these school shooters. They have no regard for human life. I also have a hard time believing a video game or a movie could ignite this type of behavior. But I do believe when you take God and prayer and discipline out of school the price might be more than we can bear.

Jeff Roland

Fear of commitment is a fear of serious, long-term relationships. The main driver of this behavior is fear and rejection of strong emotions, vulnerability or intimacy. Such people are able to maintain only a short relationship and often change their partners. If you started to date with such a person, then it will not [...]]]>

Fear of commitment is a fear of serious, long-term relationships. The main driver of this behavior is fear and rejection of strong emotions, vulnerability or intimacy. Such people are able to maintain only a short relationship and often change their partners. If you started to date with such a person, then it will not introduce you to it`s family, friends and plans for the future. Perhaps he will not even show interest in your life. Learn what you need to know before committing to someone, so as not to waste your time on useless relationships.

How to Recognize the Fear of Commitment in a Relationship?

Who makes the decisions? Perhaps it is the partner who always decides what and when you are engaged together. If he is afraid of commitment, he will see you only at a convenient time, so as not to change plans. If you take the initiative, then a person may disagree with you, be late or not to come to meetings at all.

How is your relationship developing? The more time we spend with a person, the more serious our relationship becomes. If your partner is afraid of commitment, then in such a situation he will try to distance himself from you or completely stop the relationship. Such people adore the excitement of the first dates and the passion of the initial stage of the relationship, and then lose interest in the partner. They are attracted by all the exciting, romantic and carefree. If you share the problem, you will not be understood or ignored.

Assess past partner relationships. A person with fear of commitment quite often consists in short-term relationships. Try inadvertently ask about past partners. If a person changes the topic or tells about fleeting romantic connections, then it is likely that he is afraid of commitment. Some people just have a little experience of relationships. Do not rush to the conclusion that they are afraid of responsibility. There are many explanations for such situations. Some people with a fear of responsibility could even be in a long relationship. As a rule, such ties are ended because of unavailability to commitment.

Assess the situation. If you meet with such a person, it is not always clear what kind of relationship you have. Are you friends, lovers or partners? Surely you did not even discuss the future of your relationship. If you ask such a question, then a person can change the topic, take a defensive position or ask why you try to drive relations with any framework.

Where Does the Fear of Commitment Come From?

The main reason for fear of commitment is fear of loss. You can be afraid that if you choose door number 1, doors number 2, 3, 4, … will always remain closed to you. Most people who have an overwhelming fear of responsibility are, in principle, afraid to make a decision because it may turn out to be wrong.

So what do you really want if you can not choose one thing?

Every person wants something. The problem of “the phobia to the commitment” is that it can not understand what exactly it wants.

Ironically, people who are afraid of commitment often value stability. They want strong, healthy relationships based on emotional intimacy, reliability, comfort and benevolence, but they are constantly haunted by the fear of losing all of this if the relationship does not develop.

Fear prevents people from choosing a specific path in education and careers: you may want to apply your talents in some place, but you are afraid that if your level of qualification is not high enough, everything will be in vain, and eventually you will be stuck in a job that you hate! And, unfortunately, many wonderful dreams and goals remain unrealized due to fear of responsibility.

The only true solution in this case is to start fighting with your fears. Humanity has not yet invented a guaranteed working instruction that will help you cope with fears without much effort. So get ready for hard work on yourself. Start doing things you’ve never done before. This is comparable to jumping into icy water: just close your eyes and jump.

If you’re like me you were shocked at the events that unfolded this past weekend at a high school football game in Ames, Iowa.

As the national anthem was played thirteen members of the marching band linked arms and walked off the field and the remainder refused to play their [...]]]>

Publisher Jeff Roland

If you’re like me you were shocked at the events that unfolded this past weekend at a high school football game in Ames, Iowa.

As the national anthem was played thirteen members of the marching band linked arms and walked off the field and the remainder refused to play their instruments.

The national news media reported on the incident as students protesting, “social injustice, homophobia, inequality” just to name a few.

Call me old-fashioned but I was just sickened by the whole display.  I couldn’t help but think what my Sheffield High School principal Mr. Howard Jaggers would have done had we tried to pull a stunt like these misguided kids did.

We were blessed to have a principal like Mr. Jaggers.  As the administrator, during the 80’s, he believed in order and discipline. In fact, Mr. Jaggers once told me, “Students learn a lot more when provided an environment conducive to learning,”  In other words, people following the rules, like keeping your mouth shut when the teacher is talking, etc. In fact, things I had difficulty with at times. I loved talking during class.

