In 1988 the Cowboy Junkies brought out an album which was melancholic enough that I adopted it in toto. It was a grand fit for the chaos in my life at the time, and was in constant replay all of that year and the next. The album was called The Trinity Sessions, and was a breakthrough recording for the group.
One cut on the album was their interpretation of the Lou Reed song Sweet Jane, which by now everybody that ever lived has probably heard somewhere. Hypnotic, doleful, haunting. You might think that the song had been just waiting for Margo Timmins’ quiet voice.
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As America continues to stumble through these grotesque days I know that eventually some idiot is going to say “You know, one day we’ll look back on this and laugh.” At that moment I will raise my ancient fist and smack him alongside the head. I am not ordinarily a violent person, but that would just be too much.
Of course this would almost certainly be instantly followed by my receiving a severe pummeling, but a guy has to do what a guy has to do.
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At an AA meeting this week I happened to mention one of my favorite quotations by Mark Twain.
Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged.
Mark Twain
It must have caught their fancy because everyone in the room but Robin reached for their pen and made a note to themselves to look it up. Robin, of course, has heard everything I have in my head several times by now and hardly notices when my lips start flapping, and therefore her hands remained quietly in her lap.
That’s one problem with living with me. I have only a few things to say but that doesn’t stop me from repeating them endlessly. My first wife lasted twenty-five years before she ran screaming down the street one day and never came back. Through some miracle of fortitude Robin has made it to thirty-four years, but I keep my eye on that large suitcase of hers out in the garage just in case I ever find it packed and ready to go at a time when we have no trip planned.
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Cluck gave one of his signature wanderlogues on television this past week, but of the major networks only CBS carried it, while ABC, CNN, and NBC passed. We have come to expect nothing less from CBS, which climbed into bed with Cluck when he raised the edge of the coverlet a trifle and made room for them. It’s one more phase of the sad downslide for a network that once was perhaps the most reliable of them all, certainly during the Walter Cronkite days they stood for something other than a being a gaggle of lackeys.
As an aside, when something like sanity returns to American political life, it would seem a good time for the trustbusters to take a long hard look at recent media mergers. At some point, bigger becomes a real problem, and we’ve got it already.
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Can’t talk about Sweet Jane without bringing in the man who wrote the song, from the live album Rock and Roll Animal.
Two guitarists, Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, play a long and famous introduction to Reed’s appearance on stage, and then they dig in hard when he shows up. It’s a one-act play for the ears.
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“Nicholas Dale, a 56-year-old helicopter pilot from British Columbia, Canada, died on July 12, 2026, when his K-MAX helicopter crashed into the Silver Jack Reservoir in western Colorado while fighting the Gold Mountain fire. The fatal crash is currently being investigated by the NTSB and the FAA.”
“Hundreds of local residents, including public servants and first responders in Montrose County, lined U.S. Highway 50 to honor Dale and pay tribute to his ultimate sacrifice. His remains were recovered by the Montrose County Sheriff’s Office dive team shortly after the aircraft went down.“
Various news sources
Our local wildfires have claimed one more firefighter. The reservoir cited above is only an hour’s drive from us. We’ve visited it several times. This brings the sad total of lives lost in this fire season in Paradise to four.
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Little Home In The Valley 