Month: September 2023

Took a long drive on Sunday morning, going up and over the Uncompahgre Plateau and down on the far side, ending up in Naturita. The ride goes roughly like this: Ten miles of asphalt, ten miles of good gravel road, ten miles of single-track rutted cowpath, ten miles of good gravel, and finally ten miles of asphalt.

On the cowpath part the scenery was outstanding. Broad valleys, cliffs you could just drive right off of, little rivers winding here and there … made driving the narrow road and all the rut-straddling worth the trouble. I circled back home on comfortable and undemanding asphalt.

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MORE REASONS NOT TO COMPLETELY DESPAIR ABOUT THE DEPLORABLE STATE OF COUNTRY MUSIC

Maren Morris has never been a comfortable fit in Nashville. Part of the problem is that she has a mind and uses it. That hasn’t always worked well for women in this genre in the last couple of decades, where sitting on a tailgate in a pair of cutoffs was more the model. You may recall the time that the Dixie Chicks were immediately consigned to the country-western sub-cellar when they had the audacity to criticize George W. and his war in Iraq during one of their concerts.

The example I’ve chosen for this morning is from her latest EP, which some regard as her swan song as she drives off with corporate Nashville in the rearview mirror. I hope not, but like I said, she has her own mind.

(You could ask Where is Willie Nelson in all this? Isn’t he one of the good guys? And my answer would be that of course he is. But at 90 years old, he’s from two generations of artists ago, when things weren’t deplorable yet.)

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Robin has been off visiting her sister in Sioux Falls SD for the past several days. From her telephone reports they have left a trail through some of the most rugged shopping destinations, knocked off at least one decadent pastry shop, and in general behaved about as well as one could expect from a pair of country girls on a rampage.

My problem has always been that my idea of tidiness and Robin’s are not precisely the same. So I never quite pull off that con job of being the well-behaved husband that I strive for.

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Ran across this very thoughtful piece on the NYTimes opinion page entitled “Being There.” It hit a nerve, a raw one in me, touching on an area where I have so often felt myself to be sadly lacking. Of feeling sort of paralyzed by someone’s need when they are going through a particularly rough patch. Recurrently having the idea that I should have done more, should have said this or that, should have been a better friend. Ultimately wondering if I really am that good friend that I thought I was.

The author describes what he regards as one of his own worst failures, not “being there” for a friend whose mother had passed away. I’m not going to list them, but I have my own tawdry compilation of inactions to regret.

When I was still a working stiff in the halls of medicine, I had opportunities galore to “be there.” And sometimes I was. Sometimes a phrase would pop out of my mouth that obviously gave comfort, and I tried to learn from that. But often I was mute, could not think for a moment of what I might say that would be just right, and so said nothing.

But, and here comes my point, there were times when I did step up. How? By literally being there, physically in the room with that person, saying nothing out loud but using the act of putting my body quietly in a chair to offer myself in whatever way was needed. Looking back, I realize that I was saying … tell me what I can do.

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Good article in the NYTimes about aging, strongly suggesting that having a positive attitude is a good thing, and may add a couple of years to your existence schedule. I spend quite a bit of time in this blog dissing getting old, primarily because my basic posture has been to whine about my life situation at every stage. Another aspect is that I am amused by the ridiculous in life, and aging certainly provides material for that conversation.

Yesterday I had lunch with friend Rod, chomping down on a couple of chile rellenos at a local restaurant. Our chat ranged widely, but it was inevitable that age was on the table, if only briefly, several times. That somewhat hoary adage, “getting old is not for sissies” came up, and both the truth of it and the humor in it were noted. He mentioned that a drawback of having his cataract surgery was that once his vision had been surgically improved, he was unprepared for the face he now saw clearly in the mirror. My response was to describe my typical morning visit to the same mirror in the mornings. I rub my eyes, put on my glasses, throw out my arms to the side and declare to my image “Well, what fresh hell have you got for me today?”

(I’m sorry, I so love that phrase of Dorothy Parker’s, What fresh hell is this?, that I keep using it in almost any kind of situation. If repeating myself is a sin, I am doubly doomed.)

One of my children, bless her heart, has been making fun of my addiction to Metamucil for decades, ever since on a long-ago visit to her home I had to make a late night trip to a grocery store to refresh my supply. I assured her that she didn’t want to be around me if I was forced to go into withdrawal, so would she please get out of my way and tell me the shortest route to the store.

