Well, of course I bought it. If Bruce Springsteen can bring out an EP that just might piss off president Cluck, I am all in. It contains the now famous introductions that the world has heard, emanating from concerts in Manchester, England. Music to my ears, they are. The EP is called Land of Hope and Dreams, and retails for $4.95.
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Introduction to Land of Hope and Dreams
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My way of looking at it is that for a very modest sum I can send Cluck one more mosquito to stab at that thin skin. It’s a small and petty thing to do, but I never claimed to be anything else, now, did I?
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Introduction to My City of Ruins
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Bruce finishes the EP with a cover of what some folks think is Bob Dylan’s masterpiece, Chimes of Freedom. It’s one of those rare songs will never go out of style, principally because freedom can never be taken for granted, but must be earned and re-earned by one generation after another. (NB: if you live long enough you may get to re-earn it more than once)
Chimes of Freedom
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And in our present day here in America …
when you can’t see the way forward
when it all seems overwhelming
when the voices of hate threaten to drown out the music
when just getting out of bed in the morning seems a struggle
It’s all just like the man said – every step you take forward is a little victory.
Little Victories, by Bob Seger
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It is 82 degrees in Paradise, no wind, humidity 17% , Wes Montgomery playing Down Here On The Ground over the little blue Bose speaker. I’m out in front on the patio with a can of Spindrift. A couple of the neighborhood teenagers are hunched over the handlebars of their bikes, unsure of their next move. They are pretty good kids, so our lives and property are probably not in jeopardy.
Now in the background it’s Ali Farka Touré playing Soukora. Perfect.
Since I am at the time of life that I am, it behooves me to take little for granted. Not an interesting cloud, not a new flower out in the berm, not a single strawberry is ignored.
Soukora, by Ali Farka Touré
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It tickles me that a columnist for the citadel of conservative fiscalism, the Wall Street Journal, came up with an acronym that apparently does not please His Tangerine Sublimity. It is T.A.C.O.
Translated, it refers to the crazy ups and downs of Cluck’s tariffs.Trump Always Chickens Out is what it stands for. How exceedingly droll and perfectly disrespectful.
The T.A.C.O. Meme has exploded on the web. I gathered a handful for your enlightenment.
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Chicken Train, by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils
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Today Robin and I hiked on the Upland Trail at Black Canyon National Park. Halfway through the walk I saw a large red fox with a world-class bushy tail. He ran into some scrub oaks and disappeared in a second. First fox we’d seen in the Park.
We had driven up shortly after breakfast because the forecast for the day was to hit the low 90s. Since senior bodies tend to wilt in the heat we took our hike when and where it was cooler.
One unexpectedtreat was the discovery of many small clumps of Claret Cup cacti. They like rocky outcroppings and their brilliant red flowers are exquisite. (For reference: these blossoms are only about 1.5 inch across)
I have a new part-time occupation. I am the official button maker for our chapter of Indivisible, which is a politically progressive and activist organization with thousands of chapters throughout the United States. It is not affiliated with any political party.
Some say that it is primarily anti-Cluck, but it is more complicated than that. If tomorrow Mr. Cluck were to lose his footing and be washed away by the tsunami of bad karma he has accumulated, we would still have a problem, because he is far from the only Ugly American.
So here is what Indivisible is for:
Democracy Reform: Advocating for policies that enhance democratic processes, such as voting rights protections and reducing the influence of money in politics.
Social Justice: Supporting initiatives that address systemic inequalities, including racial justice, immigrant rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Healthcare and Economic Equity: Promoting access to affordable healthcare and policies that aim to reduce economic disparities.
Climate Action: Pushing for environmental policies that address climate change and promote sustainability.
Now it happens that Cluck is today’s poster boy for opposition to these worthy goals, but one day he will be gone and many of those other less visible bad boys will still be there.
(BTW, Indivisible takes its name from our Pledge of Allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”)
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I thought that making pinback buttons would be a lark, a mere bagatelle. Turns out that there are several predictable mistakes that button-making newbies commit. I have made all of those and added a brand-new one of my own to the list.
But those pins that didn’t end up in the trash can are beginning to resemble something that a person might actually wear. Who knew? We’re getting these ready for the June 14th national “No Kings” celebration.
Robin and I bought the button press as our contribution to the presently cash-strapped local group. The hope is that there are at least a handful of progressives out there who have not lost everything yet in the tariff wars and who can make a small donation to a good cause, thereupon receiving a button as an expression of gratitude.
Bootstraps, you know.
