Month: November 2023

Time marches on, goes the saying. The imputation is that it is somehow something that is relentless, unchanging, doesn’t give a damn how we feel about what its passage does to us.

But it doesn’t always march, sometimes it creeps imperceptibly, glacially, as back when I had suffered a broken rib for the third time. Through past experience I knew it would feel less painful in a couple of weeks, but right then it hurt when I moved, when I laughed, when I coughed … when I breathed.

And then there are times when it simply hurtles. There was a day in summer on a rural highway in western Nebraska when I wound my motorcycle up to its limit, which turned out to be 116 mph. I glanced down at the highway below my feet and saw a complete blur that (sensibly) freaked me out and I slowed to a more reasonable rate of travel. That was how this past summer flew by.

I bent over the raised bed to plant a tomato in June and when I straightened up it was September. By the time I had absorbed this fact it was the end of November. That, my friends, is life winding up the motorbike for me, without my touching the throttle. No matter how rational I am on my good days – no matter how much I accept the natural order of being born, of living a life, and then passing away – there are moments when I look down below my feet and see the blur and feel a twinge.

That happened last night just before I fell asleep. Our elder cat, Poco, joins us when we read in bed. After we turn out the light he takes off for his preferred sleeping place, wherever that is. I was looking at him, at his scruffy fur, his thinness, his irregular breathing, and remembering the sleek and powerful creature that he had been and now he was at the point where I was checking on his breathing.

At that moment, I was feeling rather scruffy myself. And I know that Robin checks my breathing occasionally. I thought … hmmmm … this is what amigos do for one another. I smiled to myself, rolled over, and went to sleep.

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Since I am on the subject of time, I thought I’d bring in the observations of some of the great philosophers to give us their take. They are much more interesting than my own. Some of them you can even dance to.

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The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

Albert Einstein

I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

Steven Wright

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Henry David Thoreau

Time is the wisest counselor of all.

Pericles

Time is bunk.

Douglas Adams

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Heading into winter with a fraction of an inch of snow on the ground and the chill is definitely in the air. Winter here in Paradise is never a hardship, not really. Not for an old Minnesota boy and a South Dakota girl. We’ve been here a decade now and the worst thing that Winter has thrown at us is to close the mountain passes once in a while. But since we’ve really scaled back on even thinking about traveling in the sketchy-road season … even that is not much of an inconvenience.

In South Dakota there was always less certainty. You’d read the weather report suggesting that a frozen calamity was en route to where you were or wanted to go while you looked out the window at a sunny day. And you’d take that chance. And sometimes … sometimes … this attitude and practice left you spending the night in the Bide-A-Wee Motel in Last Chance SD, population 12. Watching the wallpaper peel, listening to the bathroom faucet drip, and being glad to be anywhere with the blizzard on the outside and you within. What a difference a door makes.

There was that one day that I still don’t understand completely. We started out from Minneapolis on a return trip to Yankton SD. The air temperature was minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. We were maybe one hour into the trip when it started to rain. Rain! How does that even happen when it’s 15 degrees below zero?

Everything, the car, the highway, the trees, became instant ice. All of the cars had to pull over to the shoulder because there was no way that defrosters could clear the windshield under those conditions. And, of course, even if you could see ahead, the road was an ice rink. Days like that it’s good to have enough gas in the tank to run the engine and keep you warm until travel is once again possible. (Update: Or enough juice in the battery for EV drivers)

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(The header image today is not a photo that I took myself. I rarely do this, but Saturday morning’s
Montrose Daily Press had printed this image, and I thought it too pretty not to share it.)

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For some reason, I was thinking about my wife Robin the other day. Actually, I think about her pretty much every day. It’s hard not to, when there are only two people living in a smallish house. There is a definite tendency to bump into one another in such a situation. So how did we end up together? I will tell you.

It had been several years since my first wife had walked out the front door and off to better things. During those years I had become a sort of hermit, living alone in the house I had previously shared with five other people. To help fill the big hole I now had in my spare time, I was becoming a self-taught expert on the preparation and consumption of gin and tonics and the sampling of expensive scotch whiskies. I was very successful at that enterprise.