The husks of the seeds of this plant have magical properties, some proven and others claimed but which fall more into the area of faith than of science. I am satisfied with science once again and will leave the rest of the discussion to others. And that’s all I am going to say about that.

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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.

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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SOME REASONS NOT TO COMPLETELY DESPAIR ABOUT THE DEPLORABLE STATE OF COUNTRY MUSIC

These days when I accidentally tune in to a country station while driving, I am nearly driven to tears and occasional nausea. So much of it is … actually, crap would be a euphemistic way of describing it. But then I catch myself and think, hey, there are real country singers singing real songs out there, they just aren’t being played as much. Songs by Patti Griffin, Amanda Shires, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Brandi Carlile, and Emmylou Harris. For whatever reason, only female names occur to me this morning.

Way too many of the guy singers are of the sleeveless shirt, pickup truck, flag-waving, and let’s get blitzed variety. They also tend to reduce women to objects, but hey, that’s what guys do when they are drunk, don’t they? You know, “locker-room talk” and all that.

So today we are dropping in a couple of tunes by one of the most thoughtful singer/songwriters out there – Mary Chapin Carpenter.

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Our leaves are beginning to turn color now, here in the valley. The Canada geese are getting together in small groups and practicing flying from field to field and pond to pond. Judging by the amount of honking they’re doing, they are pretty excited about the whole process.

Each fall for the past several years we’ve had a two-day “Salute to Aviation” at our local airport. The armed forces fly in a handful of planes, park them near the terminal, and allow the public to come by and walk around the aircraft.

Of course at this point in life I don’t need to experience those big-time G-forces while pulling out of a dive in a fighter jet. All I need to do to lose consciousness is stand up.

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From The New Yorker

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I don’t know if I’ve ever described my morning routine to you. Once I’ve had my first cup of coffee and am almost fully awake, I walk to the bathroom and turn toward the mirror. I plant my feet firmly about 24 inches apart and square my shoulders.

Only then do I raise my eyes to regard my reflected image and say: “Okay, what you got for me today? A new bump or lump? Something else will stop working? Breaking new ground in the sagging department?”

If I can’t see any new damages I count myself lucky and go on with the business of tidying up the ruins of the Adonis-like creature that I once was. Who knew how important gravity would become? I suspect that if I woke up in the International Space Station I wouldn’t recognize myself in the mirror at all, absent the wrinkles and bags.

Tempus seems to fugit faster and faster every day.

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A couple of days ago I was taking off on my e-bike to ride to the gym when I made some error and ended up dumping my self and the bike on the ground. A quick damage assessment showed only a scraped left knee and a sore spot on the opposite quad.

That wasn’t what was most bothersome . It was when the bike righted itself, backed up a few feet, and took another run at me. Like a toreador, I dodged to the right and grabbed the handlebars as it passed, avoiding further injury.

Now this episode will come as no surprise to long-term readers of this blog, who are familiar with my belief that inanimate objects are not. Inanimate, that is. How else to explain so many oddnesses?

For instance, the car keys that you know you put in the drawer where they belong but are now in the pocket of the jeans that just came out of the washing machine.

Or the jar lid that simply will not come off even with the proper cursing and sweating, but then twirls off like a ballerina when your wife takes her shot at it.

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From The New Yorker

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Let me take a moment to praise the homely apple. Available in scads of varieties, the number of which is added to every year, delicious eaten raw or baked into some of the best comfort food in the universe, and handsome to look at, I think it may not be getting the respect it deserves.

Our local market tries to interest us in dragonfruit, papayas, and kiwis, which are all commendable fruits. But they ain’t from here. Apples don’t like the tropics, requiring colder climates to do their thing. If you’re looking hard to find a blessing in cold country living, the apple is one you might consider.

Yesterday a friend who has a small orchard gave us a large bag of Honeycrisp apples, and we are presently gorging ourselves on them (at least I am). it is also entirely possible that there is an apple crisp in my future.

And no matter which variety you choose to eat, you are almost guaranteed to be happy and satisfied. Almost. We need to be warned that there exists that paradox of fruits. The only apple variety which has none of the attributes we cherish. With its thick skin, mushy interior, and uninteresting flavor, the only thing it has going for itself is that it looks good. But its name itself is a lie.

So how did we get stuck with this loser? Here’s a young man who seems to know the answer. You don’t have to watch the video if you aren’t curious. Just don’t buy the dratted apple.