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Slouching Toward the Millennium, by Kris Kristofferson
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From The New Yorker
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I am confident that the Cluckian attempt at a dictatorship will eventually fail. He’s just so bad at it. What I can’t predict is how much blood, both metaphoric and real, will be shed en route to that good and necessary goal.
A man who will snatch up innocent people and transport them to hellish prisons in another country is certainly capable of violence if threats to his power become something he can no longer ignore.
Someone asked me the other day if she should worry about some of her posts on Facebook that were negative re: Cluck. She was serious. Her question took me by surprise. Here … in America … to worry about posting on social media being a dangerous thing to do? To me it showed how far we’ve come along a very bad road. When good people are starting to practice self- censorship lest they find themselves on a midnight flight to El Salvador. Unfreakingbelievable!
I told the lady that I thought we were such small potatoes that we would not be picked up on Cluckian radar, unless they were looking for some random schmo to use as an example of how powerful and all- seeing they were. That may not have been reassuring to her.
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Friend Neil has introduced me to something amazing. the world of Raspberry Pi. It is a world of computers that you can hold in your hand. What caught my attention was a setup that would use microphones to record birdsongs, and then identify the birds for you. Easily transported to woodlands, prairies, wetlands – wherever birds are, the device records the calls and then feeds them to Birdnet at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology which makes the identification. If you record all night, It can generate a list of every bird that had sounded off while you slept.
This video has more information than you might need, and certainly more than I completely understood. But what came through was the relative ease of doing something truly remarkable.
S.w.e.e.t!
Should you find yourself sniffed at by true-blue birders deriding the use of technology to find and identify birds, just point out those binoculars they have hanging around their neck. Ask them what tree they plucked those from?
BTW, you can get Birdnet as a free app for your phone, and anytime you are listening to a birdsong you don’t recognize just bring up the app and it will start making a recording and eventually tell you what it is.
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From The New Yorker
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This next offering is in the nature of a Public Service Announcement. There was a piece written a couple of weeks ago by Timothy Snyder, a historian who is an expert on tyranny and terrorism. The piece is a longish one, but it’s worth taking the time to read it. Its title: The Next Terrorist Attack.
The people who have pointed out the menace that the Cluck administration represents are already out there writing, marching, giving speeches, telephoning, doing whatever is in their power to do to limit the damage that Cluck and his band are causing. They want and need all of our out-of-tune voices, our inexperience, our sore and tramping feet.
Read the column and then seriously consider joining one of the organizations that are working to preserve our democracy. It is a powerful thing to be part of, this saving one’s country.
There’s a person who posts on Substack as “Rosie the Resister.” On Thursday she came up with the beauty at right.
My comment on Rosie’s post is that America wasn’t ready for Cluck. Too many didn’t believe that fascism could happen here. Next time someone like him comes along, hopefully, we will smell them coming in time.
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The first election that I ever voted in was in 1960, when the question was “Is America ready for a Catholic president?” There were pamphlets placed on public buses in my hometown of Minneapolis suggesting that if JFK were elected we’d all become subjects of the Pope, and after that it would be all fish on Fridays and burnings at the stake and everything.
Well, Kennedy was elected and, mirabile dictu, that particular nightmare never happened. Turns out that our society makes progress by fits and starts rather than smooth transitions. On Monday being Catholic was an obstacle, but on Wednesday it’s a fading line in the sand. It’s what we do.
My first choice back in the 2020 election season was Amy Klobuchar (woman), and my second was Pete Buttigieg (gay). Both lost. Really, as if sex was the most important thing to consider when it comes to choosing leaders. How quaint. The all-male game is doomed to die an ungainly death and all one has to do is check the numbers. Within a generation women will make up an overwhelming majority of educated persons. Add to that the fact that they have always been better at networking and it’s Katie bar the door for bearers of the Y chromosome.
My own opinion is that this will change the sum of political life very little. For instance, by taking a close look at some of the women already in Congress we can see that stupidity, inanity, and cowardice are not exclusively male virtues. We can also see that steadiness, compassion, and common sense can be brought into the mix no matter what our genders might be.
After the present season of Cluck, I will be ready for almost anything and anybody as an improvement. Perhaps, since humans have brought this chaotic circus into existence, we should be considering other primates as candidates for public office.
I would have no trouble voting for the fellow at right, for instance. He has what is now in short supply on the national stage – an intelligent gaze.
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From The New Yorker
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There seems to be something about being the wealthiest people in our country that makes them insatiable. There is never enough of anything for them. Whatever machinations that Cluck is doing today to shovel more and more of our nations’ treasure into their bank accounts, all but a few of them seem to want more. An even more monstrous share.
