Author: jono55

Grace, Actually

jono55

Jimmy Carter passed away this week, at the age of 100 years. He had been our 39th president of these United States. Carter’s entire adult life was one of devotion to public service. When he was voted out of office, he picked up a hammer and went to work with Habitat for Humanity. He was also a humble man who taught Sunday School and who traveled the world as a private citizen, working always for peace, human rights, and the dignity of all men and women.

He and I shared a love of music in nearly all of its forms, without either of us being able to play an instrument. I learned just this morning that one of his favorite songs was Amazing Grace. So that’s two things that he and I shared.

Amazing Grace, by Judy Collins

The contrasts between this good man and the one recently re-elected could not be greater. Words like decency, self-sacrifice, faithfulness, moral rectitude, unselfishness, courage, honesty … all of these words have been used for many decades now in describing Mr. Carter and his works. None of them are ever used in describing our incoming president.

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From The New Yorker

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In the language of the land of divorced people, there are basically two groups, unceremoniously named dumpers and dumpees. Robin and I were dumpees. Neither of us had found the process of getting divorced to be pleasant in any way, and when we began dating were both still nursing bruises of varying degrees. We fell in love and in 1992 were married. We had decided that rather than have a subdued and quiet marriage ceremony, perhaps at a midnight chapel on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, we would instead celebrate how good can sometimes alchemically arise out of unhappy events.

Part of our planning was to sit down with the church organist, who was in charge of helping people select music for such ceremonies. We told her that one of the selections we wanted was Amazing Grace, a song we both admired. At first the organist knitted her brow “Well, we usually play that at funerals … but … hmmm … just a minute … if you think about the lyrics… hmmm … they could also apply to happier occasions, couldn’t they?” We nodded assent, and into the program it went.

What we couldn’t have predicted is what the large group of friends we had invited would do with it. Robin and I stood at the front of the church and facing the minister, while those friends began to sing the hymn behind us. We had chosen only the first three verses to be sung, and the first one was performed in a rather standard and church-y way, but the next two steadily increased in volume and passion to become expressions of joy that swelled and filled the church. We received lots of presents from those same people, but what I remember most clearly thirty-two years later is their gift of that song.

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
   That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
   Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
   And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear
   The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares,
   I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
   And grace will lead me home.

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Amazing Grace, by Walela

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From The New Yorker

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For me, she nailed it.

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Amazing Grace, by the Scottish National Pipe and Drum Corps and Military Band

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So this morning we begin the laborious process of learning to write a new date on our correspondence. I usually complete the task by mid-July, but then I was never a quick study. Six months later I’m right back in a muddle once again. Hardly worth the trouble, really. If any of you receive a letter from me, you’ll pretty much know that it was written in 2025 whether I put it on the page or not, so not to worry.

We’ve got our work cut out for us in the upcoming 12 months. Slightly less than half of the American citizenry decided that they would like to have a degenerate for president and so in three weeks he takes office. He is assembling a band of quacks, charlatans, and marauders to assist him in cleaning out the vaults, men and women whose curriculum vitae under normal circumstances would disqualify them from any job other than brigand. I have no crystal ball, but like my great-great-grand-daddy might have said, you don’t get apples from a shit-tree, son.

Hang on, friends, it’s going to be a ride. It might help to remember that to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose. At least that’s what good ol’ Ecclesiastes said, and I’ll go with him every time.

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Turn, Turn, Turn, by the Byrds

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Most of the Time

jono55

I think that I might have already read about thirty short blurbs about the new Bob Dylan biopic, and I’ve done that without even trying. The hoopla machine must be starting to smoke from overuse by now, and perhaps it needs to be shut down and given a bit of preventive maintenance.

So I am totally tenderized and ready to watch it should it come within range, which means if it comes to Grand Junction. (By the way, if you were wondering about the origin of that town’s name, wonder no longer. It sits at the junction of the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers, and the Colorado was once named the Grand River.)

Why would I go to see such a movie when I already know all the songs and much of how his life has unfolded? Well, that’s a fair question.

Perhaps because we are both Minnesota boys of about the same age. Or that the lyrics to some of his songs have spoken truth to me since I was a lad. Or that it’s nearly January and some mid-winter boredom is setting in. Or that I suspect that much of what I think that I know about Mr. Dylan’s life story is wrong, and perhaps I’ll learn something new .

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Most of the Time, by Bob Dylan

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A dense fog rolled in yesterday afternoon and is still hanging ’round. Visibility is less than half a city block. Travel in our part of the world is moving at a sensible speed as a result. Unusual, a fog like this here in Paradise.

Quite unlike on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan, where I lived for several years. The Keweenaw was a finger of land about 15 miles wide and 40 miles long that stuck out into Lake Superior. When you are nearly surrounded by one of the largest lakes in the world, fogs are a regular part of life.

FOG

(by Carl Sandburg)

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Unlike Carl Sandburg’s fogs rolling in on little cat’s feet, the Lake Superior version would materialize around you. One minute visibility would be unlimited and the next you couldn’t see to tie your shoelace.

One fall evening I had traveled to a small-town hospital fifteen miles north of where I lived to consult on an infant. There were clear daytime skies on the ride up, but darkness and dense fog when I stepped out the hospital door two hours later.

To make things even more uncomfortable on that return trip, I was driving a small motorcycle, a Kawasaki KZ 400, to be precise.

Tooling along at 10-15 mph I wasn’t much worried about hitting something in front of me. No, it was someone in a car or truck smacking into me from behind that was the main concern. I’ve never felt more vulnerable when motoring than I did that night, because I knew that the taillight on that bike was too small to be much help in the fog.

So in this grand mist this morning? I’m not going anywhere at all. The poet’s cat will need to get off its haunches and pad out of town before I even start the car.

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I’ll go no further without sharing an image of my first motorcycle love, the Kawasaki machine mentioned above. there were bigger and faster bikes to come later, but none did more to free me from the four-wheeled cage that is a car than this one. You don’t forget your first time.

Risk-averse people used to ask me why I would ever ride a motorcycle. What could I possibly get out of it that was worth the hazard? I would answer: “You remember when you were a kid on your bicycle and you were riding down a long hill? How much fun that was?” They would always nod in assent. “Well, on my cycle I get that same feeling going uphill.“

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Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, by Bob Dylan

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There is an interesting article in Saturday’s NYTimes about saunas and sauna culture. It takes the form of a 750 mile road trip from Grand Marais MN to Copper Harbor MI, sampling some of the luxury offerings that tourists might enjoy, or at lease pretend to love. Some of you might question the sanity of sitting in a 200 degree sweat-room and then leaping into Lake Superior in the winter then back to the steam room and back to the lake … you get the picture. But there are those that give this exercise in the treatment of one’s body (that would likely violate the terms of the Geneva Convention) credit for their health and peace of mind.

What is missing from the article are the thousands of residents of this same area who quietly install small personal saunas on their property for much less than the $50,000 units that are discussed. Ordinary folk who just want to percolate themselves whenever they feel the need, and do so without spending a small fortune.

My first sauna experience was at the home of a friend of mine in high school. Mike’s parents were artists and their home couldn’t have been more different from that of my family of origin. His mother taught modern dance in the Twin Cities and his father was a sculptor and painter.

On learning that I’d never sauna-ed, Mike invited me for an evening when his parents happened to be throwing a party. Most of the other attendees were middle-aged inhabitants of a world unknown to me, but I knew I was not in Kansas any more when a slightly portly Lonnie (Mike’s father) walked through the crowd carrying a tray of hors d’ouevres and wearing nothing at all. Although I was slightly hungry, I declined to take a canapé, being unsure of the hygienics of the situation.

Mike then took me out back to the sauna, showed me where to leave my clothes, and I undressed and entered the steamy wood-scented room, where others had already gathered. Not accustomed to being in a completely nude environment with both men and women present, I found a piece of bench as far from the light as I could get. Although I was a curious 15 year-old, and would really have liked to look more carefully at the first nude adult females I had ever been that close to, I neither wanted to be seen or to be seen see-ing, so I hunkered over and stared at the wooden floor.

After what seemed to be an acceptable period of discomfort, I rose and left the room to find my clothing and resume normal existence. All in all, when looking back, I wish I had done things differently. Today I would take one of those canapés and think nothing of it.

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Like A Rolling Stone, by Bob Dylan

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Saturday evening: Just left the theater after viewing “A Complete Unknown.” The film rocked us both. Not a single disappointment and nothing but respect for the actors playing people that many of us grew up listening to and watching from a distance.

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Where To Start

jono55

Last night I started rereading the Tao te Ching for perhaps the third time. Each time I go through it I am given the gift of learning new things. Last night there was a quotation in the book’s foreword which contained information that I badly needed to read right now. Here’s the story.

Our next-door neighbor had a big Vote for Cluck sign on his garage door during the last campaign season and I put up a Harris/Walz sign in front of our house. We have not spoken since the big vote last November.

Post-election I have constituted myself as a large pile of resentment toward those who voted for the other guy. All sorts of negative adjectives run through my mind each time I think about it. All the way up to idiocy and treason. Actually, I go beyond even that and rain down vigorous calumnies on their ancestors as well, going back several generations to question the manliness of great-grandfathers and the virtue of great-grandmothers.

This needs to stop. I am making myself miserable to no purpose. But the self-righteous part of my brain tells me that by God I am right and that I should never forget that, and also that I am a much more moral person than all the rest of those b****rds put together.

So I have quite a lot to deal with, as you can see. It makes little difference that I am causing most of my own problems. They are still problems. And now in the middle of all this the Tao has made its move. Here is the quotation:

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand, this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.

One interpretation that (which is awfully tempting) is that I am the good guy and the superior being and if I could just get this man’s head scrooched around to where I could lecture him face-to-face all would be well.

Of course, there might be other interpretations. And then my thought is how does all this “teaching” really come about? Lecturing and the pounding of fists on desks (my default strategy)? No, somehow I suspect that the word humility is going to come in to play and when that happens resentment will have a harder time holding its ground.

Looks like I need to read further, I am obviously not yet one with everything.

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Hold On, by Tom Waits

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From The New Yorker

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I truly don’t know anyone else like Tom Waits. Writer, singer, actor, raconteur … you might say he has a way with words as the bare minimum, but I think that it goes further than that.

Mostly he tells stories, and the thing is that each one of them ends up feeling like part of my own story in some transmuted way. The particulars may not be different, but the universals are all there.

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When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.

Tom Waits

If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it’s good. I’m not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don’t cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don’t stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you’ll never see it again.

Tom Waits

Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop.

Tom Waits

Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You, by Tom Waits

When I was younger I bought into the idea of the suffering artist, with a glass of scotch in one hand and a dangling cigarette in the other. Becoming an attractive dissolute was my goal, and an early and “romantic” death was my clear endpoint. Like a male Camille but without the tuberculosis. The only problem was although I could and did learn to drink I wasn’t an artist at all. I wasn’t a musician but a guy who played records on a stereo. I read books but didn’t write any. I had become a periodic drunk without ever becoming charming.

So if I kept going I would just die in a very ordinary fashion, and no one would write precious stuff about me and how pure my heart was and how sad it was that a man with such talent perished so soon. I was wasting the single life I’d been issued.

So I quit.

Lots of good people stepped forward to give me a hand, and right at the head of that worthy and necessary bunch was a lady name of Robin. At some point I started to pay it forward, becoming one of a multitude helping to keep the doors open for the next person unsteadily weaving up the path to a rented room in the back of a church.

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From The New Yorker

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Looking For The Heart of Saturday Night, by Tom Waits

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Bang A Gong

jono55

As I unpacked the groceries a couple of days back I set aside the three small bags of mixed nuts in-the-shell. You know, the kind you struggle to break open without smashing the contents to smithereens, failing most of the time even on a good day.

And I mused.

The purchased mix was English walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, pecans, and Brazil nuts. With some trepidation based on years of dashed expectations, I picked up a nutcracker and had at a walnut. As I applied pressure to the arms of the tool the walnut suddenly shot out and hit the wall.

I had forgotten that while we have two nutcrackers, one of them is so lacking in all aspects of performance that what just happened was not actually a malfunction, it was what it does! Each year I think that I’ve thrown it away but then the next December rolls around and out pops the Nutcracker from Hell to darken one more day.

Here are the two crackers we own. The one on the right works beautifully. The one on the left is diabolic.

Apparently simply trashing it is not enough, it needs to be buried by someone acting quite alone and under a full moon. If a silver spade is handy it is the preferred practice, but if not a steel one will do the job most of the time.

The hole must be at least three feet deep, and the device buried face down. This is where things often go wrong because it is exceedingly difficult to tell the face from the back on a nutcracker.

In my childhood it was Grandpa Jacobson who put out the nuts to shell each year at Christmas, and I still attempt to maintain that tradition when I can. It is the reason I purchase these bags of frustration each year.

He would set them out in a bowl exactly like this one. I found this item on Etsy where you can purchase such a bowl for a measly $276.00. (I strongly suspect that Grandpa paid much less for his.)

In my family of origin, the only nuts occasionally found in the cupboard were walnuts used in baking, and salted peanuts for snacking. So the varieties offered at Christmas time were special.

But what was this? Here came the cosmic joke. These delicacies were not just be picked up , be amazed at, and then eaten. Nossir. You needed a tool to bring them out into the open. And even when the tool worked properly, you might have these problems to deal with:

  • the frequent mummified nutmeat, inedible and very sad-looking
  • the process of removing the nuts from their shells resulted in their being shattered 99% of the time
  • the shell fragments are sharp and pointy things of various sizes that find their way to the floor and would be discovered by barefooted early risers the next morning, producing much involuntary hooting followed by careful tweezering to remove them.

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Joy to the World, by Train

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Another sad article in the Times of New York on Thursday. The death rate from measles in the Congo is much higher this year than in the past, the reason unclear. The disease is epidemic there, not because of resistance to the idea of vaccines but because of problems with getting the highly effective preventative to the people in that beleaguered country. People who want their children protected but either have inadequate local medical resources or none at all.

Here in the U.S. we have a more than adequate supply of the measles vaccine, and enough medical personnel to get it to every child. The only problem is what is euphemistically called vaccine resistance. My own take is that it could be better named epidemic vaccine ignoramus syndrome. Parents who will summon their inner gullible and listen to an anti-science influencer peddling bad information, and in doing so place their children’s health and life at risk on either the flimsiest of grounds or no grounds at all.

