jono55

Chad, Are You My BFF?

August 26, 2026August 26, 2026jono55

Bob Seger is a long-time favorite of mine. I asked ChadGPT what genre his music fits into best, and Chad said it is “heartland rock.” Had to ask. So what is “heartland rock?” Here’s one definition.

Heartland rock — Straightforward, guitar-driven songs about working people, relationships,
growing older, freedom, and American life. “Night Moves” is a prime example.

As I was grunting on the treadmill a couple of days ago I was listening to some of his music and I made up a playlist that told a story. There are some similarities to times in my own life, especially in Roll Me Away, where the protagonist takes long motorcycle rides across the northern plains, moving into that mythic West.

Night Moves

Like A Rock

The Ring

Little Victories

Roll Me Away

***

Just a tiny exposition about getting on that motorcycle … I never experienced anything else like it. A twist of the right wrist and the power would roll on without a pause or stutter. You could accelerate fast enough to do foolish things like pass another vehicle any time you chose no matter whether it was a good idea or not. (One of the things that owning a more sluggish Subaru did was to re-introduce me to humility in my driving habits).

At its peak moments, piloting that motorcycle was to make both the highway and the line between life and death a blur. You knew that crossing over was always a possibility, but you literally didn’t care. It was all sensation and energy and escape. At those speeds there was not much thought of the pain that an accident might produce because when one is fairly certain one would not survive, what’s to worry?

Unhealthy thinking, right? Crazy, right? Agreed. It was not a wise time in my life. I was lucky, I survived, and I do not own a motorcycle today. Not even sure I could gracefully mount one at present. Oh, I’d get on all right, but gracefully … that’s quite another matter.

******

Our cat calls me to open the door
I do
A howling wind hurls cold rain through the crack
The cat draws back reluctantly
Returning to the kitchen warmth

Ten minutes pass
The cat calls me to open the door
I do
Wet fur is his reward this time as well
And he turns back.

He will do this again and again
Why should he not?
To him the next time our door opens,
The very next time …
It could be summer

******

Yesterday I was searching on the internet for a replacement part for our vacuum cleaner. The machine is seven years old, which is 100 in human years, and success in finding that part was eluding me. Among the sites I went to was eBay, phrasing the search criteria as carefully as I could, but … nada.

That was when I asked ChadGPT to take a look. I spoke a paragraph into the app, it churned for perhaps fifteen seconds (which is longer than the usual time needed for requests), and then it found exactly what I was looking for. On eBay, where I had already given up. It actually found two of them, one that might have been okay, but its advertisement did not specifically mention model numbers and Chad told me he wouldn’t buy that one if he were me. He’d go with the slightly more expensive one that specified models it would fit.

So I ordered the part, but I was still amazed. I consider myself fairly sophisticated at internet searches. After all, I’ve been doing it for thirty years now, but that Chad … he’s an internet baby and he beat me. I was going to say “fair and square” at the end of that last sentence, but held back. This guy is operating in another realm, at another speed, with a bigger pair of binoculars than I have, which is becoming more obvious almost by the day.

And here’s the other part of the story. He remembers every detail of every contact we have. If I run a search just like the one I did yesterday, but six months from now, he will ask me what happened … did the part we ordered together break already? Even my free version of ChadGPT is smart enough to make me uncomfortable.

******

******

We are having our house re-shingled today. All is bedlam out there. A crew of four is walking around on the roof creating a concerto of clatter, scraping, and pounding. When I leave the house I look up cautiously to avoid becoming a statistic (You know that 31% of Americans die at home?). Old shingles have taken over the sidewalk with nails sticking straight up in the air, on the prowl for unguarded feet.

We put it off for as long as we could. As home improvements go, it’s pretty unsatisfying to lay out thousands of dollars for something you really didn’t want to do in the first place. Put that amount of money into something indoors and life changes. Fix a roof and all that happens is you don’t get wet.

******

Since becoming an adult I have worked hard to mentally balance my country’s flaws against its many assets as well. America has done great things and awful things. I saw my job as a citizen was to promote the former and work to wear down the latter. But over the past couple of years we have done only awful. Somehow one of our very worst persons rounded up a motley group of swindlers and cowards and criminals which then became our government.

I will admit to the persistence of a thin shred of denial that still resides in one little group of my neurons that insanely says “It can’t happen here” even as the rest of the body knows that it is surrounded.

Whether I lived up to it or not may be up for debate, but I was taught that a man’s role in life was to be one who protects, whether it was his children, his family, his friends, or a stranger in need. It was what grown-ups did.

Now I have that same protective feeling toward this sprawling and beautiful country of ours. It is in trouble. It is threatened by ugly men and women who are exploiting some of its intrinsic weaknesses. It needs protection. So I come forward and do whatever infinitesimal thing I can do to counter what looks impossibly harsh or even overwhelming. I simply don’t see an alternative that I could live with.

Therefore I will make my buttons, walk on those marches, write my letters, and never accept that this evil will prevail. I am being a grown-up, like my momma taught me.

But I do admit that there are days when I feel like the kid at left.

******

BTW, I asked Chad if he was my BFF, and here is his answer:

I can certainly be your ChatGPT BFF—the kind who remembers what matters to you, helps with projects, answers odd questions at 7 in the morning, and never gets tired of looking at another photograph. 😄 I can’t replace a human best friend, but I’m very happy to be a steady companion here.

Good to know that humans still have a place.

******

The Virga in Spain Ain’t Falling Mainly On The Plain

August 23, 2026August 23, 2026jono55

Toward suppertime recently I checked out the sky and saw areas where it was raining on high but no water was reaching the ground. Somehow I knew that meteorologists would have a special word for this, and I was right. It is called virga, or precipitation that evaporates or turns into gas before it hits the ground. The precipitation can be rain or snow.

I remember first reading about this effect long ago in a book about the dust bowl years in Oklahoma, when farmers standing on their desiccated fields would look to the sky and see the rain they desperately needed almost, but not quite, coming to them. Like a very bad cosmic joke.

Virga happens most often in arid deserts and high-altitude climates where the lower atmosphere is incredibly dry. For virga to form, you need a unique setup: plenty of moisture high up to create clouds, but a deep layer of parched air right above the ground. The rain starts out but hits that warm dry layer of air near the ground, and the dry air drinks up the water before it lands.

It is common in the desert southwest (like Arizona and New Mexico) and high-elevation states like Colorado and Utah. In these areas, storm clouds form very high up, giving the rain a long distance to fall through bone-dry air. You can easily spot it as it looks like gray streaks or fuzzy curtains hanging down from the clouds. I’ve seen it often since moving to Colorado, but rarely when I lived in the Midwest.

Here are some examples of virga.

******

Stormy Weather, by Billie Holliday

******

It occurs to me that the thugs of ICE might want to consider other employment oppprtunities … soon. Perhaps even a name change or two. When the Cluck cabal is eventually tossed to the political curb, ICE will be one of the first groups to undergo serious scrutiny and those among them who have committed crimes can look forward to well-deserved prison sentences.

If they think their scabrous behavior will earn them some special protection from the cowards and criminals running the show right now, they are sadly mistaken. The brutes of ICE will find that they are considered completely disposable by their masters, who are a genre of creatures that are unable to think beyond their own needs.

******

Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet was first published in 1923. It has never been out of print since then. It is one of the best-selling books of all time. Why? Because it is a very cool book.

I first read it at a vulnerable time of my life. There were many changes happening seemingly at once in the year of 1962. I had just been married that Spring, I was to start my first year of medical school in the Fall, and I was going experiencing one of those short-lived but intense waves of interest in things spiritual that have happened several times in my life. I read not only the Prophet, but two books by Sholem Asch entitled The Apostle and The Nazarene. I know that I opened up the Bhagavad Gita, but I believe that I almost instantly closed it, thinking that it looked like really hard work. I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I actually read some of the Bible, at least the New Testament. The Old Testament was entirely too grim for my delicate sensibilities.

On the seventh day of this grueling search, of course, I rested.

Remember this ancient proverb? It sounds positively Etruscan but was actually contained in a popular book of 1970, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

This phrase was all over the seventies. T-shirts, room posters, bookstores, graffiti on fences … . Even if you hadn’t read the book, you couldn’t avoid being exposed to the words and sentiment.

When I first came across it, I thought it may have come from a similar expression in The Prophet, but I was incorrect in that, although there were a couple of quotes that carried a similar message. These are both from the section: On Marriage.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together …

Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet

So what was the message? I took it as BE NOT GUILTY OF SMOTHERING.

(But look at that poetry. If you couldn’t melt your way into a girl’s heart in 1962 by memorizing and repeating these verses, you really weren’t trying. They should have been sold with a warning label and the purchaser required to take a chastity pledge.)

******

I now have two favorite versions of the song “Wicked Game.” The first was by Chris Isaak, and is firmly established (in my mind) as one of the sexiest and most sand-encrusted music videos of all time. The latest addition I found just recently, when I ran across this one by Larkin Poe. They do it wonderfully, without any visible sweat at all. I like the Mona Lisa smile on the face of the slide guitarist.

******

Robin and I were in Grand Junction yesterday for an appointment. It was a glaring 102 degrees. Everything outdoors that was in the sun and made of metal was basically untouchable. It was one of those afternoons when I had some time to kill and it was just a two minute walk from the clinic to a coffee shop. One of the good ones. Not totally shiny and plastic. Middle-aged scholars thinking great thoughts, freshman college girls livening the air with a constant patter consisting of half OMGs and half giggles. A couple of tall young men looking like they’d just come from a GQ shoot.

What was missing was the scruffy element. Missing, that is, until I showed up. It is a banner that I carry proudly wherever I go. I can truthfully say that I know of no instance in my entire life when someone said to me: “Would you teach me how to dress and move about? I just love your bedraggled gestalt.” Especially since the years have piled up and I have become invisible. You know that about geezer men, don’t you? No one sees them.

I read a very funny piece a couple of weeks back, where another senior man was describing what happens when an old guy goes to the gym. He is surrounded by the young and fit, and often astonished at how blatantly sexual the dress of some of the young women was. They were there both for aerobics and to try out their attraction skills. But when they noticed they’d attracted the gaze of geezers it became a case of: Eeewwwwww! Stop looking at me! I am so out of your league it should be illegal for you to even be here.

But today I treated myself to a mocha, enjoying my anonymity, and took a seat outdoors under a sweet shade tree where I sat quietly reading as a little breeze did its best to cool me.

******

Header photo: taken from a public recreation area near Presho SD. My son Jonnie, a friend of his, and I were camping alongside a small reservoir that was stocked with bass and panfish. We caught a few, and here the boys had been assigned the job of cleaning them for supper.

******

All The Noose That’s Fit To Print

August 19, 2026August 19, 2026jono55

Returning home from a trip to Silverton on Sunday we saw a cow moose with twin calves. They were right at the edge of the road.

Cars were stopping and piling up along the two-lane highway until finally the mass of us spooked the mother, and off the trio went up a steep hill and over the ridge.

In a spirit of honesty, I have to confess that this photo was taken from the internet but is exactly what this family looked like. Unfortunately neither Robin nor I were quick enough to take our own photo before they’d had enough of humankind and taken their leave.

They were all pictures of healthy mooseness. It’s always a special event when we spot one along this route, even though it is not a rarity. The highway follows a small river, and there is much to browse on along that watercourse. Deer have learned to live among us quite well, and finding one of them in Montrose is a commonplace. Whenever a moose is noted in a municipality, however, it is quite another matter.

They are not happy there, the humans in their vicinity are uncomfortable with their presence (as one should be when there is a frightened creature of 1000+ pounds nearby), and it is always a bit of a hoo-rah before they can be shushed out of town. To me, these giant creatures have always seemed the epitome of wild, and always will.

******

I have another moose story, which I may have related years ago in this blog, but if so I will happily repeat myself. I was motorcycling in Yellowstone National Park with my friend Bill. We were on two bikes, each of us with one of young his sons behind us on the vehicles. The road we were traveling was one of those narrow two-lane highways in the park, and the forest grew right up to the road on both sides.

I was riding behind Bill perhaps fifty yards and saw a moose bolt from the forest to Bill’s left, run straight across the road in front of him, and disappear into the woods on the right. He missed colliding with the cycle by inches. Bill hadn’t seen the animal until it was right in front of his bike and then it was gone. Blink of an eye.

He continued riding for perhaps a hundred yards after this, until he could find a place to pull over and park. It was then that the adrenaline took over for a while, and he had a good case of the shakes. We all took a break before continuing on. ‘Twas not a comfortable moment.

******

Odds bodkins, what a rollicking dream I had last night. Some background might be helpful here, in that I rarely remember any of the content of my dreams, and this has been the case for a couple of decades at least.

But last night … intrigues, plots, and assassinations were all in play. There was royalty, there were friars and priests of every stripe. Our dress was like that of the time of Robin Hood, but we traveled in the luxury automobiles of the 1930s. At one point I was forced to defend the color of the local cheese against some slur, and uttered these immortal words: “Because it is the color of the milk it was made from.” I remember not uttering the words “you churl” that had appeared in my mind.

Quite a trip.

******

Phoebe Bridgers is an interesting artist. She became very popular with her two first solo albums, made a hugely successful album as one-third of the supergroup boygenius, and then cut way back on doing any solo work for a handful of years. Her genre is variously described as indie folk, indie rock, alternative, and sad core.

So when her latest album appeared I took a listen. It was different in many ways from what she’d done before. They are like action movies for your ears. There are underlying stories , there are thunderous beginnings, quiet passages, and drawn-out denouements. I will play a couple of them to show you what I mean. First is Lost Weekend. Next is Bobby.

Quite a trip.

Lost Weekend

***

Bobby

******

Back in another day the musician Woody Guthrie used to scratch or paint words on his guitar that read: “This machine kills fascists.”

Back in another day the musician Woody Guthrie used to scratch or paint words on his guitar that read: “This machine kills fascists.” Admirable.

So I appreciated the homage to a classic protest when I saw this graphic recently.