They live in a completely different world than the rest of us, which would seem to make them unqualified to make the rules that we live by, but that’s not what happens. Right now our social safety net (which has never been up to the job at best) is being in danger of being completely shredded. Hundreds of billions of dollars are scheduled to be removed from health insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, for instance, if the Republican budget bill is passed. Money is to be taken from children’s food programs to be funneled into the pockets of billionaires.
Unfortunately many of us will perversely persist in becoming ill even if our health insurance is taken away or cut back severely, and too many will eventually become unable to work or support our families or take care of ourselves. Well, I guess we should have planned better, is the refrain echoing down Republican halls. Even though history has repeatedly shown this only means that small problems will become larger ones as people are forced to prioritize, and more immediate needs like food and shelter must be met.
Even as I type this stuff, eventually I have to take a break because too much thinking about our present circumstances is just that dreadful an enterprise. I have no idea why I don’t have a feeling of hopelessness, even though I admit that I can’t see a clear way out of the godawful mess Click and his troupe of bozos have created. Maybe we’re like John Mellencamp’s protagonist … too dumb to know when we’re beaten and should just give it up … instead we turn up our collars against the wind, put our heads down, and soldier on.
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Yesterday we took a very nice bicycle ride, thank you very much, into the countryside. It was a total bird show. We heard but did not see a Gambel’s Quail. Meadowlarks provided glorious background music for our trip. A huge, and I mean HUGE, Great Blue Heron had been hunting in a small creek when it took off right in front of us.
And then along came a large Red-tailed Hawk, at first flying just a few yards over our heads, giving us a great look at the patterns of its feathers, and then it began to ride the thermals, rising in lazy circles without so much as a wing flap until it was no longer visible.
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Where The Hawkwind Kills, by Daniel Lanois
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Yesterday was the 33rd wedding anniversary for Robin and I. To repeat an old story, after our respective former spouses left us for what they thought were greener pastures, she and I began to “date” and one thing led to another and a wedding became imminent. The counselor that Robin was seeing told her that making such a move might be unwise, that it was too soon after her divorce. He told her that this new relationship was a “transitional” one for her.
We have obviously been very slow about the whole thing, because it’s now 33 years on and we’re still transitioning. I’m not sure we’ve enough years left to make it to whatever the next level is supposed to be.
Oh well. One does what one can.
We celebrated quietly with supper at a new Italian restaurant in town. The food was delicious. I had the carbonara and Robin the mushroom tortellini, and our waitress couldn’t have been more pleasant.
Really, she couldn’t have. Would I lie?
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From The New Yorker
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When asked a question several years ago, the present Dalai Lama responded with the famous line: “My religion is kindness.“
This week the Senate is considering one of the unkindest budget bills in a long, long while. It strips money from health care, food programs, and childhood enrichment programs to pass the funds along to the very wealthy in the form of tax cuts. It is so blatantly unwise and unfair that it is a nightmare caricature of what a thoughtful government might do.
There is still time to telephone our senators and ask them to do the right thing. For some of them, our call might be just the nudge they need.
I am watching with great interest the political goings-on regarding a post on Instagram that James Comey had made. In the post he placed a photo of some seashells that formed a number.
The symbol “86/47” is being regarded by the Trump administration as a referring to assassination, and they are accusing Comey of fomenting violence. I am especially interested because my homemade sign says exactly the same thing, and I have now carried it in two rallies.
I had seen 86/47 in a post somewhere, thought it a clever symbol, and copied it for my own use. I frequently copy other people’s work and claim it as my own, so I thought nothing more of it. (I’m not too worried because in the photo above I had given the sign to Robin to hold for me, and thus I have plausible deniability.)
But before I ever went out with that placard in my hand I had checked out the definition of the “86” part of it and found no references to assassination or killings or violence of any sort. It appeared to have been an anonymously originated term without any sinister implications whatsoever.
Eighty-six is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to refuse service to.” It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang meaning that an item was sold out. There is varying anecdotal evidence about why the term eighty-six was used, but the most common theory is that it is rhyming slang for nix.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
I doubt that the Department of Justice is going to come to Montrose to examine my sign and haul me off to the Grand Inquisitors of the Cluck administration. But in the present era of newspeak in Washington D.C., we really don’t know what to expect, do we? I shudder at the thought of being chained in a dank dungeon while Kristi Noem parades in full tactical gear sputtering things her dog and goat once overheard and then she had to shoot them.
