When my wife and I were first thinking of adopting a dog a few years ago, we spent a while considering the breed. We went back and forth on size preferences, how active a pup we could handle, etc. Eventually Marina started looking for a German Shepherd, based on her warm memories of a half-Shepherd her grandparents had when she was a girl. When she found an adoption posting for our dog Hunter (whom I’ve mentioned before), it was love at first sight.
Hunter and his amazing ears (photo by me)
Because of the anonymity of the adoption process, we didn’t know anything of Hunter’s origins beyond his obvious resemblance to a black and tan Shepherd. It was also pretty clear that there was at least one other breed in there somewhere, if only because of his half-pointy, half-floppy ears that resemble bat wings when he perks them up. Eventually our curiosity got to us and so we paid for genetic testing. When we got the analysis, we learned we were proud owners of a 50-50 mix of German Shepherd and Catahoula Leopard Dog.
A Catahoula Leopard Dog (Wikimedia Commons)
What’s a Catahoula Leopard Dog? you might ask. I mean, that’s what Marina and I asked; we had never heard of such a thing—we had to Google. The Catahoula Leopard Dog, a.k.a the Catahoula Hog Dog, a.k.a the Louisiana Catahoula Cur, or (simply) a.k.a. the Catahoula, is the state dog of Louisiana. It’s a breed that dates to the 18th century, when French settlers in the Mississippi basin crossbred their own Beauceron dog with Native American dogs, making a delicious creole canine gumbo. The resultant breed was a dog that was smaller and faster than the Beauceron, and well-adapted to hunting in swamps (they even have webbed paws). Catahoula were (and still are) used to hunt wild boar, and while I’m no hunter myself, I have to admit that’s pretty badass. They get the “leopard” part of their name from the fact that most (but not all) have an irregular patchwork of large and small spots. Some are white, some are brown, some are black, some are a bluish gray. They tend towards medium-large (65–75 pounds) and have floppy ears and soulful eyes, although to be fair, all dogs have those.
A sampler of the many Catahoula color schemes (collage of images from Wikimedia Commons)
Knowing Hunter’s genetics explained a lot about his idiosyncratic behaviors. When outdoors, he likes to range far from us, intent on flushing out rabbits and squirrels. When he trees the latter, he expectantly summons us, presumably to shoot the poor critter down. Indoors, however, he is docile and cuddly, and he hates when anyone leaves the room and tries to herd us together—a Hog Dog in the streets and a Shepherd in the sheets. But home life is not all snuggles and pets: at home, he goes into watchdog mode, staring intently out our front window, barking clamorous epithets at anyone passing within 30 yards of the house.
They also serve, who only stand and wait
The Catahoula in Hunter goes beyond his behavior. While his coloration is Shepherd, his build is almost entirely Catahoula, from his attenuated, deer-like legs to his barrel chest. And when he gets wet, you can see through the slicked-down fur the distinctive spots on the skin below.
Hunter’s hidden spots (another photo by me)
Our adoption papers say that Hunter was born in Massachusetts. We will probably never know how or why his parents were bred together; perhaps his mix is a sought-after one? I imagine many people would want a Shepha-loua; ours is certainly a very good boy (although again, all dogs are).
To end this essay on a jarringly different note (it’s a bad habit of mine): Since New England has no boar to offer, I have spent a not-insignificant amount of time watching YouTube videos about Catahoulas, trying to learn what activities and training might be appropriate for our dog. A lot of the videos are specifically about training your puppy to hunt. Many are silly domestic videos about the odd sounds the dogs make when irritated, or other creative ways they express dissatisfaction. And some are about how the breed requires careful training lest they become dangerous. Among these, I found some curious AI-produced shorts that present a large language fever dream of a “leopard dog” which might be at home in one of Tim Burton’s later films (you know, the bad ones). These videos, while hilarious, are a puzzle to me. What series of events led to their creation? Was there a human who holds a grudge against Catahoulas that dictated these to Nano Banana? Were they part of a larger AI project tasked with producing a video about every American Kennel Club breed? Were any humans involved at all? These hallucinatory vignettes are a cautionary tale, less for their warning regarding the breed, and more for their illustration of just how froot-loops bonkers artificial intelligence can be.