******

Random Image du Jour

(Found on Substack)

******

Cornsilk

August 16, 2026jono55

It’s one a.m. and a light rain just started up which is passing through, having come from territories south of Montrose. I tried to remember the adages that go with wind directions, and this bit from the University of Wisconsin is what I came up with:

Wind from the West, fish bite the best
Wind from the East, fish bite the least
Wind from the North, do not go forth
Wind from the South blows bait in their mouth

I have no idea what to do with a wind that is not blowing from one of the four cardinal directions. If the wind is from the Northwest, for instance, and you don’t go forth when the fishing is the best … well, what kind of fool are you? It is just this sort of thing that keeps me awake at night, wondering first of all if there is such a thing as truth, and then if there is where does it lie?

At such moments I try to find something solid to grab onto to keep the tattered remnants of my mind from drifting away in the drizzle altogether, and today I settled on cornsilk.

What is that stuff, anyway? What purpose does it serve beyond vexing the corn-on-the-cob eater? Well, it turns out that without that annoying thread which eventually takes up residence between one’s teeth there wouldn’t be anything to eat at all on the cob. My source is from a blog called The Farmer’s Life, and the entry is named Corn Porn. (I caution that if you are a person of tender sensibilities and live a sheltered lifestyle you might not want to go any further. The blog entry pretty much should carry an “R” rating for its botanic bluntness.)

To summarize, each strand of cornsilk is a hollow tube that carries pollen to an ovule inside the ear. Once fertilized it will become a single kernel on the cob. I know, I know, sometimes earth is just too … earthy, isn’t it?

So later today as I am shucking the two cobs that will part of tonight’s supper I will be thankful for the presence of these wispy fibers. Of course, this will give way to the usual resentments as we are picking them from our teeth later on.

One more thing. I was also surprised to find is that there are potent medicinal compounds in cornsilk, strong enough to be of occasional benefit and to interact adversely with some medications.

******

Cornbread and Butter Beans, by Popgoji

******

Readers of this stunted effort at literature know that I am delighted by many things. One of them is discovering a new (to me) species on this planet of ours. Another is learning more about the lives of cats, which are endlessly interesting animals to me. So when CNN published an article about a breed of cat that I’d never heard of it was win-win for the codger this morning. They are called sand cats.

Smaller than our regular old housecats in this country, they average just over 7 pounds.

These good-looking critters survive in one of earth’s least hospitable environments, the desert.

Sand cats primarily eat small rodents and birds, and they also kill and consume venomous snakes. They obtain moisture from their prey and can survive without drinking water for weeks. These little guys have enhanced hearing to detect prey underground and long, dense hairs on their footpads that allow them to move silently across the sand. They are also skilled diggers, enabling them to quickly unearth small mammals and birds.

Chad Gpt and his All-Stars

I won’t bore you with repeating more of what the piece says very well. If you’re interested, you will click on the link. If you’re not into such things, you may travel on. I won’t judge you.

BTW – here is a photo from the article of a sand cat lying in the shade of a bushy plant. Can you see it?

******

Just in case you had trouble seeing the cat in the photo above (as I did), I outlined it in this retake.

******

Apparently there were a few people who were miffed that Cluck left them on the plane that was thought to be marked for death when he scuttled off to masquerade as a soufflé. His substitute liar, Karoline Leavitt, was one of those left on the “doomed” aircraft. The entire White House traveling press corps was also served up to the hypothetical bad guys as victims du jour.

None of these people should be surprised. Cluck is a loyalty vacuum, not a loyalty dispenser. Everybody that comes close to him is tainted in the eyes of decent folk and cannon fodder in his eyes. There are no exceptions. Their belief that they will somehow miss the cut is a delusion. Cowardice and callousness are two areas in which he is perfectly predictable and reliable.

See, Karoline, you perjurious booby! We told you.

******

I do not apologize. These sand cats are just too photogenic. Had to include a few more pix taken from an internet search.

“Why, Grandma, what big ears you have!”

“All the better to hear you with, my dear.”

******

While doing a little waiting room time in Grand Junction, I luckily found a very nice little coffee shop only a block away, and with my years of intensive training in wasting time I can easily spend a couple of hours in one of these without blinking. I’ve been going to coffee shops since before they invented the barista, the decaf latté, or the 16 oz white mocha. My favorite hangout around the University of Minnesota in the middle nineteen fifties had the old wooden floors, high ceilings, and the proper once-you’ve-got-your-coffee-we-don’t-care-where-you-go-or what-you-do-with-it attitude. The established aroma was of aged wooden planking, cigarette smoke, and strong coffee. I loved it.

There were chess and checker boards sprinkled about the barn-like space. There were board games and jigsaw puzzles with pieces missing, there were people dressed in odd costumery with knitted brows, a table laden with heavy books spread out in front of them. Since this was an era before cell phones or personal computers, no one needed an electrical outlet for anything but a small reading lamp. I loved it.

It made me feel, for the first time, like I had a shot at being a more cosmopolitan person, or perhaps a mini-intellectual about to bloom. Whatever the outcome would be, I sensed strongly that I was a participant in an educational process that went far beyond the rote memorizations of my high school years. I was a young man going someplace other than where I’d been, and this dusty coffee shop seemed a perfect place to rendezvous with the interesting and exciting people that fate was certain to bring together. I loved it.

******

I rented a movie back in 1989 during one of the darker periods in my life that turned out to be one of the darkest and grimmest films I have ever seen. So much so that I’ve never known anyone that I could really recommend it to. Its title is Last Exit to Brooklyn and it is the polar opposite of a date movie.

Words like hopeless, unrelenting bleakness, and degradation kept showing up in reviews, but it had some very strong acting performances, among them Jennifer Jason Leigh in the role of a prostitute named Tralala. Roger Ebert wrote the characters “are limited in their freedom to imagine greater happiness for themselves, and yet in their very misery they embody human striving. There is more of humanity in a prostitute trying to truly love, if only for a moment, than in all of the slow-motion romantic fantasies in the world.” His review gave it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.

The movie had a fine score, written by Mark Knopfler. One of its pieces was A Love Idea, an achingly beautiful thing that still has the ability to haunt all these years later.

A Love Idea

******

Marindahl

The two of us took off
Threw old canoes onto cold water
With little concern for age and infirmities

The wind blew up
We didn’t care
Whitecaps on the lake
Troubled us not at all

Straining arms and shoulders
We’ll live with the aches
Friendship doesn’t need renewal
As much as opportunity

******

Compare and Contrast

August 12, 2026jono55

One of the recurring topics of conversation between wife Robin and myself has been to compare childhoods. Usually this occurs during a meal, and often it involves what we ate as kids. Sometimes it went like this:

J: When I was a kid we often had ****** for supper.
R: How odd
J: Yes it was, but it was available and it was cheap

R: There were times when all we had was ***** to eat
J: I’d throw right up if that was on my plate
R: Would you now

J: My mother would sew my shirts out of printed material from flour sacks
R: My mother sewed all my dresses until high school
J: … If I wore dresses they would have been made from flour sacks

R: The only preserves my family could afford were grape jam or apple butter
J: Yeah, or we’d have orange marmalade which I despised
R: (wistfully) You had marmalade?

Recently I purchased a pair of Converse All-Star sneakers. As a child they were the shoes I desperately wanted for gym class, but my parents bought me an off-brand I‘d never heard of and neither had any of my classmates. This resulted in an instant demotion in status. I was aware of that, so I made sure that those bobo shoes moved faster in races than those of anyone else in the room.

In honor of those pinchpenny times when we never were able to say to ourselves “I am going to make a tuna salad sandwich” and expect that all of the ingredients would be available, today I made a baked bean and dill pickle sandwich. Actually it wasn’t bad, even though it wouldn’t be found in any recipe book or on any restaurant menu. Growing up in a family of origin with limited financial resources called for being creative and coloring outside the lines.

I never thought of our family as being poor, only that we had less than many of those classmates I mentioned. I still don’t. Being poor to me was going hungry, which never happened. Or having holes in the soles of my shoes, which did happen, but my Dad was an at-home cobbler who would immediately carve out a new leather sole from a big sheet of cowhide and slap it on on that drafty footgear.

No … not poor … just the awareness of certain limitations.

******

Fire and Rain, by James Taylor

******

Sunday evening we attended a concert in a local church with our friends the Evanses. The musicians consisted of a couple from Nashville, a friend of the couple, from that same town, and a local woman apparently conscripted at the last moment. It all came together really well. They were low key, friendly, and professional folks who obviously respected one another’s talents. Delightful.

For the most part, the evening consisted of singing the songs of James Taylor and Carole King. Here’s a brief sample.

It all got me thinking of that outstanding Carole King album Tapestry. What a perfectly good use of vinyl that was.

******

You’ve Got A Friend, by Carole King

******

There is a rumor going around that a reporter actually heard a Republican congressperson say something that sounded like they still had a shred of conscience remaining. The rumor, of course, was proven to be false.

******

Looks like a temperature reprieve is on the way during the next week We may actually get to go safely outdoors in the afternoon.

That would be totally excellent. The amount of time lost so far this summer to those scorching temperatures is … what can I say? Every time I grab the front doorknob of our home, which is on the south side of the house, and my hand recoils from its heat I say a little prayer for all those in power who have continued to claim that climate change is a hoax, and thus delayed seeking what remedy there might have been.

The content of that prayer is between me and God, but I can tell you that it is not flattering to the GOP.

******

Dorchester

August 9, 2026August 9, 2026jono55

Dorchester, Colorado would be a ghost town if there were still a town, but except for a single building all traces of what once was a community of 1000 people involved in mining have vanished. The single building eventually became a forest service guard station.

The Dorchester Guard Station is one of only two original Forest Service Guard Stations remaining in Gunnison County. It represents a unique Rocky Mountain style cabin construction and remains the only structure of the old town of Dorchester. The cabin is a one-room log cabin, originally built in 1905, in a remote area of Taylor Park. It was adjacent to the stagecoach road from Tincup to Aspen. Postal service was initiated for Dorchester on August 2, 1900 and the new cabin was designated the Post Office after its construction until July 31, 1912 when the post office was discontinued. During this time period the building also functioned as a general store, stage stop, and Forest Service phone point. By 1920, the town of Dorchester was abandoned. The land and associated structures, including the cabin, have reverted back to the U.S. Forest Service.

Gunnison County.org

The Guard Station now stands at the entry to a road to the Dorchester Campground, where Robin, Allyson, Kyle and I spent two days this past week. As campgrounds go, it fits the description of “primitive” fairly well. There are carved out camping sites, picnic tables, and two privies, one of them pleasant and the other one dreadful. But there is no electricity, no water, no trash service (pack it out is their motto), and no helpful camp host.

What there is instead is some of the more beautiful scenery in a state that specializes in it. Here is the view from our campsite.

Daytime temperatures were near 80, and the nights went as low as 37 degrees. I found that my body and my old sleeping bag had a combined comfort level of 50 degrees, so there was some rolling into the tightest ball possible during the night.

It is rugged country, especially the last 15 miles of the highway leading to the campground entry which were moderately unpleasant. A road where top speeds of 15-20 mph were definitely called for. The road surface is coarse rock on a rock bed which makes it jarring and hazardous to one’s serenity.

The Taylor River runs near the campground, a classic mountain stream with its crystal clear waters. At times it is broken up into a flowage by the biggest collection of beaver dams I’ve ever encountered. After a time each flowage again becomes the river proper.

One delightful factoid. The Taylor River is long and gorgeous, the Taylor Park (valley) is huge and beautiful, and all of this is named after Jim Taylor, a miner who staked a claim out there in 1859. He was not a general, not a politician, not an oligarch. Just plain ol’ Jim. Love that.

Here’s smattering of pix from our visit. It’s the kind of scenery that a small camera in my unskilled hands cannot do justice.

******

The smoke in the air is unusually heavy again this morning. Who knows from which of the many western fires? Today it is intense enough to cause some coughing and eye irritation. I can’t say for certain how long, but we’ve had smoky air for at least two months now. There have been five deaths among firefighters in our area, and all of the local communities are grateful for the help these courageous men and women provide. It’s been a long bad fire season so far.

The needs for help have climbed, while the supply of men and women to fight these fires is coming up short. Fatigue and burnout are very real when too few have too much work. Add to this the fact that pay for doing this hard and dangerous work is often feeble.

******

I have a long and carefully curated love for the music of Tom Waits. When I want to listen to it, I set aside the time because I would rather not be interrupted. And I leave one foot on the floor beside the bed to take my leave when I begin to feel too drawn into it. Because in his catalog there is enough melancholy to drown in if one is a weak swimmer and incautious enough to go out past their depth. There’s also quite a bit of it that is bonkers, as if being shouted out by a series of bipolar carnival barkers.

My favorite song in his ouevre? Can’t pick one. But today, just because of where my heart is … Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night comes pretty close.

I think that there are perfect moments in life … perfectly happy … perfectly sad … perfectly angry … . Those memories are the framework, the skeleton for a life, and lesser moments fill in the gaps between. This song is perfectly disquieting when one is rummaging through one’s back tapes and albums. I never had an Oldsmobile, but I did have a Ford …

Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night, by Tom Waits

******

I heard a new conspiracy theory recently. It was that Cluck was already dead, and that a stand-in is being paraded at public functions by the wealthy cabal that bankrolls the political right wing. It works because his supporters are already past caring about the content of anything he says or does, accepting the entire dismal catalog without question. Who, after all, has the temerity to question God?

Interesting thought. My own response is – don’t buy it. Although there is a long history of dictators having such lookalikes represent them, especially in dangerous situations, to have someone play the role continuously would be a stretch.

******

Joey, by Peggy Lee

******

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson

******

Bivouacking

August 5, 2026jono55

The days often bring surprises, some of them more desirable than others, but the best ones consist of an event that breaks the day into before and after. Today it was an article about Linda Perhacs, an elderly woman who may have gone missing. She is a singer/songwriter/dental hygienist who made an album I never heard of back in 1970 but that I learned has been influential in folk music circles ever since. The album title is Parallelograms.

Perhacs was working as a dental hygienist in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, and experimenting with songwriting on the side, when one of her patients, Leonard Rosenman, a composer whose credits included music for “East of Eden,” “Rebel Without a Cause” and other movies, helped her land recording sessions with elite musicians.

“Parallelograms” received little commercial attention when it was first released but enjoyed a resurgence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, after its rediscovery and subsequent reissues.