I offer a gallery taken from a Google search for the term 86/47 that I just performed. There were no mentions of assassinations in any of these products being sold. Could it be that it’s just another of Cluck’s diversions, another smoke screen to cover his rampant incompetence? Could it possibly be?
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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.1, by Pink Floyd
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If George Orwell were still alive, and if he got a penny for every time his novel 1984 was referred to in metaphors or political discourse, his fortune would exceed that of Elon Musk, I think. Too bad for George that the novel was published in 1949 and he said his last goodbyes in 1950.
But I will send $0.01 off to the Orwell Foundation instanter because I am going to use it again. The novel casts such a helpful light on our present government (I use the term “government” lightly) that I can’t help myself.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell’s ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a staunch believer in democratic socialism and member of the anti-Stalinist Left, modelled Britain under authoritarian socialism in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism and on the very similar practices of bothcensorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.
Wikipedia: 1984.
Rather than subject you to more of my tedious ranting at this time, I have gathered a gallery of cartoons prompted by the novel with which to assail you.
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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.2, by Pink Floyd
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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.3, by Pink Floyd
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I found while putting this piece together that George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. (Why do the British seem to be forever taking pen names, anyway? For myself, I would have been quite happy with Eric Arthur Blair.)
While digging around I found this gem, an interview of Orwell on his deathbed, dating back to 1950. It was chilling to listen to, as he predicted a future that we live in today.
Can I have a double OMG, brothers and sisters?
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In a sometimes glum season, it helps to occasionally bring out something anthemic and get lost in it. At least for me it does. For today I went back to the Glastonbury Festival in 2014 for Arcade Fire’s performance of “Wake Up.” Nothing intimate or quietly thoughtful here, but loads of showmanship, percussion, color, very costly costuming … a bright bit of rock and roll theater.
The message of the song’s lyrics? To forgive our own past mistakes and be more open to life before we get older and eventually drift away. (Some of us have to hurry, because drifting away is a wee bit closer.)
One morning this week I was looking to find something cheerful in the newspapers at around 6 o’clock A.M.. The first thing I learned is that the rice that I love to eat is loaded with cadmium and arsenic at “dangerous“ levels. So, to be an informed rice-eater, I researched and made a short list of what cadmium could do to me:
Pulmonary edema
Chemical pneumonia
Nausea
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Kidney disease
Osteoporosis
COPD
Lung cancer
Dysfunction of my liver, pancreas, and testes
Death
I was going to check on arsenic’s toxicity as well, but by the time I finished with cadmium I was already bummed. Hmmmmm … let’s see … a choice between shrimp fried rice and a trip straight to metabolic hell …
This information comes on the heels of my learning a couple of days ago that eating bagged lettuce is also more dangerous now because the Cluck administration has so reduced the number of food inspectors who protect us as our veggies make the long trip from farm to table that the hazards are increased. So I guess it’s back to good ol’ Soylent Green for me …. wait, what’s that … a little louder, please …
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Grift, graft, corruption, schmorruption … who is surprised by any of Cluck’s vigorous attempts to stuff money into his pockets in these days of dishonor and disrepute? He is a crook, a draft-dodger, a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and one of the champion liars of any generation. He is a caricature of a man. An empty suit.
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From The New Yorker
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Omigosh, our secrets are out! Here is Springsteen opening at a concert in Manchester, England. Damn. Now everyone will know what a bunch of twits are running our show here at home.
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Springsteen is catching four kinds of hell from MAGAland for his speech at the concert. (Because he called American out in a foreign land, he is even called a traitor, as if every word of every celebrity isn’t available instantly worldwide wherever it is uttered.) Over decades, maybe centuries, each time any singer brings up an issue that is in the forefront at the time this sort of reaction happens. And the criticisms are always the same: “He should just sing and leave the politics outside!” They try to ignore one important point, which is that music and politics have a long history together.
Pete Seeger made an entire career out of reminding us of the place that songs had in our own history, especially in labor and antiwar movements. Bob Dylan picked up that torch and carried it for years. Crosby Stills Nash and Young sung beautiful harmonies over sharp words dealing with the Vietnam War and social unrest. Sooo many others.
Music is powerful, and we all know it. It can change minds, sooth or inflame, elevate or depress moods. I don’t pretend to know why, but the far right has much more difficulty coming up with something a guy can hum than the other side does. Seems they are a hort on creativity, as it were. Perhaps that’s one reason they resent it when a Bruce or a Bob or a CSNY belts out yet another moving anthem. They know they have lost another round.