My day job was that of a pediatrician in a small South Dakota town. In that capacity I provided pediatric care to the three children of a very lovely lady named Robin. Robin had also been divorced, by a man who was an idiot to have left her. Actually, from what I hear, he still is an idiot.

At any rate, in small towns the married women abhor a vacuum, and having single adults around in society was considered a hazard to peace and social stability. So they began placing the two of us in proximity to one another to see if anything came of it.

For a time, nothing was happening, primarily because of my intractability. I was averse to any significant change in my life, and the very idea of entering into a new relationship was:

• frightening
• disturbing
• incomprehensible
• never gonna happen
• irrational, considering that I was not even sure how I’d become a single person in the first place

That last point was a biggie. The divorce that ended my first marriage was like I had been taking flight instruction but on one memorable solo lesson I flew through a barn, under a footbridge, and into an oak tree. I had little incentive for trying something again in that direction.

That was in 1991, and we were married the following year. I gave up my hobby of exploring fermented beverages and signed up for “How To Be A Better Husband Than You Were The First Time,” which is an ongoing post-graduate work-study program. (I think that Robin has graded me a C plus so far, which is way better than the D minus I got on my first time out.)

As an aside, a counselor that Robin was seeing in 1991 told her that her relationship with me was a transitional one, and not to get too serious about it. That was 31 years ago, which means that he was either really poor at predictions or that we are really, really slow at transitioning.

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From The New Yorker

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The sharper-eyed among you might have noted my use of the term fascism here and there recently. I had resisted doing so in the past because any reading on the subject reveals that defining this particular political set of beliefs is a slippery pursuit.

Fascism may be amorphous, but it does have some definite free-floating characteristics. So far, the best short dissertation on that subject that I have come across was in Wikipedia. (I say “short,” but even that one goes on for quite a few pages.)

So I will try to be specific if I use the term in the future, even though I freely admit that no one in their right mind should be taking political instruction from me. I have very little to offer in that sphere, other than to join H.L. Mencken in rejoicing that I am not a Republican.

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Now that I’ve published a disclaimer and all, let me say that I believe former president Cluck and his gang of thugs, miscreants, and generally bad actors are as close to fascists as you are going to find in the United States in our present day.

All they need to do to complete the picture is to adopt a uniform and come up with a name. Let’s see … brownshirts taken by the Nazis, blackshirts taken by Mussolini … how about orangeshirts to match Cluck’s coiffure, or yellowshirts to match his courage under fire during the Viet Nam years?

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From The New Yorker

Robin and I spent Thanksgiving with the Hurley family in Durango this year. Driving there on the Nasty Highway was a breeze, and totally on dry pavement. The mountains had a light dusting of snow on them which rendered them newly spectacular. It was a case of one mountainous Currier and Ives print after another.

Grandson Aiden is home for the holiday and so far he has not been obviously damaged by spending the past several months at the University of Texas in Austin. Apparently the university’s liberal attitudes have offset the poisonous ones emanating from the state capitol building.

Thanksgiving afternoon, we watched the classic movie Stand By Me. It’s a favorite in our clan, and my personal #2 Best Movie. It hits so many right notes about being a twelve year-old boy that it is uncanny. One of author Stephen King’s best traits is that he has such a clear memory of how it was to be a kid. (It is possible that he still is, actually, and that’s his trick.)

Robin and I had to cut our stay short due to a winter storm that was heading that way, so returned Friday evening instead of Saturday. Our thesis being that if you’re going to be trapped on one side of a mountain pass, it was better to be trapped on the side where home is.

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I would place myself somewhere between a technophile and a technophobe. I’m not sure what that should be called … perhaps a technodilettante would be closest. If a tool comes along that I think would improve my life and that of those around me, I try to learn how to use it.

Occasionally the motive isn’t quite as high-minded. Sometimes If it just looks like fun, I might be off and running with it as well.

For instance, I had a friend who was into personal computers before they were even called that. He would puzzle over a dark screen with bright green letters on it, trying to get the device to do something fairly simple, like transmit a page of text. Problem for this guy was, he didn’t know very many people who wanted to (or were able to) receive that page of text. Watching him sitting at a console with his furrowed brow I put his efforts down as harmless enough, but an electrified waste of time.

