The Not-So-Deep South

December 2006 eh, 2007

 

Greetings fans and fiends friends and of the Annual Christmas Letter of the Miller-Younkin clan,

 

As has become a tradition around here, this is your favorite canine writer of Christmas letters, Duchess, once again bringing you up to date on this past year’s family highlights.  But before we get into the usual trite and trivial news about what everyone else was up to this past year, I will cut to the chase (a favorite canine pastime if you weren’t aware) and use this very epistle to make a most important announcement.  You can brag to your friends that you were among the privileged few to hear it first.  You may want to be sitting down or have a few drinks before reading further.  Okay, comfy, snockered, whatever?    (Insert drum roll here.)

I am running for President of the United States. 

I’ll give you a few moments to pause and allow this momentous news to sink in. 

Paws…paws…paws…sink…sink…sink…

Yes, indeed, yours truly, the Duchess of the Confederacy, the canine par excellence, the Webmistress wunderhunden has tossed her bone (so to speak) into the race for the Out House—eh, White House.  But you are no doubt thinking, can a dog run for president?  Look it up.  Nothing in the U.S. Constitution stipulates human, and when you consider what dogs…eh, scum most politicians are, you are no doubt already looking favorably on my candidacy since dogs are indeed man’s best friend, whereas diamonds are a girl’s best friend but diamonds cannot hold public office, although if they could they would no doubt do a lot better job than most of that litter box filler from the Demopublican party. 

As to my platform, everything that I do will be for the sake of the children—and puppies—that goes without saying.  Hmmm, I just said it, so if it goes without saying why did I—never mind.  As such my campaign slogan is, “It takes a newspaper to raise a puppy.”  First off I will improve the country by throwing out all the undesirables and riff-raff—that is, cats, the United Nations (lock, stock and barrel--talk about a cesspool of cess), anyone with more than ten body piercings, cats, gangsta rap artists (why do they call them artists?), cats, Congress (except Ron Paul), the present administration and now that I think about it, members of any past administration, cats, Julia Roberts, Paris Hilton, Michael Savage and Michael Moore for starters.  In order to improve education I will abolish all university education departments, the Department of Education, the National Education Association and public schools.  I will abolish the federal income tax except for IRS employees and Congress.  I will also outlaw the politically correct use of the terms diversity, gender, herstory, misguided criminal, deferred success, undocumented worker, and climate change.  Any federal agency created since 1912 will be replaced by the SPCA.  The federal government will be moved to Hell Creek, Montana, and Washington D.C. will be declared a third world country.  Remember that dog is god spelled backwards. 

Okay, time to move on to less interesting topics.  Devon finished up her high school years on a roll with robotics, Skills USA, and awards, recognitions and achievements too numerous to mention.  Well, I could have listed them if I hadn’t taken up so much space on my campaign, but I digress.  In June she graduated not once but twice, delivered the student speech at the Hermitage Technical Center commencement and received the Best Female Student award, along with four college scholarships.  And to think that I raised her since she was in elementary school.  On a sadder note we say good-bye to Cotillions, senior proms, and 24-7 robot build seasons.  Sniff!  She also got her first car, a Saturn Ion, on which the doors open the wrong way.  I’m still waiting for my first ride in it.  Over the summer she again ran assets around a warehouse whatever that means, and then in August she was off to college at Virginia Commonwealth University (whose football program still remains unbeaten) to study mechanical engineering and how to blow up things.  She’s living on campus where she has her own room with private bath in a former hospital psyche ward (?).  She comes home to practice her fire spinning since playing with fire is not allowed in the dorms.

Derek is still a Hokie (and I still have no idea what that is) and is going into his last semester at VA Tech.  Yeah!  He now has his own website at derekmillerdesign.com where you can view some of his theatre work and photography.  He continues to hone his Texas Hold’um and lighting and stage design skills, and is still receiving letters of congratulations from the VA Tech engineering department for being on the dean’s list even though he hasn’t taken an engineering course in two years which in turn tells you something about how much the engineering department has its act together.  In March, Derek and Jean along with friends Debra and Hilary Beck were off to Las Vegas to celebrate Derek’s 21st birthday.  How’s that for a celebration?  (As usual pictures on website.)  Besides working on several stage productions at Tech, over the summer Derek worked the Spoletto Festival in Charleston, SC (some sort of potato celebration as far as I can make out) and then was off to Princeton to work lighting for the New Jersey Opera.  Now back at school, course work is constantly being interrupted as he is shuttled off to places like Atlanta and The Peoples Republic of Massachusetts to work on shows. 

Jean continues to mold little minds at the Second Baptist Creative Learning Center and will probably continue to do so, at least until the governor decides to destroy preschool learning by getting the State Department of Education involved.  She’s also been very busy maintaining her sister Donna’s genealogy legacy although the amount of material that Donna left behind probably precludes any one person from ever getting it all organized. 

In July, Devon, Jean and Jim left me home alone—well, in the kennel to be more precise, they left the cats home alone—and attended the Younkin family reunion in Somerset, PA, and then, after some visits in Jim’s old homestead in Harrisburg, met Derek in Lancaster for the World Boardgaming Championships which is starting to look like a new family tradition. 

At the end of July, Jim had an epiphany (thank you Devon for all those scholarships) and retired after 32 years as a nukie (that’s short for nuclear engineer).  He now spends his days in refined leisure at home directing my website development (which explains the three months lapse in any updates), writing the great American novel, building miniature dioramas, designing historical simulation games, and attempting to breed super-intelligent amoebas among other diversions while waiting for the Nobel Prize Committee to call.  Hey, if they can give a prize to Al Gore, Jim figures that with his talent for making up stories, he should be a shoe in.

Jim’s lapse in having me update the website (see above) gave me time to finally get past chapter 6 of A Canine’s Guide to Website Design.  Now that I’m back to updating it, I’m bumping it up a notch although it hasn’t been easy bringing the AWIT (Assistant Webmaster In Training) Pete up to speed. Want a challenge? Try explaining Cascading Style Sheets to a cat!

   As I'm running out of both dog treats and space I guess it’s time to wish you and yours the very best Christmas ever and a wonderful new year, and to once again leave you with that most important bit of canine wisdom:  cats is a four-letter word, but dog is only three.       

P.S.  As a reminder to those of you who would probably rather not be reminded, here are our vital sadistics, er, statistics:

Address:  204 Tamarack Road, Richmond, VA 23229            Phone:  804-741-9973

e-mail: devonrex@cavtel.net               web site:  www.dracorex.com (“Talk to the paw!”)