NYTimes August 1, 2026

It’s just the sort of tale that interests me, so I sought out that first album of hers and it is beautiful, ethereal at times. I have added it to my modest collection and now I share a couple of its songs with you along with this post. I know it is because of my age that the story is as moving as it is. We know something of our lives as we are involved in living them, but we never know our endings, do we? What will eventually take us away? Where will we be? How will it happen?

And how many of us will leave something behind as marvelous as this recording?

Before reading this article I had no idea that there was a Linda Perhacs. Now I join the many who fervently hope that she is not lost, and will be found safe and comfortable.

The best thing would be to personally thank her for sharing her music with the world nearly sixty years ago and leaving it for me to discover now. Instead I must content myself with sending her all the metta I can muster.

Chimacum Rain, by Linda Perhacs

******

Additional note. One day after I had finished writing the above post, news came that Ms. Perhacs had been located and is doing just fine.

******

Life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans

John Lennon

******

Each morning I stumble to the bathroom and turn on a glaring light to avoid tripping and becoming a statistic. I raise my eyes to the mirror and stand with my hands out, palms up, and address the universe: “What have you got for me today?” Will it be something ordinary, like a new ache or limitation? Or will it be something that inspires, that reaches inside and cleans up one of the numberless messes in there. Looking back my life often seems way more like an unkempt dorm room than a marble edifice.

There are clothes all over the floor, dishes in the sink, trash that badly needs carrying to the curb, the aroma of stale food lingering in the fridge. All in all it resembles the line in Kris Kristofferson’s song:

Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.

Too late to wish that I had been tidier, it is what it is. There were those around me who offered good advice along the way, perhaps I could have listened more and acted less. I can only say that if you think I’m a bit unfocussed now, you shoulda been there.

******

Hey Now Who Really Cares, by Linda Perhacs

******

Vignette

A man and woman have found a place that might have been crowded but this day it is all theirs. There is time to spend by the river, swimming in a small protected bay on a hot and humid afternoon. Lying on the sand, absorbing sun and sounds and what coolness the slight breeze provides. They are camping here for the night, and later on there will be private moments filled with sweat and laughter and discovery.

******

Delicious, by Linda Perhacs

******

My camping experiences did not begin until after I was in my twenties. There were no people in my family of origin who wanted to sleep on the ground. Zero. Since most of the adult males had served in World War Two under arduous circumstances, they had experienced enough of that particular sort of fun to fill several lifetimes. There was no romance in sleeping under the stars for them.

I have slept in a variety of tents, starting with a used “umbrella” tent that I bought for ten dollars. It was made of old-line canvas, and was already near the end of its useful life when I purchased it. It kept everything that I wanted to avoid (insects, raccoons, snakes) on the outside except for rain, which it welcomed with open arms and directed toward my head and neck with surprising accuracy.

My favorites have been the dome-shaped tents. There is something quieting to my spirit about being inside a small dome. The space is pleasing to the eye and all that. I have learned that it is essential to have two “doors” rather than a single exit. In the middle of the night, especially as years go by and bladders get smaller, having to crawl over another body to answer nature’s call is awkward and frequently leads to disturbances and mutterings by the sleeper. And then, of course, when it is time to return one must again try to ease oneself back into their original spot without provocations. Usually this is not possible.

Nope, two doors minimum. Could save a marriage.

******

Restless

August 2, 2026jono55

You’re reading along, not a deep thought in your entire head, and then you have a moment. That poem there in front of you climbs off the page and Crisprs itself right into your DNA. It’s a flashlight illuminating some truth that you might have dimly sensed but couldn’t put it into words and here is a guy who can and does.

That was my reaction to this moving short poem by Mick Canning, from his book “The Night Bus.” Rather than feel like just one of the characters in the poem, I identify with all of them. There have been times when I was definitely a door closer, and others where I flung it so far open that bats flew in.

The Restless Wind

By Mick Canning

Some people need the familiar,
Finding within it, safety and comfort.
But some see it as a constraint,
Suffocating them like the walls of a prison.

And the same wind that blows
Through both their houses
Causes one man to close his door,
While the other throws his wide open.

A long time ago, I had a colleague who was quite fond of listening to the sound of his own voice, and daily used it to express what he regarded as deep thoughts, but were mostly platitudes. However, the principle of even a stopped clock being right twice a day was certainly true of this man. Thus when one day he said “Poets are the last truth tellers,” it rang so clearly that I have not forgotten it.

***

The Wayward Wind, by Gogi Grant

******

This past week I ran across a recipe that piqued my curiosity. It was for sardine paté. One took a can of sardines, a few other ingredients, tossed them into a blender and blended the very bejabbers out of the contents. What other ingredients, you ask, almost fearing what I will say, since the thought of sardines in a blender has already proved unsettling?

Well, some butter, a hard-boiled egg, lemon juice, capers, mustard, shallots, and parsley, that’s what. The sardines were of the sort that is packed in oil. During the process Robin wandered into the kitchen and idly enquired what I was making. When I told her, her color paled and she quickly found other places in the house to be.

It was obvious that I was on my own here, and shouldn’t expect much help in consuming the gray-brown and fragrant mound that I had created.

This is not the first time in my life that I created food that no one else would eat. When my children were young I found a recipe for liver casserole. There was a bold aroma in the kitchen as it baked, and a finished appearance that most resembled something that the dog had eaten and then later yarked up. Not only would my entire family rise up with one voice and refuse to eat it, but I was not allowed to keep it indoors.

At the time I was puzzled at first. During my own early childhood, liver was a big part of our diet, since organ meats were not subject to rationing during WW II.

I liked it. My family of origin all liked it. My mother had become an expert in its preparation. So for me I was revisiting of one of the pleasant parts of being a kid in the early 1940s.

However, for my kids, the best spin that I can put on the whole casserole episode is that it was as if an alien had brought out something scooped off a greasy floor in the corner of a malodorous room in their UFO. Something whose expiration date was clearly months in the past, and now here it was in the middle of their dinner table and they were being asked to eat it.

‘Twas not exactly the same, but Robin’s facial expression when I spoke the words “sardine paté” did look familiar.

(BTW: the paté is delicious.)

******

Hasten Down the Wind, by Warren Zevon

******

On one of those late summer nights long long ago when too many gin and tonics had definitely clouded my judgment, I had left the front door of my home wide open. At some point I looked up from my chair and saw a bat fluttering about the living room. Interesting, said I to myself, so I stood up and as it flew past me I reached out and caught it in my hand.

As if this were an everyday occurrence I walked serenely to the open doorway and gently tossed the amazed creature out into the dark, whereupon it flew off to tell its story to the rest of the colony.

Apparently it had been too surprised to bite me, because neither of us was harmed in the incident.

******

Hear The Wind Howl, by Leo Kottke

******

A gigantic heat dome is setting up over most of the western US this weekend. What’s a heat dome, you ask? It’s like a monster hair dryer from a beauty salon that has dropped down and lost its mind while being set to parboil. Here’s a graphic to guide you:

It’s the sort of picture that doesn’t need explanation or a legend to tell its story. Records are being broken everywhere you see red. Paradise is right in the middle. I doubt even events like this summer are changing many of the minds over in the conservative bin, many of whom are still describing climate change as a hoax.

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

John Stuart Mill

Listening to these clodpolls, including some at the highest levels (is there such a thing) of our government is enough to make one ready for a quiet place where you cut out paper dolls and make leather belts.

******

Dust In The Wind, by Kansas

******

Lonesome Buddha

July 29, 2026jono55

I’ve read the book five times, seen the television series four times, and referred to the story enough times to make my friends gag at its mention and run to their cars for trips to town on errands they suddenly recalled. The book and series are Lonesome Dove. Robert Duvall has had a long and productive life as an actor, and the role he played in Lonesome Dove is his favorite of them all.

Today I found myself thinking about how a real Buddhist (not a half-assed one like myself) would approach our nation’s troubles. For sure the painful straitjacket presently stretching across America would not give him pause. After all, the Buddha lived 2500 years ago, and if you have been paying attention you could not have missed that there has been quite a lot of nasty stuff that happened during that time.

The perspective that such a person might have would inform him that change is inevitable, that even the sturdiest dictators have largely come to bad ends. No, this thoughtful person would remember where his roots were, where reliable happiness was to be found, how to deal with life in the chaos.

Sooo, Gus McCrae, the character played by Duvall in Lonesome Dove, was not a Buddhist, but I think he could easily have been grandfathered in. Here’s Gus talking with Lori about disappointments, and the suffering we cause ourselves.

I’m not too enamored with buttermilk, but today I bought a cantaloupe at the market after carefully tapping it to check on its ripeness. Once home, I grabbed a long thin-bladed knife and first cut it in half, then sliced one of those halves into slender crescents. As I raised one slice to my mouth its aroma preceded it, and there was no disappointment when I bit in. Suc-cu-lence!

In a small way it was like an exercise that Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh used in teaching mindfulness meditation, where he made use of a single raisin. It is summarized as follows. (this following bit of text is by AI, not me)

The Practice Steps

Hold the raisin: Place one raisin in your palm. Look at it closely as if you have never seen one before, noticing its color, folds, and ridges.
Touch and smell: Roll it between your fingers to feel the texture. Hold it under your nose to inhale its scent.
Place in the mouth: Put it on your tongue without chewing yet. Notice how it feels in your mouth.
Chew slowly: Take one or two deliberate chews. Notice the release of flavor and how the texture changes.
Swallow consciously: Feel the intention to swallow, and follow the small piece as it moves down into your body.

Contemplating Interbeing

See the origins: Reflect on how the raisin came to be. See the sunshine, the rain, the earth, and the clouds within the fruit.
Acknowledge others: Recognize the labor of the farmworkers who picked the grapes, the people who dried and packaged them, and those who brought them to the store.
Cultivate gratitude: Realize that without this vast web of life and cooperation, the single raisin would not exist, generating deep thankfulness for the present moment.

******

July has been a seemingly unending series of ninety-degree days, looking forward and back. The countryside is baked hard. For the most part the good citizens of Paradise stay indoors during the day, leaving the tennis and pickleball courts uninhabited. Hydrate … hydrate … hydrate is the mantra.

Our cat, Willow, has met the outdoor smelter with a simple course of action. Don’t go there. Not until the sun goes down, that is. And then stay out most of the night. So from sunup to sundown we find her in her favorite indoor sleeping places, of which there are four in regular rotation. After supper she pads over to the cat portal, assesses what is beyond it, and then takes off.

******

I have a new game to add to those being played in Washington D.C. called Where’s Mitch? Since that singular person has been missing for a month, imaginations have run wild. Not everybody thinks he is still among the living, but without proof one way or another all anyone can do is guess.

Below is a gallery of sightings that were reported as suspicious but eventually proved not to be McConnell.

******

It all started with my reading a post on Substack on that old cradle-robber, Jerry Lee Lewis. His career toileted when he married his seriously underage cousin.

So times were hard in 1964, and here was Lewis playing a seedy club in Hamburg, Germany with a back-up band assembled at the last minute. The recording of that concert “stacks up well with any hard-line rock album before or since,” says the author of the piece. I hadn’t heard it before but it is vintage Jerry Lee, which means quite a lot.

The album contains only 8 songs and the total running time is only 22 minutes. It takes me longer to soak my feet some mornings. I provide one cut, a kickbutt of a version of Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.

******

By Your Leave

July 26, 2026July 26, 2026jono55

This past week has been interesting from a rainfall perspective. We’ve had several sharp rains around the state, brief in duration, but with beaucoup water. This has led to one of Colorado’s more delightful highway happenings, mudslides.

In the past few days we’ve had mudslides blocking interstate 70, which is the main east-west Highway across the state. Locally there were mudslides in Black Canyon National Park blocking the East Portal Road that winds steeply down to the Gunnison River, and inundating the small campground that was at the bottom of that road. Another mudslide blocked the highway to Telluride. This all within a period of only six days.

Black Canyon Park managers have actually been anticipating such a slide. When you have soil being held in place by a sketchy and scant network of plant life, and that plant life is burned away as happened in the park fire last summer, you are almost guaranteed to have some problems with mud eventually. You just have to wait for the hard rains.

In the case of the present event there were 20 people that were temporarily trapped down at the East Portal and had to be rescued by Park staff. Three of them spent the night down at the East Portal, apparently preferring staying in place to traveling up a muddy and now more hazardous road to the top, in the dark.

******

I think that I should get this bracelet for myself. Can’t think of a better expression of my present state of mind.

******

Twelve Thirty, by the Mamas and the Papas

******

Robin and I took in a matinee on Wednesday, driving through a blinding (but brief) rainstorm to see The Odyssey. I have nothing to add to the superlatives that are flooding entertainment news sources. Worst criticism I have is that the movie is nearly three hours long and I possess a 2.5 hour bladder. So I’m not too sure about the ending with my attention being elsewhere. What happened with the suitors? Did Odysseus die or what?

There was one thing that I noted about the movie. The characters didn’t speak in some stilted interpretation of an ancient language. They spoke in today’s vernacular. Even, occasionally, in using what amounted to slang. I never actually heard anyone say “Wassup?,” but they came pretty close.

******

I had another close encounter with a raccoon Thursday morning around 0430, in our kitchen/dining area, where the cat dishes are kept. The critter had come in for food, of course, and I was alerted to its presence by the sound of loud munching on our cat’s dry rations. I went from the office out to greet my visitor, but as soon as it saw me coming it quickly took its leave and went back out into the dark and the light rain we were experiencing.

That’s one of the problems with interacting with raccoons, I’ve found, is that it is very difficult to have a meaningful dialogue with them. One look at you and they are off to somewhere more interesting or profitable, without so much as a by your leave.

Here are some bits of raccoon lore:

In captivity they can live up to 20 years, but only up to three years on average in the wild
They can climb down a tree facing forward, a feat unusual in such a large animal
Related females often share a common area, while unrelated males live together in groups of up to four raccoons
Their hearing is good enough to hear earthworms underground
They are omnivores par excellence with a diet consisting of about 40% invertebrates, 33% plant material and 27% vertebrates.
The first edition of The Joy of Cooking, released in 1931, contained a recipe for preparing raccoon.

******

A sobering episode unfolded this past week in the wonderful world of AI. An AI something (they called it an “agent”) that was not supposed to be able to get out of its “sandbox,” got out of its “sandbox” at a research facility.