The whole sorry mess doth make the blood boil in an ancient pediatrician’s breast. We were so close to eradicating this particular bit of nastiness from the world that it is appalling to watch what is happening out there now. I would like to see those influencers dealt with using the shouting fire in a crowded theater rule. Turn over their rock and somehow hold them responsible for the effects of spreading deluded misinformation. Perhaps make them pallbearers at the childrens’ funerals.

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Ravel: Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte, by Erich Appel, Oliver Colbentson

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Read a review today of a new film that sounded intriguing. When I reached the end of the piece I ran headlong into this paragraph:

Almodóvar’s films often explore doubles: mothers and daughters, pairs of lovers, twisted friends. “The Room Next Door” does the same, in several different registers, and I think that’s the point of the title. We cannot really know what another person is going through. Even if we follow Weil’s exhortation and ask, we’re incapable of fully inhabiting another person. We can’t live inside of them. The real act of friendship, of love, is to check on one another in the morning and make sure we’re still there. 

NYTimes: The Room Next Door

What that bit of writing meant to me is that living out here hundreds of miles from any metropolis as I do, I will not ever be able to walk into our local theater here in Paradise and watch the movie. It might not even make it as far as Grand Junction. Very thoughtful films with deep themes and deep characters just don’t sell enough tickets to be able to compete with the comic-book universe.

I went back through the review one more time and found absolutely no reference to superpowers, things being blown sky-high, or hyper-powered automobiles and their drivers being pitted against one another in meaningless confrontations. Don’t get me wrong, I am not whimpering about the situation but only describing a reality. I’ve met one of the theater owners and like him. I appreciate very much that occasionally he will bring a film to town that surprises me, and that the convenience of driving only a couple of miles to see it is gratifying. I also realize that showing films like “The Room Next Door” week after week would probably mean that the theater would not survive and even those rare surprises would go away.

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Every great once in a while when I am hiking a particularly beautiful stretch of trail above treeline I will break out into my butchered version of the following song. In doing so I embarrass my companions and alarm others we meet on the path. I can see those strangers checking their phones to see if there is cellular coverage in case I am coming down with trail rage.

I don’t care. It’s me and my inner Pavarotti and some mild hypoxia having a great time together.

The Happy Wanderer, by Frank Weir and his Orchestra

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Lastly, and because it is Christmas and all, I feel the need to make a confession. In 1958, when I was a stripling and completely devoid of anything approaching musical taste, I first heard the Harry Simeone Chorale version of “Little Drummer Boy” while piloting my 1950 Ford coupe on a nameless highway somewhere in Minnesota, probably on my way to doing something slightly illegal involving spiritus fermenti. The little fable and simple arrangement stayed with me, and I was not surprised when it later became a big hit, eventually joining that select list of tunes and carols that are played at Christmastime every year.

Here is the Chorale appearing on the Ed Sullivan show in 1959. Pretty, tasteful, melodic, serene.

Over time there were many many other artists who covered this song, most of them respectful of the original vibe, most of them not quite coming up to the original, IMHO. (But remember, devoid of musical taste). And then a few short years ago, these brothers came along, blew the song apart, restructured it, and had a hit on their hands. With modern stagecraft, enough percussion to be the background music for Sherman’s march through Georgia, and strobe lighting of the sort that brings on seizures, King and Country added their version to the canon.

Where does the confession come in? Well, my favorite version is still the original one by the Chorale. But there is a little militaristic and mindless part of me that can be sucked right up into a bit of bombast. So once each year I play King and Country for myself, watching the video on YouTube and listening on headphones, so that no one is aware of my solitary and shameful vice.

And I know I can count on you not to rat me out, right?

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Haiku, Winter

jono55

I have started to write the Great American Novel scores of times. Each effort was eventually scrapped. If I have any talent at all it seems to be in shorter pieces, essays, poems … the sort of meanderings found in this blog, for instance.

Which is why when I first came across haiku and bothered to learn something about it, I knew instantly that I was among friends. It was the economy of it all, the formalities, the natural themes that appealed to me. The Japanese must take all of the blame for starting me on this path. Traditionally haiku are three-lined poems, of 5-7-5 syllables per line. Most of those I selected today but the very last one are by Japanese masters of the art, but that 5-7-5 format did not survive translation.

To me, they are like photographs, whereas a novel might represent a movie. It’s not too hard to put myself or my experiences into the picture with haiku, which is part of its charm.

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When the winter chrysanthemums go,
There’s nothing to write about
But radishes.

Basho

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Song For A Winter’s Night, by Gordon Lightfoot

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Here,
I’m here—
The snow falling

Issa

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Going home,
The horse stumbles
In the winter wind.

Buson

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Colder Than Winter, by Vince Gill

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Cover my head
Or my feet?
The winter quilt.

Buson

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Winter solitude—
In a world of one color
The sound of wind.

Basho

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Winter, by Tori Amos

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Miles of frost –
On the lake
The moon’s my own.

Buson

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The snowstorm howling,
A cautious man treads upon
Bare and frozen earth

Anonymous

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Winter, by Peter Kater

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Some comments on the music –

Song for a winter’s night: there’s a cabin, a crackling fire, and a big ol’ down quilt to get under. We just have to find where Gordon put them all.

Colder than winter: I have experienced winters of the heart, and since I know that I am not unique, perhaps you have as well. Vince Gill never sounded better or more plaintive.

Winter: from Tori Amos’ first album, an exceptionally brave and talented young artist just getting her career underway.

Winter: yes, yes, of course Peter Kater is New Age-y as he can be, but it’s still a rather nice way to pass a few minutes. Remember how way back in those dim dark days (almost) beyond recall when your teacher in “music appreciation class” would put on a piece of music and ask that you imagine that it was snowing or raining or that the oboe’s voice was a duck quacking? Well … have at it.

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Meeting That Deductible

jono55

The assassin who murdered that health insurance CEO recently was caught at a McDonald’s in Altoona PA when another patron recognized him from online photos and called the police. Authorities now have the gun, the guy, and what seems enough evidence to bake him hard in court.

He might not come to trial for a year or two because if you are affluent enough you can spend quite a bit of time waiting for your case to come up as your legal teams place tire-puncturing devices across every road leading to you and prosecutors must clear them one at a time.

But there is still a question regarding this story that I’ve heard nothing about so far.

  • If a perfect stranger could look at a photo and pick him out instanter … where were all the people that he knew who didn’t do anything even when they saw his image on the evening news? All of his buddies and all of his family and all of his classmates in school … did even one of them make a call?

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The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

H.L. Mencken

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O Come All Ye Faithful, by James Bla Pahinui

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Somewhere along the way I realized that my social and moral education was improved more by listening to the stories told by oppressed peoples than those related by their oppressors. Nothing I have learned since that epiphanic moment has changed this outlook.

My early life was a sheltered one but in the 60s I became aware that not everyone in the USA was of Scandinavian ancestry. Well, I thought, there’s something to be learned here. So I bought some books, attended some lectures, listened to some blues and spirituals and ultimately decided that I was enlightened. I’ve got this, thought I, and it wasn’t all that hard.

Well, I didn’t have it, and still don’t. Intellectually I was able to go only so far on my own, and I have had to turn to others for help. That’s why a piece in Thursday’s NYTimes on Nikki Giovanni was so interesting. I knew of her, but had not read much of what she has written, so for me there was much to learn from this article.

But the real treat was a link to a video conversation between Giovanni and James Baldwin that was recorded in 1971. It was fascinating to see two brilliant people spend two hours talking about ideas. To argue respectfully as black intellectuals even as they each had to lean in from their respective sides in order to bridge a generation gap.

My personal needle felt it had moved an inch or two toward understanding when I had finished watching these videos. Maybe I’m wrong and I am just as obtuse as I was when I got up this morning, but I don’t think so. I may not ever know fully what it means to be black or red or brown or yellow, but I do believe that I can do human better than I have done in the past and that what I have just watched was one step moving in that direction.

Here are the links:

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On the Wings of A Nightingale, by The Everly Brothers

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Holy Highway 61 Revisited, Batman! I just watched a trailer for a film that comes out Christmas Day and while I know it likely won’t come to Paradise, which the pandemic turned from movie Heaven (sorta) to movie Limbo (pretty much), I will by God drive to see it when it comes within range. It’s called A Complete Unknown and is about a relatively short period in the life of a guy that we geezers grew up and old with. His name is Bob Zimmerman.

He might not have known at the time that he was writing the background music for our lives, but that’s what happened. Those lyrics of his … well … they won him a Nobel Prize. What territory do they cover? Not much, really, just human rights, civil disobedience, war, injustice, aging, grief, love, loss, Billy the Kid … and on and on. Not a bubble-gum piece in the lot.

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Saben the Woodcutter, by Gordon Bok

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As of Sunday morning Robin and I are gradually winning our battle against a virus as muscular as a microbial Hercules and as unpleasant as finding president-elect Cluck sleeping in the guest room would be.

Robin is her eighth day and I have as yet had only four days to whinge about my problems. Friday night I barely slept because my nose had become a raging cataract to the point where I could not lie horizontal and had to spend the night sitting up in Robin’s recliner.

We’ve also developed the sort of cough that makes anyone near us in the grocery aisle cross themselves and reach for their prayer beads.

This too shall pass, is what we tell ourselves between whoops and cringes. I have a suspicion that the culprit may be RSV, which is doing to me exactly what I saw it do to a thousand infants in a dozen hospitals. But although I may be ancient I have big lungs, unlike all those babies back then who struggled for days to catch their breath.

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Here’s Yawping At You

jono55

We have a middling sort of winter so far. Too chilly for outdoor summer sports, not enough snow for skiing or snowshoes. At least not nearby.

So what I do is sit inside and complain. I don’t like to brag, but I’m good at it … really good. In fact if there was a merit badge for kvetching I would have a chestful of honors. An international whining competition? Just hand me the first-place cup, buddy, and it will save us all a lot of time.

And that’s not because the competition is weak. Most people love to complain. It’s even expressed in our language. You know how Eskimos are supposed to have 50 words for snow because of its importance in their lives? In my online Merriam-Webster Thesaurus there are 55 synonyms for complain.

And some of them are the greatest words! A delight to any logophile! My typical day is when I get up in the morning, stretch a bit, and then begin the day with a good yawp, blubber, or caterwaul before breakfast. Couldn’t be off to a better start! Here is the list that Merriam-Webster provides:

Whine

Grumble

Bitch

Cry

Gripe

Nag

Inveigh

Wail

Bellyache

Beef

Yowl

Caterwaul

Grizzle

Crab

Yawp

Quarrel (with)

Lament

Bewail

Blubber

Scream

Mutter

Growl

Kvetch

Kick

Squawk

Holler

Grouse

Bleat

Fuss

Kick up a fuss

Carp

Grump

Yaup

Object (to)

Quibble

Fret

Deplore

Moan

Worry

Squeal

Whimper

Whinge

Murmur

Repine

Keen

Protest

Yammer

Kick up a stink

Grouch

Croak

Sob

Maunder

Cavil

Bemoan

Stew

There. Don’t you feel better knowing what a wealth there is available to you for use in such a good cause? (I especially like “deplore” because one uses it from a position of moral superiority, looking down the length of one’s nose.)

Notice that I called it a “good” cause. Think about it. Many of us have learned that our existence is not that fabled bed of roses. Things could be going along sweet as you please and suddenly a truck backs up and unloads a metric ton of horse excrement on your life.

This is where the usefulness of complaining comes in. It is something to do while you’re picking straw and other oddments out of your hair. It is a blow struck for sanity and survival when the world is just too much with us.

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Lo Siento Mi Vida, by Linda Ronstadt

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I’ve tried to recall just how old I was when my belief in Santa took the big hit. I was pretty young, maybe five or six years old … don’t know for certain. Thinking back I wonder why it took so long. After all, the presents had always borne tags that read: To Jack from Aunt Addie, or To Jack from Dad and Mom, etc. etc. None of them had ever said from Santa. I guess I was a slow learner.

Even when the myth was busted I do remember desperately wanting it to still be true. Sheesh. What a soft-headed little citizen was I.

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I had a sort of epiphany last night. Get to be old enough and you start going round for the second time in places. Like that old shirt that went out of style long ago but didn’t wear out and now it is just the thing once again. Last evening the realization that I was involved in yet another of those time circles was when I was getting ready for bed and I was just at that moment when the clothes of the day had been tossed aside but the flannel pajamas were not yet in place and much dermis was at the mercy of a very cool room.

When I was a child we did not have central heating in our home, but an oil burner in the kitchen that depended on air currents to distribute the warmth to other rooms. There were lots and lots of shivery rooms and corners under such an arrangement. But by my adolescent years we had left that all behind and now there was central heating, with shining ductwork carrying blessed warmth to all areas equally. Fuel was cheap, global warming as yet undreamt of, and our homes were toasty warm throughout the season. A person could hang out in their living room in January wearing a t-shirt and pair of shorts without risking chilblains or the loss of digits.

Which brings us to today, where our winters are being spent layered up in our own living rooms as if we were going walking to the mailbox a block away, as we keep cutting back on the thermostat settings to reduce expenses and be good citizens of a warming planet.

The French have a phrase that I think fits this phenomenon: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, which translates to – the more things change, the more they are the same. The French are really good at coming up with pithy phrases. Surely you remember that there was quite an excitement that accompanied this one: “Let them eat cake!”

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Long Way Around the Sea, by Low

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Rapturous

jono55

One day while I was wrestling myself into a more comfortable position in my reclining chair, I had some thoughts about the apocalypse. This happens all the time.

You may remember that it all begins with the rapture, when all the good folk are swooped up into Paradise, leaving the wretched refuse behind on earth to sort things out. Doesn’t sound like a good deal for many of us, myself included.

Now along comes Mr. Cluck, the eminent Bible scholar and Scripture salesman who is BFF to all conservative Christians as long as they are properly obeisant. To him, that is. He has amassed a large flock of people who fervently believe that he will save them from accidentally becoming what they fear most in life, being thought of as “woke.”

And I thought … what if we could somehow adjust the parameters of the rapture just the teensiest bit? If we could arrange that all those who voted for Cluck would be the ones inhaled and transported to Paradise or Limbo or wherever they are supposed to end up?

