Dog Tales: Recent Visitors at Watson's Bone Lounge

A long time ago a philosophy professor began his classes with the question, "Did you see anything you liked today?"  It's proof of what a lazy student this writer was that he cannot recall that prof's name. But it seems that for anyone who loves dogs, the answer to that question on any day involving a dog walk or even a dog visit is "yes"...

We recently had two dogs in the Bone Lounge, which has not seen many of them since Bone Lounge management Watson* took his last walk with this writer (Watson's pal for 66 seasons) in late August.  After Watson had moved his toys into our breakfast room addition 9 years ago, it seemed reasonable to rename it the Bone Lounge. The visiting pooches appreciated how floor to ceiling glazing allowed them to watch a squirrel scamper up a tree, and we've posted a video below. The canine visitors might have loved to see the herd of mule deer* that visited recently, or (from inside the glass) the black bear we saw a few autumns ago.  But that squirrel served to provide them a bond of common interests and maybe even an appreciation for mid-century modern architecture.

Spaniel-poodle mix Ella is 21 months old, with the curiosity and enthusiasm that implies.  She's been a Thursday morning visitor while her human Carol attends Spanish class.  We immediately nicknamed her Ellie.  She made herself at home, and because she is known as a somewhat picky eater, we took it as a sign of confidence that she's now happy to have brunch at the Bone Lounge...

On Thursday Ellie had a canine companion in Mufi, a rare breed of French sheepdog, actually the only Stateside example of her kind.  Architect intern Peyton Floyd was taking care of Mufi for a few days, and we got permission from the dogs' respective humans to introduce them...

They got along fine, sharing a big walk and treats.  Ellie, like some humans, might've taken Mufi for some exotic species of bear, if not for her floppy ears and big, waggy tail.  After taking this profile photo, we tried to get a face shot of Mufi with more detail...

But the furry curtain in front of her eyes hides them, and probably makes for a unique perspective from Mufi's point of view.  She'd been brought from France as a pup, and so it's unlikely anyone has been able to put her working dog shepherding instincts to use over here.  The lack of sheep to mind doesn't seem to have affected Mufi's enthusiasm for life at age 8. The key difference between dogs and humans seems to be that dogs never seem to lose the innocence and joy for living that reminds us of children, and binds them to children. It's a reminder, too, that we have a world to protect, if for no other reason than to provide a safe future for those beings who enjoy living in the moment. 

Here's a video of Ellie and Mufi watching that squirrel clamber up a tree in the Bone Lounge garden. We'll be welcoming Ellie back for a stay while her human, Carol, is on vacation.  And as Ellie's previous stay was enlivened by the presence of Mufi, we expect she'll be looking for her new furry friend, and sniffing around for her, when she returns for her own vacation...

*Footnote:  For the story of 66 seasons of adventures with Watson, you might want to see "10th Anniversary Post: Remembering Watson, the World's Best Dog", posted here on August 25, 2025.  For a photo essay on the herd of mule deer that recently visited the Bone Lounge garden, there's "Wild Animal Encounters Part 3:  Reflections on Kindness and Risk", posted January 31, 2026. 

 

Photo Credits:

The top photo and the video are by Peyton Floyd; the other photos are by the author.

Roadside Attraction: Boulder Eats Exhibit at the Museum of Boulder

Just because you've been living in a town for a good while doesn't mean you know its history all that well.  There are always stories to discover, so when a friend told me there was an exhibit at the Museum of Boulder about local restaurants I might remember, I decided to go.  The museum, at 2205 Broadway, is right next door to the Carnegie Library for Local History where we'd researched the Boulder Theater story*, at the intersection of Pine and Broadway.

The Boulder Eats exhibit begins with a riot of signs and menus from Boulder restaurants that will call up fond memories for some visitors (well, this one for sure), including Tom's Tavern, Juanita's, the New York Deli, Daddy Bruce's BBQ, and the Zolo Grill.  Along with more than 300 objects from their collection, the museum provides some history you might not have known...

It was news to this writer that Daddy Bruce Randoph, who died at 94 in 1994, was not the first African-American to open a restaurant in Boulder. That honor belongs to O.T. Jackson, who managed the Chautauqua Dining Hall in 1898, and later owned a seafood restaurant and an ice cream parlor. The exhibit notes his involvement in the 1910 founding of Dearfield, a farming community for African-Americans south of Greeley.  Daddy Bruce made a more recent imprint on local history, also because of his community spirit. In the 60s he began serving free Thanksgiving dinners in Denver's City Park, at first offering a couple hundred meals from a portable grill.  By the middle of the 80s Bruce was serving thousands of free dinners at his restaurant in Denver's Five Points neighborhood. 

Exhibit displays a history of kitchen appliances including a Victorian-style cast iron stove, a later 1920s model, a circular metal ice box with 100-pound capacity, a Fifties-style stove and fridge, and a microwave.  Exhibit historian and food writer John Lehndorff helped provide a timeline of Boulder's natural food businesses, including the 1969 founding of Celestial Seasonings followed in 1970 by the Green Mountain Grainary, the first health food store downtown, and first to offer Celestial Seasonings tea, the 1976 founding of Rudi's Organic Bakery, and the 1987 founding of Wild Oats Market, which became the 2nd largest natural foods chain nationally.

Owing to recent raids on food businesses in other states by ICE, the exhibit curators decided not to display photos of immigrants working in local food businesses.  Instead, they posted the silhouette of a worker, and noted the large part immigrants have played in harvesting and preparing food.  

The curators decided, however, to post a photo of a guy who worked as a janitor at The Sink on University Hill during his student days at CU. That was Robert Redford, who left us back in September.  The Sink is still in business, though, at 1165 Thirteenth Street...

There's also an ongoing, award-winning exhibit in the Boulder Experience Gallery that provides a panorama of local history including racing bicycles recalling the Red Zinger classic (1975-'79), runners and wheelchair racers from the Bolder Boulder 10k that began in 1979 and has continued on every Memorial Day since, and a satellite recalling Ball Aerospace, also in Boulder. 

The Boulder Experience also displays artifacts from deeper history as well, beginning with the stories of Chief Niwot and the Arapaho tribe, the true "legacy Americans" who first lived here, along with photos, musical instruments and clothing from the era of cattle ranches that began to take over after the 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise restricted tribal land access.

Downstairs from the main level where you enter, there's an interactive children's area with geometric toys on the wall, and a mural of a VW Microbus with colors and symbols from the Summer of Love era.  That seems appropriate (this is, after all, Boulder), and though I'd thought the artist had made a bit of an error in choosing the "bay window" bus with its curved windshield, I was off base.  The "bay window" bus first appeared in August 1967, when it was still the Summer of Love, for the 1968 model year.  In May of that year, students joined union workers on a national strike in France.  But that story is for someone else's history museum...

*Footnote: The Boulder Eats exhibit on the history of food in Boulder will be open through July 26, 2026.  The Museum of Boulder is open Mondays and Wednesday through Sunday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM and is closed on Tuesdays.  June through August, Monday hours change to noon to 8:00 PM.  You can visit museumofboulder.org to confirm ticket prices, but we saw that children under 5 are free, kids 5-17 and college students are $8 (along with seniors), and that standard tickets are $10.

 

And "Roadside Attraction: The Boulder Theater", our history of the recently-restored Boulder Theater, appeared as our blog post for December 15, 2025. 

Photo Credits:

All photos are by the author.