At the beginning of every school year, Mr. Jaggers would hold an assembly of 350-400 students in the auditorium. It was a show of force and by design let us all know who was boss. We were all cutting up back and forth fresh from summer vacation. He would pace across the stage like a panther demanding order.  Every year he would make an example of the one brave soul who continued to talk or laugh while he was talking. My friend Brack Whitfield, a defensive lineman weighing 288 and six foot four inches tall, made the cut one year. Mr. Jaggers, a black belt in Judo, jumped off the five-foot stage with true cat-like reflexes, ran out into the audience and grabbed Brack up by the shirt. Saying, ” I’ll show you,” You could have heard a pin drop.

No one was hurt but maybe our pride at not being able to do what we wanted to do when we wanted.

Well in actuality Mr. Jaggers showed us all that day how the school would run from day to day. Brack may have got detention hall for the unauthorized talking, I don’t remember but we all made a mental note that it would not be peaches and cream if you were sent to that office.

Every time I see Mr. Jaggers around town, I try to thank him for running that school with decency and order.

The principal at Ames, Iowa, reportedly told the kids to walk off the field and was clearly instrumental in the whole debacle that has cast a long shadow on that school for years to come.

It’s amazing the impact one person can make in the lives of others.

See you next week,

Jeff Roland’s column appears weekly on ShoalsInsider.com. If you have any comments or suggestions, please email us at news@shoalsinsider.com.

I love the old seventies song by Marvin Gay entitled What’s Going On. That’s the question I have been asking myself since the Colin Kaepernick-NFL- National Anthem debacle began.

This week we hear that Kaepernick will stand for the Anthem “If given the chance,” Hint..Hint..Surely some NFL team [...]]]>

Publisher and Columnist Jeff Roland

I love the old seventies song by Marvin Gay entitled What’s Going On. That’s the question I have been asking myself since the Colin Kaepernick-NFL- National Anthem debacle began.

This week we hear that Kaepernick will stand for the Anthem “If given the chance,” Hint..Hint..Surely some NFL team will allow Kaepernick the human hot potato to come play ball. Had he focused on that and not holding people captive with his display of “free speech” by taking a knee during the National Anthem to protest what? It seemed to change from time to time.

I heard it through the Grapevine that Kaepernick only did it to appease his girlfriend. Whatever the reason he has awakened a sleeping giant and a huge knee-jerk reaction from conservatives.  I suspect Kaepernick will be in another line of work next season as he will probably not be signed again. But who knows? Lightning might strike.

Just when you think it’s over, ESPN suspended this week for the second time Sports Center co-host Jemile Hill for her tweet that fans should boycott Jerry Jone’s Dallas Cowboy’s advertisers for his stance on the Kaepernick/Anthem issue.

Trump supporters are saying Ain’t No Mountain High Enough as they are standing steadfast in a proposed NFL boycott. Every Trump supporter I talk with claims they will never watch another NFL game. I can’t help but believe them as they speak with such conviction and gravity on the issue.

Vice-President Pence walked out of a game on Sunday due to the players taking a knee. It seems the more the players protest the more popular Trump becomes.

There just seems to be a lot of confusion on this issue. It all depends on who you ask. Some say Kaepernick and the players are in the right and some say it’s patriotic blasphemy.

At the end of the day, I wonder what kind of example these players that take a knee are setting for the youth of the country.

See You Next Week

Jeff Roland is the Publisher of ShoalsInsider.com. For questions or comments email news@shoalsinsider.com

By: Jeff Roland

There’s plenty to do this weekend in the Shoals Area.

You don’t want to miss “A Day with Rey” It runs Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28-Sept 30, at 7:30 pm and on Sunday, Oct 1, at 2 pm.

The original production “A Day with Rey,” written by Jesse Sockwell and [...]]]>

By: Jeff Roland

There’s plenty to do this weekend in the Shoals Area.

You don’t want to miss  “A Day with Rey” It runs Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28-Sept 30, at 7:30 pm and on Sunday, Oct 1, at 2 pm.

The original production “A Day with Rey,” written by Jesse Sockwell and directed by Brandon Willcutt.

It stars Jesse Sockwell, Harmony Malone, Joy Ragland, Melanie Dickens and Gabriel Goodloe.

Tickets are $12 and available online at www.historiczodiacplayhouse.com or at the door.

The play brings real issues that people in life go through today and puts them on the stage in a realistic setting.

The Zodiac Playhouse is located at 416 North Court Street in Florence.