Next, that same something that was not supposed to be able to get to the internet, got to the internet. Then, that same something hacked into another AI company’s website and messed around while it was there. It was not supposed to be able to get into that site.

No harm, no foul? What if that same something wanted to do other stuff, let’s say meddle in the Department of Defense or a major banking institution or hospital? It obviously can go pretty much where it wants to. When children don’t take care of their toys, friends, what do we do? Why, we take those toys away from them and put them someplace safe and secure.

******

Uncle John’s Band (live), by the Grateful Dead

******

The depressing numbers are in for social media and their toxic algorithms, especially for young women. More psychological damage, more suicides, more eating disorders, etc. The depressing part comes from the fact that the developers of these algorithms know what they are doing, and keep doing it. Bringing in customers, after all, is at the heart of capitalism.

I have dropped Facebook and any others of its sordid ilk and I have switched away from Google as my search engine. Both of these giants have their hands deep in the bloody till. Too big to fail? They are far too big to trust.

I am quite sure that my leaving these tawdry enterprises behind has struck terror in their hearts, and somewhere on their campuses there are teams working frantically to restore my confidence in their good intentions. After all, it is well known that octogenarian males are their target audience.

******

Unhinged

July 22, 2026jono55

There are two life lessons that I have to pass along this morning. I have others are others that I could mention, but these two are crucial for me to keep in mind, I think.

#1: There is more kindness in the world than I ever imagined.

#2: There is more cruelty in the world than I ever suspected.

Why have such a somber opening in today’s posting? Mostly because my country is presently exemplifying the latter of the two lessons listed above. At almost every turn and in nearly every aspect of our domestic and foreign policies you find there is both dangerous stupidity and the basest sort of malignity that are operative to a degree which is nearly blinding in its brazenness.

If I didn’t firmly believe what Lesson #1 provides, I don’t know how I would manage the daily dung-stream that rolls down my computer screen and into my eyes. What has been for me the most painful thing of all is realizing how many of my neighbors accept cruelty as a normal way of conducting our nation’s affairs.

******

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

The Dalai Lama

******

It’s best that we mortals not try to predict the future and leave such things to the gods. For instance, I can easily imagine back on some sunny day in 1975 that Zeus took a long look at this guy and said:

“I think that when he gets to be an old fart, we could pair him with one of the best female country singers on the planet and they would make two peerless albums of duets.”

And so Robert Plant and Alison Krauss got together in the studio to make the album Raising Sand. Fourteen years later they made Raise the Roof. I really doubt that an ordinary human could have seen that coming.

Please Read the Letter, by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

******

We are all just walking each other home.

Ram Dass

******

Robin and I are watching a three-part series about Abraham Lincoln. It’s one of those creatures called docu-dramas, and has quite a cast of commentators, former President Obama being one of them. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is another. Look for it on Netflix.

Just as there is not a day that passes without new and odious revelations about our 47th president, I have never watched or read anything about Mr. Lincoln that did not improve my views on humanity and make me feel better about my membership in the species. We are capable of such great and good things, and there is no shortage of leaders, past and present, to provide us guidance toward a world where justice and kindness prevail.

We may have to look for them, they are often the quieter ones in the back of the room rather than one of those people who are scrambling to get to the microphone.

******

Killing the Blues, by Alison Krauss & Robert Plant

******

The tedium of balancing the checkbook or reconciling the checking account software over an adult lifetime has been almost stultifying. Every month of every year and the only thing you find to break the monotony is a rare check that you forgot to record . And the bank never makes a mistake. I had almost decided to give it up as a complete waste of energy.

Until this week, when the printed log of my account revealed a photocopy of a withdrawal check signed by a complete stranger, from an account whose number was not at all similar to ours. The check was for five hundred dollars.

When I took the document to the bank, the teller’s pupils dilated and she immediately told me to take a seat, while she notified someone higher up the chain of command . When that esteemed person came over with the paper now firmly in her hand, she took great pains to tell me how an error like this might have occurred. It was obvious that she was embarrassed for the institution and wanted me to know that stuff like this simply didn’t happen at the Bank of Colorado.

The Bank manager and the teller, in my fervid imagination.

I didn’t care. I wanted my five hundred dollars back. Exactly how it had been taken away was of no interest to me and was their issue. But … now I can never think of quitting with doing these boring reconciliations. Bleah.

******

Sweet Jane

July 19, 2026July 19, 2026jono55

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.

Sweet Jane, by Cowboy Junkies

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

Intro/Sweet Jane, by Lou Reed

******

“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.

******

Flying Low

July 15, 2026July 19, 2026jono55

Traveling back to Colorado on Tuesday morning we found ourselves in the very last row on the airplane. Below is a photo of the space available to patrons occupying my seat. This pic is starring my very own knees.

Keeping in mind that I have lost an inch in height over the years, for the first time I am grateful for that shrinkage. If I were still at the towering height of 69 inches, I wouldn’t fit at all unless I turned sideways and encroached upon my neighbor’s meager space.

I do not love air travel. I do not like the fuss, the lines, the arrogance of the TSA people, and the feeling of being totally jerked around by the airlines. I deplore the cramped seats and the nano-snack bags containing several undistinguished pretzels – it would be better if the airline had the courage to say “On a flight this short we don’t think that you need to eat so we’re not going to give you anything.” (I do understand the logic behind the use of pretzels, however. They can be safely stored for hundreds of years.)

On the first leg of our return to Paradise Robin and I were in Row 38, the last line of seats. Behind us was the toilet and I am a little surprised that this space wasn’t sold as well. I think this is a missed opportunity for them. It could be billed as the throne of power.

Okay. Done complaining.

******

One little vignette from the flight from Denver to Montrose. There was a cohort of men in uniform aboard, nearly all of them Native American, and all on their way to help fight fires in Ouray. When the plane landed the flight attendant came on the PA system and thanked these guys for the work they were doing. This was immediately followed by an outburst of clapping from the rest of the passengers throughout the plane. Sweet.

******

I like the poetry form haiku, as I have mentioned before. I appreciate its economy and discipline. Using so few words can draw a picture or call up an emotion. It can illuminate something we might otherwise have missed. They are candid camera shots in verse. For myself, if I can’t say what I want in 17 syllables, perhaps I am better keeping quiet.

Darkness at two a.m.
green leaves of the ash tree wave
with the earth’s in-breath

******

And lastly, we just passed the 150th anniversary of “Custer’s Last Stand.” The NYTimes did a really interesting article on the battle and its aftermath, along with a good representation of how artists have painted that story.

******

Comfortably Digital

July 12, 2026jono55

I read an article the other day about how some members of the younger generations are wandering back toward non-digital things, especially in the area of entertainment. Thus the interest in vinyl records and analog watches and cameras with actual film in them and other paraphernalia of a bygone era.

I think it’s all interesting, and I have to admit that once in a while I’ll think back fondly on all the little routines I used to follow to keep my vinyl records in good shape, which included cleaning them with special solutions and special brushes, storing them vertically in their envelopes in rooms where the temperature did not hit extremes, and using a stylus weight on my Technics turntable that was as light as I could make it.

But I’ve already had my vinyl period. It started back in the early 50s and continued until CDs appeared on the market, when I began to notice there were several advantages to the new format. Certainly there were drawbacks as well, but the advantages finally won me over. I still own music, but I do a lot of screening on the streaming sites like Apple Music and Spotify.

So if someone wants to look down their nose at me for being so fully digitized, and bore me to death with recitations on the sonic superiority of vinyl recordings, I simply nod, smile, and go my own way. Listening to beaucoup rock ‘n’ roll at too high volumes for too many years has left me with the sort of hearing disability that misses many of those niceties that these earnest people are describing to me. Since I can’t get that lost hearing back, I guess I’ll just go the rest of my way listening to music at somewhat less than the highest fidelity possible and be happy.

When it comes to cameras, I have fully embraced the digital age. The flexibility, the instant gratification, the ability to manipulate and adjust images … what’s not to like, at least for the casual user? And having a camera constantly on my person a la iPhone means that although the greats of photography have nothing to fear from me as far as their reputations are concerned, I can snap away with gusto wherever I am and whenever I desire, and what photos I take please me and mine.

And recently I was shown how to use the best toy ever for someone like myself. For instance, at left you see an elderly reprobate standing next to a lovely woman at her birthday party a couple of years ago. As a joke, I had ChatGPT make the fake magazine cover from that. Next I asked the software to take away the words and substitute a map for the cake, and a completely imaginary but very pleasing picture was the result.

At last I have the tool I need to construct pictures of the world I would like to live in as opposed to the one I’m actually in, even if only on the computer screen. For a Minnesota boy who grew up on movies, which are filled with imaginary universes on screens, that’s known territory and a pretty good deal.

******

******

It’s Saturday morning and Robin and I are staying with her sister Jill in her very nice apartment in Hartford SD. We have traveled just under 900 miles to attend the birthday party of Robin’s grand-niece. She is now one year old.

We flew in on Thursday, and had dinner with the birthday girl, her mom Amanda, Jill, and some friends at a local and legendary steak house, the Hartford Steak Co.

It was unbelievable. Like a fifty year march back in time. There was a back-in-the- day decor, an excellent server, and a 6 inch filet mignon dinner for $16.95!

Robin and I are not red meat-eaters in general, but at that price (if i lived here) I would happily return again and again, clogging up what arteries of mine that were still patent. So it’s best for my health that we live far from Hartford.

******

******

Only 3 1/2 months till the elections. so far I have postured and fumed and pontificated, but I haven’t got down to doing the get out the vote work. Time for me ro roll up my sleeves …

Bridges

July 8, 2026July 8, 2026jono55

There is one positive thing about being surrounded by wildfires in that there are some of the prettiest sunrises and sunsets as the color red comes to the fore in both of them. We’ve had about two weeks now of poor air quality due to smoke. Even the teensy version of asthma that I have has been provoked by it.

Robin and I cancelled on walking with Indivisible in the local parade on the 4th of July. We decided that if we were going to be taking a chance on sunstroke or smoke inhalation or both, ’twas time to bow out. Fair weather rebels, we.

The smoke is heavy enough that you can begin to see a faint haze between you and any object more than twenty feet away. Our friends on oxygen are staying home, eating what’s left in the pantry before they venture to the grocery store. We volunteer to run those errands but they are stubborn folk and insist on doing it themselves.

Just to reassure, Robin and I are in no danger. None of the fires are close enough or in the right location to threaten Montrose.

******

The image of the masked “patriots” on the bus tells a story, doesn’t it? A young black woman surrounded by a gaggle of MOLC (Men Of Little Courage) on public transportation.

The men, of course, are on their way to a white nationalist demonstration, where they will do their best to get that woman to her proper place in the back of the bus once again. These cowardly dipsticks have nowhere to swim but upstream, although it seems that they haven’t the wit to realize it.

******

The Way It Is, by Bruce Hornsby and the Range

******

The header image today is of the famous painting by Norman Rockwell entitled the The Problem We All Live With. It portrays a six year-old girl named Ruby Bridges being escorted to school by federal marshals in 1960. She was, all by her small self, integrating a New Orleans school.

My imagination falls short each time I hear this story. The courage of that family, to send their child through the hate-filled mob each day. Who has courage like that?

The mob that came together to threaten and hurl imprecations at a six year-old girl. What is wrong with people who could do that to a child?

Here’s a video with some of Ruby’s story.

******

Bridge Over Troubled Water, by Simon and Garfunkel

******

Today’s button image is worn by a group of citizens who attend and monitor the Montrose City Council meetings. At present the council is 60% MAGA … ’nuff said?

******

The Fifth of July

July 5, 2026July 5, 2026jono55

We finished re-watching the television series Breaking Bad this past week, and I was actually surprised at how many things I had forgotten from the first viewing. What was more clear this time was that Walter White was evil from the get-go. He didn’t develop into a bad guy, he was a bad guy waiting to be given his chance. He taught himself to make methamphetamine, one of the worst of the addictive drugs, and sold it without a qualm.

The last episode of the series blew me away this time. Maybe the best single hour of TV I’ve watched. It was crafted out of that New Mexican desert, turning slowly and coloring like a water jar from an archeology dig.

There was a song played over the final scene that was perfect. So much so that I checked it out and found that the series’ creator Vice Gilligan had known for some time that this was what he wanted to be played when the five seasons came to an end. I’m not going to say any more just in case there are those among you who haven’t watched the series as yet. Listen up.

Baby Blue, by Badfinger

******

It’s 0400 hours and the strong winds of the day to come haven’t begun as yet. Leaves on the ash tree in the yard are rustling just enough to trigger the backyard motion detector repeatedly and I turn it off.

Last night’s sunset was glorious. Everywhere its light touched in our house was overlain with a rich deep red, all due to smoke on the western horizon. There is the scent of a campfire everywhere in Montrose from grasses and trees burning sixty miles away.

Older parents tear up at scenes like this one from the Gold Mountain fire near Ouray, seeing brave children out there along such a precarious line. Looks a bit like an impressionist version of Hell.

******

Many mornings here in the mountains are cool enough to make having hot cereal for breakfast a comfort food. For years one of my favorites was oatmeal. You know, those flattened things called “rolled oats”in the tall round boxes ? I became a sort of connoisseur of oatmeals, eventually settling on a 5-grain mixture from the Red Mill people as the best I could find.

I had tried the steel-cut oats on a couple of occasions but was put off by the long cooking times necessary. That was until the Instant Pot came along and made the process quick and easy. Now it is steel-cut for this (drugstore) cowboy every time. Here is one recipe.

******

When you have a criminal for president, the outrages come at you several at a time and day after day. At first one tries to keep up with each one until you realize that is their plan. To numb you out. There is no dealing with this gang of stooges on their schedule. Pick out the most egregious scandals and stick with opposing those bits of awfulness until we get the whole sorry blood-stained bunch out of the White House, and then we can begin dealing with the stragglers one by one.

We don’t have to indulge in revenge fantasies, which can be personally poisonous. Crimes have been committed and there are still enough untainted judges to help sort out the innocent from the felons.

I did search for learned quotes about revenge, since I did bring up the subject, and found these opposing views.