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I thought to myself, if that happened this country could then undergo some changes. So I started a list.

  • A very large number of billionaires would be gone. These folks really don’t make much of a positive contribution to America but they do have the habit of moving large chunks of money around which disrupts and sometimes ruins the lives of ordinary people. We’d not miss the chaos.
  • The loony-bin section of the gun owners of America would be suddenly absent, and perhaps we could at long last get something done in the area of firearms limitation to make all of our lives safer.
  • With the population suddenly cut by 40%, our national housing shortage would cease to exist.
  • Say goodbye to long lines at the DMV.
  • You could get a good campsite anywhere in the country with no problem, even without a reservation.
  • Fox News would dry up overnight as its customer base sailed away into the raptosphere. The network’s collection of gratingly inane voices would be blessedly absent from waiting rooms all over town.
  • Dialogues dealing with racism, climate change, gender equity (and many other topics) would no longer be thought controversial but instead as useful exercises in moving toward a more equitable and sustainable future for those who were left behind.
  • The Fascist population of the US would be reduced immediately to zero.

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Blue Christmas, by Low

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Well, another year has passed and I am still not making my own lefse. For those of you who aren’t sure what lefse is, it’s a particular sort of soft flatbread that Scandinavians of all types use to fill with anything in sight. Butter and sugar, mashed potatoes, leftover turkey stuffing … if it can be bent or squished, it can be rolled up into a piece of lefse. Think Norwegian burrito.

For a boy with Norwegian heritage, this inactivity is something akin to a mortal sin against the motherland. (It’s basically a given that I will never be allowed to enter Valhalla). Every December I think: Hey, I need to get one of those sets of lefse-making tools and get started. And then I go to the websites and find that today’s best price for a set is $222.51. And it is highly unlikely that it will arrive in time for the holidays.

So each year I decide to put off buying one until the following summer thinking that then I’ll have lots of time to practice before December rolls around. And each year I forget to do it.

It’s one of my longest-running holiday rituals.

So don’t expect anything from yours truly, but if someone more reliable offers you a piece of lefse to try you should accept it gratefully. There are commercial varieties occasionally available, but they retail for about a hundred dollars a pound, and although this stuff is tasty, nothing is that good.

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Magdalena, by Los Lobos

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From The New Yorker

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We have a new group of birds in the berm this morning. Now that our latest snowfall has melted away there are a handful of juncos picking up what’s been scattered on the ground.

They’re humble little creatures, quite happy to eat what falls from the plates of more fastidious birds. There is apparently no 5-second rule in junco-land. No matter how long a delectable has been down there it’s still fair game.

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A coward comes from behind, an armed man against an unarmed one, and kills him. The victim was the CEO of a health insurance company. The perpetrator has labeled the discarded cartridge cases to try to put a face of protest on his crime. But it is murder. There is no justification for such a crime.

The shooter has not been located or identified as yet, but there are presumptions being made that he felt wronged by the company and pursued his resentments to an extreme. Again, no justification. We can hope that the criminal will soon be apprehended.

On another hand entirely, health insurance is an industry whose members I have long believed should be forced by law to fly this banner, so as to reflect their true nature.

Anyone who has enough dealings with health insurers will eventually find themselves tearing the hair from their head and rending their garments. In my own contretemps with them it never occurred to me to shoot the s.o.b. on the other end of the phone conversation, but if they had been nearer to hand I might have pinched them good and hard.

We buy these policies to try to avoid bankruptcy when and if a major illness comes along. And at those times we too often find that instead of the insurance company supporting us, it backs quickly out of the room, salaaming as it leaves, all the while exclaiming “Not our problem.”

I can recommend an article in today’s New Yorker: What the death of a health-insurance C.E.O. means to America.

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Emily, by Los Lobos

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Happy Thoughts

jono55

I had a happy thought this morning. In just three weeks the hours of daylight will start increasing. More sunlight, less gloom … what’s not to like? Of course it’s a bit like getting a brighter bulb when you’re still living in the refrigerator, but hey – it’s a start.

I am reminded of the oft-uttered phrases:

  • It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
  • It isn’t that it’s cold, it’s a damp cold.

In both cases it is water vapor that is being blamed for all our troubles, rather than the obvious fact that the temperature levels may not be compatible with (comfortable) life.

Over the years I have made an exhaustive study of just what the optimal environmental temperature is for human beings. I will admit that my study sample is rather small, being limited to … me. But I believe my findings are still worthy of your consideration.

Summary of findings: the optimal room temperature is exactly 73 degrees Fahrenheit.

Anything above this and a human may suffer antiperspirant breakthrough. Anything below 73 and you’re wondering: where did I put that afghan, anyway?

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The Parting Glass, by boygenius

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From The New Yorker

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Flights of Sandhill cranes going by off and on all afternoon. Often so high you have to squint to see them, but that unique cronking sound is unmistakable. They are tidily and sensibly arranged in vee formations heading south.

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If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Lewis Carroll

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Day after day the bad odor of the yet-to-be-unleashed Cluck administration increases as it is almost entirely based on slavish loyalty and nepotism. I would describe the scent as fetid swamp mixed with hints of decay and limburger cheese.

And just when I was about to enter the state of high dudgeon over these awful Republican choices the leader of the Democratic party breaks his promise to us all and pardons his son.

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Mr. Biden and Mr. Cluck are showing us as clearly as they can that the problem with electing humans to office is to be continually disappointed. Where now is all of the posturing of either party about no person being above the law? If it weren’t for the fact that my computer sometimes behaves completely irresponsibly and illogically I would cry out: Bring on AI and the robots!

Ultimately it’s up to us, isn’t it? And we would so love to give that job to someone else while we plant our gardens and play a few more rounds of golf.* It isn’t distracted driving that’s the biggest problem out there, it’s distracted living.

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*Full disclosure here. I garden little and never played golf. I could have said go kayaking or hiking but then it would have applied to me, which I did not want it to do at all. I’m above all that. Really.

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Happy Christmas (War Is Over), by John Lennon

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From The New Yorker

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We’re getting on with the task of Christmas-izing the little space we call home. I would say we peaked in about the year 2000 or so with the amount of holiday decorations we placed about a much larger dwelling, and we have been divesting ever since. For example we’ve gone from something like thirty or forty Snow Village pieces to a modest five. From eight-foot decorated evergreen trees to 4 1/2 foot trees. We move the Buddha from his place on the berm and install statues of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus.

And presto! We’re done! To us the feeling is the same. Turns out that for us it’s not the size of the observance, but the observance itself that matters. Our plan is to be at home this year, and if there are others among our friends and neighbors who are doing the same we will see if we can’t get together for an evening or two.

So – three weeks till Christmas. I give myself carte blanche to bring out the holiday music each day until Robin exclaims: STOP WITH THE MUSIC ALREADY IT IS DRIVING ME MAD! At one time in our history together I had only purchased Christmas tunes to play, but now between Apple Music and Pandora I have access to enough new and old, profane and sacred, tacky and treasured Christmas music to choke the proverbial horse. Or, as in our case, to drive someone utterly mad.

I might even share some tunes here on this journal. BTW, I have never liked the term “blog.” Just saying the word makes me sound like I’m about to cough up something gross. Anyway, if the music starts to make you crazy, please indicate and I may or may not retreat.

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Oíche Chiúin, by Enya

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Alarum!

jono55

There are way too many alarmists working in the weather service. We were told to expect 1-2 feet of snow in the mountains above 8000 feet along with sub-zero temperatures. None of this sounded good to Robin and I as we tried to plan our Thanksgiving journey to Durango. We hunched over the weather app on my phone on Wednesday, waiting and watching, finally calling the pet sitter at mid-day to tell her “Game On.”

Predicted driving conditions

Our wills were in order, we had food for two days survival, enough warm clothing, and a reliable vehicle. We said our prayers and climbed into the Outback, looking tenderly at our little home for perhaps the last time. Off we went, anticipating treacherous patches of glare ice, hard drifts across the highway that could make you lose control, and trucks skating sideways right at us coming down a mountain two-lane road.

What we found was no snow at all on 99.4 % of the road, and temperatures in the thirties. The countryside was beautiful under a couple of inches of new and trackless snow. It was a breeze.

Actual driving conditions

I tried to imagine the home life of those prognosticators, how each flutter of a leaf or errant drop of moisture must send them into fearful spasms where they rush their families into basements or attics, handing out stored hardtack when their little ones cried out from hunger.

Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once.

William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar

I’m looking for a hive of valiant meteorologists. Growing less interested in what the Chicken Little variety has to say.

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Elon Musk is naming people that he might recommend to be fired when the new administration takes over. Naming people might be thought of as reckless of life (by uncharitable folks like me) when he and his new orange BFF have a large following of blackshirts and brownshirts who like nothing better than than to be given an excuse to hit people.

The richest man in the world publicly picking on ordinary citizens … anybody see a problem here?

Where’s my dictionary … let’s look under “bully” … ahhh … there we are. Perhaps that should be the name of his Musk’s new quasi-official-department: The Office of Cravens.

He fits right in with his new pal, President-elect Bonespurs.

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(Ran across a line from this poem, and just had to look it up.)

When Great Trees Fall

by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory,suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die
and our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

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There are those who speak our language, this English we trample on and murder daily, in such a way as to ennoble it. Or perhaps to show how innately noble our mother tongue really is. Maya Angelou had one of those voices. Each syllable ringing clearly as any bell. No mumbling. No idiosyncratic elisions. Poetry.

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If We Make It Through December, by Phoebe Bridgers

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So it is December. I must now join the consumer herd in search of some small remembrance for a handful of people. It is a dangerous thing, this entering a large and crazed group of people which has already been in motion for at least a month now. The herd slavers as it passes, every pupil dilated, every nostril flared, every breath labored. They have only just left one of the seemingly endless Black Fridays behind, and are looking desperately over their shoulders at signs reading: Only (X) shopping days till Christmas.

I will do my duty. I am no shirker. If overconsumption is required of me, overconsume I will. I am a full-blooded American, after all, and once I am galloping with the rest of the swarm it pays onlookers to be cautious of those sharp hooves and horns!

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Riding Off From It

jono55

DISCLAIMER

I don’t do jokes on this blog, mainly because I can’t tell jokes very well and often leave my listener scratching their head and wondering just what it was that was supposed to be funny. But for some reason, the story of the Scottish Regimental Sergeant Major that I first heard sixty years ago is an exception to those woeful facts. For one thing, I remember the whole joke (amazing). For another, when I tell it in conversation I can bring to bear what I believe to be an absolutely irresistibly humorous Scottish accent. ( I summon my inner Billy Connolly). All of this is to preface an off-color joke which might offend tender sensibilities, and for that I apologize in advance.

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A Scottish Regimental Sergeant Major in full dress marches into a drugstore and asks for the pharmacist. The Sergeant opens his waist pouch and pulls out a neatly folded cotton bandanna, opening it to reveal a smaller silk square which he unfolds to reveal a severely battered condom.

“How much for repair?” the Sergeant Major asks the pharmacist.

“Six pence,” he replies.

“How much for a new one?”

“Ten pence.”

The Sergeant Major folds the condom into the silk square and the cotton bandana, places it in back in his kit bag and marches down the aisle and out the door.

Next day the Sergeant Major walks back into the drugstore and asks for the same pharmacist. He pulls out the folded cotton 
bandanna, then opens the smaller silk square which once again reveals the ill-used bit of latex. He then declares:

“The regiment votes for repair.”

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Having mentioned Billy Connolly, I feel obliged to share one of my favorite bits of his, taken from a concert in New York.

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One of my daughters once said that in our family when something bad happened you were given 5 minutes to grieve, and then you had to make a joke about it.

It’s true that there have been times that my discomforts whenever I have come face to face with the appalling in life made me into a stuffer, someone who puts his feelings away until there is a more convenient time to deal with them. Being a time which may or may not ever come along. I do that less now at this season of my life, but a lifetime of such putting-things-off is not an easy habit to break off completely.

This clip from Lonesome Dove illustrates pretty well what I’ve been talking about. A boy dies of snakebite while on a cattle drive, and his compañeros are burying him. As Woodrow F. Call says, the best thing to do with death is to “ride off from it.”

And there are times when “riding off from it” is necessary. In another time and place when I found myself (believe it or not) in charge of running codes on children who had arrested, my mind all on its own would click into a cool and quiet groove where the alarmed and frantic behaviors of those around me were only static, and what I needed to do was laser-clear to me. There was a need to bring order to this clamor and I took that as my role. The other personnel in the room needed to be rapidly given assignments without raising their panic level, and I found that I could do that.

Finding that I had this facility came to be a useful thing in my emergency room work. Looking back, though, I can see where a problem gradually developed in that I began to apply it to everyday life, in relationships and situations where it wasn’t appropriate or constructive.

Because sometimes the best thing is not to “ride off from it,” but to sit down and weep. Not in some vague tomorrow but right then, on that very chair in front of you. With friends, if you are fortunate.

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Took a longish drive on Monday to Basalt CO, to the Steadman Orthopedic Clinic, for consultation on a bunion. You know, one of those foot things where for no good reason your big toe decides to go off and do its own thing.

.It’s one more case of life’s attempts at humor which falls flat. Life isn’t very good at humor, actually, being much more adept in the role of sorrow-bringer or day-screwer-upper. We met a very pleasant surgeon who was not completely full of himself, which I have found to be quite an unusual thing. He was an excellent communicator as well, and what he communicated was that if possible he would like to avoid surgery altogether, but if it became necessary how that would be accomplished. We left the clinic with a plan and we’ll see how things go from here.

En route we saw three small herds of antelope pronghorns, each group containing about twenty individuals. It’s been several years since we’ve seen even one, so it was a banner day in that department. Some light snow had been predicted, which did not materialize.

We stopped in Grand Junction on the way home to do some shoe shopping that the surgeon had suggested, and visited the Mesa Mall to do just that. It was like stepping back into 1980, because here was a vibrant mall with a great many stores (and nearly completely absent those ghostly empty stores), a bustling food court, and gaggles of teenaged girls wandering about in what seemed aimlessness, but was probably not. There were teenaged boys as well, and one sturdy group of four walked by us as we consumed some fast-food Chinese cuisine, all four young men being tall and strong and wearing identical haircuts.

