While the weather bedevils travelers all over rest of the state, it only taps us gently on the shoulder with a dusting of snow and some mildly chilly temperatures here in the Uncompahgre Valley. Now while this might sound pretty good to someone presently stuck sideways across Interstate 70 in a 35 car pileup near Vail Pass, there is a caveat that goes with the Winter Lite we enjoy. It all changes if you try to go anywhere. There are these gigantic piles of rock you have to pass through, and to do so you first go up and then you go down. It’s during the “up” part where most of the excitement lies.
Going east on I-70 you need to cross Vail Pass and the Eisenhower Tunnel. Take an alternative route and Monarch Pass stands in the way of your fun travel day. To the south, if you are brave enough to drive the Million Dollar Highway in winter, you need to cross Red Mountain, Molas, and Coal Bank passes.
Go west and you are in southern Utah, an area large in acreage and small in population. If your car should develop problems, waiting for help to come requires patience and I would definitely take lots of blankets and beefsticks with you to assist in staying alive while you wait and pray for help to come.
Going north there is no major geologic obstacle, but who in their right mind wants to go through Wyoming and the Dakota Territory in the winter unless they absolutely have to? This is the sort of country where you string ropes from your home to the outhouse so you can make it there and back safely during whiteouts.
I have many friends who are summertime dwellers in the Territory, but they depart en masse in the winter, only to end up huddling together in migrant camps like this one until Spring brings sanity back to the land and they can return.
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My point is that we are blessed here in Paradise, as long as we stay right where we are. Doing anything else is problematic.
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Newly sworn-in Rep. George Santos made headlines again this past week when he declared that he had invented Rubbermaid. “I did it during my freshman year in college,” said Santos, “when I was fooling around in chemistry lab. I was trying to find a container that would keep my stash fresh, and decided to create my own.”
When the reporter pointed out that the Rubbermaid company has been around since 1920, which was 68 years before Santos was born, the plucky congressman blurted out “Yeah, that surprised me, too. I wonder how I did that?”
In the photograph Rep. Santos is shown telling his whoppers directly to God, rather than going through earthly intermediaries. “I hate the idea that I might be misquoted,” said George.
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I know that I’ve mentioned this program before, but what good is it being the godlike creature that I am if I can’t repeat myself? We are just about done with Reservation Dogs’ second season. Robin and I are fans, and if you haven’t watched at least one … how do you know if you aren’t a fan as well?
It is a series with heart, and how many of those are there?
Plus it takes place on an Oklahoma reservation, which is terra incognita to most of us. Plus the four main characters are all interesting people. Plus there is a hilarious spirit-warrior that comes in and out of the narrative.
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David Crosby passed this week. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. Once for co-founding The Byrds and once for co-founding Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
Troubled man, troubled life, with lost opportunities and lost friends littering the road behind him. But he left us some beautiful songs as well. Here’s are some of them.
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The best summary that I’ve yet read about where President Biden stands today was in Saturday’s Times of New York. I know, I know, there are readers who believe that nothing good can come out of this news organization, but what can I say? Being generally on the side of liberalism (or conservatism) does not make one automatically wrong. All media must be approached with one’s mind open and one’s critical faculties in full employ or one risks becoming nothing more than an extension of the mob. And what sentient being wants to be that?
Anyway, the title of the piece is “Oh, Biden, What Have You Done.” I am among those who earnestly hope that Mr. Biden does not run for re-election. And I don’t want to get caught up in the vagueness and vapidity that is the ongoing discussion about aging and its effects on abilities. A fact of modern life is that there are too few thirty year-old voters who can get excited about eighty year-old candidates, no matter how much of their competency they retain.
I’ve lived with this knowledge for quite a while now. There was an axiom of the counterculture/revolutionaries in the sixties that went like this: Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty! This earnest proclamation was at its peak in 1969, the year that I turned thirty.
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Little Home In The Valley 