Within five minutes I had figured out what that little thing to the right in the photo was for (the mouse), and what the menus on the screen were for. Within ten minutes I had typed a paragraph and discovered the revolution that the commands “Cut” and “Paste” were for anyone who wanted to or needed to write.

And I was off. I joined a local Macintosh User’s Group, which was a bunch of bozos like myself who were excited by the machine and were eager to share every little new bit of information about it. We were fans in the truest sense, meaning fanatics.

One of the members of our little group was the local states attorney, and he was able to obtain copies of the few pieces of Macintosh software that were available to demonstrate for us. He had all of them because he had stolen them. I made a mental note never to trust this guy and then joined the rest of the group in learning what the software had to offer, which made me an accessory to piracy, I suppose.

My curiosity and sense of fun have carried me along for 39 years now, and I have owned quite a few Macintosh computers in that time. The Mac laptop I am typing this blog post on today cost half of what that first one set me back, and it is a gazillion times more powerful. I mean … a gazillion!

So those of you who regard these blog posts as a blight upon mankind, and cannot read what I just wrote without being nearly overcome with regrets that I am able to do so, may blame two things for this miserable state of affairs. They are the invention of the Apple Macintosh computer and my odd personality.

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For those who think that it couldn’t happen here, it already nearly did. There were many Americans who wanted us to enter World War II much earlier than we did, but on the side of the Nazis. Yes, friends, they wanted us to support the people responsible for the greatest horrorshow of the twentieth century. Which makes this video a sobering watch.

Fascists were out in large numbers in America in 1939 and they are out there now in numbers too large to ignore. The problem for you and me is that we can’t use the excuse that we don’t know what’s going on. This modern variant of the brownshirts/blackshirts consists of a group of people exhibiting the worst impulses of our species and which takes its energy from fear.

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Those of you who have younger children might have to explain the above cartoon to them. Not the carton of Asian takeout but the darker flat thing.

Watch their eyes go out of focus as you try to explain what a VCR and a cassette tape were and how people used to have to actually go to a Blockbuster store to pick out a movie rather than click on a streaming channel. It’s not that they don’t love and respect you but they might see your explanation about as relevant to them as how to churn butter or trim the wick of an oil lamp.

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We are told that artificial intelligence holds many dangers and that we might be made extinct once the bots of AI know everything there is to know about everything. After this past week, I think that those hazards might be preferable to what passes for intelligence now, in a world where in a single week:

• A senator who is angry with another senator jabs him hard in the back as he passes him in a hallway
• Another senator who is a panel member at a hearing threatens to vault over the table and attack a witness and must be verbally restrained
• A congressman is revealed to have used campaign contributions for Botox treatments and a porn channel subscription.
• University presidents are besieged by donors who are taking their money back because they aren’t doing enough to support Israel. On the other hand, they are also besieged by student groups who are threatening mayhem if they don’t do more to support the Palestinians.
• Every in-breath and out-breath of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce is being recorded even as the oceans rise and the glaciers disappear.
• An ultramarathoner admits she took a car ride for part of her route.
• A sports newscaster admitted that sometimes she just made s**t up.

Nope, I think I’d like to take my chances with artificial intelligence as opposed to the limited form we are presently dealing with.

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Rosalynn Carter’s most lasting individual legacy will be her efforts to diminish the stigma attached to people with mental illnesses and her fight for parity and access for mental health treatment. She also devoted her time to the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving at her alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University, to help families and professional caregivers living with disabilities and illnesses.

In 1999, then-President Bill Clinton presented both Carters with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. He said they had “done more good things for more people in more places than any other couple on Earth.”

CNN Online

It’s nice to be able to talk about decent people once in a while. We all know people like that, and thinking about them can brighten a gloomy day. Most of the time they don’t get to be President and First Lady of the United States.