For when you gaze long into the leopard dog, the leopard dog gazes also into you
My parents were (and remain) staunchly liberal, but for people who lived their twenties through the eras of beatniks and hippies they were (and remain) pretty square. In the 70s my dad had sideburns and a mustache and smoked a pipe; my mom had a bob cut and wore knee-length skirts. Their record collection consisted of mostly classical and musical theater albums with probably the most scandalous disc being a copy of Herbie Mann’s Push Push1. It’s a wonder, then, that my childhood was filled to the brim with subversive boardgames. By this I mean games designed to promote skepticism, free thinking, and in some cases, out and out Marxism. This essay focuses on the eggheaded, leftist games of my youth.
WFF ‘n Proof (1962)
I believe my Dad acquired his copy of WFF ‘n Proof in college. In any case, this strange dice game was kicking around the house as far back as I can remember, and as long as I can remember I was trying, and failing, to learn how to play. WFF ‘n Proof is a game where players roll a handful of odd wooden dice whose sides were (mostly) Roman letters. Then they attempt, using propositional calculus, to arrange the dice into a string of atoms and connectors to produce valid statements, or what the game maker Layman E. Allen referred to as “well-formed-formulas (WFFs).” Just for fun, instead of the standard system of symbolic logic, this game uses “Polish notation,” a system of expression developed by logician Jan Łukasiewicz in which the operator is placed before its operands. Did I mention I tried to learn this game when I was seven?
This game did not strike me as particularly odd as a child. My parents were the type to let their kids play with adult things (if they weren’t dangerous or inappropriate) and let us work out what we could. Besides, my dad was a professor of theology and philosophy and occasionally taught symbolic logic, and he had an old copy of Stephen Barker’s The Elements of Logic (1965) that he gave me and my brother to read. So, proof that autism is hereditary!
The WFF ‘n Proof dice, as inscrutable now as ever
I may never have learned to play WFF ‘n Proof, but I was in love with its odd presentation. The game came (in its original edition) in a plastic wallet with foam rubber housing for the dice, a thick rulebook that was more like a short novel, and a tiny hourglass for timing moves. Whatever happened to these tiny hourglasses? They used to have one in every game. As an adult, I once bought a copy of this game off eBay, only to find that foam rubber does not age well over the decades (to see what I mean, Google “original Yoda puppet”).
The WFF ‘n Proof company (which billed itself as “games for thinkers”) also produced other games. One, which my family also owned, was The Propaganda Game, and it was here that my education as a skeptic began. This game was also developed by Layman E. Allen, but also credited Lorne Greene, Commander Adama himself2. In a statement on the box, Mr. Greene outlines the game’s purpose:
In a democratic society such as ours, it is the role of every citizen to make decisions after evaluating many ideas. It is especially important then that a citizen be able to analyze and distinguish between the emotional aura surrounding the idea and the actual content of the idea. It is to this goal of clear thinking that THE PROPAGANDA GAME addresses itself.
In contrast to WFF ‘n Proof, The Propaganda Game‘s rules are very simple. A set of cards are printed with a series of short arguments or appeals to the reader, and the players have to identify what kind of propaganda is being employed. If they get it right, they slide their tiddley-wink marker up the score sheet; if they get it wrong, they go back a rank.
The game is subdivided into various propaganda categories, such as “Techniques of Self-Deception,” “Techniques of Language,” “Techniques of Exploitation,” etc. Within each category, there are eight to ten techniques to identify, such as “Prejudice,” “Academic Detachment,” “Drawing the Line,” “Not Drawing the Line,” “Wishful Thinking,” “Tabloid Thinking,” and my favorite, “Causal Oversimplification,” which I believe is 85% of discourse online (the other 15% is straight-and-out lying). These categories and their techniques were first proposed in the book Thinking Straighter by George Henry Moulds (1966).
Some of the statements to evaluate. Can you spot the propaganda techniques used?
As you might imagine, a lot of this is subjective, and even as a child I found myself yelling back at Allan and Greene: “That’s not Drawing the Line! That’s just being clear!” Apparently I am not alone in my complaints, as tournament rules for this game use an amended guide, available online.
The most amusing aspect of the game is the “Clear thinking chart” used to keep score. Each rank has an unflattering name that corresponds to how easily propagandized the player is, such as “Brooklyn Bridge Buyer” or “Bilker’s Bonanza.” If you are unlucky enough to slide into negative numbers you end up in the “Ding-a-ling section.” It was a different time. There was also an interesting mechanic for games of three or more players where each voted on the correct technique, so the game not only introduced participants to propaganda but also to the Asch Conformity Test.