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Each year at this time I try to find a particular table grace of Garrison Keillor’s and I fail to do so. What I do succeed at finding each year is yet another prayer that cuts through the gourmandic fog of the day. Here is this year’s.

O, heavenly Father, we thank thee for food and remember the hungry. We thank thee for health and remember the sick. We thank thee for friends and remember the friendless. We thank thee for freedom and remember the enslaved.

There are so many people on this planet that it is quite likely that somewhere in the world there is a man who was born on the same exact day that I was and at exactly the same hour and minute. He may be living halfway across the globe and have had the hardest of lives, such trials that if I knew them they would make my own problems seem positively trivial. In this season of Thanksgiving I think of him and my wish is that in the years to come the blessings would be distributed more evenly between he and I.

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Thank You For A Life, by Kris Kristofferson

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Moving On

jono55

A bit about our family story. Every family has its tales, and this one is about geography. I moved from Michigan to South Dakota with my former wife and four kids. This was in 1980. Within seven years all had fled the state but me. My children ended up in a variety of places, including Minnesota, North Carolina, Missouri, China … but none of them anywhere near where I was living.

After a few years of bachelorhood I married Robin, and took up residence with her and her three children. Robin was 11 years my junior, so her children were still in school in Yankton SD. But within a decade that trio had also packed up and left, this time headed for Colorado.

Robin and I had good friends in South Dakota, so stayed right where we were. Until a new crop of grandchildren started to appear, that is, who were all out there in the Rockies. Eventually those small creatures proved to be very powerful magnets, strong enough to draw us out to the mountains. We triangulated and chose to live between these pockets of kids, who were located in Denver, Steamboat Springs, and Durango. The closest to us was a 2.5 hour drive, the furthest was 6 hours away.

Today those grandchildren live in North Carolina, California, and Texas, with only one still here in the Columbine state. That last survivor is still in high school, so who knows where she might choose to settle once she graduates? It’s a common story of familial mobility, with nobody presently living anywhere near where they grew up, including Robin and I. There is no “old home place” for anyone of us to return to, except for the one we carry with us in our minds. Our blended family empire now stretches from Washington DC to Walnut Grove, California. Making in-person contact with everyone, every year, has not been always been possible, especially as the years pile on.

But I do have some small sense of what those mothers and fathers felt long ago as they watched their children walk up gangplanks onto ships that would take them to the New World, when the possibility of never seeing them again was always present. Those wharfside moments must have been some serious tug on the heart.

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Wooden Ships, by Crosby, Stills, and Nash

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Some new birds showed up on the berm in our front yard this week. I identified them as a pair of lesser goldfinches. Very pretty coloration, although not quite as showy as the variety of goldfinches who came to our feeders in South Dakota. They were picking through the dried heads of the black-eyed Susans for seeds that other birds had missed.

Jabbering clouds of yellow, green, and black Lesser Goldfinches gather in scrubby oak, cottonwood, and willow habitats of the western U.S., or visit suburban yards for seeds and water. These finches primarily eat seeds of plants in the sunflower family, and they occur all the way south to the Peruvian Andes.

All About Birds

(The black eyed Susans we saw them chomping on out front are in the sunflower family, just like the book says they should be.)

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Drift Away, by Dobie Gray

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From The New Yorker

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One of the joys of streaming television is locking on to a program that enriched you in some way, and then being able to revisit it down the road whenever you want to. Taking the same lessons away that you originally did, or finding new ones because you are not the same person you were then.

Robin and I are revisiting Call The Midwife. A series that ran for 13 years. One of those rarities where you could believe in all of the characters as they grew older or grew up. It begins in London, in a neighborhood named Poplar. A part of town that is about as far from posh as you can get.

A small group of nuns operate a public health nursing/midwifery service, being assisted by young female nurses who are laity. Many other characters round out an excellent ensemble.

The timing of the series begins in 1957, when the last of the rubble from WWII has barely been cleared away. There are sentimental stories mixed in with large doses of the profound grittiness that is life in Poplar. None of them rings false. Some nights, like last night’s episode about the harms perpetrated by the old London workhouse system, can be a hard watch, actually.

The people who put this series together did their research. Seeing what was available as medical/nursing care in 1957 in a poverty-stricken area and watching this evolve over more than a decade was very engaging for me.

It’s a series where no one is omniscient and mistakes are sometimes made, but the major characters have one thing in common, and that is devotion to helping people. The show has a beating heart.

On Netflix.

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Rank Stranger, by Crooked Still

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From The New Yorker

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Oh me, oh my. The company that kept me alive for five years has gone under. Is kaput. Those yellow trucks will no longer be rolling up rural driveways bringing real food to malnourished bachelors. I am, of course, talking about the Schwan’s company.

When my first wife had taken her Le Creuset cookware and moved on to better things, I found myself in a medium large house with a full kitchen but without the will to cook anything. I gave up on meal planning altogether and allowed the package to determine what supper was going to be. One of my favorite dodges was to buy a package of hot dogs and eat that every evening until it was gone. Eight dogs in a package eaten at the rate of two dogs a night meant that four days were covered. I was not fool enough to believe that I was eating healthily, since I knew that one cannot live on fat and pig lips alone, but that reckoning was for some future day and I was hungry right now.

Bread would go moldy, anything in the fridge in Tupperware became a culture medium for some of the most colorful fungi I have ever seen. Works of art, really. I had acquired a microwave oven for the first time, but had not taken the time to learn how to use it properly. It worked well for heating water, but when I would put anything that was meat into it what came out was more suitable for making shoes than for eating.

And then I discovered Schwan’s. An entire yellow truckful of deliciousness would show up in my driveway and all I had to do was to pick out what I wanted and give the man some money.

No waste, no steady streams of hot dogs, no interesting growths in the refrigerator. Instead I could eat chicken cordon bleu and it was pretty darn good for frozen food. Plus I now found something to do with that microwave sitting useless on the counter.

So I experienced a tender moment this morning when I read about the company’s struggles over the past decades, and their painful decision to retire the fleet. If it means anything to them, I am here typing this only because they fed me when I was a man in need.

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Byte Me, Universe

jono55

Before Apple’s Macintosh came out, I had no interest in puttering around with personal computers at all. They seemed perfect nerd fodder, with their dark screens and blinking green cursors. Who cared?

Then one day in 1984 I wandered into Team Electronics in Yankton SD and there was a new Macintosh sitting on a table with a sign that said “Try Me.” So I did. All I had to do was find out that there was such a thing as cut and paste to make me realize that for anyone who needed to write this was a magical tool.

So I bought one. And I installed it on a table on the lower level of our home where I could explore its possibilities without being in the way of normal household activity. I wrote letters, wrote poetry, fiddled with MacPaint to create primitive graphics … a kid in the proverbial candy store was I.

One evening, after I had been working on a talk I was going to give at a staff meeting, I was looking over the several pages I’d created for typos, when my son came down the stairs and flicked a light switch. At that moment I discovered two things. One, that the outlet my Macintosh was plugged into was controlled by that switch, and two, that when the Mac went dark all that precious writing went away. Forever. I had not yet learned to save as I wrote because I didn’t know you needed to. Who could imagine a machine that would take your hard work and allow it to vanish?

For a few frantic minutes I couldn’t believe that my stuff was gone. I read through the computer’s manual several times looking for some loophole, some place within its CPU where that speech still existed, and all I had to do was figure it out. At long last I gave up and gave in. Rather than go look for a shotgun to deal with the problem directly, I resolved to save and save and save my work from then on. Whenever I purchased new software I looked to see if auto-save was a feature or not. If it was, the sale was made.

There were other smaller and less dramatic losses to come before I truly learned my lesson, but that first one was the mind-bender, my “I can’t believe it” moment. Even today when I think back on that moment, I can see where my sense of how the universe should be ordered was disturbed. And in my perfect universe several hours of one’s work did not disappear at the flick of a switch.

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Loser, by Beck

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I used to have a friend who was paranoid-ish. He didn’t own a credit card of any kind, being suspicious that there were people out there who would steal his money. He owned a computer but used it basically as a large calculator/paperweight, since it was never connected to the internet. He worried that someone might get inside his head and he had no intention of letting that happen.

And that was in a much more innocent time, 40 years ago. He and I have lost touch, and I can’t help but wonder what he thinks today of social networking, online banking, and sexting. Must be hard for him to sleep at night, worrying about someone breaking into his home and surreptitiously connecting him to an ISP without his knowledge or permission. It would be a new sort of cyber-crime, in that they don’t take anything the night they enter your home, but over the years to come you are electronically whittled down to poverty and insignificance.

Because once you turn that sucker on and hit that first clickbait screen telling you to come see the 100 most vicious dog breeds owned by 100 of the worst actors of all time, you have a 50/50 chance of disappearing forever into bogus-land.

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I have what might charitably be called irregular sleep habits. Robin and I retire early, as befits persons of our seasoning, but I am usually up again before midnight. Then there will be a variable period of hours where I completely waste my time using the internet as my tool of choice, next it’s back to sleep once again, then awakening before 0400, when I finally decide I’ve had enough of this circus and just get up.

This morning during the internet phase I got it into my head that I wanted to listen to the song Terrapin Station, by the Grateful Dead. And I wanted to listen to the very best version of the song. So I posed that question to the cloud, and while there was not unanimity, the version played at a concert at the Swing Auditorium on February 26, 1977 kept coming up.

This morning during the internet phase I got it into my head that I wanted to listen to the song Terrapin Station, by the Grateful Dead. And I wanted to listen to the very best version of the song. So I posed that question to the Cloud, and while there was not unanimity, the version played at a concert at the Swing Auditorium on February 26, 1977 kept coming up.

.

On Amazon the triple CD of the concert containing the “album only” cut was priced at $135.00, which was not a budget item that I had submitted for approval, so I searched further and found the song once again at the Internet Archive, where it could not be downloaded legally. And yet here it is now for your listening pleasure. Don’t judge me.

Terrapin Station, by the Grateful Dead

After I was done messing around with all of the above electronic stuff, I got up to stretch my legs and found that a beautiful light snow had fallen. Only a fraction of an inch, but enough to make the world pure white. Trackless.

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BTW. The world of the Grateful Dead is not one to enter without a guide. They have released more than 200 albums, mostly live concert recordings, and there is quite a bit of variability in sound quality and occasionally the enthusiasm of the musicians. Fortunately the Deadheads have not all died off as yet, and they are out there vigorously commenting on each band on each album.

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Music Hath Charms …

jono55

Students … STUDENTS! Take your seats, please. I am about to expostulate right in front of everyone (an act that is a misdemeanor in at least four of the red states , and a felony in two).

My statement for the morning is this. There are rock songs that are as worth studying as some pieces of classical music are, for they are every bit as intricate and complex.

Now I can already see a few haughty noses being raised in the back row there, those of you of privileged breeding who regard such suggestions as being quite preposterous. Must I remind you of the quotation from the philosopher Herbert Spencer:

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which can not fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance-that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

There. I’ve had my say. And now a musical example is provided by Jason Isbell and his band The 400 Unit. To begin with it’s an interesting ballad, but listen carefully to the long break after the second verse. Themes rise and fall, guitars move in and out, percussion waxes and wanes. What is this if not the rock and roll equivalent of chamber music?

Dreamsicle, by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

There will be a quiz on Friday next. Bring your Air-Pods.

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From The New Yorker

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If you accept ovo-lacto-vegetarianism as a thing, I have slowly moved to where I am about 95% vegetarian. Reasons? Health concerns, curiosity, economy … all of these have played their part. But the final straw (or straws) has been the cumulative addition of one horror story after another about how that piece of beef or pork or chicken made its way to my plate. The awfulness of that industry … if you would ask me why it took me so long to get to this point, my answer would probably be twofold, sloth and unwillingness to change.

I have no excuse. I read The Jungle as a teenager. During the ensuing decades since that eye-opener I’ve seen one documentary after another on the meat industry and felt shame each time when I was done viewing.

All of my life I have been picking up bits of knowledge about what it means to be a sentient being, and what our duties and responsibilities toward the rest of the animal kingdom might be. But my eating patterns remained largely unchanged.

So about that remaining 5%? Well, that’s my personal hypocrisy score, I guess. It’s a better number than it was a decade ago, and I confess there are many other areas of my existence where that score would be higher. Slow learner, moi.

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From The New Yorker

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I’ll Fly Away, by Ian Siegal

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Less than two weeks now until we celebrate the national holiday in support of obesity. The only one of the bunch where eating large quantities of food is the whole point. Oh, there are brief mentions here and there about being grateful and giving thanks and all that, but otherwise the articles dealing with Thanksgiving are mostly about recipes.

If I were to decide that each day for the rest of my life I would eat nothing but turkey stuffing, I am almost certain that I would not run out of instructions for preparing variations of these dishes until I was over the age of 125.

And by that time my bloodstream would be 50% creamery butter, I would likely weigh over 600 pounds and when I died I would have to be cremated with a flamethrower. If you Google overeating on turkey day, you will be inundated with suggestions as to how to avoid things like food coma, GI reflux emergencies, and trips to the emergency room for tryptophan overdose.

So you can see how far we’ve come from the first Thanksgiving where the Pilgrims sat down to platefuls of succotash and were grateful for not being dead of starvation, exposure, and disease.

I have my own gratitude list that I compiled some time ago, and keep amending from time to time. It is much like the Pilgrim’s might have been. Grateful for the roof over my head, clothing enough to keep me warm this winter, and food enough for the day. Grateful for the friends that I have now and have had over a considerable lifetime.

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Observations on what has transpired since the recent election. I have my own conspiracy theory which is no more crackpot than many others that are circulating. I think that it is possible that the leaders of North Korea, China, and Russia got together and decided that instead of continuing to amass nuclear arsenals and build up armies against the USA they would do what they could to get Donald Cluck elected to office. It was a far cheaper and more effective approach, knowing that he would appoint one incompetent after another, deliberately sow chaos and disunion in his own government, and undermine agencies, institutions, and programs that had been effective in promoting safety and stability for generations.

It was a genius idea, and we are seeing it play out daily in the media. Half of the country is still gloating in his re-election even as he is busily sawing a leg from the very stool they are standing on.