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If there was ever a time to hope that we Americans will collectively keep our heads, it will be the next twelve months. And I’m talking to both sides of the so-called culture wars, to lefties and righties and even those political agnostics, the independents. It’s likely that there will be a fire or two set during this time, with some well-known blowhards puffing on the flames like strutting blacksmith’s bellows.

I am also talking to the “media,” who have been known to fan a flame or two themselves whenever it helped their circulation. No one should feel that they need to give up any firmly held political principle, but we need a safe space where such things can be debated, and some of the actors in our national drama would take this space away from us and use it only for themselves.

There are moments when I get all tensed up as il fascisti strike their poses and do their acting out in the public square, and I see those puffed-up warriors wearing their camo outfits and brandishing their AR 15s. Do we need a clearer picture as to their intent? They are made of the same clay as the blackshirts and the storm troopers from another time.

As boring and tedious and mind-numbing as our political debates can be, they are essential to keeping the best of what we have and offering a better future for us all. When the scales finally fell from Italian eyes back in 1945 and they threw off fascist rule, they did it with some grisly fluorishes, including hanging a bunch of them from a girder, Mussolini included.

But it had taken nearly thirty years for enough of them to come to their senses. We need to do that before November 2024, and reject authoritarianism and its ugly buddies – power cults, looking for the strongman, threats of violence, rejection of the very ideas that have made the ideals of America worth supporting. Authoritarianism tends to carry the seeds of its own destruction along with it, but there can be so much harm done along the way.

In our past, a respect for fair-mindedness and decency have kept us strong and united even in our fractiousness. Taken together they are a heady blend, something to get quietly high on.

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We’ve had the pleasure of having Cynthia, a good friend of Robin’s from South Dakota, stay with us for several days. She is a delightful person, and from my standpoint it was great fun to watch these old buddies get a chance to chat and laugh and flat out enjoy one another’s company.

On the other hand, being caught in a small house with two intelligent and fast-talking women at the same time is a harrowing experience for me. I simply could not keep up, and had to keep inventing excuses to go off to my room to catch a breath.

(I am much more at my ease in the company of a bunch of typical male louts, scratching and farting together and dealing with the deeper questions of life like “How ‘bout dem Broncos, eh?”)

Of course, having a guest means we got a chance to show off this part of Colorado, which offers much to show off. The weather wasn’t perfectly cooperative, with some rains here and there, but there was just enough sunshine to keep our plans on track and our mood light.

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In our conversations I was reminded of the first time I took Robin canoeing in the Boundary Waters. We put in at an entry point that I had used several times before and headed for a portage a few miles ahead. An hour or so later I realized that I was seeing a shoreline I had never seen before, which meant that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and we were now in unfamiliar territory.

As I was fuming at myself for my chuckleheadedness, Robin spoke up and suggested that we return to where we had started out and begin the journey anew. I stared at her for the longest time before I came up with this response:

Robin, dear, if I knew how to get to where we started out, we wouldn’t be lost.

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I am a sucker for signs that bring a laugh or even a grimace if they are bad enough. Collected these this week. I especially appreciate the desperation of the one covering the urinal in the men’s room in a restaurant in Silverton CO.

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The number of people who follow this blog puts me somewhat short of enough to qualify as a macro-influencer. I am definitely in the “nano” category.

People with followers in the range between 500,000 and 1 million followers on a social network are macro-influencers. Most influencers are micro-influencers with between 10,000 and 50,000 followers. In really specialist niches, you have nano-influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers.

Influence Marketing Hub.com

Which brings me to acknowledging the latest follower to sign on to the blog, who is from Nigeria. I am delighted to welcome them as my first followers from Africa.

Amazing, isn’t it? The ease of communicating with people thousands of miles away, separated from us by vast oceans. There is certainly a darker side to what the internet can be used for, but I believe it is far outweighed by the positives. So I will return the favor and follow this new blog from the folks in Nigeria with hope that I will learn something about a country other than my own, from the people who live there.

It serves as a reminder that what we now refer to as the internet was once commonly called the world-wide web. We no longer need to type in the “www” on a web address, our computers make that assumption for us, but it’s still true.

[Now would be the time, I think to admit that I am not any sort of influencer at all. Just a rambling sort of writer. I just wanted to talk about it as if I were, for a moment. If you need corroboration of this, you need only contact my children, who will tell you straight up that I have never influenced them in the slightest.]