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The Uncompahgre River that flows through Montrose varies greatly in flow rates. Much of this variation is due to releases from a dam twenty miles upstream. So far this fall the level has been too high for me to feel comfortable. I had visions of myself tumbling downstream like a large chunk of flotsam with my head underwater and my posterior pointed toward the heavens.

It’s an undignified prospect and not a thought to be entertained for long.

But Wednesday I checked and the river was perfect. Pools and eddies and pockets galore. Unfortunately this didn’t translate into fish caught because I lost two due to my inexperience with barbless hooks.

Later that same day I once more tried my luck, again on the Uncompahgre River, but 22 miles upstream, at Pa-Co-Chu-Puk State Park. It was almost full dark when I caught a beautiful 16 inch rainbow trout. There was so little light left in the day that I could barely see well enough to release it properly.

Of course when I returned home and announced my success to the assembled members of Robin’s book club, not one person believed me. It is possible that I might, perhaps, maybe, possibly have stretched the truth a time or two in their presence in the past, but still … .

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From The New Yorker

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Many of the people who write about things political keep telling us that the Democrats are losing ground with persons of color and the blue collar world. That the party has become enthralled with hanging out with celebrities and those who own boats longer than 100 feet. That they have forgotten where they came from.

(Growing up in the Midwest I became well acquainted with the DFL, or the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, which was the local branch of the national Democratic party. You had to look no further than the name to see their roots.)

The pundits could be right. Think back on Mr. Obama who so obviously loved the galas and the balls and the White House musical performances and being a guest on talk shows … the man liked to dress up and looked good when he did.

But he might have done more for his party (and his country) if he’d gone to fewer soirées and more barbecues. And perhaps a quinceañera or two.

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From The New Yorker

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By now you have almost surely read the story of the old man who went hiking with his dog in August, and for whatever reason died out there on the trail. Just this week his body was discovered, and the dog was still with him, and alive.

The animal was malnourished and had lost half its weight after so long a time, but had not abandoned its owner. An amazing and very touching story.

I suspect that if I were hiking with one of our cats and keeled over that the scenario would be quite different. Poco might watch over me until the 5:00 P.M. feeding time came and went, but then he would quite sensibly take his leave and find his way home.

Cats are much more practical than dogs in these matters.

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I am having a little trouble bringing my usual smarmy self to the enterprise this morning. So I will fill in the spaces where my mordant wit would have been with stuff that might be more useful to you.

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The first thing is a movie review. The movie: The Half Of It. Let’s see … it’s a coming of age movie that doesn’t make you want to puke and an interesting re-working of Cyrano de Bergerac done in small-town teenage style. It is thoughtful, never condescending, and sweet without a hint of saccharine-ness.

Okay, enough. Here’s a trailer. If it looks like your kind of movie, watch it on Netflix. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 97%. And they know everything.

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Everyone has problems. Mine are truly no more severe nor interesting than anyone else’s (even if they might seem so to me). When these issues come along one at a time I can usually deal with them, even some pretty big ones. It is when they come in bunches that the water starts to come in over the side of the boat, and there is nothing for it then but furious bailing. I reach for a bucket and if I can find a big enough one I stay afloat.

That’s what I learned to pray for a few years ago, neither for relief nor for release but for a big enough bucket to see me through. And here I am and here you are. Works okay.

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From The New Yorker

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I used to blame God when the world turned sour for me. In fact, I can recall a particular one-sided shouting match as I loudly listed the ways that I thought God had let me down. I had taken it really personally and wanted to make that clear.

I don’t do that any more. I know much less about God’s nature now than I did then, but I am pretty sure that my problems are of little concern to the Master of the Universe, who is now off the hook as far as I’m concerned.

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The concept of “fairness” has been a hard one for me to shake. If your ears are open at all you will occasionally hear a child on the playground say to another “That’s not fair!” I was one of those kids, believing that a guiding principle of the Universe was fairness. In our games we would be fair with one another. My parents would treat me fairly, and my portion of our family’s resources would be exactly the same as my brother’s or sister’s.