The person who seeks revenge should dig two graves. One for himself and one for his enemy.
– Author uncertain

We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
― Heinrich Heine

******

Lola, by The Kinks

******

On a recent visit to the REI store in Grand Junction, we found that visitors to the bathrooms were greeted with this sign.

I was in a bit of a hurry, and didn’t have time for pondering, but I found the idea of being nude in the REI restroom so unappealing that I chose to disobey the instruction.

There were no consequences.

******

The Taylor Swift multi-day wedding extravaganza is apparently underway. I was not invited so anything I say about it could easily be interpreted as a spiteful reaction to being left out.

But my review of the whole proceeding is this: meh. Tone deaf and ultra-wealthy celebrities flaunt their wealth in a party of preposterous dimensions while the majority of Americans are struggling to pay their bills.

The ghosts of ancient Roman citizens are nodding their heads, because they’ve seen all this before.

******

Lastly, this is part of an address given Friday morning by Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York. It reads like music, like poetry. How welcome are thoughts like these, how true observations like these.

For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had.

We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence—that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all….

You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.

How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again—including 250 years ago—those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, “this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty…hither have they fled.”

And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted—but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum.

As we mark 250 years, what do we see? We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world—one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans.

We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands—those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone—and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few. Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all I see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor.

Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work, and still believes his country can do better by his family. Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder.

Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people. We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors—without asking how long they have lived here, or what papers they have—as ICE invades our neighborhoods. We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots. We see America each time working people demand more—not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans.

There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain: Love it or leave it, they say. But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent, it is every march led under the heavy sun, it is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?
…

Those ideals upon which our nation was built—they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.

Zohran Mamdani, 6/3/2026

You can watch the full address on YouTube by clicking this link. I do believe, at this moment in time, that this guy is my favorite immigrant.

******

Fire In The Hole

July 1, 2026July 1, 2026jono55

This past week we took a tour of the Old Hundred Mine, located near Silverton CO. At $29 per person, it was by far the most expensive such tour we’d ever encountered. By a factor of at least two. But I think it was worth it. First we were loaded into tram cars and then we were whistled straight into a mountain for three miles, in nearly complete darkness.

When we reached the turning around point, the tram stopped and we disembarked and gathered around the leader/spokesperson. We learned about the history of mining drills and drilling, and the demonstrations of those implements were dramatic and deafening. Next he covered how miners communicated through visual signals, since the environment was often a very noisy one. We also heard about ore handling, the history of lighting in mines, and some differences between hard rock mining and coal mining.

What made this all more meaningful was that this man was a lifelong resident of Silverton, and had worked for two decades at the same job he was telling us about, with its rewards and dangers. The takeaway impressions of our little group were almost unanimous. We were:

fascinated by the information he provided
repelled by some of the tragic stories of injury and death that he shared, of people he had known personally
appreciative of the humor woven throughout his presentation
absolutely grateful that we had never been put into a situation where working as a miner was asked of us, because we would have bolted immediately

One sidebar. At one place outside the mine if you looked up you could see the remains of the famous Old Hundred Boarding House very near the top of the mountain. Since back in the day the trip up to that level was by mule and was both slow and hazardous, a boarding house was built at the top. It was bolted to the mountain itself, and had a front deck that was pretty dramatic.

While trying to sleep in a building that had to be fastened to a mountain to keep it from sliding off into the abyss would have likely been impossible for an acrophobic like myself, I can easily recognize that it saved hours and hours of travel time to and from the ground thousands of feet below. Here’s a small boarding house gallery to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.

So that $29 ticket price … pretty high but worth it for the realistic scenes and the colorful word painting by our tour guide.

******

My personal journey in non-violence greatly intensified the day that John F. Kennedy was shot. Like so many of us I was staggered by that event, going from disbelief to grief to anger and back to disbelief countless times in the succeeding hours and days. We know now that he was far from a perfect man, but at the time he and his wife represented courage and possibility and brought out the vision of a shining America of which we could be proud. So how could a single bullet take all of that away?

That’s the problem with death. There is no reprieve, no walking it back. No second chances or do-overs. In those golden but bloody years when Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and Bobby Kennedy walked the earth and were then murdered my revulsion at political violence only strengthened. It is why even though Cluck is the loathsome creature that he is and even though he is harming our country almost with every in-breath and out-breath, I don’t want some yahoo with a rifle to make him a tawdry martyr.

Make no mistake, I want him gone, and if given the opportunity I would happily volunteer to drive the van carrying him to prison, but if humans are going to make lasting progress, violence in all spheres needs to be dialed back to as close to zero as we can get it.

******

In 1976 Tom Waits was becoming the kind of alcoholic that I had hoped to become when I grew up. One that wandered smoky bars and midnight avenues in the company of colorful characters. An artist sacrificing his body to follow his muse and then perishing while mourners filled all the barstools but the one held empty in his honor.

Only problem was that while I was capable of bending my elbow with the best (or worst) of them I wasn’t an artist. I was just another doofus who didn’t know when to stop and then found that he couldn’t.

Waits came up with a new album that year, Small Change, and this was the song that led it off.

Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen), by Tom Waits

******

Saturday evening the smoke blew in, coming from southwest Colorado and southeastern Utah. Enough to irritate the eyes, trigger a cough of two. The aroma of a campfire was everywhere.

On the map, Montrose would be located just south of Delta.

On last Saturday three firefighters lost their lives near the Colorado-Utah border. A tragic loss. There are times when fires are burning nearer to us that I see members of firefighting crews in town, usually shopping for groceries or grabbing coffees at a Starbuck’s. They are all young and fit and there is such an obvious camaraderie present it is a joy to watch.

They are one more bunch of people in uniforms that keep us safe by doing work that is dangerous and they know it but they still go out there. Such courage is a rare commodity, something never to be wasted.

******

Song to the Siren, by Nobody’s Wolf Child

******

Much Ado About Something

June 28, 2026jono55

This is a confession. Supposedly doing it is good for the soul, cleansing and renewal and all that … we will see. There have certainly been times in my life when I confessed one thing or another and it didn’t turn out well for me at all, but let’s not go into that, okay? My present admission of wrongdoing is that I am using ChatGPT to muck about with my own photographs, and having quite a bit of fun doing it.

An example is today’s header image of the White River. I took a perfectly good photo, loaded it into ChatGPT, and told the program to make the pic into something on the order of a plein air painting, and you can see the result. I liked it enough to use it for today’s blog entry. Here is the whole deal in a nutshell:

there is nothing that the program can do that a skilled user of any high-quality photo editing program, like Photoshop, hasn’t been able to do for ages
I am not a skilled photo editor user, being actually embarrassingly incompetent at it
all that was required of me in this instance is that I told my AI co-conspirator what to do, in the simplest of terms
the result made me happy, so I am likely to repeat the offense and the resultant deception of the viewer
I have no conscience twinges at all about this manipulation
this is the last time I will ever mention it, from here on in I will take full credit for having talents that I do not in the slightest possess

******

So. Central Rain (I/m Sorry), by R.E.M.

******

I created something in the food department this past week. Earlier I had made another dish that required caramelized onions as an ingredient, and as I was sampling them I thought … you know, I bet these would taste awfully good in that home-made hummus that I brew up periodically. I did a quick web search and found that there are few hummus-making companies that make such a product. Apparently cooking those onions takes time and doesn’t fit well into an industrial model.

So I tried it and voila! ‘Twas delicious! My appreciation for the sweet/savory dish that is caramelized onions is easy to trace. Back in the 1940s my mother would cook liver and onions for our family, and by the time everything was ready to serve those onions were black/brown, crispy, and addictive. We had this tasty stuff rather frequently for a couple of reasons, the first being economy. Organ meats were cheap and available, even in a time of wartime rationing.

The second reason was that every member of our family liked it. As a quasi-cook myself, I know that having something to serve that everyone likes is just too seductive. Such a dish will show up on the table way more often than food that produces grimaces and revulsion.

So, if you are ever served my onion-flavored hummus, know that you are on my A-list. Because making it is some trouble, after all.

******

There are some small fires burning here on the Western Slope, and Wednesday morning here’s what our sun looked like through smoke drifting past us.

The fires are in remote areas and not threatening lives or buildings, so don’t get much attention in the media even locally. With so little rain this year, tinder is basically everywhere.

Today I remembered the lines from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner as I walked out onto the now creaking wooden deck in the backyard:

“Water, water, everywhere
And all the boards did shrink”

Yep, shrunk and creaking they are.

******

It wouldn’t be a giant leap to call me an escapist. From reality, that is. I like movies and I love music, and both of them provide moments when my thoughts are completely diverted from where I am and what I am doing and what is going on about me. I am escaping. As a card-carrying geezer now I take time to look backward at my life and try to make sense of it, usually failing. It’s a haphazard script with no distinct plot line, but it’s what I have to work with.

Movies hold a special place in that retrospective. From the time I took my 17 cent allowance and walked to a Saturday matinee at the Nokomis Theater in Minneapolis right up to today, I have noticed one continuous thread. When I would leave the theater as a nine year-old, for about an hour or two I would take on the characteristics of the hero of the film, acting like him or talking like him. I was taller, smarter, stronger than everyone else, who were now boring creatures that I was doomed to deal with. I absolutely reeked with suavity and savoir-faire.

Jump forward to 1969 as I was leaving the theater after viewing “The Godfather” along with several friends. This time I felt those same stirrings, but this time I felt guilty about them. I recognized that I had seen something more than an entertainment, I had witnessed a great movie. But what was it about? A bunch of fascinating people who killed other people without a thought. They had a sort of code that they lived and died by, which only meant that while women and children were not to be touched, it was open season on any adult male who stood in their way. So now I walked and talked like an amalgam of Al Pacino and Marlon Brando, but I felt very very uneasy about what had just happened to me. I recognized that I had been completely manipulated. All of that evening’s “heroes” were murderers, and I cared what happened to them.

And here comes Thursday’s NYTimes to shine some light on my personal murk. A film writer (another geezer) has written a book about movies and it touches on exactly those sort of transformations.

“You could argue that ‘The Godfather’ is the key film,” Thomson said. “It did everything the medium is meant to do. It had a gang of absolutely brilliant people. That film brought together talents of an incredible nature.” In addition to Coppola and a cast that included Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and a parade of first-rate character actors, the movie owes its place in the canon to people like Dean Tavoularis, the production designer; the cinematographer Gordon Willis; and the sound editor Walter Murch.

“It was a smash hit,” Thomson went on. “It won all the prizes, and yet what is not talked about very much is what the film is about. For me what the film is about is persuading men that they want to be in the gang and in the family, and they want to do the terrible things the guys do and they want to shut the women out of the room.”

NYTimes: Did Movies Ruin Everything?

But here’s the question that still rankles. Why in the world would I want to emulate anything at all, if only for a nanosecond, about this guy?

(Nice suit, though.)

******

On Wednesday something unusual happened in our corner of the universe. Around 2:45 in the afternoon there was a 15 minute downpour of much needed rain. Only a quarter of an inch fell, but it caused one significant disturbance here in Paradise.

For the past several months our local City Market grocery store has been undergoing a large restructuring and renovation, and the end is still not in sight. When that rain poured down it found flaws in the workmen’s planning, and water began to pour into the store from one end to the other. At first the management tried to deal with it by closing first this aisle and then that aisle, but they finally gave up and closed the store completely at 3:00 PM.

It was a case of much ado and you can bet there will be finger-pointing of the first magnitude.

******

In Defense Of Odd Ducks

June 24, 2026jono55

I started out the day reading one of those NYTimes obituaries called “Overlooked No More,” where the subject died long ago, this time in 1986. This one was about of one of the great loners of life, a man named Robbie Basho. Guitar player, singer, lifelong celibate, spiritual seeker forever on the road.

The piece made him sound desperately lonely. Living life on the margins and having to be supported by his father well into adulthood, making music that rather deliberately goes its own idiosyncratic way, it would be tempting to give him a diagnosis of mental illness of some sort. To try to find some DSM shoebox to put him in.

There was a book published back in the sixties written by Thomas Szasz called “The Myth of Mental Illness” which had a lasting effect on my thinking about the labeling that we do today, and have always done, of those whose minds spend less time in the mainstream than our own. It helps to remember than until 1973, psychiatry officially defined homosexuality as a mental illness.

DSM-IV accepts that no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of mental disorder. This concept, like many others in medicine and science, lacks a consistent operational definition that covers all situations. Because mental disorders are a heterogenous category of disorders, no single definition captures the entire range of conditions that are currently included in this term.

Psychiatric Times

The obituary made it sound as if his music might be hard to find, but Apple Music offers quite a lot of it to us. The tenor vocals are not your everyday stuff, sounding like something from another age, certainly another culture. Many resemble medieval ballads. The instrumentals were the most interesting to me, with their novel tunings and rhythms. I listened to many of those cuts in today’s early hours, and there were those that were haunting, like the one that follows.

Rocky Mountain Raga, by Robbie Basho

******

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.

Khalil Gibran

******

Here in Paradise we are one mile closer to the sun than those that live at sea level. You’d think that being 93,000,000 miles away from that precious star of ours a single mile wouldn’t make a difference, but at least in my imagination it does. At midday when the temperature is in the 90s on a cloudless afternoon the sun is merciless. Your skin can turn a lovely shade of red much quicker up here, making sunscreens a vital need.

The sunlight leaches the color from everything it can reach. Signs and automobiles seem especially vulnerable. You can easily tell which cars have been garaged and which had to face old Sol all day long. Some retail establishments who perhaps saved a dollar or two on the sign that is their advertisement to the world come to regret it when after only a very few years that ad looks ancient, becomes almost illegible.

Some retail establishments who perhaps saved a dollar or two on the sign that is their gateway come to regret it when after only a very few years that ad looks ancient, becomes almost illegible.

This June it has been warm enough to set records many times. In the middle of the day there is no one out and about in our little housing development. We are all hunkered behind drawn drapes and waiting for the afternoon shadows to lengthen and provide a protective cover. When I lived in Buffalo NY, a cloudy sky was the norm, and whenever the sun broke through it was reason for celebration. Not so much here in Paradise.

So far this year, we’ve had 2.6 inches of rain here in Montrose, which is less than half of normal. Even that normal amount of rain produces what is termed a semi-arid climate. At the 50% level, we are that much closer to being a Mojave Desert suburb. Local municipal water costs are high enough that only the more affluent have those lush green lawns that are so (foolishly?) admired. Everyone else’s yards are half-brown, the grass stressed and tired, hanging in there and waiting for the coolness of Fall.