Lie, Cheat & Steal (1971)
I remember when my parents purchased this game (at my brother’s and my behest). It was at Straus’s, which was the frou-frou department store that once was the pride of Youngstown, Ohio. In those days before being destroyed by malls and big boxes, department stores often carried unusual games, toys, and other novelties, and that included the output of tiny producers. Lie, Cheat & Steal was published by now long-defunct Reiss Games, whose output mostly consisted of abstract strategy and party games, although they also apparently made a board game based on the 70’s scandalous paperback The Happy Hooker. Lie, Cheat & Steal (herein, LC&S) was a highly jaundiced game about political campaigning, as described on the box bottom:
LIE, CHEAT & STEAL is the game of unscrupulous politics. You and one to five of your shifty friends can get in on the dirty-dealing, back-stabbing and thinly disguised thievery that make up the real political world.
You buy and sell votes, steal from the Public Treasury, and libel the other players to get ahead. The Senate may investigate you. You may even go bankrupt. But don’t give up! LIE, CHEAT & STEAL gives you plenty of opportunity to come back and win.
LC&S actually pre-dates Watergate, but it does reflect the era’s cynical views about corruption and money influence. Modeled somewhat obviously after Monopoly, the players roll dice to move clockwise around the board, acquiring money in unscrupulous ways to eventually buy votes. Along the way you land on spaces with names like “Tammany Hall,” “Chicago Machine” and “League of Women Voters Luncheon.” In the course of the game you might become the subject of a Senate investigation and have to take the witness stand. You collect “feathers in your cap” or “black eyes.” Neither my brother or I understood the meaning of any of this other than the “Jail” space, but we did ask our mom a lot of questions, and she did her best to explain the machinations of American Politics.
The LC&S board. I thought the guy in these pictures looked like a character in an Inspector Clouseau cartoon.
LC&S was probably the most playable amongst the games I describe in this essay, but that’s not to say it was all that fun. Like Monopoly, it ran long, and by the end I was happy when anyone would win, just as long as the game was over. As far as politics went, I was already pretty cynical and needed no board game to disillusion me.
Class Struggle (1978)
I have no idea where my dad got this game, but I suspect he sought it out because of its press coverage. The bottom of the box (I think it was the second printing of the game) enumerates its infamy:
FIRST book about capitalism to come packaged in a game box… FIRST game to be written up in a NEW YORK TIMES editorial … FIRST game ever to be played on the radio (for two hours on WBAI) … FIRST game ever to be sold by Scribner’s, 8th Street Bookshop and Salter’s Bookstore, three of New York’s most famous bookstores FIRST full-scale board game to present the side of the workers. FIRST board game ever to be sold in both Toy and Stationery Departments in Bloomingdale’s .. FIRST game ever to be sold out in one week in Bookmasters, N.Y.C. …
Class Struggle was developed by political professor Bertell Ollman of NYU and it’s really less of a game than a recapitulation of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, with a rule book that is nearly as long as its source material. The pre-Photoshop collage on the cover shows Nelson Rockefeller arm wrestling Marx. Nelson has a few hundred dollar bills in his suit’s breast pocket, in case the point isn’t clear enough. In this game, one player is “the workers” and the other is “the capitalists” and they are caught in an arena of dialectical materialism, as represented by a cluttered and hastily-designed board. If there are more than two players, other factions are used, like academics or professionals, and these can make alliances with either the workers or the capitalists. The game, at least in its early editions, came with components that were at once elaborate and cheap, the strangest of which were the dice, which seemed to be cast in some sort of yellow epoxy that chipped easily.
The Class Struggle board. Will the world end in Socialism, Barbarism, or Nuclear War?
The game was not so much fun as it was funny. I imagine if you were a student of political philosophy your would get many sensible chuckles. But for me it was another clockwise slog around the board, and the games’s many potshots at Capitalism seemed like casual oversimplification. Callback!
When my parents moved from my childhood home to a new place a couple of decades ago, they cleaned out a lot of the games that had survived our many basement floodings, and one of them was Class Struggle, which they offered to whichever son would take it. I said thanks but no thanks. I think Rob may have taken it, which in hindsight might have been a lucrative move. Because however unfun, the game has developed something of a cult status over the years, with online retrospectives, contemporary re-imaginings, and even original sets sold at auction. An ironic fate, considering the game’s whole raison d’être.