Also, this Saturday at McFarland Park is the Shoals Dragon Boat Festival. I posted a video below for those who want to see what it’s like.

It’s neat to watch all the work that goes into the annual effort.  All proceeds go to Kilby Laboratory School. It kicks off at 9:00 am Saturday.

On a more serious note, the 2nd Annual Blue Light Vigil is Saturday night from 7:00 until 11:00.  The event honors our fallen heroes in Blue.

The event will be at the Cowboy Church of Colbert County located at 3440 Highway 157, Leighton.

There will be a ringing of the toll. Guest speakers such as Colbert County Sheriff Frank Williamson, Lawrence County Sheriff Gene Mitchell, Tuscumbia Chief Tony Logan and more are scheduled to speak.

Retired Officer Bobby V. Inman is also scheduled to speak.

At dark, the Officers will turn on their blue lights during the calling of the fallen Heros.

Hats off to the event organizer Amanda Skipworth for her work putting the vigil and speakers together.

The Velcro Pygmies will play at the FloBama, 311 N. Court Street, in Florence Friday night at 9:oo until midnight.

I can’t wait to see these guys jam out. These old boys really know how to put on a show. If you haven’t seen them perform, here’s your chance.

Have a Fun and Safe Weekend!

ShoalsInsider.com-Keeping You Informed

If you’re like me, you’re getting tired of seeing and hearing these millionaire NFL players whine and disrespect the country by not standing for the national anthem. I probably wouldn’t have called them a “Son of a bitch,” like President Trump did. But I see a pattern developing [...]]]>

Publisher and Columnist Jeff Roland

If you’re like me, you’re getting tired of seeing and hearing these millionaire NFL players whine and disrespect the country by not standing for the national anthem. I probably wouldn’t have called them a “Son of a bitch,” like President Trump did. But I see a pattern developing among these naysayers.

I stood at a Sheffield Highschool football game recently for the anthem and the lowering of the colors. Sheffield won that night, by the way, but, I respect the flag and what it stands for regardless of who occupies the White House. Several professional athletes are saying the President is misusing his position as leader of the free world for calling them out when in reality, they are doing the very same thing.  We have all heard the saying it’s like the pot calling the kettle black. This saying rings true during all of these recent verbal attacks.

Colin Kaepernick, the millionaire 49ers player that started this whole thing, is still unemployed.  I do not agree with him on his notion that the American flag and the National Anthem is a sign or symbol of oppression.  Far from it my friends. That flag has and is still an inspiration for billions of people around planet Earth. People have and still do risk their lives fighting for that flag and the ideals that it stands for. Many paid the ultimate price to ensure our freedoms and rights.

A recent poll asked NFL fans if their favorite team hired Kaepernick would they stop supporting the team. 70 percent said yes they would stop supporting their favorite NFL team if they hired Kaepernick.

Is the National Football League so patriotic that this man taking a knee at the anthem should be kept without a job? Absolutely not. NFL teams are businesses and they are there to make money and teams can’t make money if there are no fans to buy tickets and licensed products.

Kaepernick has become a political and business hot potato and would quickly be the kiss of death for any NFL team that signed him on board and they know it.

I always remember the old slogan  All gave some, Some gave all. It is normally used to honor those that served and those that paid the ultimate price in battle for the freedom and rights we enjoy.

It seems Kaepernick in his arrogance or in his miscalculations has become an unemployable martyr.

What can we learn from the Kaepernick fiasco? Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is and sometimes it’s just best to keep your mouth shut.

See You Next Week

Jeff Roland

Jeff Roland is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of ShoalsInsider.com. His column appears weekly.

 If you have any questions or comments, please email them to news@shoalsinsider.com

Rarely since the Great Depression has our country been as polarized and angry as it is today. On television, in newspapers, on social media, around the office water cooler, in line at the supermarket, even at the family dinner table, there is constant clashing and creating of divisions. [...]]]>

Stephen Cooper 

Rarely since the Great Depression has our country been as polarized and angry as it is today. On television, in newspapers, on social media, around the office water cooler, in line at the supermarket, even at the family dinner table, there is constant clashing and creating of divisions. Warring political parties, “special interest” groups competing for social change, and an endless series of labels–liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, libertarian or evangelical–work to separate us from one another. More and more, Americans are being asked to take sides in this battle of interests and ideas, magnified by social media and the 24-hour news cycle. Inserting sanity into the crock pot of conflicting ideologies can be challenging. Reading John Steinbeck, one of America’s greatest writers and keenest observers, offers a way out of the insanity.