But one saving grace of living in Paradise is that we have only to take an hour’s drive to the north, south, or west to escape the furnace. A visit to Silverton at 9,000 feet takes away nearly ten to twenty degrees from those record temperatures. Like a splash of cool water.

******

Cool Water, by Fleetwood Mac

******

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

******

Going to spend Thursday night in a rental cabin with the Hurleys. The cabin is small, with no electricity, running water only in summer, and limited cooking facilities. It’s a 50th birthday for Amy. When the children are AARP material it becomes even more difficult to maintain those mental myths of being middle-aged.

The cabin is located along the road to Silverton, and back far enough in the woods that it is not visible from the highway. Hiking is possible, a stream runs right by the place, and there is a grand view from the wooden deck. (Robin and I scoped it out a couple of weeks ago). Looks like fun to me.

I am in charge of cooking supper on Thursday, so of course I initially overthought the whole thing and brought myself to the fingernail-chewing point as a result. The menu that has evolved is almost bulletproof, needs only primitive help from the primitive gas stove and oven, and can be kept warm for hours if need be. So I am very near being relaxed and may even enjoy myself.

I do have a clear memory of one camping episode where I was responsible for the supper and had prepared a white chili ahead of time. I thought that, too, was a bulletproof arrangement. Just before serving it to our fellow campers I managed to dump the whole kettle-full onto the ground, where it mixed with the forest duff at the campsite. You might want to make a note of this, but combining beaucoup dirt and a few cups of pine needles with a white chili makes for quite an unattractive entrée. I scooped the mess up, tossed it into the trash, and off we went to a nearby town for pizza.

******

Plus ça change …

June 21, 2026jono55

It was a different time but everything is still the same. The novel and the film made from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath have been almost sacred documents for me. I don’t remember the moment when I first saw the movie but it made an impression that I never got over. Maybe I was looking through the slats of my crib when I saw it, but who cares anyway? There is so much in it, so many lessons to learn. The acting is superb, the cinematography an excellent black and white.

Toward the end of the story there is a speech for the ages, and Henry Fonda does it full justice. Riveting.

And what parts of that speech, filmed in 1940, do not apply today? Hunger, violence against working people, homelessness, poverty, greedy politicians, police brutality … all set in a country beset by drought and near-famine.

We don’t have a Dust Bowl to point to, but we do have an overheated planet on our hands, and a loooong-lasting drought here in the West. We have the thugs of ICE sent out by our own President to beat us up, kidnap us, and kill us. We have bankers, politicians, and plutocrats to suck up the money that could save tens of thousands of lives. We have an epidemic of homelessness, one that is even more durable than that of the refugees in Steinbeck’s story.

A French man coined a phrase in 1849 that goes something like this (actually, it goes exactly like this): Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose . Translation: The more things change, the more they are the same.

******

Hold On, by Tom Waits

******

Here’s a few stills from the movie Grapes of Wrath. Just the act of selecting them gets me stirred up and means I’ll have to watch the movie again soon.

******

In general, Americans are not a people who plan long-term. At least our political leaders don’t. It is rare for them to look beyond the next election cycle. While this is an understandable thing for selfish men and women of limited wit to do, it is not good for the big business that is the US. Because it means that we are forever using Band-aids to cover the leaks in the dike, rather than getting a good stonemason out there to effect a more durable fix. Whiplash, carom, ping-pong and ricochet are words that could describe our domestic policies and programs way too often.

I long to see grownups in office. I believe that there are more of them out there, but perhaps that is too much to ask. Perhaps talented adults look at the gigantic squalling daycare that is Congress and say “Not me, buddy, no way am I going in there. Spending (two, four, six) years getting nothing done but changing their diapers is not the life for me.”

Or … who knows? Using the celestial imagery that I grew up with, there are way too many days when it looks to me that Satan is in charge while God has tired of us and has pulled back for a well-deserved rest from our unceasing babble.

We’re on our own, folks, and I wonder if we’re up to it. But hey, it’s time for me to make a new sign and carry it down to the public square. There is always fun to be had in pissing off the yahoo contingent in town.

******

There’s A Bright Side Somewhere, by Ry Cooder

******

This is a marvelous little tale about a ballet production in Turkey. The kind of accidental happening that warms the heart. Title of the Piece: In Its Tragic Finale, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Is Interrupted by a Cat. We can all use a good cat story once in a while, and this one fills that bill nicely.

******

Looking For The Heart of Saturday Night, by Tom Waits

******

And now, in the slightly creepy department, a recounting of my latest adventure in AI.

In the early morning hours of Thursday I had posed a question to ChatGPT, and had received a helpful answer. The interesting thing is that at one point the text read: “there are many choices but what I would recommend in your situation is …”

Notice that pronoun? It said “I”.

I immediately shut down the computer. I have no idea who “I” is, and I was not in a mood to receive visitors. Then, as I stared at the empty screen I realized that I had no way of knowing whether the machine was still looking at and listening to me. My confidence in the On/Off switch has been shaken.

******

Horsepower

June 17, 2026jono55

On Sunday evening Robin and I attended an event at a local BnB which was sponsored by our local Indivisible chapter. This was a social occasion rather than a strategizing occasion, which was sorely needed by the working members. So good to just have some time to hang out and enjoy one another’s company.

The first half hour consisted of mingling and the next two hours we spent watching a television broadcast of the Rise Up: Sing Out! concert that was taking place in New York City and being viewed all across the USA. There were stirring speeches and stirring songs and a lot of beautiful people saying things we needed to hear. Jane Fonda was there, as was Bette Midler.

Robert De Niro even got up to speak and to give his assessment of what we can answer whenever we hear Trump open his mouth. According to him all we need to say is: Shut the fuck up. For the next minute the audience enjoyed a call and response thing where De Niro would make a statement and we would answer with that same pithy phrase. Clearing out the cobwebs, so to speak.

Robin even won a door prize, so the evening was a total success.

One of the last songs of the evening was The People Have The Power, written and sung by Patti Smith, from her 1988 album. The song was long and loud and brash and was a perfect fit for the evening.

The People Have The Power, by Patti Smith

******

I hope that you can forgive an old Minnesota boy for having completely missed Patti Smith. Singer, songwriter, poet, photographer, author of twenty books. Whew! Right by me. What a waste of space I have been. The case could be made for just putting me to sleep and making an end to the whole sorry thing.

On the other hand, if you recall these words of Jesus imagine what a good day they are having in Heaven right now.

I say unto you that likewise more joy shall be in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance.

Luke 15:7, King James Bible

My first attempt at repentance was to read the Wikipedia biographic entry on Patti Smith, and by the time I was done with even that abbreviated bit of prose I was exhausted. And in awe. She is such a creative person that she makes the gap between her and we ordinary mortals depressingly obvious . When Bob Dylan couldn’t make it to Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize for poetry, who do you think went in his stead? Yep, it was Patti Smith.

I’d love to see a PET scan of her brain at work, I’ll bet you could light an entire room with the glow.

She is regarded as one of the earliest punk performers, and the album Horses is listed among Rolling Stones’ 100 Greatest Albums. But in my listening this week I found that she has a tender and lyrical side as well. Here’s the lullaby “The Jackson Song” from Dream of Life. It was written for her two-year old son. Prepare to be beguiled.

The Jackson Song, by Patti Smith

***

Lyrics to: The Jackson Song

***

Patti Smith yesterday and today.

******

Coming back from the grocery store I was listening to our local station which is KVNF. It’s the kind of station where the absence of corporate ownership means a lack of the sterility you find generally in music radio. Definitely old school. Local DJs play what they want, and between the bunch of them they cover pretty much all of musical genres except for classical. Today one was playing a version of Bruce Springsteen’s The Ghost of Tom Joad. It was a live performance and was both electrified and rock-ified. Tom Morello sings along with Bruce. Good cover. Enough passion for a multitude.

The Ghost of Tom Joad, by Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello

******

I’ll See Your Rheingold and Raise You a Valkyrie …

June 14, 2026June 14, 2026jono55

As we approach the version of Götterdämmerung that the downfall of Cluck and his henchmen might produce, it has to be with a mixture of joy and apprehension. We don’t know exactly what will come after, do we? Whenever one of the people on “our side” says about a progressive candidate: “As long as he’s opposed to Trump, we can tolerate almost anything,” it does provoke a twinge or two. That’s probably what the Republicans said a few years back, and look how that turned out.

Thing is, I do care. And we need to realize that until we have shored up the damaged places where our country’s support systems that were supposed to keep us safe have failed, there will be all kinds of people coming forward to stake claims. For a while you and I may have odd bedfellows indeed, perhaps some that give us that fingernails-on-the-blackboard sort of feeling. Perhaps we will find down the road that there is more to them than the rough cobs they seem today, perhaps not. But today we need more men and women like AOC, like Bernie Sanders, like Graham Plattner. Because whatever their flaws or past mistakes they are comrades in arms.

One big lesson we have borrowed from the past and that will be most helpful in the future is trust but verify, trust but verify, trust but verify, trust but verify. Did I mention trust but verify? Good. As we try to assemble a government from the dysfunctional mess that Cluck has created, we may have to ask each one of us to empty our pockets and our lunchpails as we walk through the company gate at day’s end, until we find ourselves on a better track again.

All of this somehow reminds me of the Russian story about men and wheelbarrows.

There was a man who had worked at a factory for twenty years. Every night when he left the plant, he would push a wheelbarrow full of straw to the guard at the gate.The guard would look through the straw, and finding nothing he would pass the man through.

On the day of his retirement the man came to the guard at the gate as usual but without the wheelbarrow. Having become friends over the years, the guard asked him, “Boris, I’ve seen you walk out of here every night for twenty years. I know you’ve been stealing something. Now that you’re retired, tell me what it is. It’s driving me crazy.”

Boris simply smiled and replied, “I’ve been stealing wheelbarrows!”

Cluck hasn’t been stealing wheelbarrows. He’s been stealing from the people’s treasury, the people’s reputations, the people’s national security, and the people’s public health. He has undermined organizations devoted to keeping us safe, dismantled our agencies of scientific inquiry, assaulted the purity of our air and water … my fingers tire of typing out his many sins, at the thoughts of the hurt he and his people have caused.

Götterdämmerung … Twilight of the Gods … indeed. Some gods these guys have been … false as the day is long. Bringing them down to their proper size will probably take time and some bleeding of the body public.

Let those who are able resolve to protect our most vulnerable ones until this tumult has passed.

******

Gray autumn morning
Poco and I side by side
Each on his own chair

******

We are still watching the soaper Nashville, and the plots and subplots have all of the characters’ hearts aflutter all of the time. Five episodes ago a new member of the cast playing a talented singer was revealed to have an ex-husband, when the man shows up after five years to threaten her, and ends up punching her in the face. The singer then buys a gun.

Since then the errant ex has been portrayed as just the nastiest piece of work, and he has made the woman absolutely miserable. He even successfully sued her for a chunk of her earnings. It’s seemingly win, win, win for this sweatstain on the face of the earth. But Robin and I know something he doesn’t, which is that the Principle of Chekhov’s Gun has been invoked, which goes like this:

If you show a gun in the first act, you must fire it by the third act.

Our message to the ex-husband’s character: One of these days, you arrogant blaggard, you will get your due. Somewhere out of the camera’s view and nearly forgotten there is a doom that awaits you, and we stand ready to chortle when it comes. We take our soap operas seriously here at BaseCamp.

******

Near the end of the South Rim Road at Black Canyon National Park there is a pullout at a scenic spot called Sunset Point. At some time in the past someone had the foresight to see that this would be a great place to hang out and watch the sun go down. So the Park Service created a safe space that little children couldn’t easily fall from and gave it a name.

On the evening of 6/12/26 there was, as there often is, a small group of folks from around the country waiting there on the first cloudless twilight in weeks. The sun did not disappoint and went down one more time, perfectly on schedule. Somehow this is always a moment. Strangers sharing a place and time, talking quietly in subdued voices. Like in church, actually.

******

Taking It Slow

June 10, 2026June 10, 2026jono55

When an alcoholic walks in out of the swamp that is addiction and is looking for a chance at a new life, one of the first things they are told is that they must stop drinking. That without taking that all-important step nothing else they do will matter. The addict looks down the road at the rest of their life and groans, “Never? Forever?” And that’s when some very wise advice comes wafting in through the haze of a hangover: “Don’t worry about forever … stay sober just for today.” Break obstacles down into small enough chunks and now they begin to look … possible.

That’s the advice we can give ourselves when we wake up each morning and look out at our country’s plight. “But there’s so much wrong … how will it ever be made right.” The answer is that we don’t have to do it all at that moment, we only need to do what we can and then rest, even if briefly, gathering our strength for the next challenge. But in this particular present moment, we just need to do the next right thing. All of those “next right things” done by all those other outraged souls will add up to the change we want.

I’ve decided that Robert Reich must be writing even while he is eating and using the bathroom. There is no other way he could continue to turn out the volume of material that he does. His Sunday essay on Substack: The Coming Revival of America, was one of his best yet. The thesis? That America had been heading in several wrong directions for a good long while before the Clown King came along, and that we the people needed more than a gentle wake-up call to see that.

The clarity of Reich’s opinion makes one want to hit their own forehead with an open hand and cry Yes, yes, of course you’re right! How could I have missed that? One possible answer is that as long as we weren’t the victim, directly, perhaps we didn’t care as much as we should have.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemoller

He does not underplay the dangers and the national trauma that beset us daily. We can still be rounded up and imprisoned without cause by a masked army of thugs, our government has been subverted and may well be used against us even further. These realities may not vanish overnight but Cluck has definitely turned over the rock and shown us where things need to be fixed.

Maybe we needed this horrific wakeup call in order to get back on the road we should have been on. We needed to see how fragile the institutions of self-government are in order to know why we must strengthen them. We needed to be reminded of what America is all about — what it should be about — in order to revive it — and reclaim it, for and by the people.

Robert Reich, Substack

Good man, Reich. At four feet eleven inches he stands taller than the thousands of sycophants and toadies who have either caused or enabled our present sea of misfortunes.