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One of the table conversations with Robin and Cynthia was about early rock and rollers, including Elvis Presley. I consider myself a fan of his, but only of the too-short period before he was drafted. After that he was mistakenly guided toward turning out some sort of canned pop-rock that had obvious appeal because he sold a gazillion records. But I didn’t buy any of them.

Following up on our discussion I have included three tunes today from that golden time when he was young and fresh and thought to present a clear and present danger to public morals.

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I had it on continuous, repeated headphone play during my routine at the rec center, as I sang silently along, the words “Black Myself “ ringing inside my cranium.

But, dear hearts, I am not black, but of Norwegian ancestry, which makes me a poster boy for pallid. No matter. A good soul-stirring anthem is what I needed today at the gym and that is exactly what I got. Cultural appropriation … possibly. But I don’t know any Norse exercise songs that can carry one through the paces like this tune does.

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From The New Yorker

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I admit to having taken cheap shots from time to time at the world of fashion. It is a world beyond my understanding or caring, but obviously means a great deal to some people, and it is unkind of me to be so dismissive. It is, after all, art of a sort and I have no qualifications to judge art.

But I will remain silent and let the picture speak for itself.

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Life has offered me opportunities too many to mention, to be a good example. I have taken advantage of so few of them … . For instance:

A. I was given a substantial four year scholarship upon graduation from high school. After two years of spending more time wandering the bluffs of the Mississippi River than I did in class, the scholarship committee cut off the last two years.

B. When seat belts were first offered in cars, I ignored them entirely. It wasn’t until going without a belt was against the law that I finally gave in and put the blasted things on.

C. I was repeatedly told that going bareheaded while bicycling was a poor example to set before children in our small town. I cared not a fig. I was already working overtime with those same children in other venues, what @&&$$#%^*% claim did they have on my free time? But the incessant badgering finally wore me down.

D. Motorcycling? Helmets? Take away my freedom to ride the way I wanted? I grudgingly relented, but with much pouting. I’m still pouting and I don’t even have the motorcycle anymore.

And so on.

But that was the old me. The new man that I am sits up straight at the table, uses his knife and fork properly, and closes his mouth when he chews. I keep my lawn trimmed and follow the recommended schedule for maintaining my automobile. I try to be a good listener even when the speaker is spewing pure bilgewater. I pat the errant children of others on the head, even when their hygiene is questionable.

At long last I am making an effort to become a grownup, and leave those bad behaviors behind. What are the odds in my favor? I would guess about 10%.

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From The New Yorker

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I like to point out the hypocrisy of others. It helps me to avoid dealing with my own. But there has been quite a hoorah about women over the past several years about their right to wear whatever they want and wherever they might be. Appeals to caution generally fall on deaf ears.

No matter. Their theme is wear what they want and any adverse consequences are somebody else’s fault.

Now the hypocrisy I mentioned comes in at exactly the speedo point. This is where these same people do not granted males the same freedom of clothing expression . To refresh your memory, the speedo is a garment which is the male equivalent of the bikini, but one that has almost no defenders.

If I were to go to a beach wearing this patch of material, I imagine it would be a very short while before the beach police covered me with a horse blanket and hauled me off for fashion counseling. If I were stubborn about it I might even be charged with creating a public nuisance, and brought before a jury that would consist of twelve persons good and true wearing identical expressions of disgust.

The only people who are allowed to wear a speedo without becoming targets of derision and hurled tomatoes are the young and extremely fit. And even for them it is a chancy thing to wear one in public in America.

The last time I ever put on a Speedo was in Mexico, when I was eons younger and a good deal more fit. Today I have enough respect for the public’s sensitivities to not want to provoke their horror by wearing this abbreviated bit of cloth.

So, where we are at present it is women – wear what you please. Men – don’t even think about it.

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When I was a little kid, staying on grandpa’s farm, I would occasionally be sent to the cornfield to select a few ears for supper. Grandpa never planted sweet corn for the table, but thought that if field corn was good enough for his hogs, it was good enough for us. So off I’d go to do my duty. Somewhere along in life I was taught to examine the cobs for worms, which was a gross thing to do and therefore interesting to a kid.

I was reminded of this childhood process when this summer an infestation of corn earworm developed in the fields of Olathe, about ten miles from us. Olathe is a very small town, almost completely dependent on sweet corn for its livelihood so the local effects were, if not disastrous, certainly harmful to the local economy.