Eighty years before it was made into a mixed-review movie by the mercurial actor-director James Franco, Steinbeck’s Great Depression labor novel In Dubious Battle explored the complex relationship between the individual and the group, sometimes referred to in Steinbeck’s writing by its more malevolent moniker, “the mob.” Using a strike-torn California apple orchard as his backdrop, Steinbeck deep-dives into phalanx or “group-man” theory, grittily exposing the causes and consequences of a volatile, violent labor struggle involving pickers and organizers, growers and landowners, vigilantes and victims, and outside agitators who are never called “communists” but clearly are.

In his introduction to the 1995 Penguin Books edition of Steinbeck’s Log from the Sea of Cortez, Richard Astro, Provost Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University, writes that Steinbeck’s ideas on “group-man” thinking were influenced by the writing of the California biologist William Emerson Ritter (1856-1944). According to Astro, Ritter thought that “in all parts of nature and in nature itself as one gigantic whole, wholes are so related to their parts that not only does the existence of the whole depend upon their orderly co-operation and interdependence of the parts, but the whole exercises a measure of determinative control over its parts.” Ritter also believed that “man is capable of understanding the organismal unity of life and, as a result, can know himself more fully. This, says Ritter, is ‘man’s supreme glory’ – not only ‘that he can know the world, but he can know himself as a knower of the world.’”

Steinbeck illuminates “group-man” thinking in much of his Great Depression fiction, especially the idea that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. But this central tenet of Ritter’s theory is voiced most clearly by the character Doc Burton in the 1936 novel whose title—In Dubious Battle—Steinbeck took from John Milton’s 17th century poem Paradise Lost. Explaining his participation and fascination with the apple pickers’ strike, Burton says, “I want to watch these group-men, for they seem to be a new individual, not at all like single men. A man in a group isn’t himself at all, he’s a cell in an organism that isn’t like him anymore than the cells in your body are like you. I want to watch the group, and see what it’s like. People have said, ‘mobs are crazy, you can’t tell what they’ll do.’ Why don’t people look at mobs as men, but as mobs? A mob nearly always seems to act reasonably, for a mob.”

As marches, movements, protests, and counter-protests increase in volume and virulence, Steinbeck’s insights into the behavior of “group-man,” through the words and actions of Doc Burton, can be viewed as prescient indeed, particularly by Americans who know their history. Midway through the book, in a passage worthy of one of history’s greatest thinkers–a passage I submit provides an outlook on life that, if adopted, could alleviate much of the rancor in America–Burton says this to the communist agent sent from San Francisco to organize the orchard strike: “That’s why I don’t like to talk very often. Listen to me, Mac. My senses aren’t above reproach, but they’re all I have. I want to see the whole picture–as nearly as I can. I don’t want to put on the blinders of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, and limit my vision. If I use the term ‘good’ on a thing I’d lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don’t you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing.”

In “John Steinbeck, American Writer,” Susan Shillinglaw, Professor of English at San Jose State University, notes that “in most of his fiction Steinbeck includes a ‘Doc’ figure, a wise observer of life who epitomizes [Steinbeck’s] idealized stance of the non-teleological thinker.” Non-teleological thinking, she explains, is “‘is’ thinking” marked by “detached observation” and a “remarkable quality for acceptance.” Reinforcing Steinbeck’s obeisance to this philosophy–an open and tolerant approach to ideas and to the people who believe in them that is desperately needed today–Shillinglaw highlights a journal entry made by Steinbeck in 1938: “[T]here is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.”

Eschewing the American impulse to classify, pigeonhole, prejudge, discount, and disparage opposing ideas and those who hold them, Doc Burton prescribes detached observation and personal experience as an alternative to blind theory and blind hatred. Looking back on the unbiased Doc-like worldview favored by his father, Thom Steinbeck told an interviewer in 2012 that Steinbeck always ended his beautifully written letters to his son with this bit of advice: “Good luck. Find out on your own.” Finding out on our own is a good way, perhaps the only way, to survive the dubious battle of ideologies raging within and around us in 2017.

Stephen Cooper was a public defender in the District of Columbia and also worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He now writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, Calif. This piece was written for Steinbeck Now. It is being republished with the author’s permission.

