ohmidog!

Who says dogs have no place at a literary festival?

Certainly not me … or I.

Ace, though he attended last year, stayed home on Saturday when I went to Bookmarks, the annual Winston-Salem literary festival. I figured it would be too hot for him to enjoy it, and, besides, I was serving as a volunteer at the Winston-Salem Writers booth and, even though he’s great at drawing a crowd, I felt it best to go solo.

There were dogs there, though, including these two Boston terriers, who were being pushed in a stroller.

 The booth next to the one I was in was operated by  the North Carolina Shakespeare Festival, and it featured a plywood cut-out of the bard into which people could stick their faces to be photographed.

Among the people taking advantage of it were the owners of the two Boston terriers.

The larger of the two Bostons was almost able to fill the face hole when his owner held him up.

The smaller couldn’t begin to fill Shakespeare’s face. His head only took up about half of the hole.

But he had such a great smile, we have to give him equal time anyway:

(An open house is being held by Winston-Salem Writers, starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12 at the Central Library, 660 W. 5th St. I’ll be among the authors selling and signing books (DOG, INC.) at the event, which offers an opportunity to learn more about the organization.)

“Macbeth” doesn’t have a particularly happy ending, but one of the stars of the Baltimore Shakespeare Factory’s production of the play might find one.

The performances of “Macbeth,” starting with a Thursday, April 12 premiere, will feature homeless dogs from the Baltimore Humane Society, including Sophia (above).

Sophia will appear in the premiere — a long way from when she was found starving and freezing on a garbage dump behind her owner’s home, able only to walk on her hind legs. Her owner said he had no use for her anymore and had not even named her for the months in which he owned her, according to the humane society. Sophia, a nine-month-old boxer mix, is now living with a foster family.

The Baltimore Humane Society says the Shakespeare Factory is also featuring adoptable dogs in the playbill and setting aside space for a humane society information table at all shows.

Baltimore Humane Society will be sharing the stage with The Shakespeare Factory throughout the rest of the year for several different plays.

Different dogs and cats will be appearing in each of the performances.

Macbeth will be performed beginning April 12 at the The Great Hall Theatre, St. Mary’s Outreach Center, 3900 Roland Avenue, Baltimore.  Additional performances will be April 20-22  and April 27–28.

For more information or tickets visit theshakespearefactory.com.

Anyone who sees Sophia or any of the other Baltimore Humane Society actors will get half off the adoption fee if they mention it when they come to the shelter and fill out an application.

John Steinbeck, as he tells it in “Travels with Charley,” didn’t stop in Fargo.

He kept Rocinante rolling another 40 miles until he stumbled upon a more idyllic setting — yet another riverside camping spot, this one along the Maple River, near the sleepy little farming town of Alice. There, he just so happened to run into what would turn out to be one of the book’s more colorful characters, an itinerant Shakespearean actor.

Steinbeck would break out the coffee, and the whiskey, and listen as his flamboyant fellow camper explained that he performed Shakespeare around the country, in tents, in high schools  … “wherever two or three are gathered together … With me there’s no question of doing something else. It’s all I know — all I ever have known.”

Steinbeck recounted the meeting in great detail — including how the actor unfolded a packet of aluminum foil to reveal a note he once received from John Gielgud. After that, explaining the importance of a good exit, the actor makes one.

Was the Shakesperean actor a dramatic invention in Steinbeck’s classic work of non-fiction? We’ll probably never know. But indications are, just maybe, something is rotten in the state of North Dakota.

From all existing clues, it appears Steinbeck didn’t actually sleep in the town of Alice on the night of Oct. 12, which can only lead one to wonder if the actor was real, or if, like Tom Joad in ”The Grapes of Wrath,” he was artfully concocted by the author, most of whose works were fiction.

If so, it wouldn’t be the first discrepancy between Steinbeck’s account in “Travels with Charley” and what his papers and other sources reveal about his 1960 trip.

Many of those are now being brought to light by blogger Bill Stiegerwald as he retraces Steinbeck’s route. (Bill, who we met at the begining of our trip is a good two weeks ahead of me.)

“Contrary to what he wrote so nicely and in such detail in ‘Charley,’ Steinbeck didn’t camp overnight near Alice on the Maple River or anywhere else on Wednesday, Oct. 12, 1960,” Stiegerwald concluded on his blog, Travels Without Charley. “He stayed at… in Beach, N.D., some 300-plus miles to the west.”