Chimes of Freedom, by The Byrds
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Every year it is the same. In the spring we sort out the camping gear, toss out the broken items, and replace those as well as the ones we just lost somewhere. We arrange the stuff perfectly logically and neatly until it is a joy to behold. By mid-summer chaos has sneaked in and taken over everywhere. As we set up our tent it becomes obvious that neither of us knows where the rubber hammer the we use to pound tent stakes into hard ground has got itself.
We find that if we are to eat anything which requires a tool we must make do, because all we have are spoons. The rest went into the house after the last camping trip and never made it back into the storage boxes. There are now six bottles of insect repellent and no sunscreen at all in the bag of necessaries. A cut finger provokes a search for a Band-Aid and we can only come up with two of them. Where is the First Aid Kit? Abducted by aliens is what we deduce. The first night of any trip when we can’t find the small flashlights that we need to find a bathroom during those early morning hours … it’s not the predators we worry about as much as rocks, cacti, thistles, and tripping over those accursed tree roots.
In short, we go from perfection to woefully unprepared without even noticing, and we do it every blessed year. As of this writing, I have all our stuff laid out in front of me on the garage floor and am preparing to put it back just the way that the universe knows that it should be done … all the while aware that ultimately I will find myself this autumn with only two Band-Aids and no sunscreen once again.
As Sharif Ali says to Major Lawrence in the movie Lawrence of Arabia:
We’re coming on the time when temperatures will get high enough that people begin to think about turning on their air conditioners. I’m not one of those that waits until the last minute to do so. At the first bead of sweat on my forehead in the middle of the day, I’m reaching for the switch on the cooling system.
I’ve had friends in the past who made it a point each year await absolutely as long as they could to turn on the air conditioning in their home. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but they also made a point of telling every single person they were doing it, including myself, as if this was some sort of public virtue.
I call this delay in accepting the blessing of air conditioning as comfortusinterruptus, and classify it under mental aberrations. Why someone would have air conditioning that could make them comfortable and keep them from sweating and becoming rancid and not use it I doubt that I will ever completely understand. All I know is that I will never be an entry in the sad race to be the last person to turn on their AC in Montrose County. In fact, I may well be the first.
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There are times, however, when sweat is admirable. Desirable. Delightful in the recalling. And it all has to do with s.e.x. My personal favorite movie that intricately weaves enough perspiration to fill a pool with the slip-slap clash of testosterone and estrogen is Body Heat. It’s a noirish kind of thing with sweat-stained shirts and ceiling fans galore. Here’s a scene that is an illustration of why prudence and chastity require air conditioning.
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Surely by now the Republicans who have fastened themselves like ticks to Emperor Cluck are wetting themselves regularly as they see their political futures becoming cloudier and cloudier. His latest offense against taste and ethics is that he wants to accept an airplane from Qatar. A really BIG airplane.
I keep forgetting … how do you spell putrescence, anyway? This is way beyond ordinary corruption.
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There was an article in Monday’s Times of New York that brought a smile. For those who have not heard of Rhiannon Giddens, she is a woman who has spent her adult life bringing music to us all. And she does it with class and humor and scholarship and style. The news that she has recently started a festival is the point of the article. The gathering is called the Biscuits and Banjos Festival, and it took place in Boone, North Carolina. A high point was the reunion of members of the group Carolina Chocolate Drops.
You know when you see those pictures from space of the earth at night and there are these points of light? Giddens is one of those points. She contributes, contributes, contributes. That’s a very nice thing to see in an era when so many are subtracting, subtracting, subtracting.
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Cartoon du Jour
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Today’s entry in the chucklehead sweepstakes is an article at CNN online entitled: “Why men are shaving off their eyelashes.”
From stopping dust and dirt getting into the eyes to prompting our blink reflex, eyelashes do more than just look pretty. Which makes it hard to explain the social media trend of men trimming down — or even entirely shaving off — their eyelashes in a bid to look “more masculine.”
Staggering. To look more masculine we need to cut away a major protector for the only two eyes we’ve got? I know that as a group we males aren’t too bright, but … does being “masculine” require that much stupid?
Now, I know that to take any advice on personal adornment from a man who still thinks cargo pants don’t look all that bad may not be the wisest course. But please, if you know someone who is considering eyelash-shaving, try to talk them into doing something else just as ridiculous but less harmful. Like wearing elephant pants. I did that in 1972 and lived to tell about it.
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On our camping excursion last weekend we saw two creatures that were new to us. The book says that neither of them is a rarity, but no member of our party had seen them before.
The Long-nosed Leopard Lizard.
(Say the name out loud. Sort of rolls off the tongue.)
The Great Basin Gopher Snake. Harmless. Beautiful coloration.