But all this ado and fuss has made me paranoid enough that today when I shopped for corn, I peeled back the husk just enough to check for unwanted travelers. Call me fussy, but I don’t like it when my meat moves on my plate.

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There’s been a boatload of information in recent years on how bowel flora can influence behavior in creatures who we think are far beneath us on the scale of how living things are ranked on this planet. Of course that’s our ranking, and we have no idea what theirs would be, since we ascribe little importance to the mental life of anything but our own species.

The idea that microorganisms could be doing the same thing to us, the ultimate in evolution’s grand progression, is not worth considering and can easily dismissed with a haughty sniff.

Perhaps rather too easily.

Here are a few recurring situations that are possibilities, perhaps you have noticed some as well.

• A person who has everything to lose has an overnight sexual dalliance when thinge chance of discovery is nearly guaranteed
• A person has already eaten way more than they should have and feels a bit ill as a result, their waistline is straining at their belt, and then they reach for one more shrimp. Or two.
• A person reads an article about someone using high colonics in a wackadoo health regimen and finds that they have a low opinion on such maneuvers even though they really don’t know what one is.

I think that we should look into the off chance that we are being pushed around on a regular basis by our bowel flora, just like those “lower” organisms are. I can tell you for certain that in my own case, and this has happened many, many times, a touch of diarrhea will routinely make me move toward the loo much faster than I had believed possible.

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From The New Yorker

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Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? And it was so early one morning at the South Fork Campground until a couple of small bits of burning pine jumped onto my fleece pajama bottoms and quickly burned two holes in the garment and one in my anterior thigh. Some, but not all of the magic went out of the moment as I flapped my hands to put myself out.

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Of all the Colorado rivers I’ve seen so far in this state which is filled with beautiful rivers and streams, the White River is my present favorite. I’ve spent a little time on both the north and south forks which join up to create the main river and brother, gorgeous just don’t do them justice. Here’s a couple of pix along the South Fork taken this past week.

We camped one night at the South Fork Campground, which is at the end of Highway 10. It’s a “primitive” location, which means fewer amenities. But the restrooms were well maintained, the sites were far enough apart, and it was right on the river.

We were using a two-person backpacking tent and I have to tell you that getting into that thing in the evening, with all of our senior citizen creakings and groanings, was hilarious. Once installed we were quite comfortable and slept well in 40 degree temperatures.

In the morning, as we sipped our coffees, two trains of pack horses passed through the campground carrying elk hunters and their gear up into the Flattop Mountains. Each train was about ten horses long. You could tell the outfitters from the hunters pretty easily, they were the ones who looked like they knew what they were doing. The others were dressed in brand-new camouflage clothing and did not appear to have been born to the saddle.

As they passed I sent out all the good wishes and karma that I could muster – to the elk. Essentially these guys were going to all this trouble to have a chance to shoot at a peaceful herbivore bigger than a cow while it was grazing and standing perfectly still.

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Today, while I was waiting at the pharmacy I saw a man wearing a cap with an inscription I hadn’t seen before – “I Miss The America I Grew Up In.“ At first I thought that it might be code for MAGA, but there is a wistful quality to this new one that is lacking in the Cluck slogan.

I miss the world I grew up in, too, but that was because I had it pretty good, while so many others did not. Some of the things I was lucky enough to enjoy back then:

• Riding bikes up and down the streets of my home neighborhood in Minneapolis where the elms formed a complete arch
• Walking a mile to attend Saturday matinees at the Nokomis theater without parents hovering over my every step
• Every boy I knew played baseball, owned his own glove and bat, and could be counted on to help get up a game at a moment’s notice
• Adults in my family who were adults, and we could take for granted that they had our back, every day
• Never going to bed hungry

Although I “miss” these things, I don’t really want to go back and relive those times. The charms of sketchy electrical wiring, unreliable indoor plumbing, no antibiotics, and car tires that went flat on every other trip would wear thin very quickly for modern me, I think.

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I don’t know how it is with you, but my spiritual side is a patchwork quilt, with pieces from time spent in churches, in hospitals, reading books, watching films … a basketful of patches retrieved from the ordinary messes of an ordinary life. One of those patches came from a phrase in a middling sort of movie, Beyond Rangoon. Way before I came across Buddhism, I came across this actor reading the line “Suffering is the one promise that life always keeps.”

