Little Home In The Valley

There’s been a boatload of information in recent years on how bowel flora can influence behavior in creatures who we think are far beneath us on the scale of how living things are ranked on this planet. Of course that’s our ranking, and we have no idea what theirs would be, since we ascribe little importance to the mental life of anything but our own species.

The idea that microorganisms could be doing the same thing to us, the ultimate in evolution’s grand progression, is not worth considering and can easily dismissed with a haughty sniff.

Perhaps rather too easily.

Here are a few recurring situations that are possibilities, perhaps you have noticed some as well.

• A person who has everything to lose has an overnight sexual dalliance when thinge chance of discovery is nearly guaranteed
• A person has already eaten way more than they should have and feels a bit ill as a result, their waistline is straining at their belt, and then they reach for one more shrimp. Or two.
• A person reads an article about someone using high colonics in a wackadoo health regimen and finds that they have a low opinion on such maneuvers even though they really don’t know what one is.

I think that we should look into the off chance that we are being pushed around on a regular basis by our bowel flora, just like those “lower” organisms are. I can tell you for certain that in my own case, and this has happened many, many times, a touch of diarrhea will routinely make me move toward the loo much faster than I had believed possible.

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From The New Yorker

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Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? And it was so early one morning at the South Fork Campground until a couple of small bits of burning pine jumped onto my fleece pajama bottoms and quickly burned two holes in the garment and one in my anterior thigh. Some, but not all of the magic went out of the moment as I flapped my hands to put myself out.

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Of all the Colorado rivers I’ve seen so far in this state which is filled with beautiful rivers and streams, the White River is my present favorite. I’ve spent a little time on both the north and south forks which join up to create the main river and brother, gorgeous just don’t do them justice. Here’s a couple of pix along the South Fork taken this past week.

We camped one night at the South Fork Campground, which is at the end of Highway 10. It’s a “primitive” location, which means fewer amenities. But the restrooms were well maintained, the sites were far enough apart, and it was right on the river.

We were using a two-person backpacking tent and I have to tell you that getting into that thing in the evening, with all of our senior citizen creakings and groanings, was hilarious. Once installed we were quite comfortable and slept well in 40 degree temperatures.

In the morning, as we sipped our coffees, two trains of pack horses passed through the campground carrying elk hunters and their gear up into the Flattop Mountains. Each train was about ten horses long. You could tell the outfitters from the hunters pretty easily, they were the ones who looked like they knew what they were doing. The others were dressed in brand-new camouflage clothing and did not appear to have been born to the saddle.

As they passed I sent out all the good wishes and karma that I could muster – to the elk. Essentially these guys were going to all this trouble to have a chance to shoot at a peaceful herbivore bigger than a cow while it was grazing and standing perfectly still.

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Today, while I was waiting at the pharmacy I saw a man wearing a cap with an inscription I hadn’t seen before – “I Miss The America I Grew Up In.“ At first I thought that it might be code for MAGA, but there is a wistful quality to this new one that is lacking in the Cluck slogan.

I miss the world I grew up in, too, but that was because I had it pretty good, while so many others did not. Some of the things I was lucky enough to enjoy back then:

• Riding bikes up and down the streets of my home neighborhood in Minneapolis where the elms formed a complete arch
• Walking a mile to attend Saturday matinees at the Nokomis theater without parents hovering over my every step
• Every boy I knew played baseball, owned his own glove and bat, and could be counted on to help get up a game at a moment’s notice
• Adults in my family who were adults, and we could take for granted that they had our back, every day
• Never going to bed hungry

Although I “miss” these things, I don’t really want to go back and relive those times. The charms of sketchy electrical wiring, unreliable indoor plumbing, no antibiotics, and car tires that went flat on every other trip would wear thin very quickly for modern me, I think.

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I don’t know how it is with you, but my spiritual side is a patchwork quilt, with pieces from time spent in churches, in hospitals, reading books, watching films … a basketful of patches retrieved from the ordinary messes of an ordinary life. One of those patches came from a phrase in a middling sort of movie, Beyond Rangoon. Way before I came across Buddhism, I came across this actor reading the line “Suffering is the one promise that life always keeps.”

Apparently I was at that moment fertile ground for this particular teaching, because it stuck, and slowly grew into a sort of acceptance. That this might truly be how life operated. Randomness. No one needed to be blamed, no one was being punished, no tortuous explanations were necessary. When bad things happened, they just happened. As did good things.

I began to appreciate more the varieties of suffering that always been around me, and I saw more clearly what my own path forward should be. To not add, if possible, to the sufferings of this world, and to help reduce it wherever I could.

I see these practices as ordinary tasks for ordinary people like myself. Not saints, not holy men or women. Just regular, everyday, unremarkable folks.

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From The New Yorker

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I am re-reading one of the best books about Native American history that I’ve come across: Empire of the Summer Moon. It is a fascinating story in so many ways. Of course, the overall arc is the same as nearly all of the other stories dealing with what happened to Native American tribes when they encountered the European invasion. The tribe encounters the whites, who lie and cheat and murder their way to driving them out of their home territories.

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From The New Yorker

We are at the Classic Sheepdog Trials, in Meeker CO. They’ve been holding this event for a couple of decades now, and it has become well- known in sheepdog circles. We rendezvoused with Ally and Kyle, who took a day out of their very busy schedule to join us.