If I followed certain moral admonitions, I just knew that my life would be a necessarily happy one, because it was only fair that this should happen. When my first marriage was coming apart, I recall thinking that it was unfair to the extreme. Hadn’t I done my best? (Probably not) Wasn’t I therefore entitled to the fruits of my labors? (Certainly not) Unfair, thought my inner child, unfair!

Finally the message got through to me. I had been trying to impose my personal standards upon the Universe at large, and it wisely ignored me and went rolling implacably along. The only “fairness” that existed was what I or somebody else inserted there. It was me nailing my theses upon the door of some ancient cathedral on a cold morning. Theses that said “I basically disagree with the way things are, and you know why … because they are unfair, that’s why.”

Some of us never learn. That woodpeckery knocking sound that you hear out there in the distance is that of my head repeatedly banging into reality.

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From The New Yorker

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Finally, about the title of today’s post. Doldrums can have different meanings, although if you read them through they are certainly related.

• a spell of listlessness or despondency
• a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or slump
• a part of the ocean near the equator abounding in calms, squalls, and light shifting winds

The “Doldrums” is a popular nautical term that refers to the belt around the Earth near the equator where sailing ships sometimes get stuck on windless waters.

National Ocean Service

The Doldrums holds a distinct place in maritime history, having developed a reputation as a potentially deadly zone which could strand sailing ships for weeks on end, causing them to run out of food and drinking water.

National Ocean Service

So, I’m only temporarily becalmed and before you know it I’ll be back to full-bore irritating once again. Anything else would be totally unfair.

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President Biden continues to soldier on even though the most recent polls suggest that the only man in America less popular than him is the Boston Strangler. This in spite of the fact that he goes to work every day with shoes shined and suit pressed, and his job performance has been a mixture of mistakes and things well done, mostly well done. Pretty good for a man who is almost as old as I am.

But neither of us is in our prime, and both of us have a somewhat smallish chance of making it through the next five years. Robin is unsure enough about me that during the night she sometimes checks to see if I am still breathing. Can’t help but wonder if Jill Biden does the same thing.

(I’ve never asked Robin but always assumed that when she finds signs of life she is relieved, not disappointed)

So who knows what will happen between now and the first Tuesday in November 2024? If Mr. Biden turns out to be the nominee of the Democratic Party of course I will support him, even with my misgivings. Because on the other side, barring some completely unforeseeable and miraculous transformations in the next year, we will be presented with a person whose candidacy can only provoke nausea in a thoughtful person.

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I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.

Mark Twain

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From The New Yorker

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This piece of music gets around quite a bit. We’ve all heard it played in venues from concert halls to when a pro hockey team comes onto the ice. It’s the Fanfare for the Common Man, written by Aaron Copland.

In 1942, Copland was commissioned by the music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to write a fanfare. The U.S. had entered World War II, and then-Vice President Henry A. Wallace was trying to rally Americans against imperialism. Copland was inspired by a speech Wallace gave that spring at the Free World Association in New York City.

“Some have spoken of the American Century,” Wallace proclaimed. “I say that the century on which we are entering, the century which will come out of this war, can be and must be the century of the common man.” Copland would later echo that sentiment himself, saying, “It was the common man, after all, who was doing all the dirty work in the war and the army. He deserved a fanfare.”

NPR: American Anthem

It’s a fanfare for the ordinary man or woman, the GI, the “grunt,”the hoi polloi, for those on whose broad shoulders our idea of America has always truly rested. A strong piece, inspired in its origins.

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From The New Yorker

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I am not a huge fan of awards shows, at least not to the point where I think you can really pick out the best one of any group of artists or works in any given year. But this year something unusual happened Wednesday evening at the Country Music Awards.

Tracy Chapman continues to make history with her 1988 hit “Fast Car” after winning song of the year at Wednesday’s Country Music Awards  …The CMA win is a remarkable achievement given “Fast Car” debuted 35 years ago, and saw a resurgence in popularity in July after country star Luke Combs released a cover of the hit single. Combs’ cover went on to reach No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart, making Chapman the first Black woman to top the chart since it came into existence in 1990.

CNN Online

Fast Car is a great song from Chapman’s first album, written by an artist who was very wise at 24 years of age. It is a ballad, a story song. And if we are not the protagonist in the story, we probably know somebody who is.