Our first campout of the year, and we’re meeting Amy, Neil, and Claire at Hatch Point Campground in Utah. It’s located about an hour’s drive south of Moab. This same group camped there once before, in 2019, except that Aiden was with us back then. At present Aiden is frittering away his life at college in Austin TX. God knows what they are putting in his head.
The campground contains only ten sites, and has no water or electricity, but there is a privy and trash service. That’s it. The surrounding desert countryside is striking, with beaucoup trails for hiking or biking . The weather promises to be in the middle 80s with nothing but sunshine in the forecast.
The map at left shows no roads, but there actually are some. It is at least that civilized.
It’s one of those times where making that all-important list of what you need and bringing it with you is crucial, because it’s an hour back to Moab for supplies if you forget something.
No matter how much you plan, the first campout of the year is when you find that you forgot something which every other person in the group now wants desperately. They give you glances for the rest of the event, glances that either say “I trusted you but never again,” or “If I get a hemorrhage it’s your fault!”.
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I Lied, by Lord Huron
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There’s a thoughtful article in the Times of New York on presidential overreach, making the point that Cluck may be the latest and most egregious example, but the groundwork had been laid for him over decades by others of both major parties. Title of the piece: We Have To Deal With Presidential Power. I almost didn’t read it, what with my short attention span and all, but I’m glad I did, because it provided some perspective. And perspective is a quality very short in supply right now with the available oxygen nearly completely taken up with constantawfulness on one side followed by alas and lack we are undone on the other.
Wouldn’t it be sweet to have a Congress where each member had a head, a spine, and a very low level of mendacity? What wonderful things we could do with such an instrument! We could fix this presidential thing and then get on to trying to repair the damage done everywhere you look on the planet.
One could almost despair every time we see a member of Congress being interviewed by media magpies trying to goad him/her into saying something impossibly inane or stupid and succeeding nearly always. I find myself way too often wondering either How did this doofus get elected? or Can this person even tie their own shoelaces?
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From The New Yorker
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Yesterday as I was scurrying about the grocery store rounding up things with which to feed us, I heard something really unusual on the radio. It was the song Be Bop A Lula, by Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps.
The tune was recorded in 1956 when every record label was looking for its own version of Elvis Presley.
It is awfully good rockabilly music, and no, the lyrics are never going to win a Nobel Prize. However, they are perfect early rock and roll. Dumb as a fencepost but easy to remember.
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Well, be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe Be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula She’s my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll
Well she’s the girl in the red blue jeans She’s the queen of all the teens She’s the woman that I know She’s the woman that loves me so
Be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe Be-bop-a-lula She’s my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll Let’s rock!
Well now she’s the one that’s got that beat She’s the one with the flyin’ feet She’s the one that bops around the store She’s the one that gives more more more more
Be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe Be-bop-a-lula She’s my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll Let’s rock again now!
Well, be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe Be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby Be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe
Be-bop-a-lula She’s my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll
Even though it is a staple of rock and roll history, and is cited in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, you almost never hear it played on the radio. But here it was, right there in front of my ears and I could sing along lustily on every repetition of “she-he-he’s my baby doll, my baby doll, my baby doll” right along with Vincent. (Lustily was the only way to sing it, since it’s basically about lust in the first place.)
Be Bop A Lula, by Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps
Remember that famous line from St. Paul who said: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things? Remember that? Well, Paul wasn’t talking about me. I never put them away. Don’t intend to. I have studied adulthood thoroughly and it looks like a poor fit for me.
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Hería small gallery from the Utah trip, posted from Hatch Point.
Once upon a time I was a member of a small multispecialty medical group in a small town in South Dakota. One of our perennial problems was recruitment of new physicians, even though the town was pleasant enough, and was in a scenic part of the state. The problem was, we were in South Dakota.
And to the majority of Americans, if the earth had been truly flat, our state would have been off the edge of the world in the place where the maps state: Here Be Dragons. Abandon hope.
So much so that most people made little effort to learn to distinguish between the two states with Dakota in their name, North and South.
So when we finally had a physician come to look us over, we often looked beyond aspects of their personalities that might be thought of as irregular in order to add their expertise to our mix of doctors. But there were limits to which we would go. One example follows.
A middle-aged orthopedic surgeon came a-looking. We already had one physician with that specialty on staff, but being the Lone Ranger was growing tiresome to him, so we wanted desperately to find him a companion. Someone who spoke his language and could share the burden of being on call. This candidate looked good. He was well-trained, with good references, a personable man with only two areas that were worrisome.