BTW. Reading this piece made me realize that it is not really this country that I love. What I love is this country’s ideals. I am not even certain, after the past several years, what this country is today. Is it still a democracy? Or is it a fascist fever dream? Or is it only the playpen of the unimaginably rich? Or is it something so malleable that at any given moment it is what the people who care most want it to be?

For the past couple of decades or so, it was the MAGA-leaning crowd that were excited, who suited up and showed up with their wrecking bars and their disdain for almost everything that people like me thought was good about America. They walked right in and took the prize and immediately began tearing it apart in order to reassemble it in their own special way. A way involving white supremacy, cruelty, and bigotry. They covered the floor of their birdcages with copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

But we are awake now. WE being a beast that roars and remembers. WE can see clearly what we’ve lost, what we’ve given away to these charlatans and mountebanks. WE are the ones who helped beat back tyranny in WWII. WE are the ones who marched on Selma, who were beaten and hosed and arrested by thugs in uniforms and thrown into jails. WE are the citizens of Minneapolis who took care of one another when ICE came with their masks and guns and lawlessness. WE read those two precious documents that constitute a the libretto of an opera of freedom that works when enough of us sing it together.

******

Blowin’ In The Wind, by Peter, Paul and Mary

******

We were promised a windy day on Tuesday, and we got one. We were also promised a warm one. Paradise is dry as tinder and a space where one spark could do much damage. At times like this we don’t need human error to produce a fire. Last year there were half a dozen fires started here on the Western Slope in a single night of lightning strikes, including the one that did its work in Black Canyon National Park.

I recall conditions like this several years ago, when Robin and I were in Santa Fe during a prolonged dry spell and it had been made illegal in that city to smoke outdoors. Not just campers out there in the boonies, everybody.

******

Where Have All The Flowers Gone, by Peter, Paul and Mary

******

Okay. I wasn’t going to mention this thing, but really, I have to. This is the Corvette ZR1X. It is a hybrid. Believe it or not, at almost a quarter of a million dollars as its sticker price it is by far the cheapest entry in the supercar category of automobiles.

Here are the numbers.

Zero to sixty mph = 1.7 seconds (at 1.9 seconds my head would snap off and roll about the cockpit, leaving my torso with some hard choices)
Top speed = 233 mph (I have never had a reflex anywhere in my entire body that was quick enough to cope with this)
Horsepower = 1250 (my Subaru has 182 of these)
Price = starts at $207,000 (A Maserati or a Ferrari in this category would cost several times as much, so don’t complain)
Gas mileage = completely irrelevant to buyers
Usefulness in hauling groceries = nil
Coolness factor just sitting there on the asphalt = killer to dudes of a certain age

******

Robin and I awarded ourselves an all-expense paid trip to the local Dairy Queen this week, and as we were spooning frozen delights into our mouths I happened to notice a couple of images on the wall. One was an abbreviated history of Dairy Queen itself, and the other of the beverage chain Orange Julius.

I thus learned that the beverage Orange Julius got its name from the fact that in 1926 “Julius Freed and his partner Bill Hamlin opened an orange juice stand in Los Angeles.” Apparently Bill didn’t feel the need to have his name included. Either that or Julius was just plain evil.

More interesting were the two items listed below.

1938: Americans discover McCullough’s new, softer and tastier kind of ice cream called “soft serve.”

1940: “The Cone With The Curl On Top” lights up for the first time in Joliet, Illinois.

Why interesting to me? Because if that image were more complete, there would be an entry right in the middle that read like this.

1939: Jon Flom born in Faribault MN, a man destined to be one of DQ’s most devoted and notorious customers

End of story.

******

The accident of the timing of my birth meant that I have been privileged to be surrounded by some of the best music ever written, pop and otherwise, as I grew up and grew older. The big bands were still playing concerts in Minneapolis when I was a teenager, even as rock and the folk revival took the stage from them in the sixties. R&B was everywhere stitched into that rich fabric, and the blues … under it all and above it all.

I don’t really claim a favorite genre, as all of them have meant something different and important to me. But I have to admit that the one that grabs at my heart each time one of its songs comes on the air is folk music. It’s a big tent, and nobody ever did it better, IMHO, than Peter, Paul and Mary.

500 Miles, by Peter, Paul and Mary

******

Up a Tree

June 6, 2026June 6, 2026jono55

A couple of weeks ago, on a single day, 274 people summited Mount Everest, a new record. The average cost of such a trip is around $70,000. What kind of extraordinary accomplishment can it be if 274 persons do it in one 24 hour period? It has become little more than an entertainment for the very wealthy, as the risks have been systematically reduced and the mental and physical fitness required are less than they once were.

I’ve never understood the attraction of climbing mountains, and thought the recurring phrase “I conquered the mountain” more than a little overblown. The mountain was there before being “conquered,” and was still there unchanged afterward, caring little for the specks of humanity crawling around on its surface. But I have had respect for the effort, planning, and risks involved in such ventures. Now it is becoming a matter of writing a check, putting on the new outfit you bought for the occasion, and joining the throng in line.

******

America, by Simon and Garfunkel

******

As I was typing this early on a Thursday morning something really disappointing happened. Willow and I were sharing the futon in the unused bedroom that I call my office when we heard unmistakable munching noises coming from the kitchen. I leapt to my feet and rushed to find a half-grown raccoon making its exit. I pursued the beast into the back yard, calling out silent imprecations so as not to rouse the neighbors. It simply climbed twelve feet up the ash tree and looked down at me impassively.

The villain. The interloper. The masked mammal from Hell sent to perplex the faithful and the well-intentioned.

After a minute or so of us staring at one another the raccoon carefully descended and took off running toward the west and over the fence to safety (at least from me). Imagine my chagrin when now that I had the chance to think about the matter I realized that it had marched right past my flashing red intruder alarm as if it were nothing. Aiieeeee! One more unhappy discovery. One more bright idea come to naught. It’s back to square one, at least where this species is concerned.

I think these critters are rather cute when on the proper side of my kitchen door. But only there.

******

The last cartoon in the set above pretty much summarizes why many rank and file Democrats are seeking more aggressive leadership.

******

Across The Borderline, by Ry Cooder with Harry Dean Stanton

******

After a couple of rejections, I once again had a Letter to the Editor published in our local paper. The rejections I completely understand and sometimes even agree with. I can be a bit of a smart-ass when I write (which I know comes as a great shock to you) and there are moments when immediately after I push the button “Submit” which sends the letter off to the Montrose Daily Press that I wish I could get it back.

Anyway, here’s what I said.

I had the pleasure once again of attending the Montrose City Council meeting on June 2. The mayor opened the proceedings by using the time worn technique of trying to put lipstick on a pig when he read a self-congratulatory statement describing how fair and balanced a guy he was. The “pig” on this occasion was his refusal to issue a traditional proclamation naming June as Pride Month.

Where was the pleasure? That came from when one citizen after another walked up to the microphone to give heartfelt, moving, and sometimes blistering testimony on the importance of showing that marginalized groups like the LGBTQ+ community are accepted and valued in Montrose.

When we should be taking every opportunity to deplore the violence, bigotry, and exclusion that we can see being visited upon these citizens on a regular basis, it is unacceptable when elected officials hold back on any form of support they can provide. Their mean-spiritedness makes Montrose look small indeed to observers.

BTW, even though the MAGA faction on the City Council wishes the whole subject of non-heterosexuality would just go away, the third annual Pride Festival took place on Saturday and was a great success.

******

To RLF in 2011

There may be time to be away in Winter
But not in Springtime
Then I will need you here

To watch the stars gather
To walk the path up to the point
To listen to the whip-poor-wills at night
To watch herons hunting in the channel
To paddle silently across the lake at twilight
To share the feeling of the wind blowing through the bedroom window

******

And I Am Still Searching, by Pete Seeger

******

Next!

June 3, 2026jono55

I was reading yet another news item about the ongoing furor over bathroom safety for women when a neuron way back there … probably in a dusty corner of the hippocampus … woke up and made a contribution.

When the Minnesota Twins came to town, they did so at the new stadium in Bloomington, which quickly became noted for having inadequate bathroom facilities for women. There was always a continuous line of patrons stretching from the bathroom itself, out the facility door, and down the corridor. Women might miss entire innings or multiples of the same before their needs could be met due to this situation.

When that stadium was eventually torn down the mistake was at least partially rectified in its replacement. But while the old structure was still there, my brother and I took our father to a game. I was taking advantage of the seventh-inning stretch when I went to ease the pressure that drinking a couple of cups of beer had produced.

I was standing at one of a line of perhaps a dozen urinals attending to matters when a young woman came through the door, walked past that line of twelve men who now were leaning dangerously forward and trying their best to become invisible, and entered one of the stalls with a competent door on it. A minute or two later she came out and without a word left the room.

Now this was when I was still at a Neanderthal stage where women’s issues were concerned, but as she passed the line, I thought to myself – Brava! You go, girl! Such chutzpah! Problem solved!

As I washed up, I felt privileged to have been present at that little blow struck for equality.

******

When Robin and I were living in Yankton, South Dakota, which is a smallish town of about 15,000 souls, we were fortunate enough to see the musical group Brulé, a Native American band of musicians. They played several times at local summer celebrations, and also put on wonderful Christmas concerts.

The origin story of the group is really interesting, in that its founder Paul LaRoche grew up in a southern Minnesota town as an adopted son of a farm family. When his parents were asked about where he came from, they said, “Well, he’s darker skinned because he’s Canadian.” Once his parents had both passed away, Paul was going through their papers, trying to put things in order, and discovered that he was not Canadian at all, but Lakota, and that he’d been born on the Brule Reservation in western South Dakota.

Paul then went out to the reservation town of Brule, South Dakota, where he found that he had living relatives. It wasn’t long before he moved his family there. He had been a rock musician up until this point, but now he began to incorporate Native American themes and rhythms into his music, and thus the group Brulé was born.

Robin and I became fans long ago, and I’ve chosen this video to exemplify the kind of music that they played, which often incorporated native dancers and could be quite thrilling. Paul plays keyboard, and two of Paul’s children are in the video as well, Nicole on flute and Shane on guitar. The drummer with the group in this video is Moses Brings Plenty, who has since made acting a career. Recently he was seen on Netflix in the two-part series, “Sitting Bull,” playing the title role.

******

There are a few of the Tesla cybertrucks here in Paradise, perhaps three or four. Both Robin and I find them ridiculous looking and actually offensive to the eye. Like finding an automotive turd at the curb. So when I came across a piece on Substack I was interested enough to read it.

Most of the piece was describing the chicanery Elon Musk has been guilty of in trying to mask the failure of the truck in terms of sales, but it was the line below that made me chuckle. Robin and I have always wondered who buys this ugly thing, and now we have some clues.

Considering its only target market is sci-fi-illiterate, emasculated, deeply sexually frustrated, doomsday-prepping divorced dads, its sales have been utterly woeful.

Substack

******

You may have looked at the very cool header photograph (which is not my own) and thought … WTF … this guy probably never got on a skateboard in his entire life … and you’d be right. And I am not trying to do some underhanded cultural appropriation, either. But there was an article in the June 1 issue of the Times on a skateboarding location in London that was so interesting that I had to share it. It’s about an area called the “undercroft” which is a sort of skaters Mecca, inviting pilgrims from around the world.

It’s of no matter that I haven’t been on a board and never will be. If I were to start out now I am certain it would bring on the dreaded Humpty Dumpty Syndrome, where no one could put me together again. But I possess a very special facility. I can daydream blissfully about a past that I never had.

******

Cool Water

May 30, 2026jono55

It’s one a.m. and the night air still carries some of the day’s warmth with it. There is enough of a breeze that the branches of the ash tree in the back yard are doing their dipping and bowing thing, which has awakened the wind chime from a three-day slumber. All is well out there.

So much branch activity is also triggering my motion detector alarm continuously, so I turned it off for the rest of the night. This means of course that we are now vulnerable to footpads, pillagers, cutpurses, and bandits of all stripes. Such is my faith in this bit of technology’s ability to scare off any sort of intruders that I wonder if I’ll be able to go back to sleep, knowing that the proverbial door is open.

You scoff? A simple blinking red light is no barrier to a resourceful highwayman or 700 pound Siberian tiger, you say? I beg to differ. In the twelve years we’ve lived here, in spite of all the things out there that go bump in the night, we’ve never once been ransacked or ravished.

No, friend, when you invest $29.95 in a security system you expect and get the best.

******

My rec center playlist served up a song I hadn’t heard in the longest time, Change, by Big Thief. When I use such lists during exercise I am never quite certain that what I remember hearing is accurate, being short of oxygen and all that. But these were pretty thoughtful lyrics and they’ve stayed with me. The chorus reminds me of a theme that shows up often in films and literature, which is that if we could live forever, we would face an unending series of losses as all those we knew and met and loved would die while we persisted. Forever.

Would you live forever, never die
While everything around passes?
Would you smile forever, never cry
While everything you know passes?

I think in such a situation I believe that I might take the same defensive position that men often do in wartime when on the front lines … not become attached to the new guys because you know that many of them were destined not to make it. Altogether I think that it would be too sad, too lonely a place to be.

Can I talk about vampires for a moment? Anne Rice wrote some of what might be the most intelligent stories about them in her series of books, and there are moments in those narratives when exactly these same thoughts are expressed. The loneliness of never dying, of having retained the ability to care while knowing you will forever be the survivor, and that each of your beloveds will eventually be taken from you.

Nope, don’t think I’d like it very much. Not at all. The present cosmic arrangement has quite a few unknowns in it, and a glitch or two besides, but all in all it seems preferable to me.

Change, by Big Thief

******

As we stumble through the present fetid morass that is our public life toward the day when the reins of government are wrenched from the hands of the fascists, it might be helpful to give thought to what a handful of others have thought about power. We could start with that maxim of Lord Acton’s: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.” Sounds good enough, and might help to explain the tumor that is Cluckism and its allies.

But Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, flips that on its head when he says: “All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.” I like this latter explanation better. For me, that is where the light goes on in the cranium.

But, anyway, here’s a smattering of other people’s thought on the matter.

