Just study this photo for a moment. Everything you need to know about why the fascists are going to be eliminated is right there in the frame. In frigid Minneapolis a young woman comes out of her house in bathrobe and slippers with her phone in hand to film the goons of ICE. Now look at the number of other people who are also filming this scene.
ICE is an army composed of the sort of humans you find when you turn over rocks, led by cruel people whose grasp on power is slipping away daily. This casually dressed woman knows that she is only one of many but, by God, if her pictures can be of any help she is out there shivering and taking them.
A message for the criminals of ICE and their handlers. Once America regains its sanity, we will find you. We are writing everything down.
******
I had another letter to the editor published Wednesday. Not anything earthshaking, just enough to annoy some of the hard-right citizens of Montrose County, which is my principal goal. I’m getting better at the process, and more of these letters are getting through. If the paper doesn’t like one, you never hear back from them, it simply vanishes and is never seen again.
So … I have found a few things that are important if you seek success in having your letters printed. Here’s my personal list.
- Never drop an f-bomb in your opening sentence
- Keep the word count well under 9000
- Do not suggest assassinations as a way of improving society
- Avoid topics that are ultra-passé. For instance, forget the Barry Manilow stories …
- Cannibalism, diarrhea, and large pustules have limited audience appeal
******
******
(Ahhhhhh, that one about the psychiatrist’s couch. Coarse language, I know, but I cannot stop laughing at it.)
******
A dusting of snow has fallen over the past 24 hours. Not enough to require anything of me. I can safely ignore it without having to worry about the elderly slipping and falling on my part of the sidewalk. Friday evening was the first fish fry of the year at the local Catholic Church. Each year, during Lent, the church serves up a dinner for $15.00 per person that includes either deep fried or baked fish, fries, coleslaw, Mac n’ cheese, and a delightful selection of desserts made by ladies of the congregation. It is dispensed from a buffet line in a large, barn-like room.
The quality of what is offered varies from year to year, so the first one is the tell. Here’s my breakdown on the offerings.
- Cole slaw was excellent, with good flavors, bright colors, and someone actually paid attention to proper seasonings
- French fries: made sometime this week, limp, gaunt, pale in color
- Mac n’ cheese: baked in a very large pan to the point where the pieces of pasta were beginning to lose their boundaries and were turning into one great twenty pound pasta rectangle
- Fish: it would seem that the person responsible for the deep fried variety must also operate the local crematorium. My pieces were fried until whatever fish there was had shriveled to a nubbin inside the armor of the breading. The breading was also not penetrable with a fork, but required attack with a knife as well. Some pieces had to be picked up in one’s hands and eaten like fish-on-the-cob.
- Desserts: superb examples of the best of church basement food
So, the verdict overall for this year is: not bad, better than average. We went with friends and will no doubt attend at least one more session before Easter rolls around to end all the fun. Sometimes it’s about the company, and not the food at all.
******
Robin and I will sometimes fill the odd moment playing games on our phones. Each game comes with a free version and a paid version. Take the free one and you get commercials, just like on television. The ads come in waves, and the wave this week is making the assumption that I am a large-breasted woman over 60 years of age. I am offered brand after brand that will make my life a joy, and in each ad there is at least one lady who jumps up and down wearing the bra being offered to show me how little ‘jiggling’ there is with this undergarment.
As a male senior citizen I find all of this interesting, and while at present I have no need for such masterpieces of support, I now know that if things go south and I do need one, I will absolutely go for the model that snaps in front. It just makes such sense.
The last time I really thought about brassieres I was an adolescent, and my concerns at that time were to develop the dexterity needed for the one-handed-behind-the-back-unsnapping from the en face position. The secret, I learned way back in those uncertain years, was practice.
******
******
Lastly. I think that I mentioned once or twice before that I have learned how to grow mushrooms in my home. The sort that contain psilocybin. The reason? To see if some thorny chronic pain issues could be improved upon, as has been reported in the literature. I am microdosing with the dried mushrooms, and the jury is still out on whether there is improvement. It can take a while.
But I have about a pound of powdered magic mushrooms in my freezer, which is enough for at least a hundred full-blown trips, according to my informants. In Colorado it it legal to grow them, use them however you want, and to dole them out to family or friends. What one cannot do is sell them. Colorado is one of those few states with a relaxed attitude toward psychedelics, but they are very serious about money exchanging hands.
It has occurred to me that I might be able to use my supply to brew up a batch of cream of mushroom soup that would be legendary and be talked about in Lutheran Church basement kitchens forever. Imagine, if you will, one hundred Scandinavian-Americans who have slipped the surly bonds of earth, put out their hands, and touched the face of God … all at one time.**
Of course I wouldn’t do such a thing. Perish the thought. But it would be something to see …
** (Lines borrowed from the poem High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee Jr.)
******
Little Home In The Valley 