The first was that he loved sky-diving as a hobby. From the clinic’s standpoint, if you have a precious resource you hated to think of them jumping out of airplanes where gravity and a recalcitrant parachute could put you right back where you’d been before they came.
He still might have made the cut if it wasn’t for the fact that he liked to sky-dive in the nude. With his girlfriend. And take photographs as he fluttered down.
Somehow this last bit of business was too much for our board of governors, and they told him goodbye. Our clinicians didn’t think of themselves as a prudish bunch, not really, at least not when measured against the average American. Oh, we had our occasional affairs and office intrigues, but as the rest of the world knows, our country has a problem with nakedness at any time outside of infancy. We are a clothed people, and that was that.
On the other hand, another doctor-candidate, a cardiologist, was hired even though one of his qualifications for us was that he had to live in a place where he could feel free enough to step out on his deck of a morning and take a leak (urinate) any time he chose without fear of being arrested.
That seemed easy enough to accommodate, and he was helped to find a home on the edge of town where confrontations would be highly unlikely. We were also sensitive that the deck not be on the west side of the home, where our prevailing westerly winds could be a problem.
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Mean Ol’ Wind Died Down, by the North Missippi All-Stars
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There were two things on Monday that prompted an unscheduled trip to Paonia, a village an hour’s drive from Paradise. The first was that a friend of Robin’s had discovered a restaurant there that she thought was special, and the second was that the weather was a cold (but welcome) drizzle. So off we went. We’d visited this town a couple of times before, but hadn’t really given it a close look, usually we were on our way to somewhere else and stopped for a coffee or something similar.
But this day we located the restaurant, which is called Nido, and at the waitress’ suggestion, ordered the bubblegum plum carnitas tacos on soft corn tortillas. Its ingredients were listed as “crispy pork, local bubblegum plum/jalapeno jam, mixed greens, miso molé mayo, b.p. hot sauce, plum pickle, and cilantro.”
There’s not much to say except that we’d never had a taco like them, and I mean this in the best possible way. They were lovely to look at, actually, and so tasty … excuse me while I salivate at the memory. ‘Twas real food artistry.
Paonia is a town that has a definite cultural vibe. It is artist-friendly, DEI enough to give a Republican acid reflux just thinking about it, with some unobtrusive modern elements nestled among leftovers of the coal mining town it once was. The depressing aroma of gentrification is still absent.
Across the street from Nido is TLC, a shop that dispenses locally made ice creams which were delicious, but take a close look at this part of the menu which was posted on the wall. The attention-grabbing sentence was “To ensure access to everyone, everything on our menu is offered on the gift model so you have the option to cover the cost, pay it forward, or pay what you can.”
Now, I asked myself, when was the last time I dined at a place that offered such options? NEVER! That’s when! What are these people, anyway, socialists? Sheesh! Where were they when I was an impoverished college student barely surviving on the dollar bag lunches dispensed from a campus food truck?
We are thinking about going back when the weather is just a bit warmer and not so bleary and perhaps spending a weekend studying the town more carefully than we have in the past. It is entirely possible that we might gorge ourselves on these delicacies in the photo at right … the bubblegum plum carnitas tacos.
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Corazon Apasionado, by Cuco Sanchez
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It is almost beyond belief that we are still talking about child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as an unresolved issue. But the gaps in supervision haven’t been closed, the new perpetrators keep coming, and the old perpetrators die of old age without ever being held to account for their crimes. The Church has been a foot-dragger all along, and this includes Pope Francis, who started out better than his predecessors in this regard, but ultimately failed in his duty to protect the children of the Church. And he had nearly twelve years to do it.
This is a church that has completely lost its way and doesn’t seem to want to find it. Until and only if it does, no child should be left alone with any member of the Catholic clergy. Not for a moment.
Robin and I set a personal record by attending two political rallies only one day apart. On Thursday we drove to Grand Junction to march in their May 1 observation. On Friday we attended a smaller demonstration here on Montrose. Both of these focused on the harm to working families brought about by the present government.
We’re excited about the continuation of the protests around the country. They continue to grow in number and in size, and it should come as no surprise that this is happening. Every day the haphazardness of our federal government supplies fuel for the fire in the breast and the anger in the heart.
I’ve had good people ask questions as to why get involved in demonstrations? Each time it reminds me of the (perhaps apocryphal) conversation between Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau had been arrested and jailed for not paying a poll tax which he regarded as unjust. His refusal was an act of civil disobedience. When Emerson came to visit his friend in the hoosegow he asked “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau’s classic answer was “Ralph, what are you doing out there?”