I would find it hard to feel sorry for them if they ever realize their error and the great national harm of which they have been a part. In fact, I will probably haul out my trusty “I TOLD YOU SO!” and use it as a club to lay about me at will.

I am nothing if not petty.

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Here is where I would like to spend eternity. At the World Cheese Awards. This year there were 4786 entries from 47 countries at the event. It was held in Portugal and the winner was a Portuguese cheese described thusly:

Made with vegetarian rennet created from thistles, the winner is described as a gooey, glossy, buttery cheese with a herby bitterness that’s typically served by slicing off the top and spooning out the center.

CNN Online, November 16

“Slicing off the top and spooning out the center” … have you ever read a more beautiful line in your life?

The photograph below was taken of the judging floor, and ( I am choking up just thinking about it ) those tables are filled with the best cheeses in the entire (bleeping) world. I mean, really, what wouldn’t I have done to get there? To get a chance to wear one of those tan coveralls I might not have killed, but I would certainly have bruised.

The Director of the Guild of Fine Food, which puts on the show, described the atmosphere:

Gathering thousands of cheeses at room temperature under one roof inevitably produces an intense aroma. “It’s very punchy,” is how John Farrand, managing director of The Guild of Fine Food, the contest’s UK-based organizer, described the atmosphere at the event.

CNN Online

So probably not for everyone. I have known people who swooned from the aroma of a single well-aged chunk of Roquefort unveiled at a party.

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That Smell, by Lynyrd Skynyrd

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It’s In The Book

jono55

Something very pleasant happened to me recently, and it had to do with my birthday. I was given the gift of a book. A physical book with pages and a spine and everything. How long has it been since that happened? I can’t remember the last time.

There was a time when it was normal and to give gifts of books and music. Pleasing on both ends of the transaction. Any excuse to through the stores that sold such things was appreciated. And spending money on such luxuries was not extravagance but a noble gesture …. because I was going to give it away. Win – win.

With books, it was the Kindle and its clones. Not only were the books generally cheaper, but you had access to a gazillion titles. And on a cold and rainy day when you didn’t want to get out of bed you could simply click “Purchase” and the book would magically wing its way through space and land exactly on that small device in your hand. But giving somebody an e-book … the magic is diluted, if not absent.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle. Why, I can carry hundreds of books with me when I travel, and who doesn’t need such a library when stranded in a Super 8 on a snowy night in Nowhere, USA?

But this new actual book that I was given … I am savoring it … turning pages … inserting bookmarks … what’s not to love about “old school?”

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It’s In The Book, by Johnny Standley

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Touch the Hand of Love, by Renee Fleming and YoYoMa

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Reading can be hazardous to your health. Every time I do a little bit of it, I can’t wait to run and tell somebody about what I’ve learned. In that I am much like the average four year-old.

This time it is once again something from the book The Animal Dialogues, and it was in the chapter dealing with pronghorns.

For a good part of my life I called them antelope, and even when I learned that this was not the proper terminology I wasn’t curious enough to pursue the obvious question – if they aren’t antelope, what the heck are they? When I finally did, I found that they weren’t anything in the world but … pronghorns.

Their genus, Antilocapra, belongs to no other species in the world but the pronghorn, endemic to North America. Since they are technically not antelope, and their genus is solitary, the pronghorn is the sole animal of its genetic kind in the world.

Craig Childs, The Animal Dialogues, p. 176.

We have seen them occasionally here in Paradise when we drive to Grand Junction, along Highway 50. But not as often as we would like, perhaps a sighting every couple of years or so. They can survive in what looks to us like the most unpromising rangeland.

The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, being built for maximum predator evasion through running. The top speed is dependent upon the length of time over which it is measured. It can run 56 km/h (35 mph) for 6.5 km (4 mi), 68 km/h (42 mph) for 1.5 km (1 mi), and 88.5 km/h (55 mph) for 800 m (0.5 mi). Although it is slower than the African cheetah, it can sustain top speeds much longer than cheetahs. The pronghorn may have evolved its running ability to escape from now-extinct predators such as the American cheetah, since its speed greatly exceeds that of all extant North American predators.

Wikipedia: Pronghorn

Imagine that. Not only could the pronghorn outrun those cheetahs, they outlasted them in the evolutionary story. Today there’s nothing left in North America that can keep up with them.

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Veteran’s Day came and went as always. Thank you for your service has become as frequent and almost as meaningful as other common phrases like I know just how you feel or thoughts and prayers. I always nod when it is said to me, even though I feel somewhat of an impostor. My military service consisted of putting on the uniform, setting aside two years of my life from my civilian career, and then going to work in a safe and comfortable environment. At no time during those two years was I in any danger greater than is encountered by anyone driving on an average American highway.

So those of us who were in the Armed Forces are not all heroes, no matter how many florid speakers on how many platforms proclaim the converse. Most of us worked far away from the sound of guns and bombs and cries of the wounded. The men and women who do that are true exemplars, but unfortunately at parades and public functions where we put on our uniforms we all look the same.

Yesterday I was listening to a discussion on PBS as to who soon-to-be-president Cluck would choose as his military advisers, since nearly all of the generals in his previous term came to detest and distrust him and have clearly said so in the past several years.

The speakers were talking about the ethos of a company of men and women who are going into danger. They must trust their leaders and their fellow warriors, and also must share the intangible ideals of sacrifice and honor. Such a unit cannot function well without all of these.

Our newly elected leader knows nothing of either sacrifice or honor. In his public statements over the past dozen years he has shown that he has little understanding of or respect for the men and women in the military, except as they can be a source of profit, as in his statement “We should have taken the oil.”

So technically speaking I am a veteran, but nowhere near a hero, not even on the same page with them. I did make small sacrifices, and I do know something about honor. I like to think that I would not have behaved badly had I been put into a combat area, but of course I have no way of knowing, and unless they start drafting octogenarians for combat work I will never find out.

So when I am thanked for my service I nod acceptance, because it is easier than going into a harangue like the one you have just been subjected to. But I do know the difference.

So to all of those who did the heavy lifting while I walked through my tour of duty in Omaha, Nebraska, a sincere thank you for your service.

.

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A moving scene from a fine movie – From Here To Eternity. Robert E. Lee Prewitt plays the bugle call Taps in honor of a friend who was killed. Something about these twenty-four notes has the power to halt people in whatever they are doing until the last one is played.

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Good Mourning, America

jono55

Wednesday morning we woke to find that two very different things had happened during the night. One of them was ugly, and the other beautiful.

Let’s do the ugly first. A man convicted of multiple felonies including sexual assault, and who is a racist, fascist, and bottomless liar was elected president of our unfortunate country yesterday. Those of us who are not Cluck-cult members are walking around humming dirges to ourselves.

Now for the beautiful. Several inches of snow fell, warm wet stuff that covers everything, including the plants on the berm in the front yard. Around breakfast time dozens of tiny birds appeared and were busying themselves in the dried foliage, eating seeds or bugs or whatever it is that they were seeking. They were all the same species, with olive coloration on their backs, white bars on their wings, and they were between a hummingbird and a chickadee in size. Because they were flitting about so much it was impossible to do an accurate count. But there were dozens.

I took a photo of the area, and there are five birds included in the photograph above. I identified them as ruby-crowned kinglets. Not rare sightings, but not everyday occurrences, either. They were sooo busy.

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Snow, by Gustavo Santaolalla

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Wednesday evening we had friend Rod over for dinner and a movie. Dinner was two new recipes, an instant pot chili and a cornbread (from scratch) cooked in cast iron.The film chosen was The Fisher King, which is an oddly satisfying movie. It’s a gritty fantasy and not every viewer becomes a fan. The cast is excellent, with Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruehl, Jeff Bridges, and Amanda Plummer all doing good work.

Ruehl won an Oscar for her role, and Jeff Bridges does the truest portrayal of a shit-faced drunk that I’ve seen on film. He is by turns pathetic and disgusting, which, if you’ve ever seen such a person, is accurate.

The director is Terry Gilliam, who was once a member of the Monty Python troupe, and that sensibility is layered everywhere in the movie. It is one of Robin’s lifetime favorite films.

[BTW. The food was awfully tasty on a cold and snowy evening. Two winning recipes. Comfort food for the end of an uncomfortable day.]

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City of New Orleans, by Steve Goodman

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Thursday morning, after a seven inch snowfall and the coldest night of the year so far, hundreds of Sandhill cranes got up and took off for the south land. They flew over our home, making that croaking call that would be quite at home in the soundtrack of Jurassic Park X.

Beautiful in flight. Dramatic in voice.

I have to smile when our local media calls Thursday’s precipitation a “snowstorm.” As tough and resourceful as the mountain people are, they obviously do not know a snowstorm from a soft taco. What we had was a snowfall. At no time was driving visibility impaired, commerce interrupted, or lives threatened.

No, a snowstorm is when you grip the steering wheel of your automobile so tightly you leave a mark. When you try to remember where you put your will, and hope that the kids will find it. When you navigate by following the white lines in the middle of the road because looking forward is pretty much useless. No, we didn’t have a snowstorm. Not even close.

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From The New Yorker

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I’ve been corresponding with various scholars, scientists, and other potentates over the past couple of years. I am trying to find the original blueprints for the human body.

Having come this far in life, I have dozens of ideas for improvements, but have failed to achieve an introduction to whoever is in charge to begin to re-work this troublesome and flawed corpus. I can only assume that it was an early prototype that was somehow released to the world before it could be properly finished.

For instance, and I realize that this is a trivial example, but there is the problem of hair on the human body. For nearly fifty years our body hair remains in roughly the same locations. And then the gloves come off and each hair regards itself as an independent agent free to wander about wherever it wishes.

Women get mustaches, men go bald at the same time forests grow from their ears, and there are four of those rebellious hairs who have settled on the tip of my nose perhaps hoping to one day rival the rhino’s horn.

Well, I’m not having it, and I know that with a modicum of genetic engineering we could do away with the entire circus. I just need to get to the right people.

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[The beautiful header photograph is not one that I took, but is from this site.]

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Special Edition

jono55

[I have taken a great liberty here, but Robert Reich’s piece in The Guardian today speaks to perhaps millions of Americans who are standing around wondering what our next move should be. Here is the piece, along with a link to it in its original location.]

A Peaceful But Determined Resistance to Trump Must Start Now

by Robert Reich, from The Guardian

I won’t try to hide it. I’m heartbroken.  Heartbroken and scared, to tell you the truth. I’m sure many of you are, too. Donald Trump has decisively won the presidency, the Senate, and possibly the House of Representatives and the popular vote, too.

I still have faith in America. But right now, that’s little comfort to the people who are most at risk.

Millions of people must now live in fear of being swept up by Trump’s cruel mass deportation plan – documented immigrants, as he has threatened before, as well as undocumented, and millions of American citizens with undocumented parents or spouses.

Women and girls must now fear that they’ll be forced to give birth or be denied life-saving care during an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.

America has become less safe for trans people – including trans kids – who were already at risk of violence and discrimination.

Anyone who has already faced prejudice and marginalization is now in greater danger than before.

Also in danger are people who have stood up to Trump, who has promised to seek revenge against his political opponents.

Countless people are now endangered on a scale and intensity almost unheard of in modern America.

Our first responsibility is to protect all those who are in harm’s way.

We will do that by resisting Trump’s attempts to suppress women’s freedoms. We will fight for the rights of women and girls to determine when and whether they have children. No one will force a woman to give birth.

We will block Trump’s cruel efforts at mass deportation. We will fight to give sanctuary to productive, law-abiding members of our communities, including young people who arrived here as babies or children.

We will not allow mass arrests and mass detention of anyone in America. We will not permit families to be separated. We will not allow the military to be used to intimidate and subjugate anyone in this country.

We will protect trans people and everyone else who is scapegoated because of how they look or what they believe. No one should have to be ashamed of who they are.

We will stop Trump’s efforts to retaliate against his perceived enemies. A free nation protects political dissent. A democracy needs people willing to stand up to tyranny.

How will we conduct this resistance?

By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.

We will ask other Americans to join us – left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.

But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.

We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation – rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights.

The preamble to the constitution of the United States opens with the phrase “We the people”, conveying a sense of shared interest and a desire “to promote the general welfare”, as the preamble goes on to say.

We the people will fight for the general welfare.

We the people will resist tyranny. We will preserve the common good. We will protect our democracy.

This will not be easy, but if the American experiment in self-government is to continue, it is essential.

I know you’re scared and stressed. So am I.

If you are grieving or frightened, you are not alone. Tens of millions of Americans feel the way you do.

All I can say to reassure you is that time and again, Americans have opted for the common good. Time and again, we have come to each other’s aid. We have resisted cruelty.

We supported one another during the Great Depression. We were victorious over Hitler’s fascism and Soviet communism. We survived Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts, Richard Nixon’s crimes, Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war, the horrors of 9/11, and George W Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We will resist Donald Trump’s tyranny.

Although peaceful and non-violent, the resistance will nonetheless be committed and determined.

It will encompass every community in America. It will endure as long as necessary.

We will never give up on America.

The resistance starts now.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

Any Old Time

jono55

Sunday morning we were entirely ready for the %^*%^^ semiannual time change. The four wall clocks were all reset. The two digital readouts on major appliances were changed. Our wristwatches were brought into synchronization with the rest. The only things we couldn’t adjust were our stomachs which told us it was lunchtime when our clocks told us that it positively was not.

It says something about the inertia and dysfunctional nature of Congress that despite the desire of 63% of Americans to do away with this noxious practice we must still play the time game twice each year.

When I was single, I was routinely late for Sunday services in the Spring, and arrived an hour early nearly every Fall. Remembering the axiom “Spring ahead, Fall back” seemed beyond my ken, like some temporal learning disability. And it is all for nought! It serves no purpose! It is a leftover from the past that is less useful than corset stays and spats.

I am of the belief that when I have checked out and am on my way to glory DST will still be the practice. And people will either be an hour late or an hour early to the funeral.

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Time After Time, by Cyndi Lauper

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On a recent visit to Silverton I collected some photos of the pickings in a tourist-oriented shop. I am a fan of the creatively tawdry, as you can see. Please don’t blame my parents … this is all on me.

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Time For Me To Fly, by REO Speedwagon

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Even quietly perched on a church roof or under the arm of a bridge, ravens are obviously brooding, grumbling among one another, plotting the end of the world.

