The sky above me could not be bluer. The day could not be sweeter. And that’s because I am severely limiting my exposure to that part of politics that I cannot affect. I simply can’t deal with the maelstrom that is out there to the East. It’s too crazy. Too all-absorbing. Too toxic for me.
I have volunteered for phone call duty, perhaps some envelope-licking, and I read the Times in the morning. If anyone needs a ride, I will mask up and be there. If there are banners to hang or signs to stick into the ground, I am game. But for now I am done with watching any of the breathless ones with microphones in their hands. Personally, I don’t need to find another reason to vote for Biden/Harris. I already have hundreds.
You remember this guy, Travis Bickle. He got too close to the flame in a political campaign and you know how that came out. I’m definitely not going where he went, but I do understand how he got there.
When my mail-in ballot shows up it will not spend one night in my home but be filled in and rushed to where it needs to go by suppertime. If by some mischance I am sent two ballots I may do the patriotic thing and vote twice. If I see a ballot hanging out of a trash can I may pluck it loose, brush off the food scraps, and use it to vote straight BLUE. Ordinarily I do have more scruples than this, but 2020 is special. If it takes some creative chicanery to help unseat the Cluckmeister, I am not above doing my share. Perhaps my unmeritorious efforts will cancel out one Russian troll’s mischief.
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The song Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye has become a classic. Leonard Cohen wrote it. Wistful. Poetic. Beautiful. Feist’s version over there in the Jukebox is intimate and gorgeous. Perhaps that’s because she’s Canadian, as was Cohen. Maybe there is a cosmic Canadian consciousness that they shared. How would we ever know, not being from there, and presently not even being allowed to go there?
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On our recent drive to South Dakota and back we had hours and hours to look out the car windows for the signs of autumn. I would estimate that in the prairie states about 10% of the leaves have turned color, while here in the mountains it is closer to 40%. There were places in both prairie and mountains where instead of becoming colorful, the leaves were just becoming a lusterless brown and shriveling up, presumably due to the dry weather.
Colorado still has a statewide fire ban in place, and it would take a lot of rain to change that. Fortunately, even the drunken yahoos we met a couple of weeks back seem to take this admonition seriously, so our local fires are basically lightning-caused. We’ve not had any burning near us here in Paradise, and over the past couple of days the West Coast hasn’t been nearly as generous with their smoke cloud, allowing our sun and stars to peek through.
One thing we’ve been spared so far is a fire caused by exploding devices at a gender reveal party, unlike what happened in Arizona and California. Ahh … humans … can’t live with ’em, can’t live with ’em.
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From The New Yorker
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Andrew Sullivan wrote an excellent piece this week about tyrants, starring guess who? Sullivan’s a smart guy, and this article brings conflicting things together so well I highly recommend it. Unless your blood pressure is worrisome or your mind is about to snap with what you’ve already taken in. The piece is called “The Face of a Tyrant.”
And if your brain is not worn to a nubbin and you are still wanting more to think about, click on David Brooks’ name over in the Links list on the right. His latest piece is How Faith Shapes My Politics. A thoughtful op/ed about one man’s journey from atheism to belief and what that did to his political convictions. It’s pertinent to today where a candidate’s fitness for the SCOTUS is being at least partially based on answers to these same questions.
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Little Home In The Valley 