When a zealous public defender acting as the effective lawyer guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment was handcuffed in a Las Vegas courtroom in May for doing her job – pleading for “some leniency” for her indigent client – I wrote in the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Being a public defender is tough. It’s grinding, under-compensated, [...]]]>

When a zealous public defender acting as the effective lawyer guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment was handcuffed in a Las Vegas courtroom in May for doing her job – pleading for “some leniency” for her indigent client – I wrote in the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Being a public defender is tough. It’s grinding, under-compensated, unappreciated, physically and emotionally draining work. It takes fierce heart, thick skin, formidable stamina and a deep-seated desire to help the least fortunate among us.” (“Judge erred in having public defender handcuffed,” May 29, 2016).
What I didn’t observe given the context and what is hardly ever written about, discussed, or publicized, especially in the mainstream press and media: Public defenders have the best job in the legal profession.
Often portrayed and even disturbingly romanticized as serfs in the hierarchical caste-like valuation system that exists within the legal profession (and outside of it), in actuality, public defenders are, minus plush and puffy royal-red robes, golden crowns, and other baubles of majesty, the kings and queens of the law.
The large majority of public defenders valiantly wage battles in courtrooms across the country without enough resources, a police force, or a Law & Order cloak of goodwill that the general public and even The New Yorker, routinely grants prosecutors (see Jeffrey Toobin’s May 9 paean-like profile of United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, “The Showman: How U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara struck fear into Wall Street and Albany”).
Instead, when a case goes to trial or the large majority of the time, when there’s a negotiated plea, public defenders are called to battle like Davids: With well-worn slingshots they march across a rocky and hostile legal terrain towards an angry, often unfeeling Goliath; the outcome is usually far from biblical but somehow, summoning strength of character and a singular will to help a fellow soul, they act.
Henry Graham Greene (better known by his pseudonym, Graham Greene), who the New York Times dubbed the “Novelist of the Soul,” wrote: “People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person’s habitual misery.” Greene wasn’t referring to public defenders, but he could have been.
Good public defenders believe strongly what Sister Helen Prejean is credited with saying: “The dignity of the human person means that every human being is worth more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.”
Once I saw a bumper sticker that proclaimed, “If Jesus Christ were a lawyer, he’d be a public defender.” Maybe this pithy quotation goes too far like Toobin’s recent praise for Bharara, but it’s not without supporting proof in Christianity: Specifically John 8:7 in the King James version of the New Testament where Jesus says, when asked to judge a woman who has committed adultery and is therefore subject to stoning: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her.”
Public defenders know what Peter Cicchino, a brilliant law professor and former civil rights attorney (who taught me torts) said just prior to his untimely death at 39: “Our lives are among the only things that are completely ours. The kind of life we make is the most important work, the single most important project we will ever undertake. I suppose what I am trying to say is that in my own life as I have struggled with the question of what makes a good and happy human life, I have become ever more convinced that struggling to secure the conditions for a decent human life for others is a large part of the answer.”
The joy in public defense is found in the unshakeable belief that no matter a person’s alleged or actual crime, there is goodness inside each one of us, and that is always something worth fighting for.
Stephen Cooper worked as a D.C. public defender between 2003 and 2012 and as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on Twitter @SteveCooperEsq

“Friend” is a reddish-brown submarine of a dog not unlike a cross between a miniature Jersey cow and tan Easter Bunny. His extra long hash-brown colored ears, silkier than satin, frame his stoic, bovine face. Friend cuts an imposing figure based on bulk [...]]]>

Friend, not Frank, the name the rescue operation gave him

“Friend” is a reddish-brown submarine of a dog not unlike a cross between a miniature Jersey cow and tan Easter Bunny. His extra long hash-brown colored ears, silkier than satin, frame his stoic, bovine face. Friend cuts an imposing figure based on bulk — but he’s a gentle giant — and that’s why my wife and I decided to call him “Friend” not “Frank,” as he was named by the rescue organization from which we adopted him.

Dog people (“people of the dog,” dog lovers — whatever you want to call them — they’re a large cross-section of humanity in this country) smile when they see Friend lumbering down the street, taking my wife, or me, or both of us, for a walk. Passersby on foot and in cars often stare in admiration and point at Friend — especially when they hear him hound. Friend’s distinctive bay comes from deep in his diaphragm and his throat is thick with muscles capable of producing a high-decibel type “whoop-whooping” that provokes droll imitation by children and adults (who really are too old for that kind of thing, especially leaning out their car windows).