Craig Childs, The Animal Dialogues, p.129

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At the end of the chapter on ravens, Craig Childs muses on our human arrogance when we talk about other animals’ “intelligence.”

Anthropomorphism is generally frowned upon. It is said to be improper to see animals the same way we view ourselves. We are asked to temper our language when speaking of animal traits, lest we call them by a name that is not theirs, forming words in our mouths that do not sound like a snake’s whisper, a grasshopper’s clicking. It just seems as odd, though, to sequester ourselves in a cheerless vault of sentience, sole proprietors of smarts and charm. Bees form a mind of a hive, don’t they? Doesn’t the bear dream when it sleeps, and don’t grasses stretch with all their might toward the sun? Every living thing has the same wish to flourish again and again. Beyond that, our differences are quibbles.

Craig Childs: The Animal Dialogues, p. 138.

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Any Old Time, by Maria Muldaur

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Dreadful

jono55

Halloween here in Paradise is generally a tame affair, as it was this year. A gaggle of well-costumed children are paraded by our house, all accompanied by their parents. They come with collection bags open to receive our safely packaged bits of candy. All things considered, it’s a pretty sanitary evening, especially since it celebrates the demonic.

As a kid I would be sent out into the world wearing a cheap mask and carrying a pillowcase. I don’t recall ever having parental accompaniment. The world of treats had not yet devolved into the present-day tiny avatars of candy bars, but might feature a host of unpackaged things to eat. Among this bounty might be found:

  • home-made popcorn balls
  • apples, with or without caramel
  • handfuls of candy corn or peanuts
  • cookies out of the host’s oven
  • full-sized candy bars

There was a complete absence of razor blades, brownies containing psychedelics, or any of the other scary materials or objects that addled conspiracy theorists dreamed up to alarm the populace. (As a species we are so easily frightened that I wonder sometimes how we ever found the courage to leave the caves?)

After Robin and I had turned out the lights and got out of the giving away stuff business for the night, we watched a movie, Late Night With The Devil. It was one of the better horror films I’ve seen. I’d rate it a mild gross-out, but there is so much else to watch.

A movie to be savored. Rotten Tomatoes loved it.

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Rivers of Babylon, by the Melodians

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When I was quite young, and spent summers on Grandpa Jacobson’s farm, going to get the mail was a big deal. The large galvanized mailbox was located up on the county road about a mile from the farm. So when we opened that thing one day and found that it contained a large and heavy package, it was enough to be an excitement. The package was addressed to:

Nels Jacobson
Rural Route 3
Kenyon, Minnesota

At that age I was a bundle of barefoot curiosity, and when Grandpa was taking way too long to open the darn thing to suit me, I began to badger him about it until finally he reached down into the pocket of this Oshkosh B’Gosh bib overalls and retrieved his pocket knife. Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought, as the knife did its work and the carton flew open.

It was a book! A huge book! On the cover were the words “Holy Bible.” It was a true extravagance of a book, and Grandpa lived in a world of very few extravagances .

That farm, which I loved like no patch of earth since, was never big enough to support his family, and taking off-the-farm extra jobs was always a necessity. Leftover money at the end of any given month … or at the end of the year … zero.

But somehow this treasure had come to him. From then on it always rested on the small table alongside his armchair. Table and book to the right, coffee-can spittoon to the left. Evenings he would sit and read, the last thing done before going to bed.

Long years later, after his and Grandma’s passing, the well-worn book came to be mine. Grandpa had made me a gift of it. Inside the front cover were these words:

This Holy Bible shall be presented to our first and oldest grandchild, Jon O. Flom, by Grandpa and Grandma Jacobson, whenever I and Grandma are dead .

Nels was a man of short stature, but had been a giant in my world as a kid. His was a gift that was not taken lightly. Even today, just opening it has the power to bring memories flooding in.

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In the Mississippi River, by Mavis Staples

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In two days the U.S. takes its National Civics and Morals test, as Election Day arrives. It’s pretty obvious that a whole lot of folks haven’t studied for it at all. I am as prepared as I can get myself to deal with either depression or relief, but no matter how it goes, there will be a bad taste in my mouth.

In studying the history of the Third Reich, and the role that “Ordinary Germans*” played in that horrorshow, I had realized long ago that we must have at least a few of the same sort of people here at home. People who seem outwardly normal but given half a chance will quickly revert to barbarism. While in my gut I knew this, I hadn’t realized until recently how many of them there were … how many of our neighbors have kept a brown or black shirt in their closet, ready to put on at the first opportunity.

Fool me once … fool me twice …

*Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Goldhagen

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River, by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

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Our first snowfall of the year happened on Wednesday last. Big flakes off and on all day. Each one melted immediately on contact.

We’ve seen snow at higher elevations for at least a month now, but not in the valley. The San Juans are looking quite beautiful in their “snow-capped mountain majesty.” (Can’t remember where I heard that phrase but I’m quoting it anyway).

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Today is Robin’s birthday. It is not up to me to tell you which one that is. We will celebrate it sensibly, as behooves sensible people, no matter what their years. No late-night partying, no extravagances, no hangover from the ingestion of an inordinate amount of cake frosting. Just quiet recognition of the passage of time, with perhaps a remembrance tossed in here and there.

We know our way around birthdays, we two. Experts, you might say.

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Doom, Interrupted

jono55

When I was in my twenties I acquired a strong sense that I wouldn’t live to be thirty. (Later in life I found out that this delusion was not uncommon among young men of my generation, especially wastrels like myself)

Well, you can imagine my chagrin when I woke on the morning of my 30th birthday not only alive, but a family man. With a wife, multiple children, and a regular job to boot.

And me with the soul of a Byron, a buccaneer, a would-be surfer on the breaking waves of decadence.

However, since I was not dead, I checked the calendar and found that it was a Sunday morning. Good, I thought, at least I didn’t have to go to work.

Going to work frequently brought on an incompatible collision of feelings. The first was that I was a well-trained and competent physician perhaps at the peak of my game. The second was that I was a charlatan, a masquerading quack who knew so little he was a danger to society. Sooner or later I would be discovered and then it would be the stocks for me from then on.

But right at this moment it was Sunday, leisure was the plan, and with any luck it would be a day with cake in it.

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Springtime, by Allison Russell

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Only a week to go till election day, and what a ride it has been. As each day passes the differences between the opposing sides become clearer, almost extravagantly so. What this campaign has revealed about a large segment of my countrymen is ugly, but does not come as a complete surprise. To borrow from Mr. Freud, it’s like the U.S. is a single personality, and what we’re seeing now is our ego running against our id.

The history of human beings is filled with scenes of blood and horror. Violence between groups of humans, any that could be identified as other, has been the rule rather than the exception. The present-day Republican party has deliberately made itself into an avatar representing some of the worst traits of humanity, and Mr. Cluck (bless his heart) is trying to help us make informed choices by telling us that on a daily basis.

So what happens if Harris wins? My neighbor with the big Cluck sign on his garage door will still have been a proud member of this malignant cult, and how to trust him again, if ever?

Perhaps I can begin to do so if I keep in mind what I learned so well from Buddhism, and that is that the seeds of everything good are within me, and the seeds of everything not good as well. The choice that I have is which seeds to water.

I could have been the guy pointing out to the Nazis where Anne Frank was hiding or I could have been the guy who owned the house she used as refuge and thus helped hide her family.

My personal views and ideas have been shaped by the fact that the rooms I walked into during my life have contained more peacemakers and truth tellers than fearmongers and haters. Seeing what prominent roles chance and luck have played … it is difficult to feel superior.

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The Last of My Kind, by Jason Isbell

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I don’t know why, but the above cartoon makes me laugh out loud every time I look at it

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I’m in the process of learning to speak Spanish, using the free online version of a program called Duolingo. I have heard that trying to pick up a new language at my age is difficult, due to memory issues. I don’t know why they say that. Why, I can remember what I’ve learned in a lesson for up to two hours after I’ve put the computer away.

Here – let me show you what I can say after only six months of working with Duolingo.

Buenos días, Señor Herrera, como está usted?

That’s it. A puny outcome, you say? My response is: one small step for man …

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Can’t Find My Way Home, by Chowder

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Did I Ever Tell You … ?

jono55

The problem with being a garrulous old gent like myself is getting your victim to stand still long enough to unload your priceless cargo of stories on them. At first they get that cornered look in their rapidly shifting eyes and when they decide that more desperate measures are called for:

  • They take out their phones and pretend to receive important calls.
  • They develop abdominal pain that they are sure is appendicitis.
  • They remember a doctor’s appointment for that brain tumor they just learned they have.
  • They hear their mother calling.

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The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.

Henry Wallace (1888-1965)

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There is an informative article in the local paper on the birthing pains of our Black Canyon National Park, which was established 25 years ago. It was that famous philanderer Bill Clinton who signed the bill creating the park, at a moment between dalliances.

One thing I didn’t know before reading the article is that while a national monument can be created by the president alone, it takes Congress to make a national park. Good article. Short. Non-taxing.

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Moonlight In Vermont, by the Ahmad Jamal Trio

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Fascism is capitalism plus murder.

Upton Sinclair

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I am presently reading a book by Craig Childs which is about animal encounters in the wild. In the first couple of tales I had been put off by what I thought was a too-frequent use of metaphors. But then I came to the story about a meetup with a mountain lion, one he had been observing for awhile from afar, and which had then wandered off out of sight.

A bit later he realized that it had circled around until it was behind him, and was very close indeed. It is a really gripping short tale, well enough written to make me sense the nakedness of standing by a desert waterhole thirty feet from a lion who is walking toward you, and you with nothing in your hand but a folding knife.

No metaphors here. Straight up, no ice.

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Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.

Aneurin Bevan

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Ai Ga Bani, by Ali Farka Touré

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Saturday I attended a birthday party for Archer, who lives next door. We barely know each other and have almost nothing in common. His tastes in music are deplorable and at least half the time he smells more than a little off. But he and Robin have become friends, so when she attended I went with her.

Anyway, Archer had his one-year old party on a lovely Fall day and he seemed to enjoy the whole thing. But he completely ignored the fact that it was also my birthday and monopolized the group’s attention. Rude child. Spiteful.

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After one of the most beautiful autumns I’ve ever experienced, it looks like our weather is finally going into the crapper. Ah well, October 31 is nearly here and what’s Halloween without hypothermic children out gathering things to eat that are not good for them?

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What the hey ?

jono55

This week I developed a minor infection for which my personal physician Dr. Ursula Major prescribed an antibiotic, one I have taken several times in the past. I took the first dose an hour before retiring, and two hours later I woke scratching. Everywhere. Top to bottom.

I got out of bed and checked my look in the bathroom mirror. My face was slightly puffy and red, and my chest a mass of hives. In fact, everywhere that I could see was a field of hives. There were even places where there seemed to be hives stacked upon hives.

I scratched my way to the first aid kit, which is where I keep a couple of household medications like Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and such. There was a vial of unlabeled pink tablets that I was almost certain were Benadryl, an antihistamine. But I was already having one drug problem, and didn’t want to take a chance on another, so I went to the internet at midnight and eventually identified the mystery tabs as Benadryl.*

Popped a couple of them, went back to bed, and slept as much as the itching would allow. Three days later the rash is nearly gone and I am taking a brand new antibiotic. Which is prompting a moderate degree of diarrhea.

And so between the fitful nights and days of scratching and the tender moments in the bathroom, I sometimes wistfully look back at that initial illness and wonder … was it really so bad after all? Would it have taken care of itself?

*BTW: if you need to quickly identify a medication one good resource is at https://www.webmd.com/pill-identification/default.htm

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Uummati Attanarsimat (Heart of Glass), by Elisapie

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Daughter Kari put me onto something special in the way of music. An album of covers of rock and pop songs. Sung in the Inuk language by an Inuk woman.

One of the best things about a good cover is when it makes you listen to a well-known tune from a new perspective. One of those “getting new glasses” kind of moments. These songs do that for me.

Her professional name is Elisapie. The album is entitled Inuktitut.

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Taimangalimaaq (Time After Time), by Elisapie

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Plaisir d‘amour
Ne dure qu’un moment
Chagrin d’amour
Dure toute la vie

One verse from a beautiful and wise song written in 1789. Translated it says: The joy of love is but a moment long. The pain of love lasts the whole life long.

We are going through some of the pain part these days with our cat friend Poco. The love part has always been easy, but this segment … not so much.

Age has brought a full slate of infirmities to this brave little guy. Arthritis, muscle atrophy, dental issues, intermittent confusion and forgetfulness, just to name a few. Thinking about the future brings on a jumble of thoughts. What to do when there is nothing to fix?

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Qimmijuat (Wild Horses), by Elisapie

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Listening to Colorado Public Radio the other day I caught these interesting statistics. The lowest point in Colorado is the Arikaree River where it flows out of the state into Kansas, at an elevation of 3,317 feet. This is also the highest low point of any U.S. state.

This low point is located in Yuma County, in the northeast corner of the state. The GPS coordinates for the lowest point are 39°58’41″N, 102°03’06″W.

Our lowest point is higher than the highest point in 18 states and the District of Columbia.

[FYI: Our altitude here at home is 5920 ft.]

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Flight Path

jono55

Robin is safely back home through flying the friendly but expensive skies of United Airlines. No wheels fell from the plane, no doors blew off, and none of the passengers (including Robin) had to be subdued or arrested for worrisome behavior. So … all good.

I no longer enjoy flying, and it has nothing to do with being 35,000 feet in the air and moving along at 500 miles per hour. It has everything to do with being jammed into smaller and smaller spaces over the years, overzealous and officious TSA screeners in airports, and increasingly complex websites in which to handle ticket purchases or rescheduling. Oh and yes, there is the ever-present worry about whether you will ever see your luggage again when you turn it over to the baggage handlers.

It doesn’t help that we must enter the plane up front and walk through the gilded first class section while putting up with the long-suffering expressions on the faces of the occupants of that exalted realm who seem to be afflicted by seeing the unwashed pass them by. All this in order to get to the rabbit warrens in the back of the plane where we lesser beings are being shoehorned together.

The last time I flew I think that I saw Marie Antoinette in the first class section, lifting a small cake to her lips as the bubbles rose in her champagne glass.

