Mabel, Bob and the Puppets

08/26/2023 by Pat Shiplett 1 Comment

You can be forgiven for thinking, at first glance, that these hand puppets are teddy bears.For more than forty years the hand puppets have accompanied Mabel and Bob through airports, restaurants, memorial services, clam bakes and around the neighborhood. “Almost everywhere except job interviews.”

They’ve traveled hither and yon jutting out of backpacks and tote bags carried by their humans who refer to them as ‘the meeps’ because that singular sound is the basis of their very limited vocabulary.

They are tools of communication that express sentiments words alone can’t capture.

They help bring confrontations down a notch. They call out bullshit. With a shake of the head they can offer advice without judgement. And for being stuffed animals they are surprisingly discreet – they’ve learned that Bob or Mabel need to be left alone at times.

The puppets both answer to the same given name – Meep – but they are as different from each other as from you and me. They’re not siblings or in any way related by blood. They’ve never shown romantic interests in each other (or other hand puppets for that matter).

As is well known, puppets sometime quarrel with their puppeteers and with each other. After all, there are six possible combinations of opinions between these two humans and their meeps. But apologies are given and accepted quickly, and grudges fade within days.

The enduring relationships started when Mabel Liang and Bob Leigh attended their five-year reunion at Harvard. There is no favoritism between the four of them. To this day, the humans and their meeps attend to each others’ needs without question.

In puppet years, Meep and Meep are getting on in age. But despite patches of missing fur which have been attended to, there is no sign that they’re slowing down.

Hand puppets are a resilient lot.

Jack Birdsall

07/27/2020 by Pat Shiplett 8 Comments

Things happened recently that set the young barista on a very different path in life.

He earned his undergrad degree. He met a wonderful woman at church and they married. He started his first salaried job.

As a student he focused on writing and directing for movies and television. His university sends exceptional talents into that field but Jack has decided not to head off to Los Angeles or New York.

Filmmaking fame and fortune will have to come later. Read more…

Jamie McNear

07/28/2020 by Pat Shiplett 2 Comments

Jamie and his partners played mostly covers until they made it to high school.

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They reverse-engineered the likes of OutKast, Lauryn Hill, Kanye West, Eminem and Jay Z among others. They borrowed and learned. Their skills grew exponentially until at a certain point Jamie turned to the others and said:

“Fuck this! I want to write my own shit!”

Michael, Eli, Henry, Ari and Julian all agreed that they would absolutely fuck this and perform their own shit from that moment on.

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Jamie became the group’s lyricist and vocalist. “I’m no singer,” he admits — but in rap and hip hop that’s not a fatal flaw. He can hold a note and push a rhythm and he’s begun to round tones. It’s not exactly singing but it’s not exactly not singing.

The Manwolves play by ear. Progressions are laid down on keyboard and then cross-jiggered against lyrics, syllable by syllable. All six of the artists contribute. They record in a home studio and send their files to goodly Zen-Master Jim who mentors and mixes them.

None of the six are enrolled in college. They may not see themselves as entrepreneurs but in reality Manwolves is a start-up venture trying to crack a multibillion-dollar industry. They’ve recently opened for bigger names while touring the East and the Southwest.

Who’s to know how far the Manwolves’ decisive ‘fuck-this’ moment will take them?

They may be touring fifty years from now — still selling out Manchester Arena and Madison Square Garden and headlining UNICEF concerts. Of course Manwolves’ fans will demand they perform their epic Manwolves hits over and over and over and over again.

But this time it’ll be different. This time the cover songs Jamie McNear and Manwolves will be performing will be the ‘shit’ they wrote for themselves.

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Maya The Barista

07/07/2019 by Pat Shiplett 1 Comment

Maya is the face of a generation.

Students I’ve studied with from Europe, Asia and South America — along with community-college classmates — are preparing for a future no one can exactly envision.

It’s said that the Mayas among us will pursue several careers, often as contractors without benefits, and may need to create their own jobs. They’ll start as unpaid interns while carrying serious debt.

Many of them believe that following a personal passion will serve them better than signing up for a traditional professional path — by dint of curiosity and dedication, they’ll find their way. They don’t worry about a steady income at the tender age their parents did.

Maya will enter the last year of an independent-study program. Her focus on Community Services includes English, Sociology, American Studies. She sees it as an insurance policy that her scholarships helped make happen.

Maya spends summers as a barista at our corner coffee shop. The encounter has made her more optimistic about life (a lift every undergrad could use).

She’s drawn to the precision, science and artistry of the craft; and the teamwork it requires. Hardest to master is the simple, elegant cortado. The espresso is to be just so. The milk needs to be exactly warm enough (never steaming) to lay down the right trace of foam.

Although the coffee shop adheres to Fair Trade Organic and Direct Trade practices, it’s not an underground or bohemian kind of joint. Maya brags on its homey quality.

She plans to continue as a barista after she graduates. It will give her breathing space and it may leave breadcrumbs she can follow along the way.

Does she worry about her future? “Not at all,” she’ll tell you, “but I do worry about ‘our’ future.”

Maya Crowe-Barnes is the face of a generation.

Peter and Enzo

03/18/2019 by Pat Shiplett 4 Comments

There are dogs bred to herd sheep and steers. Enzo isn’t one of them.

And there are dogs that assist the sight-impaired. That’s not Enzo either.

Certain breeds flush game from tall grass but Enzo does not hunt, pull sleds, sniff out contraband or repel intruders.

The two and one-half year-old spent 10 days waiting to be adopted. He was withdrawn, mistrustful and desperately in need of a haircut.

Joanna and Peter drove two hundred miles during one of the meanest days in many years (-20°) bent on adopting a dog that same day. Too soon for a new mutt? Joanna was confident that her Jude would have understood.

The shelter’s app listed three dogs that might work given their apartment and their allergies. The least promising, the only one left when the couple arrived, had been written up for urinating and nipping. Patience was advised.

Enzo inspected every inch of the living room at the Mulder-Baker household before sequestering himself there. Its couch revealed truths about the late Jude that only another dog could understand. It was reassuring.

Enzo feared the hallway leading to the rest of the place. Something in its closet made noise and caused heat to fall from the ceiling. But the kitchen and its activities called and eventually Enzo allowed himself the run of the place. Once on the bed he inched his way toward nighttime contact.

Because he’s skin and bones, Peter and Joanna feed him canned food. They agreed they wouldn’t repeat the table scraps mistake they’d made with Jude. Maybe the squeaker toys Peter brought home would compensate.

Ezno is taken out three times a day. Joanna does the a.m. and Peter the p.m. Midday is a toss-up.

It’s not unusual to see the writer of long-form articles in the New York Times, The New Yorker and The Guardian — one well along on an anticipated novel — abandon his work in a window at our coffee shop to show his new dog the neighborhood.

We tend to think of shelters as places we humans go to rescue animals. And that’s true as far as it goes but more often than not, the rescues that take place go in both directions.