While this might not have been the best year to grow tomatoes in my backyard, it was a banner year for growing peaches on the Western Slope in Colorado. I’m serious, you had to eat them leaning over the sink to avoid dripping juice on your floor and clothing. And flavorful? My oh my!
This time it was two friends who each gave us a grocery sack full of peaches, way more than we could eat without doing ourselves harm, so we’ve preserved them, after a fashion. Following a recommendation found on the web, we cut them in half, brushed the cut side with diluted lemon juice, then flash froze them.
Now all we have to do this fall and winter is thaw out a few, enough to make a cobbler, and indulge!
Growing up, having fresh fruit was a luxury, and I never got over feeling that way. So to be buried in freestones too many to eat at once … I do believe I’ve died and gone to heaven.
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On January 23, 2016, candidate Donald Cluck said: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
He was possibly correct in this assumption.
And that’s what I think he did this past weekend on Meet the Press, when he basically said Yep, trying to overthrow the results of a democratic election and continue as president was my idea. He fired that gun down Fifth Avenue, and he is challenging us to do something about it by putting the ugly deed out there where we can’t mistake the who and the what. My own feeling is that we take up his challenge as the bit of high unpleasantness that it is and beat the living s**t out of him at the polls in 2024.
Our problem is that it looks like we’ll be trying to use an 80 year-old warrior to do it with. Ah weel, laddies and lassies, it’s a poor workman who blames his tools, eh? We’ll just need to put a bit of extra starch in Uncle Joe’s boxer shorts when we send him out to do battle.
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Recently I ran across an article that made my gray hair stand on end. It was about the apparently incontrovertible fact that old people have their own smell. And that everybody who ever walked into a nursing home knows it. That faint but slightly suffocating aroma is the accumulation of the scents of all the residents, and not the result of poor housekeeping.
While I was reading this piece, I went directly from curious to horror-stricken.
I am of a certain age. In addition to looking old, walking old, thinking old, and being unable to vertically jump more than a few centimeters (thus taking dunking a basketball forever out of my grasp), do I (gasp, wheeze, urk) smell that way?
Gaaaaaccck! How would I know? The affected persons probably don’t have a clue that they are walking around with a heady cloud of Eau de Dotage trailing behind them.
Anecdotally, the unique scent of the elderly lingers wherever they live and in any confined spaces they have recently occupied, such as taxis and elevators.
Scientific American
And who would you ask? Certainly not young persons, who already hate the boomers for all sorts of things and don’t need another reason to have them put away. Another senior citizen? Can they discern something in others that they, too, are carrying along with them? The only reassurance is that even though we stand out with our own special bouquets, they apparently aren’t as revolting as the armpits of the middle-aged.
Contrary to common complaints about “old people smell,” the volunteers’ blind ratings revealed that they found elderly people’s odors both less intense and less unpleasant than odors from young and middle-aged people. Middle-aged man musk took top prize for intensity and unpleasantness, whereas volunteers rated the odors of middle-aged women most pleasant and whiffs of old man as least intense.
Scientific American
But I am taking no chances. I take four showers a day, tape floral arrangements under my arms, and eat at least one cup of alfalfa at every meal. In addition, my clothes are washed twice in cider vinegar and not rinsed. I’d rather smell like a gherkin than you know what.
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From The New Yorker
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The New Yorker magazine had two articles that caught my eye this week. The first one was about Larry McMurtry, who is the author of Lonesome Dove, one of my favorite novels. I’ve read it several times, and here’s the crazy part, I believe that it represents a truer view of good old late 19th century Texas than any other book. Why crazy? How would I know? I’ve spent a few weeks of my life in that politically benighted state, but was never a cowboy nor did I know one personally, and certainly I have no cred when it comes to knowing the minds of the state’s early residents, white, brown, or red.
But the words of the book … truth ringing like bells on every page for me.
The second article dealt with something more recent, a little movie about yet another world I’ve never inhabited, Theater Camp. Again, I have no trouble believing that anything on the screen couldn’t have happened in real life. My only window onto this world has been through the eyes and actions of grandson Aiden, whose dedication to his acting and singing craft in high school paralleled that of the characters in the movie. He’s an impressive young man, and one of the good people of this world.
Worth a watch, I think. On Hulu.
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MORE REASONS NOT TO COMPLETELY DESPAIR ABOUT THE DEPLORABLE STATE OF COUNTRY MUSIC
Emmy Lou Harris is the reigning queen of country, at least for me. A class act with impeccable musicianship. I first ran across her music in 1975, when her second album Pieces of the Sky was released and I was laid low by the song Boulder to Birmingham. Here is a sampler from her extensive (and eclectic) catalog. For instance, May This Be Love is her cover of a Jimi Hendrix tune.
The lady simply does not put out anything second-rate.
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I am accustomed to brook trout being pretty and small, but on Saturday morning I went fishing down at the East Portal in the Black Canyon N.P. and saw one do a slow roll out in the water in front of me that was perhaps 16 inches long. It had that unmistakable and striking red belly coloration that made it stand out from all of the other fish I sighted that morning.
Sighted, but didn’t catch. Although there was one very young, very foolish, and very small brown trout that managed to embarrass itself by letting me hook it. Poor thing must be the laughingstock of the Gunnison River even as I write this down.
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Little Home In The Valley 