Apparently I was at that moment fertile ground for this particular teaching, because it stuck, and slowly grew into a sort of acceptance. That this might truly be how life operated. Randomness. No one needed to be blamed, no one was being punished, no tortuous explanations were necessary. When bad things happened, they just happened. As did good things.

I began to appreciate more the varieties of suffering that always been around me, and I saw more clearly what my own path forward should be. To not add, if possible, to the sufferings of this world, and to help reduce it wherever I could.

I see these practices as ordinary tasks for ordinary people like myself. Not saints, not holy men or women. Just regular, everyday, unremarkable folks.

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From The New Yorker

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I am re-reading one of the best books about Native American history that I’ve come across: Empire of the Summer Moon. It is a fascinating story in so many ways. Of course, the overall arc is the same as nearly all of the other stories dealing with what happened to Native American tribes when they encountered the European invasion. The tribe encounters the whites, who lie and cheat and murder their way to driving them out of their home territories.

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From The New Yorker

We are at the Classic Sheepdog Trials, in Meeker CO. They’ve been holding this event for a couple of decades now, and it has become well- known in sheepdog circles. We rendezvoused with Ally and Kyle, who took a day out of their very busy schedule to join us.

Now there are those of you who wonder why a guy who doesn’t own a dog, and who has never shown the slightest interest in sheep would go to such an event, let alone buy a ticket to attend. My answer is the same one given by George Mallory when asked why he climbed Mount Everest: “Because it is there.“

That’s about as far as I care to go in making a comparison because Mallory perished in his attempt in 1924, and if there was any chance that this was a possible outcome of watching a bunch of dogs chase a bunch of not too bright animals around a pasture I wouldn’t be here at all. I may be occasionally unhinged but I’m no fool.

Meeker is one of the towns we pass through on our way to visit Ally and Kyle in Steamboat Springs. I learned about this event a few years ago when I perused a poster in a Meeker cafe. A mental note was made that it might be interesting to come see it some day, and for whatever reason I didn’t instantly forget about it (Forgetting having become one of my major talents).

So here we are. Meeker has a population of 2374 on a good day, but there are quite a few more people here today. You might even say it is bustling.

Ordinarily you wouldn’t travel here in the Fall unless you were one of the brave and intrepid souls who show up with their rifles to shoot at elk grazing in mountain meadows. I wouldn’t drive six feet to watch that sorry sight, but we are assured that nothing of the kind happens at a sheepdog trial.

Ah, but it is Autumn and the air at 6200 feet is bracing and cool, and there is nothing but sunshine promised for the duration of the meet. Life could be a lot worse.

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From The New Yorker

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I was musing this morning about the heyday of MTV when it began in 1981, with its stable of interesting VeeJays and nonstop music videos. When my own children were teenagers MTV was playing in the background all day long (minor exaggeration here), even if no one was watching it. Anytime you passed the television set, you could check out what was current in pop music. It was how a relatively obtuse dude like myself knew a little bit about the popular music of the day.

Sadly, MTV went down the chute into “reality TV” and I never turned it on again. But people still make those videos, and every once in a while I discover one that improves my day. The following offering by Maria BC is one of those.

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August 1947 in Kenyon, Minnesota.

Kenyon, I learned later in life, contained only 900 people when I was a boy. A farm town in the middle of rich farmlands. It had a grain elevator, a dairy, a movie theater, two grocery stores, two restaurants, a drugstore, a farm implement dealer and a hardware store. Most of its residents back then were Scandinavian, and nearly all of them were Lutheran. As you left town taking Highway 60 west toward Faribault, you passed the only “rambler” style home in the community. That was where “the Catholic” lived, according to my grandfather.

My brother and I often spent the summer at grandpa’s farm, which to us was a never-ending source of wonder and intrigue. We ran like ferrets all day long exploring barns and sheds and creeks and valleys. We trapped pocket gophers. We fished for very small fish in the small pond that forty years later would take my cousin’s life, as he and his snowmobile crashed through the ice together. There was just enough water to cover them both.

Bud pitched or played outfield and he was our by-god hero. Just to be able to tell some other kid at the games that look there was our uncle out on the mound with his uniform and everything and did you see that he just struck that guy out! Struck him out cold! When I grow up I’m gonna play softball just like him.

