June 13th – but ABOUT June 7th, 2006.

Driving on University Boulevard to meet up with my friend Amanda. Oh she of the crazy. Traffic and the usual on 193. Cars vying for position and taking what they please under acceleration, careening and careless. Swerving up ahead of me, cars slowing and moving to the right and I see a guy dashing into traffic, grappling with a medium-sized black dog in the left lane. The dog has a leash and the man has gotten a hold on that and is grabbing the collar and is grabbing the body and the dog is fighting him and yelping like it’s in pain and a leg is twisted strangely. The man loses his grip for a moment as the dog bites him and I pass slowly and see the man carrying the dog back across the median and through three lanes of traffic in my rear-view mirror.

I’m not really sure what to do. A woman ahead of me has her flashers on and is swerving a little bit with her passenger-side window open yelling back and forth to the car next to her. She rolls her window up and accelerates away and I’m wondering if this is the car that hit the dog and I grab the license plate number just in case THAT proves to be useful – still, I have no idea what to do.

My conscience for once gets the better of me and I pull a U-turn to see if there’s anything I can do to help, but by the time I reach the scene the dog and the man have vanished and I pull into the left lane to turn around yet AGAIN, and as I sit behind a Mazda waiting to accelerate back into the rush, I spot the man and a woman squatting at the edge of the woods near a parking lot by the side of the road. Just as I spot my space and pull out into traffic, paying far too much attention to events across 3 lanes of traffic and behind me, I realized that they’ve lay the dog down there and are leaving.

A fellow rockstar at the Columbia Arts Festival in Columbia, MD.

So what do I do with that? I thought about turning around again but now my punctuality gets the better of me and I head to meet with Amanda while wondering what it is that you do in that situation. I haven’t actually witnessed anything – I haven’t actually seen anything happen, I have a license plate number to someone who was passing by. I guess I should just go ahead and forward this to the police and see what they do with it, if anything.

It leaves me feel strange and guilty and unsure for the rest of the night.

This picture from Jeff (the guy who runs sound from the New Deal Cafe cause he’s freakin’ awesome) captures our ilyAIMY dancers at the Columbia Arts Festival.

ilyAIMY + Amy at Perkapalooza in College Park, MD. One of our best shows ever. After the difficulties of the Columbia Arts Festival, I’ve sort of vowed to make SURE I’m prepared for shows. I’ve been a little slack recently. It made a huge difference Saturday night though – we were amazing, and this performance of “Illinois is Overflowing” was devastatingly beautiful…. if’d I do say so myself.