This, along with some of the recent stops on our own retracing of Steinbeck’s travels with Charley, brings us back to our discussion of the truth in fiction, and the fiction in truth.

We’re all for the former, but have some problems with the latter. We have nothing against using the techniques of fiction writing in non-fiction – in portraying the innate suspense of a situation, or the turmoil raging inside characters; or in skipping over the boring stuff.  (Otherwise, a writer might end up boring readers with something as mundane as tossing french fries to his dog.)

But we’d argue that a reader of books, even a reader of blogs, deserves — like an eater of food — to know what he’s consuming. What sort of liberties an author of non-fiction has taken in processing the facts is information to which a reader should have access, much like a diner should be able to find out what sort of oil a fast food restaurant uses to cook its french fries.

The line between fiction and non-fiction, it seems, is becoming a difficult to define boundary. Then again, maybe it has always been so.

Earlier this week, our “Travels with Ace” took us to Sauk Centre, or as Sinclair Lewis called it in his 1920 novel “Main Street,” Gopher Prairie. “Main Street,” while labeled fiction, exposed many truths about small town life — more, at least initially, than some Sauk Centre residents cared to be exposed, proving that not only does the truth hurt, but fiction can as well.

Our next, and latest, stop was Fargo, which most people know through the Coen brothers movie of same name. The movie starts off with the words: “This is a true story …  At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”

But “Fargo” — whose characters were mostly portrayed as dull-witted sorts, living in a frozen wasteland — wasn’t a true story at all; rather it was a concoction of the wonderfully degenerate minds of two brothers from neighboring Minnesota.

Both the movie “Fargo” and the book “Main Street” brought some unflattering notoriety to the towns they were depicting — much like Steinbeck’s novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” offended some Oklahomans.

In addition to criticism that “The Grapes of Wrath” was too political, didn’t accurately describe the migration of farm families from the dust bowl to California, and some nitpicking that Sallisaw, the town it opens in, was not actually part of the Dust Bowl (a fairly major nit), there were those who thought the novel portrayed “Okies” as illiterate hicks.

(Possibly, that’s why when he was traveling with Charley, Steinbeck sidestepped the state of Oklahoma.)

In each case, though, once the dust settled, there was something close to a happily-ever-after ending – some acknowledgement of the truth beneath the fiction, or at least some evidence that any perceived slights were forgiven.

Sauk Centre, where Main Street now intersects with Sinclair Lewis Boulevard, has embraced Lewis, its most famous son, with an annual festival.

In Fargo, chamber of commerce types proclaim there has been “a renaissance” — not so much due to the movie itself, maybe, as to the efforts to show the world there was more to Fargo than the movie portrayed. In 2006, on the movie’s 10th anniversary, it was projected on the side of the Radisson Hotel, the city’s tallest building as part of the Fargo Film Festival.

And even Sallisaw, on the 100th anniversary of Steinbeck’s birth, started a “Grapes of Wrath” festival, though it was short-lived. It has since been replaced with the annual Diamond Daze Festival, which isn’t Steinbeck-related at all.

All of which, in addition to just being interesting, serves as proof that — as the maybe real, maybe not Shakespearean actor in “Travels with Charley” might have said — all the world really is a stage.

According to the old saying — at least as old as Shakespeare — every dog has his day. 

In California they just got an extra one.

Interpreting a regulation that sets the “holding period” for a stray dog impounded in a public or private animal shelter at “six business days” (or, if certain exceptions apply, “four business days”), a state appeals court in San Francisco has ruled that Saturdays don’t count as business days.

The ruling  was the first to interpret a 1998 California law that increased the holding periods for public and private shelters, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The ruling will affect Contra Costa County Animal Services and all other counties and cities with similar policies.

The case goes back to 2006, when a miniature pinscher named Duke, was impounded at a county shelter in Pinole on a Thursday. The shelter held the dog until the following Wednesday, when another person took him. Duke’s owner, Veena Purifoy, went to the shelter the next day the following to find him gone.

She sued both the county and the new owner, who relinquished Duke in a settlement, Evans said. The suit against the county challenged its claim that the shelter had held the dog for the required four business days.

Overturning a judge’s ruling in the county’s favor, the appeals court said the state law did not define business days but was intended to increase holding periods from the pre-1998 law, which required a 72-hour hold.

Excluding Saturday as a business day serves “the legislative goal of access, because longer holding periods will often provide more opportunities for redemption and adoption,” Justice Martin Jenkins said in the 3-0 ruling.

(Photo from Cafepress.com)