Friend is a red-tick coonhound who, not long before we adopted him, was found wandering all alone in a field in Pennsylvania. The rescue organization speculated he was two years old, and the abandoned hunting dog of an obviously abusive owner. Sadly, Friend bears telltale signs of maltreatment. A white scar circles his massive head like a misshapen ivory necklace — the outline of a dog collar once allowed (or worse, forced) to embed in the loose folds of skin that hang about Friend’s massive neck. Also, Friend’s back right leg, once fractured — perhaps chasing prey while hunting — healed improperly and without proper care, resulting in Friend’s early development of arthritis and a permanent limp when he walks. Sometimes Friend forgets his leg is hurt and suddenly, when the spirit moves him, he’ll hop when he barks, punctuating his howl. And amazingly, even now, at the stately age of about 9, there are times Friend will unexpectedly jolt forward at Olympic speed triggered by an odiferous whiff in the air, a fire hydrant, a trashcan, or any communal point of canine urinary correspondence.

Despite an inauspicious start in life, like all dogs, Friend doesn’t dwell on past misfortunes.

“(Friend is) very much here and now focused. (He) doesn’t sit around and ruminate about the past. (He) also (doesn’t) lay awake at night, consumed with massive worry and anxiety. Instead, (Friend) tend(s) to think about what is happening next at this exact moment in time.” (John D. Moore, Ph.D., “7 Mindfulness Tips from Your Dog” at http://www.blog.psychcentral.com.)

Indeed, Friend’s ability to squeeze joy out of every moment of life — now that he is well-cared for and loved — is infectious. His carpe diem is a model to be admired and imitated. As Cathy Hull wrote in an article fittingly titled, “What Dogs Teach Us about Peace, Joy, and Living in the Now” ( http://tinybuddha.com/blog/what-dogs-teach-us-about-peace-joy-and-living-in-the-now/): “Dogs live for today — and so can we. We can appreciate every moment as it comes and be grateful for what we have. Like all animals, when live in the present, we have more enthusiasm, joy for life, and less to worry (about).”

Friend revels in simple pleasures, primarily food. Like Edmund’s bottomless appetite for Turkish delight in C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe,” Friend’s addiction to food is never fully satisfied. Despite repeated counseling to “slow down,” Friend’s feeding is always a quick affair. Not a believer in chewing slowly, Friend sucks his meals down in seconds like a high-powered vacuum cleaner. Friend’s passion for culinary delights is well-documented in our family: On one particular occasion at a family reunion on the day after Thanksgiving, immediately prior to the “big” meal being served, Friend decided to sample the hors d’oeuvres, making off with an entire block of cheese in his mouth before being apprehended.

After food, it’s all about sleep for Friend — usually, in the warmest, sunniest patch of real estate he can find. At night, Friend’s long legs twitch when he sleeps curled up on his very stinky pillow, and his droopy bloodshot eyes will even open momentarily and he’ll make high-pitched moaning sounds like he’s still on the hunt. But he’s dead asleep. I know because when he does this, I’ve often gone to him out of concern only to find he’s snoring — completely oblivious to my touch.

The thing about Friend – and the other two rescue dogs my wife and I own, as well as the very many future dogs of our dreams — is that he’s a natural de-stressor. When I pet and care for Friend, I don’t worry about my career as a struggling writer, I don’t worry about paying the bills — I don’t worry about anything at all. It’s a well-documented scientific phenomenon, this feeling of inner peace I have when I’m with Friend.

Alan Beck, Ph.D., director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine and his co-researcher Aaron Katcher found in the early 1980s that when people interact with dogs, “You actually get a drop in blood pressure – a true relaxation response.” (Jessica Gross, The Health Benefits Of Having A Dog, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/21/health-benefits-dogs_n_1421573.html)

More recently, researchers in Japan found that dog owners who were bonded to their pets experienced a spike in oxytocin — a neurotransmitter that helps us cope with stress — from simply meeting their dogs’ gazes. Playing with your dog also focuses your attention.

“It keeps you in the moment,” says Beck. “So when you’re talking and playing with your dog, your mind is not free to worry. We intuitively try and do this anyway — we listen to music, we sit in a coffee shop, we watch TV — just to keep our minds focused on what’s going on right now. But if that focus is nature or an animal, it’s that much easier.”

Sadly, despite these important and physical and mental health benefits that domesticated animals provide, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) notes on its website that “approximately 7.6 million companion animals enter shelters nationwide every year. Of those, approximately 3.9 million are dogs and 3.4 million are cats. Each year, approximately 2.7 million animals are euthanized (1.2 million dogs and 1.4 million cats).” So, you who are reading this: Isn’t it time to consider whether your household can afford another (or a first) dog? If you’re lucky like me, you might find a Friend too.

About the author: Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. His column appears in the Shoals Insider.