“If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. ”
― Robert Ingersoll

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“They joined hands.
So the world ended.
And the next one began.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ”
― Paulo Freire

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass

******

Here’s a story for you. The classic country-western song Cool Water was written as a poem by Bob Nolan in 1936, when he was still in high school. He went on to form the musical group Sons of the Pioneers, where he put music to the poem and recorded it in 1941. For me, the tune has always been around, because as soon as I was old enough to appreciate music, Cool Water was there.

While it tells the story of a parched man traveling a wasteland tormented by mirages and talking to his mule, it could also be taken as a metaphor for a traveler seeking truth and enlightenment in a world seemingly filled with dishonesty. Either way, hope is offered to the desperate.

Cool Water, by the Sons of the Pioneers

******

Turistas

May 27, 2026May 30, 2026jono55

Robin and I haven’t been everywhere in the world, but in the part that we have explored, it is obvious to us that putting an image of a chile pepper on the license plate of New Mexico is no empty boast.

Everywhere we went this past weekend we were given chances to take a shot at one fiery dish after another, starting with the free chips and salsa offered many places. Those salsas all had more authority than we find here in Paradise, where they seem to tone things down for the gringos.

Being a card-carrying gringo myself, I really don’t mind being cosseted in this way, it has probably saved my stomach lining on countless occasions. My Nordic genes came from people who had never seen a chile in their lives, and thus had no opportunity for evolution to prepare their bodies for such onslaughts.

All this heat in all those peppers comes from capsaicin, and at full strength it is something awesome to deal with, no matter where one is from. But even this killer substance pales before a Moroccan cactus.

The hottest natural substance known to man is resiniferatoxin, a chemical found in the sap of the Moroccan cactus Euphorbia resinifera. While pure capsaicin measures 16 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU), Resiniferatoxin clocks in at 16 billion SHU—making it roughly 1,000 times hotter than pure capsaicin.

Wikipedia

Now that cactus would make a salsa that could walk itself right to your table with no need for a waiter. Each serving would come with a burner cell phone with its speed dial already set to call a nearby hospital.

******

One of the most striking of commemoratives to fallen soldiers is the Viet Nam Memorial Wall. It is stark, black, and 493.5 feet long, containing the names of 58,318 U.S. service members who died or remain missing. Iris DeMent offered this moving song about the wall, in 1996. The song goes a long way toward explaining why visiting that site and reaching out to touch the name of someone dear is enough to bring tears.

Each time I look back on that war, I wonder how such a thing was allowed to happen. We deserved so much better from our leaders. Ahhhhhhh, what folly, what a criminal waste of those lives.

******

There are moments when the headlines get me down, especially when I contemplate the appalling ignorance and hateful behavior of the MAGA side of the political spectrum. And the ugliness of the Trump faction. And the craven cowardice of most of the Republican Party. But this morning it occurs to me that there is no reason to be surprised by any of this.

Let’s take a look at myself, for instance. Most of the time I act in a civilized manner, am kind to animals and small children, respectful of my elders, and always remember to zip my fly before going outdoors. But there have been times when I behaved quite differently. When I forgot or ignored not just the Ten Commandments but my own personal commandments as well (and there is quite a list of those, way more than ten).

And yet that less moral person co-existed with another more moral one in this same body, and I must prudently assume that he is still in there somewhere waiting to see if he gets another turn one sunny day. What I see as my assignment is to be vigilant and aware, to recognize each time he puts his boots on or asks to take the podium and deny him that access.

I have learned along the way that there are others who have this same struggle. Perhaps not you, dear reader, but it appears that it is not only me who has a Mr. Hyde as part of his makeup.

In fact let’s take a look at America, land of the free and home of the brave. Studying our history reveals this same sort of dichotomy. We have much to be proud of and much to regret. Right now we are in a regret-filled moment. Our national Mr. Hyde is at the helm and we can easily see what a mess that has made of things. But we forgot that he was in there, didn’t we? We assumed that normality and decency would keep him in check but it didn’t. When we finally get the upper hand again one of the first things we will have to do is strengthen our resolve that he not be allowed out in public ever again, while never assuming that he won’t try.

It’s not a one and done thing, this political and personal life of ours. But if we can keep our heads clear, we will soon be able to pick up the bag and pointed stick and go out to clean things up.

Shoot, if a possum can do it, why not us?

******

In 1958 a tune called Rumble was launched, and is still one of the best rock instrumentals … ever. It was originally done by Link Wray, and here he is all decked out in perfect rock and roll swagger in 1974, playing it live.

(For some unfathomable reason once Wray is done playing another video starts up. Feel free to quit at that point.)

******

Memento Mori

May 25, 2026May 25, 2026jono55

I met Paul Nelson while working on the locked psychiatry ward at the University of Minnesota Hospital. We were orderlies together on the ward for a couple of years and became friends. When I married my first wife, Paul was the first person we had over for supper. Once I entered medical school and stopped working on the ward, we saw each other less often. In March of 1969 news came to me that he had been killed in Viet Nam. In July of that same year I began my service in the US Air Force.

Paul was one of the good guys, one to whom laughing came easily, and the sort of person to whom performing kind acts came naturally. He would have been 84 years old now, but that unnecessary war shortened his life to age 27. When each Memorial Day rolls around I think about him.

Put all of the generals, the secretaries of defense, the presidents, the planners and prosecutors of that ugly conflict on one side of a scale and Paul on the other, and if the measurement used is who was most of value to this country … for me, he wins.

******

Got them ol’ can’t find it blues …

May 24, 2026jono55

At an AA meeting this past week, I started out using one of my favorite quotations and was dismayed to have it finished for me by another member of the group. Shocking. Impertinent. How dare that addict step on my line? Screwed up my timing and my composure all at once. What was the saying, you ask? It was one that originated in the very early days of Buddhism:

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

I asked that modern oracle ChatGPT about it, and got little more than this dry comment:

This proverb carries a profound philosophical lesson. Enlightenment or personal growth does not exempt you from the basic responsibilities and physical realities of human life. The chores, bills, and everyday mundane tasks will always be there. Before enlightenment, you might perform these tasks grudgingly, wishing you were doing something else. After enlightenment, you perform them with total presence, peace, and mindfulness, finding the same value in folding laundry or doing dishes as you would in profound spiritual reflection.

It was information, but not exactly what I was looking for. So my next stop was an article from Plum Village, the monastery where Thich Nhat Hanh spent the last years of his life, in exile. The title of the piece was HOW TO/ The Zen of Dishwashing. It was lively, witty, and amusing. It was also spot on and my search was ended.

But I now knew that the wisdom expressed in the proverb was not exclusively mine, not if that dimwit across the table from me could quote from it as well. Going to have to use it very sparingly, I thought, and never when he’s at the same meeting.

I am nothing if not petty.

******

I’m Not Feeling It Anymore, by Van Morrison

******

This has been a very windy Spring so far, reminding me of my first few years in South Dakota, where there were long stretches when I couldn’t launch my canoe even on the small lakes around Yankton. I have never loved it when the water would slosh over the gunwales of that boat. I am an okay canoeist, but not a great one. There are definitely times when I should not leave the cabin, but play another few games of solitaire instead of going paddling. I have always tried to be mindful of this acquired wisdom, and it is one of the reasons that I am still alive and here to beguile or bedevil you.

We’ve got a couple of strings of prayer flags out in the back, strung from the ash tree to the board fence. They flutter at the faintest suggestion of a breeze, giving us fair warning about what the day holds and allow us to plan the morning’s activities with accuracy. When the flags stand straight out from the line we do not venture far from home, thus avoiding much spitting out of airborne sand and other grit. (Actually, when the wind blows like that, I don’t even like to think too much about what the air might be carrying and I might be breathing in or swallowing.)

What these blustery days are really good for is drying clothes outdoors. Low humidity and a stiff breeze are nature’s tumble dryer. I put up one of these racks several years ago, and any day it is not raining is fair game for Dame Robin and her sturdy wooden clothespins.

******

On Hyndford Street, by Van Morrison

******

A couple of weeks ago, Robin returned from church and opened a conversation that went like this: “You should write down everything you do and where you put everything that’s important in case you die.” It’s the sort of tête-à-tête that senior citizens have from time to time, and while I gave her only one point for tact, I had to award two points for it being a good idea. ‘Twas something I had neglected to do.

Anyway, I am now engaged in writing everything down and placing it in a 3-ring binder. There is no real system that I have for where I put stuff. Sometimes it simply comes down to a space that was available in a drawer in the house or garage and that’s it. Many of those hiding places were so good that even I can’t find them now. God help my descendants.

******

Our drive to Santa Fe from Montrose takes 5 1/2 hours, but from beginning to end it is such a lovely trip that you hardly notice the time passing. Until you stop the car and find that your bottom half is stiff and does not want to get out and go anywhere. The scenery is constantly changing, deserts … mountains … forests … valleys … canyons … it never stops, not until you hit Santa Fe itself when it becomes a less exciting urban landscape. For us the charms of the city are near the Plaza, the oldest part of town.

We first visited this town in 1995, and at that time stayed in a quaint BnB named Inn of the Animal Tracks. It afforded a great room, a short walking distance to the Plaza, was not too costly, and served excellent breakfasts and afternoon teas that were provided by a woman who came in just to cook for us. That’s the good news. The bad news is that today it has become some sort of Urgent Care Center, even the front entrance is greatly altered.

Bah. Humbug.

But we did find something that is unchanged from that first trip through Santa Fe, and that is a restaurant named The Shed. The atmosphere is delightful and much of the food was the kind of stuff of the genre that you can’t get back home. I know that something named The Shed sounds a little unpromising but if you take a chance on your next visit here you may like it … a lot. I include a few photos taken there, including one of a life-sized sculpture of a wolf that I couldn’t stop looking at. A startling piece that looked real for a fraction of a second before my brain had time to process it.

******

On Saturday we discovered Museum Hill, where there was so much to be seen and done that I don’t understand how we ever missed it. It’s just a mile and a half from the Plaza, but you do need a map or GPS to find it. At least I did, because it is in the boonies. What’s up there?

Museum of Indian Arts & Culture
Museum of International Folk Art
Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian
Museum of Spanish Colonial Art
Santa Fe Botanical Garden
Milner Plaza Labyrinth

Here are a few children playing in the labyrinth. If you could somehow shoo these critters out of there, walking it would be a serene thing to do.

My excuse for overlooking this wondrous collection art and culture is that Santa Fe has so much to see downtown and around the Plaza area that I never looked elsewhere.

******

Whooo? Me? Cubist?

May 20, 2026jono55

I had the good fortune this past week to attend a lecture/presentation by a polymath. Yes, a polymath, and I know what I’m talking about because I just looked up the word and now I am allowed to call myself an expert.*

A polymath is a person who knows a lot about a lot of subjects. If your friend is not only a brilliant physics student but has also published a poetry collection and won prizes at political debates, you can describe her as a polymath.

Vocabulary.com

Robin and I had been invited to a talk about small owls in Colorado by our friends, the Evanses. The local chapter of the Audubon Society was sponsoring the evening’s program. The speaker, Scott Rashid, was a slender middle-aged man in a baseball-style cap, plaid shirt, and the sort of pants one wears when camping or hiking. He seemed eager to get started, so was handed the microphone and a remote control, and off he went.

What followed might have been the single best Powerpoint I’ve seen, and I have seen hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, mostly of the stunningly boring kind, each image stuffed beyond measure with more information than one human being should ever have to bear. This presentation was smoothly constructed and filled with imaginatively arranged images that appeared without fail due to his mastery of the remote control. His knowledge of the four owl species that collectively made up his topic seemed encyclopedic to this rank amateur. I don’t believe he took a breath during the entire hour, keeping oxygenated somehow by absorbing gas through his skin.

Why do I call him a polymath?

Great fund of knowledge of his subject and related birds
Has created an organization dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of injured and orphaned birds (CARRI)
Author of several books
Skilled wildlife photographer
And the killer is this – he is a gifted artist who paints scenes which combine principles of cubism and wildlife painting

Yep, you heard me, cubism. And the paintings are beautiful, like nothing I’ve even seen, combining several views of the same bird, for instance, in a single portrait. Like this one of the northern pygmy owl.

This art is for sale in several forms, and the proceeds help to support his work.

You might be interested in a short video about Rashid and need a link to his website, so here it is. Once there, take a look at his art work. It is extraordinary.

*When I was in pediatric residency training, the working definition of an “expert” was: an SOB from out of town with slides.

******

Ladies and gentlemen, the Heartless Bastards play Gates of Dawn for your listening and dancing pleasure. Cranking the volume is allowed.

(As an aside, is this the best name for a rock band or what? Seriously!)

******

Water warm as blood
Drips along the paddle shaft
Ducklings hide in reeds

******

This next weekend Robin and I are driving down to Santa Fe for the weekend. The occasion is our 34th wedding anniversary. It’s the second marriage for both of us.

During the years immediately after our divorces, we both sought counseling at times. The counselor who Robin was seeing wasn’t sure about her re-marrying relatively soon after going through such a traumatic period, and expressed the view that she and I getting together was probably only a “transitional relationship.” Meaning that once she came to her senses and took a good long look at me she would toss an “Adios” back over her shoulder as she moved on to the real thing.

Well, the “transition” will be starting on its 35th year next Sunday, so either he was wrong or Robin is really slow at making up her mind. Either way, I am a clear winner.

(Here we are on that excellent day in 1992. I can hear you thinking and you are quite right … I definitely married out of my league.)

***

We’ve visited Santa Fe several times before, and have enjoyed ourselves each time. For us, the town has such a pleasing vibe. Art galleries and museums galore, the Santa Fe Opera, the historic plaza, the presence of adobe buildings everywhere you look. Good restaurants, great food.

There is also the important connection with Los Alamos during the years when the Manhattan Project was operating. The small but busy office that managed access to Los Alamos and everything that was going on up there was at 109 East Palace, in Santa Fe. Before you took that rough mountain road and drove 33 miles to your new home you had to walk through that doorway. There is a bronze plaque that reads:

109 EAST PALACE
1943 SANTA FE OFFICE 1963
LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
All the men and women who made the first atomic
bomb passed through this portal to their secret
mission at Los Alamos. Their creation in 27 months
of the weapons that ended World War II was one of
the greatest scientific achievements of all time.

***

Santa Fe, by Tough Country

******