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In keeping with the theme of this post, which is ducks of various stripes, I searched the cartoon archives of the New Yorker for “ducks,” and one of those that came up in the search was this one. Now a staple of the thinking of New Yorkers is that the rest of the country, especially the Midwest, consists of a population of buffoons residing in a land that nobody important wants to live in.

But even the buffoon-est of those of us who grew up in the Midwest knows that this is not a cartoon of a duck at all, but of a loon. And loons are their own category of waterfowl. Remembering that old saying “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck” should have informed the staff at the New Yorker. Loons simply do not quack.

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Robin was out of town for a couple of days, so I had to come up with some constructive things to do while she was away. Therefore, and with much thought given to the matter, I went fishing.

It’s a very scenic hour’s drive from Montrose to Silver Jack Reservoir, and the last fifteen miles you are on a decent gravel road. At this time of year the reservoir is at a low level, and it’s a bit of work to get down to it, but it wasn’t my destination, anyway. What I was interested in was nearby Beaver Lake and the Big Cimarron River.

Beaver Lake is a little thing, with a campground along one side. The morning I arrived there were no humans present, but there was a single black steer grazing beside the fisherman’s path that encircled the lake. We ignored one another as I walked past him. I fished all along the bank without experiencing so much as a nibble, but the views in all directions had begun the work of restoring my soul by the time I gave it up.

Next stop was Big Cimarron Campground, which was right on the river of the same name, and only a mile or so from Beaver Lake. Beautiful river, fast flowing. The water wasn’t too deep this time of year, but wading it was challenging. The riverbed consisted of stones the size of footballs that were slippery with moss. After struggling for an hour to go only a relatively few yards, I gave it up and from then on chose spots where I could fish from shore. At one point I came across this pool. You can see that the water is a bit murky with runoff from last weekend’s snowfall, but otherwise … .

https://videopress.com/v/JDl73MRU?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

It might have been better if I had caught a fish, but only marginally so. To be lucky enough to be have the opportunity to scramble along this trail and see places like this was my reward. As the author Robert Traver once said when asked why he fished for trout, “Because you can only do it in beautiful places.”

I ate the simple lunch I had brought along, which had been prepared for me by the highly tattooed and very pleasant man at Subway a few hours earlier. It was an Italian-style sandwich that might have been easier to eat with half the amount of olive oil he had applied to it, but I simply waded through to the end before even trying to clean up. The provided napkins were not enough to clean up the oil slick I had become, and I had to fall back on some paper towels we carry in the car.

Smelling a bit like an oregano-scented air freshener, I moved on to my next destination, a part of the Gunnison River located within Black Canyon National Park. You get there by turning right just after passing the park’s guard station and driving down the East Portal road. When I say “down the road,” that is an accurate description, because portions of it are on a 16% grade.

There were a few other fishermen working the river, which was low enough to make wading possible. We did not need to get too close to one another, but were well spread out. For the first hour nothing was happening, when suddenly I could see fish rising everywhere on the river. Over the next couple of minutes I caught two small rainbows before the excitement turned off as quickly as it had begun, and the water’s surface was once again quiet. That was something I had never experienced before.

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Daughter Sarah sent along this video taken near her home in Mankato MN. I’ve seen only two of these in my lifetime, and never two at one time.

https://videopress.com/v/EbUMjtKz?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

Oh, you ask, what are they? Why, pileated woodpeckers! They are big birds, nearly the size of chickens, so are not easily confused with other species.

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I am on my second day of grumbling all because of DST being snatched away. I didn’t want it in the first place, but you know, you kinda get used to it and then BAM! it’s gone. There’s no hope of a change in this annual charade as long as the members of Congress remain unable to perform even the itsiest bit of governing.

Why, that would require that they actually sit in their chairs and vote on something, as opposed to what they do now which is flit from TV camera to TV camera in full prance.

In a week the federal government will be out of money, unless our misfit congresspersons pull their heads out of their nether regions and do the country’s work. I don’t know who paid for the curse on us to live in such interesting times, but they are certainly getting their money’s worth.