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Flying, by The Beatles

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For those people who are becoming interested in learning more about the fascinating world of birds there is an abundance of national and global resources that are eager to provide information.

One of these that I recommend is the American Bird Conservancy. Something that they offer that I particularly enjoy is to have free periodic Zoom seminars. The next one is on nightjars, is scheduled for October 29, and you can sign up on their website.

Another personal favorite is the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. There is loads of information here, with photos, bird calls, habitat descriptions, etc. Southern New Hampshire University posts an extensive list of resources on all things birds on their website. My point? There is no shortage of ways to add to one’s knowledge of birds and birding. Just you and your computer and a measure of time could get you firmly on the way to a lifelong hobby or interest.

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What is hardest to accept is not that there is a creature like Donald Cluck. Aberrations such as he exemplifies are occurring all the time among humans. No, the hardest thing is that nearly half of our co-citizens support him for our country’s highest office.

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Flying, by Chris Isaak

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Another hike at the Black Canyon National Park – the Warner Point Trail. Only 2 miles out and back. There are magnificent views of the Black Canyon on this trail, but the camera doesn’t do them justice.

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Attention K-Mart Shoppers, don’t let the doors hit you on the butt on your way out. The last one in the U.S. just went down the tube.

From Kresge’s to K-Mart to Super K-Mart to extinction, this icon was both a creation of capitalism and a victim. I can’t say that I will miss shopping there. When I had access to one while living in South Dakota I rarely found what I was looking for at the K-Mart.

Kresge’s started in 1899, and the first K-Mart opened in 1962, so they’ve been around for an eon. Notice the line at the top of the photograph: “Nothing Over 10 Cents In Store.” My only recollection of a Kresge’s was the one located in downtown Minneapolis, and that was when I was a kid. Even then it had wooden floors and a musty aroma. Now they are gone and I have the musty aroma. No fair.

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Damn The Patriarchy, Full Speed Ahead!

jono55

With all that’s been written about “toxic masculinity,” there were many articles that I never read because … why would I? Surely they were just more paragraphs in the long and numbing description of the failings of my gender.

But recently I decided to check out just what was this toxic masculinity, anyway. Just for a lark, you understand. So I asked ChatGPT to write me a definition. In less than ten seconds my computer presented me with a really fine essay, from which I excerpted this passage:

Toxic masculinity refers to a set of socially constructed attitudes that reinforce male dominance, emotional repression, and aggression as defining traits of manhood. Rooted in patriarchal traditions, it perpetuates the belief that men must adhere to rigid gender norms, such as being physically strong, emotionally stoic, and assertive. This form of masculinity not only harms women and marginalized groups but also men themselves.

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Then I asked my new oracle for 300 words on “toxic femininity.” I wasn’t even sure there was such a term, but there was. Here’s an excerpt from that piece:

Toxic femininity refers to a set of socially constructed behaviors and traits that pressure women to conform to restrictive and harmful ideals of traditional femininity. Just as toxic masculinity reinforces harmful stereotypes about men, toxic femininity stems from patriarchal systems that define women’s roles in limiting, often disempowering, ways.

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It did not escape me that both these examples of toxicity were being blamed on “the patriarchy.” Unfortunately, I am a lifelong member of that noxious fraternity. In the late 60s, my former wife and I were attending Unitarian church services in Minneapolis when the minister astounded me by telling us that a large number of women were unhappy with their lot and were not satisfied with having only the “big four” life choices offered to them.

  • homemaker
  • teacher
  • nurse
  • librarian

I turned to my ex-wife (a nurse) and asked … is this true? She looked at me with an expression that said volumes: Yes it is true, fool, and how could you have not noticed?

I walked out the door of the church, the scales newly fallen from my eyes, and soon discovered that there was something called feminism which was composed of battalions of fierce women who were marching, venting, and creatively expressing their collective anger.

Within feminist scholarship, patriarchy has been understood more broadly as the system in which men as a group are constructed as superior to women as a group and as such have authority over them.

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography

And who were they mad at? You got it, the patriarchy. I took it all very personally. (Which was not too odd because this was at a point in my life when I was pretty much taking everything personally.) Not only was I a (gasp, puke) male and therefore one of the prime targets of feminism, but I was white, straight, and Protestant as well. Most of America was pissed off at at least one of the groups that I belonged to.

I’ve never quite gotten over that day at the Unitarian Church. Realizing how unobservant and unimaginative I had been was like getting a pail of ice water in the face. Humbling, depressing, and dampening all at once.

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Colorado Song, by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils

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One of our favorite hikes is up at the Black Canyon National Park. It starts at the Visitor Center and loops around and up and down for about 3 miles. ‘Tis a good workout for Robin and I. Thought I’d include a handful of pix for your edification. The course is an amalgam of three shorter paths, the Oakflat, Uplands, and Rimrock trails.

There were still a raft of visitors to the park, taking up the parking spaces at the visitor center. I find it quite annoying when foreigners in my park are too abundant. There was one amusing moment. I had just left my car and was heading for the trailhead when I was accosted by a woman about my age.

The lady came immediately to the point: “You look like someone who would know about the trails – do you know where the Rimrock Trail begins?“

It happened that I did know exactly that: “If you follow this rail fence behind me across the parking lot, it ends where your trail begins.”

She seemed satisfied, and added: “Thank you. I knew I had the right person.”

Leaving me to wonder just what look I was projecting. I decided that it was a positive one, and walked smugly away.

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The Colorado Trail, by Sand Sheff

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Robin has been away for nearly a week now, back in South Dakota renewing friendships and spending time with her sister Jill. As is my usual, I do no cleaning, dusting, or sprucing up until the very last day before she returns.

I find that I am comfortable with a certain level of grubbiness, and left to my own devices I would probably do nothing until the dust bunnies reached the height of the coffee table and one could actually trip over them.

I am much better at keeping the kitchen clean, however. I seem to have a talent for operating a dishwasher, and use it at every opportunity. My motto is Never Let The Sun Set On Leaving Something In The Dishwasher. What’s the point of owning the thing if you don’t give it a run now and then?

But my habit of turning it on and then going to bed is probably not the wisest course, since all mechanical things eventually fail, and waking to a kitchen flood would be a bad start to any day.

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Super 8

jono55

I am having my faith shored up in country music this month. That’s not really accurate because I still think that most of that genre is a musical waste of time. I’m talking about the wide swath of undistinguished pabulum that goes something like this: “picked up my baby in her cutoff jeans and we went down the dirt road in my pickup truck to have a beer and make sweet love but oh Lordy does my head feel bad this mornin’ “.

But there’s always been other threads running through those carpet sweepings. Like traditional Appalachian music, spirituals, work songs, and relatively recently “outlaw” and “alternative” country. Singers like Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson have been examples. Where the lyrics are typically far from superficial.

This week I’ve spent time listening to a musician who has links to many of those threads of “country” and of rock and roll as well. His name is Jason Isbell and he could be the undeclared love child of Neil Young and Lucinda Williams.

Miles, by Jason Isbell

Isbell writes songs that tell good stories, he plays excellent guitar, and he sings well. Interviews he comes across as smart and humble, an attractive combination. Today’s tunes are from a live concert at the Ryman Theater in Nashville, where he and the 400 Unit, his backup band, are in good form. Makes me wish I had been there to hear it.

[BTW – there’s a line that I think we can all get behind in the song “Super 8.” It is “Don’t wanna die in a Super 8 motel.” Can I have an Amen?]

Super 8, by Jason Isbell

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We’re seeing more and more articles on eco-relocation. People packing up and moving to parts of the country where the long arm of climate change doesn’t reach. There is no such place, of course, but they seek at least a spot where hurricanes and rising sea levels aren’t daily concerns.

Paradise is one of those less-affected places, at least for today. Oh, these days we are hotter and drier, but at least our homes aren’t being blown skyward or washed out to sea, and for the less adventurous among us having your house stay in one place is important.

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Living in Colorado has been instructive. Before I became a resident it seemed all rocks and wilderness, and to some degree it still is. But it is harder even just ten years later to get that alone in nature feeling. One of the issues is the mechanization of the mountains.

Colorado’s history of mining left behind a spider web of old, rough roads connecting the small towns and leading to what once were productive mining areas. While ordinary vehicles can’t manage these bumpy and often deeply rutted tracks, Jeeps and other 4WD vehicles can. As soon as the snow melts these pathways are filled with such machines, often traveling in packs.

Some of the pilots of these cars are skilled in navigating mountain roads, but many are not. After all, you don’t need to know what you’re doing to get yourself out there, all you need is a fistful of disposable income and a Jeep. There are now so many unskilled drivers in the alpine areas that a few weeks back a local sheriff was publicly bemoaning the number of “assclowns” on the trails causing problems for drivers who knew what they were doing.

None of these things are impediments to the guy on foot, who can walk past a roadblock caused by a driver who fears going forward and is unable to back up. Hikers don’t get to cover as much ground as the motorized explorer, but they do get to know the ground they cover better. To each their own. I happen to prefer wearing out a pair of boots to a set of tires.

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Middle of the Morning, by Jason Isbell

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I don’t know how many of you are as fascinated by the story of the man eating lions of Tsavo as I am, but there was a tidbit on CNN that I thought worth sharing. The taxidermized lions have been on display at the Field Museum in Chicago for 100 years but recently some small hair fragments noted in their teeth drew the attention of researchers and the guns of DNA study were brought to bear.

What they found was that almost anything on four legs was included in their diet plan, including some large mammals not found today in what is usually considered to be the lions’ range.

And of course, some of the hairs were human.

In the photo of the mounted specimens they don’t look nearly as threatening as they must have in 1898, when they killed 35 railway workers who were involved in building a bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. This story was made into a pretty entertaining movie entitled “The Ghost and the Darkness.” There is a fair amount of quibbling about the film not telling the story exactly as it happened, but when has that ever occurred before? It still makes for a good story, and one disturbing enough to frighten small children.

There are suggestions that the lions turned more to dining on softer and easier to catch humans because of dental diseases. Having had many toothaches as a child I can easily imagine how that could occur. Either way, these famous cats are once again in the news.

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When The Student Is Ready …

jono55

This afternoon I was brushing our older cat, Poco, whose coat requires frequent attention. He can no longer keep himself tidy due to old age and arthritis. But he seems to very much appreciate the help we provide with brush and comb, purring and doing that rubbing thing cats do.

When this particular grooming session was finished he and I found ourselves staring at one another. I wondered – what would life have been like these past 17 years without him as a companion?

You know that old adage: “When the student is ready the teacher will appear?” That has been true for me on many fronts, but never more so than with the pets I’ve had.

I had to slow down the pace of my life before I could truly begin to notice what the smaller critters of the household had to teach me.

The most important lesson that I’ve learned from Poco? I think that it was this. When life spins out of control in the myriad ways that it can, there is enormous comfort in having another living creature just sit with you in the room, quietly, not speaking, perhaps not even understanding. Just being there.

I don’t know how it happens, but I am a witness to its power.

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Birds, by Neil Young

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Just in case that you haven’t yet had your fill of reminiscing about Kris Kristofferson, here’s a link for when you have 45 minutes to spend. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdZo_eMeGvg

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For the first time since we’ve lived here in Paradise, I have a problem with the local dove population. This year one of them has picked out a branch high in the ash tree that is directly over my chair at the table on the backyard deck. When said creature relieves itself, it leaves a mark on exactly that chair. Each day there is fresh evidence of its presence, and each day I must clean the chair before sitting down.

You might ask – why not move the chair? Aren’t you afraid of being bombed while occupying it? Questions like these are entirely appropriate and my answer to both is that it’s my chair and my space and bird be damned if I’m going to change either one of them.

If the dove wants war, it can continue its reprehensible behavior. I am slow to burn but once I get started, well, that little shitter better watch it is all I have to say.

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King of Birds, by R.E.M.

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Amy and Claire were here over the past weekend. The weather was lovely and we found many things to do to pass the time. Friday the three ladies toured our shopping establishments. Durango is actually much less of a shopper’s paradise than Montrose, believe it or not, and whenever these two come for a visit, there is at least one raid on the local Target.

Saturday we rented e-bikes for our guests and the four of us pedaled the bicycle/walking path along the Uncompahgre River. It’s a really pretty ride, six miles in length, and we did the twelve miles out and back without breaking a sweat. We stopped for lunch at Shelter, a brewpub which is right on the path and overlooks the river. Those hours passed delightfully.

There were quite a few people enjoying the path, brought out by the excellent weather, I suppose. We were in no hurry. It was a day to be sipped, not chugged.

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This Bird’s Gonna Fly, by Los Lobos

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A bit more about the National Audubon Society’s decision to keep its old name even after learning about the ugly history of John James Audubon and his family, who were not only slave owners but traffickers to boot.

This Science Friday podcast talks about this decision and why it might have been a poor choice. In an era when vestiges of systemic racism are being identified and removed one by one around the country, it does seem puzzling. So I googled the National Audubon Society and looked at the photos of the members of its various boards. What is striking is the underrepresentation of people of color.

When we know how sneaky racism can be, and how in so many ways it is the sea we all swim in, it makes you wonder if these boards looked a bit more like America that the vote would have been different.

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Finally, this photograph won the Wildlife Photograph of the Year competition in 2024. It is of tadpoles in a lake on Vancouver Island and was taken by photographer Shane Gross. So beautiful it almost looks unreal.

I Ate The Whole Thing

jono55

Breakfast with friend Rod yesterday. Something we hadn’t done in some time. Two hours and entirely too many calories later, after we had solved most of the world’s problems and come up with cures for nearly all the discomforts of age, we returned to our respective homes. This had to be done to allow the food we’d engulfed to come to some sort of détente with our bodies. It was nip and tuck for a while, but I finally forced those hash browns into submission.

I had made the serious mistake of ordering a “slam,” which meant that I was served two of everything you could imagine, when one egg and a slice of toast is my usual meal. I did some calculations and if I can survive the next four days my cholesterol will have returned to normal and my chances of survival improved by 15%.

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Brown-Eyed Girl, by Van Morrison

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These days ex-pres Cluck is telling such big, foolish, and easily disprovable lies that I have come to only two possible explanations that make any sense to me:

  1. He has completely lost his marbles
  2. He has grown tired of people coming forward to shoot at him and wants to be defeated in the election so they will stop, but to admit this to his supporters would be to lose too much face. His problem is that those same supporters seem to enjoy being lied to so much that as far as they are concerned, the bigger the whopper the better.