The 70s were filled to the brim with photos of hairy shirtless guys. ↩︎
Yes, I know that he’s primarily known for Gunsmoke. This sentence is here just to annoy Boomers. ↩︎
This weekend I donated platelets. I’ve been a donor for about a decade and a half; I’m not exactly sure when I started, and my Red Cross phone app only goes back 100 donations, which was some time in 2013. It is more helpful in keeping track of the number of units I’ve given so far: 361. Platelets are measured in units of at least 3 x 1011 individual platelets, of which I give six each donation, along with two units of plasma. It’s hard to tell what this works out to in volume or mass, but each of the plastic bags containing a unit looks to hold about a pound of a thick yellow syrup that resembles butterscotch topping. If my guess is accurate, I’ve donated about two times my body weight at this point.
The donation process is called apheresis, and how it works is you get hooked up via IV tubes to a machine that sucks out a little bit of your blood at a time. Deep inside this contraption, a centrifuge spins the blood at a terrifically high speed, which separates the platelets, which are a different density from the other blood elements. The platelets get shunted away into the previously-mentioned plastic bags that hang in a row above the apheresis machine. You can watch them fill, which is oddly satisfying. The remainder of your blood gets returned to you—this can feel a little odd at first because it’s never quite the same temperature as the rest of your body. The procedure can either be done using two tubes attached to two arms, one for out and one for in, or by cycling the draw and return using just one arm. By the time the donation is done, all of your blood will have been removed and returned to your body, which will either fascinate you, if you’re like me, or make you feel faint, if you’re like most people.
Platelets are used in a variety of medical procedures and therapies. One of the most common uses is as part of courses of treatment for leukemia. The disease causes abnormal blood production and one part of that is a low platelet count. Units of platelet are also used in surgeries for traumatic injuries and organ transplants. In these cases, blood loss is a dangerous problem, and platelets produce clots that seal incisions and lacerations. Platelets even support wound healing and tissue growth.
One of the things I like best about the donating process is its anonymity. I get to know where donations go (in my case as far north as Maine, as far south as North Carolina), but I will never know who received them, or why. The recipients will never know me either. I like to think about the way a part of me traveled off in the world to be a part of someone else for a while, and the fact that I will never meet them is part of the charm.
This is an old photo. They no longer use the squeezy blue ball, I sort of miss it.
My wife has often told me that she thinks I am brave and selfless to donate because she absolutely hates needles and having blood drawn, and she couldn’t put up with it for a few minutes, let alone the two to two and a half hours a platelet donation takes. I feel like a fraud when she commends me like this, because needles have never bothered me, and I like sitting still and zoning out. I enjoy the fact that I have no responsibilities for the next couple of hours. I have even fallen asleep a few times during a donation (which isn’t a good idea if you have sharp metal objects stuck in your arm). When I give platelets the phlebotomists are doing all the work and I’m relaxing, watching foreign sitcoms on Netflix.
My wife, by contrast, has volunteered for the last couple of decades to lead a theological and philosophical reading group at a nearby prison. For this she has to develop a reading list and prepare notes. Every month spends an afternoon enriching the lives of men who are serving decades-long, or even life, sentences. The trip, including a substantial drive there and back, takes about four hours. To me, that’s work that deserves praise, and work I could never do, because I am autistic (have I mentioned this?) and I suffer from social anxiety even when dealing with people I know. So she’s the hero in the couple, or at least that’s what I think. She, of course, would say different.
I once saw a video in which a photographer said the best camera is the one you have on you. You can buy a top-of-the-line DSLR and outfit it with the most expensive lenses available. But ultimately, if your phone is what you carry around with you, that’s your best camera. Similarly, the best charitable work is the work that you are likely to continue. Volunteering isn’t about doing things that take the most effort or even deciding which cause is the most deserving of your support. It’s about finding something that lies at the intersection of what needs to be done and what you can do.
If you are like me, wanting to do good in the world but also very lazy and perhaps antisocial, you might consider platelet donation as well. You get a warm recliner with heated blankets. The staff mills around and coos over you like mother hens, asking how you’re doing and offering pillows. You can watch Veronica Mars for two to three hours and still feel virtuous. And when it’s over and the last of your blood is returned, they bandage you up and send you to a folding table they charitably call “the canteen.” Here you will eat the junkiest cookies you ever tasted and sip small boxes of fruit juice. And if you’re lucky maybe there will be a promotional tee shirt or tote bag that week.
This weekend the canteen was unusually crowded with donors. Two older guys with scruffy gray beards and worn jeans were comparing their lifetime donations. One proudly gave his number as 700. So I guess I have a ways to go yet.