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Now this, my friends, is something interesting. An electric airplane. Take a look.

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Well, there was one drawback in that I had no rifle, for one thing. And there was not enough cash lying around to get a new one, so I went to the classified ads in the newspaper and soon became the proud owner of a Winchester Model 94 carbine, one of those storied firearms. Unfortunately I knew nearly nothing about calibers, and this particular rifle was a .25-35. Ammunition for this relic was difficult to find, and when I did locate some the guy who sold it to me suggested that while this was a good gun for shooting rats at a dump, it was far from a first choice for deer hunting. But at least, I thought, I was now armed.

We drove three hours due north before we took a right and turned down a small gravel road leading into the forest. Going toward some place Bob had heard about. It was a cold night, and there was about two feet of snow on the ground. On the way in we passed a hunting camp where a dozen men were seated in a circle around a huge campfire, the ground around them littered with empty beer cans.

Bob turned off the gravel road onto a level spot, and we slept in the wagon, starting it up periodically during the night to keep from freezing. Around four in the morning we gave up on sleep and went into the nearest small town where Bob had heard there was a Catholic church that offered an early “hunter’s mass.” It was interesting attending church services where all the attendees wore the same red clothing (hunter’s orange had not yet become the standard).

Then it was back to the forest to park the car and wander separately into the woods to find each a place to conceal ourselves and wait for the legions of deer that would surely pass by us. The season would legally begin at dawn.

An hour before dawn the firing began. It was at first sporadic, but by the time the sun came up it seemed that I was surrounded by nearly continuous rifle fire. My mind was now fully awake and alarmed, and it arrived at two clear thoughts. One was the memory of those drunken hunters sitting around that campfire who were now out there in the same forest someplace. The other is that there were not enough deer in the entire state of Minnesota to warrant the number of gunshots that I was hearing, so what was everybody shooting at?

At that point I heard a rifle report and a small branch was clipped from high up on a very tall pine tree, the one I happened to be sitting against at the time. Before that branch hit the ground I was on my feet. I took that rat-killer of a carbine, my half-filled Thermos of coffee, and I walked the few hundred yards back to the road. There I found a stump and sat on it for the rest of the day, trying as much as possible not to look like a deer. On that stump was where Bob found me toward dusk.

I never returned to that war zone laced with beer-filled bozos. Each year thereafter I would read about some poor shot-dead sod who had somehow been mistaken for a 300 pound, four-legged, antlered woodland creature, and I would think, Yep, I made the right choice once again.

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From The New Yorker

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This past year is going down with Robin and I as the Year of the Praying Mantis. While we see a couple of these fascinating bugs in our back yard every year, this summer they were present down by the river in greater numbers than ever. On a single walk in September we probably encountered 7 or 8 of them. All were of the same bright green color.

These guys have powerful arms, powerful jaws, and can strike in a fraction of a second. While it was not fearing for my life that caused me to drop the bug, there was always the possibility of being nipped slightly, which has less appeal than you might think to a tender soul like myself.

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From The New Yorker

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We finished the last season of Reservation Dogs, which is only the third one. No more are planned, and that’s a lovely idea.

This makes this series even more special, their quitting on top, so to speak. Of course you can’t make a ten season-long series about Native American teenagers because at some point they aren’t any more. Teenagers, that is. They are adults and let’s face it, films about adults have to be spiced up somehow because we aren’t nearly as interesting when we start to mold.

And Reservation Dogs is right up there with the best of all the television series about Native teenagers. In fact, as far as I know, it’s the only television series about them. As a taste, here’s an introduction to a spirit warrior who appears at various moments in the series. His name is William Knifeman, and he almost fought at the Little Big Horn. He’s special.

Even if you don’t have access to Hulu, it’s worth signing up for the free trial and then watching the hell out of that week or so. There is much to learn here, young warrior (of any age), much to learn.

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A song from the musical The Most Happy Fella, done by the great Peggy Lee. I think it’s just the right song for November, as the last leaves flutter down from the trees and delicate ice forms overnight on the ponds in the mountains. If there was ever a time for moving on, this is it.

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