He owned a black 1946 Ford two-seater coupe with a cool V-8 symbol on the hood. Inside the car there was a tiny electric fan on the dash that you could turn to blow in your face on hot days. There was also an AM radio that never played anything but polka music.

Bud didn’t take us home every night. Olaf and Harold were friends of Bud’s and on some evenings they would ferry us safely back to the farm. Apparently there were some team issues that had to be occasionally sorted out at a local tavern after the games. Grown-up stuff. Some of them involved a lady in the community who was nicknamed Moonbeam.

I never met Miss Moonbeam but I’m sure that she was a very nice person because nearly all of the men on the team spoke very highly of her.

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There was a moment when one of the non-idyllic parts of farm life was revealed in the starkest of terms. Uncle Bud was attending the birth of piglets, in the hay-fragrant twilight that was the barn’s interior.

I watched fascinated as each small glistening body was delivered. Then one piglet was born that was half the size of all the rest.Without a word, Bud picked up that tiny animal and flung it, hard, against the barn’s cinderblock wall. The creature dropped, lifeless, to the floor.

To say that I was shocked would be an understatement. I could not believe what I had seen. I couldn’t put my idol’s hands and the killing of that poor creature together in my mind. When Bud then said the word “runt” it didn’t help at all. I had no frame of reference for that word. All I knew was that something completely inexplicable had happened. And I felt like I was an accomplice, somehow, because I hadn’t stepped in on the piglet’s behalf. Even though there actually hadn’t been enough time to do so.

Later someone explained to me what being the runt of the litter meant. That trying to raise one to adulthood was wasting money, something that was always in short supply on a small farm.

Known as runts, the smallest-born pigs often get the short end when it comes to feeding and attention from their mother, two factors that diminish their chance to survive. Runt pigs often weigh 1.1 kilograms — about 2 1/2 pounds — or less at birth. They may die on their own, or may be euthanized because of quality of life or welfare issues.

Kansas State University Bulletin

However logical my uncle’s actions might have been to him, the event was my first brush with cognitive dissonance, and it was a doozy.

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From The New Yorker

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Yesterday at City Market I had just put my purchases into the bike’s panniers when an elderly man came up to ask how I liked riding an e-bicycle.

A little background:

• This happens with some regularity
• I am very enthusiastic about the utility of e-bikes
• I am very enthusiastic about bicycling in general
• I am a consummate bore when it comes to expounding on my favorite topics

I don’t seem to be able to help myself. Robin knows how to deal with these episodes which is by hollering Pedant! Pedant! at me. But some poor sods like this gentleman have no clue what to do but to awkwardly stumble off.

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The summer days here in Paradise have been warmer than I would have chosen if I had been asked, but the nights … they are something else.

Take last night for instance. At 9 PM the temperature was just cool enough to be at the point where you might have put on another layer but are still okay without it. No wind. Just a few stars and the moon only half up. Bugs jamming around the lights (they seem to like LEDs just as well as incandescents).

Those insects reminded me of a camping experience we had. I don’t remember where we were, actually, but I do remember the toad.

It didn’t budge an inch as I walked by, and I wondered … how did it get so big? … but then I saw how. Several feet above its bumpy head the insects were fluttering around the light, and every once in a while one of them would fall to the ground. Where the toad waited patiently. No muss, no fuss, just putting electricity to good use. Every night that light would turn on automatically, and the feast would begin.

On the whole I don’t give toads credit for being very smart, but the one had something going for it.

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From The New Yorker

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I don’t like Mitch McConnell much. I think his partisan power-grabbing shenanigans went way past the point of okay when he refused to allow even a vote on Merrick Garland’s appointment. Basically he’s been an example of the worst sort of behavior in politics.

But I wouldn’t wish what’s in the video below on anyone. Notice how his aides are right there, showing no signs of surprise that their boss just lost it for awhile. Keep in mind that this man is one of the most powerful people in America.

There is a time, friends, when the elders of the tribe should retire to the shade of the great oak tree and spend their time chucking acorns at squirrels and telling stories to small children.

When are we going to get serious about dealing with the fact that human brains do burn out, and that it is neither surprising nor shameful when it happens, but a natural event. At present we are tiptoeing around the subject because it is an awkward one to discuss. Sooner or later those who try to bring it up are shouted down as “ageists”and discussion comes to a halt.

One cannot become U.S. President before attaining a certain age. How about one cannot do so after a certain age?

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