Can’t decide which is the case. Help me out here.

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Cyprus Avenue, by Van Morrison

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It was Willow’s turn to go to the veterinarian yesterday, and he was waiting for her with immunizations in hand. Last night she showed signs of not feeling well, and this morning she still doesn’t want to stir from the comfortable place she’s staked out. I have that “Dad” feeling of knowing that getting the shots was a necessary and good thing, but really hating to see the temporary suffering of the little animal for which I am responsible. (It was actually slightly easier with my children when they were small, since I could administer simple pain/fever relievers and could talk to them.)

Hopefully she will begin to feel better later today, but almost certainly tomorrow will bring improvement. In the meantime, soft words and touches along with offering food and water will have to do.

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The ash trees in the back yard have turned their many shades ranging from gold to red, and they have upped their ante in how many leaves fall per day in the last two days. So far I have been “mulching” them with my lawn mower, but that tool will soon not be equal to the job. There are only so many inches of “mulch” that a lawn will tolerate.

I will do almost anything to avoid raking the leaves, since I have a congenital condition called achingus backus which begins to spasm at just the mention of using any tool that has tines (except for a fork at mealtimes, where I excel).

Enter the leaf blower. This is admittedly a clumsy way of bringing the leaves together into one big heap, but there is something satisfying about blasting away at the problem. Just a squeeze of the trigger and away you go, roaring about the yard until the battery runs down and you get to take a break while it recharges. I am quite fond of those breaks. I could skip them simply by having a spare battery to press into use, but where’s the fun in that?

If we lived in one of those areas of the country where fall rains keep the leaves wet and cause them to mat together, I would have to alter my approach. But in our semi-arid world the leaves remain dry and eminently blow-able for weeks. There is only one drawback to my approach, and that is the one year-old who lives next door. I never know when he is napping, and the noise created by the blower is incompatible with sound sleep.

So far I have been lucky in my timing, but make repeated errors here and I can expect that the mother of said infant might have something pointed to say about my practices. I know that way back in time when I had babies in the house I personally was not very tolerant of anything that stood between me and the serenity of a sleeping infant.

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These Are The Days, by Van Morrison

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Van Morrison has had such a career! From a modest beginning with the great song “Brown Eyed Girl” to 45 studio albums and 7 live albums.

Released in 1967 on Van Morrison’s debut solo album, Blowin’ Your Mind!, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ was swiftly associated with the “summer of love” which the singer despised.

… In 2009 he told Time magazine: “‘Brown Eyed Girl’ I didn’t perform for a long time because for me it was like a throwaway song. I’ve got about 300 other songs I think are better than that.”

Wikipedia

I never like to argue with my betters but if I could take only one Morrison song to the proverbial desert island it would be “Brown Eyed Eyed Girl.”

He made musical history with the album Astral Weeks.

Morrison’s first album for Warner Bros Records was Astral Weeks (which he had already performed in several clubs around Boston), a mystical song cycle, often considered to be his best work and one of the best albums of all time.  Morrison has said, “When Astral Weeks came out, I was starving, literally.” Released in 1968, the album originally received an indifferent response from the public, but it eventually achieved critical acclaim.

The album is described by AllMusic’s William Ruhlmann as hypnotic, meditative, and as possessing a unique musical power. It has been compared to French Impressionism and mystical Celtic poetry. A 2004 Rolling Stone magazine review begins with the words: “This is music of such enigmatic beauty that thirty-five years after its release, Astral Weeks still defies easy, admiring description. Alan Light later described Astral Weeks as “like nothing he had done previously—and really, nothing anyone had done previously. Morrison sings of lost love, death, and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature.” It has been placed on many lists of best albums of all time. In the 1995 Mojo list of 100 Best Albums, it was listed as number two and was number nineteen on the Rolling Stone magazine’s The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003. In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians conducted by Hot Press magazine.

Wikipedia

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Adios to Yet Another Amigo

jono55

Aaahhhhh, dang it. You know how there are people you’ve never actually met who have had a greater effect on you than people you see every day. For me, some of them wrote novels, some wrote poetry, some wrote music. Kris Kristofferson was one of the latter. When I read this past Monday morning that he’d died I felt a sharp hurt. There were tears shed at our home on Monday at the sense of loss that was felt.

Me and Bobby McGee

If Kris had only written the one tune, Me and Bobby McGee, it would have been enough to put him in my personal Hall of Fame, but he went on from there. He wrote the best hangover song I’ve ever heard in Sunday Morning Coming Down.

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down

He also wrote some of the best breakup songs in For the Good Times and Loving Her Was Easier Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again.

For the Good Times
Loving Her Was Easier

And he wrote some songs that were at least partly autobiographical, using his wry sense of humor to great advantage. He was a good man who lived his life well enough that others can take lessons from it. Love the phrase from The Pilgrim: “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, taking every wrong direction on that lonely way back home.”

The Pilgrim, Chapter 33

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Kristofferson was a Rhodes scholar, football and rugby player, boxer, helicopter pilot in the US Army, actor, singer, and songwriter. One of those folks whose life story absolutely forces one to accept that they are just more interesting than you are. (At least than I am.)

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I haven’t talked about his movie career at all, but he appeared in nearly 50 films, including two of my favorite movies, which are Heaven’s Gate and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Here’s a clip from Heaven’s Gate, featuring him waltzing with Isabelle Huppert. Sweet.

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Now it follows as the night the day that some of Kris’ music was recorded and made famous by others. A prime example was Me and Bobby McGee, recorded by a former lover from Port Arthur, Texas.

While Kristofferson’s original version was typically laid-back, Janis Joplin’s was kick-ass. I include it because I can’t help myself. It’s a favorite of both Robin and I.

Kristofferson recorded his own version of the song on his debut album Kristofferson in 1970. … Janis Joplin recorded the song for inclusion on her Pearl album only a few days before her death in October 1970. … Record World called it a “perfect matching of performer and material.” Joplin’s version topped the charts to become her only number one single.

Wikipedia: Me and Bobby McGee

Me and Bobby McGee, by Janis Joplin

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Just a thought. If Janis Joplin had lived, she would be 80 years old. Instead, she is forever twenty-seven.

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Will Somebody Answer That Page?

jono55

The Israeli government has shown us something new this past week. That they were willing to cross a line in the sand and load hundreds of explosive charges into everyday handheld devices. It was done by infiltrating the supply chain at the company that produced them. In this way very many Hezbollah were harmed, as well as anyone unfortunate enough to be standing near them.

Think for a moment. If the Israelis are able do it, so are we. And so are our adversaries.

Our phones, our computers, even our automobiles could be weaponized and there you are driving down the road and your car swerves into oncoming traffic. Or your phone explodes and maims you and the child you are holding in your lap. Or your toaster starts to fling sourdough shuriken at you.

About that crossed line. Perhaps we should thank Mr. Netanyahu and his gang for bringing us up to date on just how vulnerable we all are. Quite a bloody demonstration, though, with all those bystanders hurt or killed and everything.

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Five years ago when I renewed my driver’s license, the photograph that was taken was awful. It was washed out, grim, and totally unrepresentative of my vibrant and devilishly attractive self. This year I had to renew that license, and now the photo is even more grotesque. I look like a startled corpse.

You know how in a horror movie when the camera moves forward and down into the coffin and then suddenly the eyes snap open? – that’s me in my official ID photo!

Fortunately very few people will get to see that photograph, and I am certainly not going to publish it here. After all, there may be children looking over your shoulder and their little psyches could be permanently scarred.

BTW, if any of you are wondering whether I should still be driving, calm thyselves. For some reason Nature has blessed me and I am still one of the most capable drivers ever seen in Paradise. And whatever you may have heard about that time last week when I crossed the median downtown and drove for three blocks into oncoming traffic, I have a perfectly logical explanation. A squirrel.

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I am disappointed when the fact-checkers of the world find that a member of the “Blue Team” is telling fibs. Doubly disappointed when they repeat the same mistruth the next day.

I can understand how it could happen when you are asked to spew thousands of words a week in rallies, interviews, sound bites, scripted moments, etc. But even though it is a lot to expect, striving for honesty and admitting when you’re wrong … I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

I am just so tired of being lied to. Really tired of that whole shabby business. If someone is promoting themselves as an agent of change, talking straight would be a good place to start. I hope Harris and Walz will keep their focus and clean up their speeches. The Republicans supply more than enough reasons for criticism without them needing to make stuff up.

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Not Too Much To Ask, by Mary Chapin Carpenter

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One morning this week a large sign blossomed on our next-door neighbor’s garage.

The subtitle of the sign is “Make Liberals Cry Again.” That makes me sad. These are two decent people who have been hoodwinked by a charlatan. Cluck is not a conservative but an unprincipled opportunist. These neighbors are strongly “pro-life” and that makes it hard for them not to react viscerally to the Democratic platform, with its emphasis on reproductive freedom. I get that. What I don’t get is single-issue voting.

If liberals are crying it is because they see clearly the harm this orange-tinted crook has already done, and blatantly promises to keep doing if re-elected.

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Can’t Find My Way Home, by Stevie Winwood

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Frank Bruni is a good man and a very thoughtful columnist. Thursday’s posting in the Times I thought was worth linking to. Sort of summarizes where a lot of folks stand re: the two campaigners. (At least a lot of folks on the left, which means the right side of history.)

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The movie “Reagan” has been in town now for several weeks. Apparently there are enough local people interested in a time when Republicans were only (forgivably) mistaken in their politics, and had not yet become the gaggle of lunatics and criminals we see on television. Nostalgia for a dimly remembered past, I guess.

The film stars Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan. Quaid has recently revealed himself to be a Cluck supporter, which I’m thinking … is there anything that would cause Reagan to spin faster in his grave than knowing this bit of irony?

But Dennis’ coming out hasn’t bothered me like you’d think it would, because he is not the Quaid brother I respect the most. That honor falls to Randy, seen at right in the tasteful “the shitter’s full” scene from the movie A Christmas Vacation.

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The Road, by Euphoria

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Memento Mori: Maggie Smith (1934-2024)

For me, Maggie Smith was given the best lines in the series Downton Abbey. The rest of the cast played characters who were still trying to achieve something or other, but the grande dame Violet Crawley had already achieved it all, seen it all, and was not enamored of modern life.

Her specialty was the verbal dagger thrust, sometimes in and out before the person even knew they’d been wounded, and who were left wondering where all that blood on their shirtfront was coming from.

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Seen on a drive toward Telluride on Saturday.

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Brontosaurus medicus

jono55

We have two veterinary clinics in Paradise. We’ve used them both in our time here. In the past two years each of them has sent notices that they would not be available for after hours or weekend emergencies, but recommended that we take our ailing friends to a veterinary emergency room in Grand Junction, which is a 75 minute drive. And that is in the summertime. There will be times in winter when it will be impossible.

My reaction to both announcements has been the same. I was steamed. WTF! That is absolutely not okay! What sort of dismal dedication is this? They are assuming little more professional responsibility than a clerk in a C-store.

If I had tried such a move when I was working as a pediatrician, this morning I would still be scraping off some of the tar and feathers that the parents in my practice would rightfully have applied to me decades ago.

I realize that my way of looking at how a doctor should provide care, whether that is for animals or humans, makes me a relic, a dinosaur. Other members of my generation of doctors feel much the same way as I do, but we are steadily becoming extinct.

Soon there will be no one who remembers that at one time in our history if you became ill after hours, there was a good chance your own physician would answer the call. Or at the very least, someone you knew.

Got a sick pet here in Paradise after 5:00 PM? Get in the car and don’t forget to fill up the tank on your way out of town.

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I Don’t Need No Doctor, by Ray Charles

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From The New Yorker

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Robin and I are signing up to do phone banks for Harris/Walz. We are also attending a meetup online to educate us on Project 2025. We are also contacting our precinct chair regarding “How can we help?”

Doing what we can to avoid waking up on November 6 feeling pole-axed and guilt-ridden with four more years of you-know-who in front of us.

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Rereading Lonesome Dove for the … I don’t know … fourth time. Never gets old. Renews my connection with a fascinating part of western history, with Larry McMurtry’s extraordinary portraits of ordinary people doing what today would be considered heroic deeds, but in their time were just life. I am reading it at a measured pace, savoring the writing and the story.

It’s the book that has caused me to annoy many, many people because I can’t keep myself from urging them to read it. Most of those I have thus leaned on have totally ignored me, sniffing that “it’s a cowboy book.” (Well, yeah, like the Old Testament is only a Hebrew travelogue.) It’s all in how the tale is told, and this is McMurtry’s masterpiece.

As a bonus, when you finish it you can watch the television series made from the book, which was one of the best miniseries ever. Nominated for eighteen Emmys and won seven.

No less an actor than Robert Duvall considers Augustus McCrae his favorite of all the roles he’s played. But I’m not going to beg you to read the book. That would be annoying.

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From The New Yorker

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Daily I try to find sane and thoughtful voices in the clamor that is today’s world. If I take CNN’s headlines at face value we are facing several Armageddons at once, it’s only a matter of chance which of them inevitably crushes us under its hammerblows. The New York Times tries to be more restrained, but is always a day behind, when a news cycle lasts 20 minutes.

It is dizzying. I really don’t want to go back, even in my imagination, to the days when news traveled slowly enough that you might miss Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train going by if you weren’t paying attention. But something between that and this morning’s clamor would be nice.

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Here’s a tune for the elephants of the Middle East, the Israeli and Arab leadership, who are trampling on the lives of their peoples. Who are using their ingenuity and power to kill and maim in both ancient and novel ways.

Masters of War, by The Staple Singers

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This post is too heavy by far, so far. How about a bit of Swedish vs Norwegian humor?

Sweden and Norway were playing a soccer match.
About 20 minutes into the game a train rolled by and blew its whistle.
The Swedes thought it was half time and left the field.
The Norwegians scored 5 minutes later.

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“Out of the minds of babes oft times come gems.”

An old saw with much truth tucked inside. I thought of this when listening yesterday to a Neil Young song from 1974 entitled On The Beach. One perfect line went “Though my problems are meaningless, that don’t make them go away.”

My situation exactly.

On The Beach, by Neil Young

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