While my natural bent is to sit in the shade in a comfortable chair with an iced coffee near at hand, today’s realities have forced me to do something quite different. I am very clear as to why I am taking to the streets with many other good people. Firstly, I have seen such demonstrations work … twice … in my lifetime. The long hard protest for civil rights was one of those times, and the other was the fight against the war in Viet Nam.
Secondly, I know that everything Cluck and his adherents are doing has been done by every totalitarian government trying to take power. There are no mysteries here. It is the same playbook over and over again.
Our present Congress is has proved itself too weak an instrument to resist these machinations. Our Supreme Court is too compromised to be counted on. If there is anything that can stop the present march to non-democracy, it is the people themselves. People who see the inequities, the injustices, and the corruption for what they are. And who then step forward in numbers great enough to show those we hired to do this work how it should be done.
One person doesn’t count at all, really. But millions of people will get the attention of our elected representatives and they will finally find the courage to do the right thing. Perhaps grudgingly, but they will do it. It has happened before and it will happen again.
So I am one of the millions now and the millions more to be. No more and no less. A speck. One cell of a body that is gaining strength every day.
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From The New Yorker
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Recently Rachel Maddow had this to say:
So if suiting up and showing up helps our country in any small way to get out of the unholy mess that the Cluck gang is deliberately creating, I will do so with alarming frequency and ridiculous fervor.
Perhaps I should carry a sheaf of signed waivers to hand out to rally organizers absolving them of any responsibility should my particular cosmic and eternal number come up during a demonstration.
(I know that croaking on a march with my sign in my hand would be bad form and a definite downer, and promise to do what I can to avoid making such a scene.)
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Power to the People, by John Lennon
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Supper Thursday in Grand Junction was at one of our favorite restaurants, Namaste. It’s a small place in a strip mall on the southern edge of town. Our waiter was the most upbeat and chatty guy, almost as if he was an emcee and we were an audience of two. Snippets of his monologue would be:
When I was a little boy in Nepal, we had kings and queens. When the queen got an automobile for the first time, bearers carried the car with her in it.
I came to this country when I was eight years old, and I thought I was just moving to another state in Nepal. Then I got off the transport and there were all these people with light hair and blue eyes. I had never noticed the difference in the eyes before.
All in all, delightful. Good food and a memory tour of Nepal.
For most of my life whenever I played the game “If you were marooned on a desert isle and could eat only one cuisine for the rest of your life what would it be?” I chose Italian. But at some point a few years back, that choice became Indian, and still is. I love the respect that they have for vegetables.
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Aad Guray, by Deva Premal
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From The New Yorker
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There are a lot of colorful characters to be met at AA meetings. We are definitely a motley bunch. Early on in sobriety I met a man named Jim at a meeting who was about 7 degrees off to port most of the time, but while this exasperated some of the other attendees I found him interesting, and we became friends. He introduced me to Krishna Das and kirtan music.
Krishna Das started out in music as a rock musician, and he was part of a group that eventually became Blue Oyster Cult, but this was before it had taken on that name.
However, he met Ram Dass along the way and his life’s trajectory was definitely altered. After than it was off to India to study, and learning the use of music as a form of meditation. It doesn’t take a hard listen, though, to hear rock and roll underpinning his stuff here and there.
Check out this one, taken from a concert in New York City, see what I mean. He’s one of the good guys.
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Yesterday as I was cruising the streets of Paradise NPR was playing and a woman whose name I never learned was describing the epiphany that being able to make one’s own mixtapes truly was. To be able to make a tape recording containing only the tunes I wanted to hear in the order I wanted to hear them was so liberating it was not to be believed.
Just spending time with this advance in technology I believe cumulatively used up enough minutes to make up about four of the years I have spent on the planet. And then along came the double tape deck machine that allowed me to make duplicates of a cassette to distribute to friends and random people I met along the way … my oh my oh my. I never thought of it as a hobby based on theft, but it was of course, as soon as I made the first copy not for my own use. Up until then the music belonged to me and I could, by God, do with it whatever I wanted was my thought line.
Late at night I would get lost in the process of creation, finally looking up at a clock and realizing that I’d better quit and go to bed or I would be going directly from the tape deck to work. And I was a thirty year-old married guy with four kids and a day job … the mind shudders at trying to imagine what would have happened to me without these anchors to reality.
Anyway, who would have thought that listening to NPR could be dangerous to one’s peace of mind? Maybe I shouldn’t be driving when I do it?
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Apropos of the above rant, here is a glimpse of how it was … from the movie High Fidelity. The original one. (Warning: lots of naughty words here)
Little Home In The Valley 