Now there are those of you who wonder why a guy who doesn’t own a dog, and who has never shown the slightest interest in sheep would go to such an event, let alone buy a ticket to attend. My answer is the same one given by George Mallory when asked why he climbed Mount Everest: “Because it is there.“

That’s about as far as I care to go in making a comparison because Mallory perished in his attempt in 1924, and if there was any chance that this was a possible outcome of watching a bunch of dogs chase a bunch of not too bright animals around a pasture I wouldn’t be here at all. I may be occasionally unhinged but I’m no fool.

Meeker is one of the towns we pass through on our way to visit Ally and Kyle in Steamboat Springs. I learned about this event a few years ago when I perused a poster in a Meeker cafe. A mental note was made that it might be interesting to come see it some day, and for whatever reason I didn’t instantly forget about it (Forgetting having become one of my major talents).

So here we are. Meeker has a population of 2374 on a good day, but there are quite a few more people here today. You might even say it is bustling.

Ordinarily you wouldn’t travel here in the Fall unless you were one of the brave and intrepid souls who show up with their rifles to shoot at elk grazing in mountain meadows. I wouldn’t drive six feet to watch that sorry sight, but we are assured that nothing of the kind happens at a sheepdog trial.

Ah, but it is Autumn and the air at 6200 feet is bracing and cool, and there is nothing but sunshine promised for the duration of the meet. Life could be a lot worse.

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From The New Yorker

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I was musing this morning about the heyday of MTV when it began in 1981, with its stable of interesting VeeJays and nonstop music videos. When my own children were teenagers MTV was playing in the background all day long (minor exaggeration here), even if no one was watching it. Anytime you passed the television set, you could check out what was current in pop music. It was how a relatively obtuse dude like myself knew a little bit about the popular music of the day.

Sadly, MTV went down the chute into “reality TV” and I never turned it on again. But people still make those videos, and every once in a while I discover one that improves my day. The following offering by Maria BC is one of those.

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August 1947 in Kenyon, Minnesota.

Kenyon, I learned later in life, contained only 900 people when I was a boy. A farm town in the middle of rich farmlands. It had a grain elevator, a dairy, a movie theater, two grocery stores, two restaurants, a drugstore, a farm implement dealer and a hardware store. Most of its residents back then were Scandinavian, and nearly all of them were Lutheran. As you left town taking Highway 60 west toward Faribault, you passed the only “rambler” style home in the community. That was where “the Catholic” lived, according to my grandfather.

My brother and I often spent the summer at grandpa’s farm, which to us was a never-ending source of wonder and intrigue. We ran like ferrets all day long exploring barns and sheds and creeks and valleys. We trapped pocket gophers. We fished for very small fish in the small pond that forty years later would take my cousin’s life, as he and his snowmobile crashed through the ice together. There was just enough water to cover them both.

Bud pitched or played outfield and he was our by-god hero. Just to be able to tell some other kid at the games that look there was our uncle out on the mound with his uniform and everything and did you see that he just struck that guy out! Struck him out cold! When I grow up I’m gonna play softball just like him.

He owned a black 1946 Ford two-seater coupe with a cool V-8 symbol on the hood. Inside the car there was a tiny electric fan on the dash that you could turn to blow in your face on hot days. There was also an AM radio that never played anything but polka music.

Bud didn’t take us home every night. Olaf and Harold were friends of Bud’s and on some evenings they would ferry us safely back to the farm. Apparently there were some team issues that had to be occasionally sorted out at a local tavern after the games. Grown-up stuff. Some of them involved a lady in the community who was nicknamed Moonbeam.

I never met Miss Moonbeam but I’m sure that she was a very nice person because nearly all of the men on the team spoke very highly of her.

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There was a moment when one of the non-idyllic parts of farm life was revealed in the starkest of terms. Uncle Bud was attending the birth of piglets, in the hay-fragrant twilight that was the barn’s interior.

I watched fascinated as each small glistening body was delivered. Then one piglet was born that was half the size of all the rest.Without a word, Bud picked up that tiny animal and flung it, hard, against the barn’s cinderblock wall. The creature dropped, lifeless, to the floor.

To say that I was shocked would be an understatement. I could not believe what I had seen. I couldn’t put my idol’s hands and the killing of that poor creature together in my mind. When Bud then said the word “runt” it didn’t help at all. I had no frame of reference for that word. All I knew was that something completely inexplicable had happened. And I felt like I was an accomplice, somehow, because I hadn’t stepped in on the piglet’s behalf. Even though there actually hadn’t been enough time to do so.

Later someone explained to me what being the runt of the litter meant. That trying to raise one to adulthood was wasting money, something that was always in short supply on a small farm.

Known as runts, the smallest-born pigs often get the short end when it comes to feeding and attention from their mother, two factors that diminish their chance to survive. Runt pigs often weigh 1.1 kilograms — about 2 1/2 pounds — or less at birth. They may die on their own, or may be euthanized because of quality of life or welfare issues.

Kansas State University Bulletin

However logical my uncle’s actions might have been to him, the event was my first brush with cognitive dissonance, and it was a doozy.

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From The New Yorker

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Yesterday at City Market I had just put my purchases into the bike’s panniers when an elderly man came up to ask how I liked riding an e-bicycle.

A little background:

• This happens with some regularity
• I am very enthusiastic about the utility of e-bikes
• I am very enthusiastic about bicycling in general
• I am a consummate bore when it comes to expounding on my favorite topics

I don’t seem to be able to help myself. Robin knows how to deal with these episodes which is by hollering Pedant! Pedant! at me. But some poor sods like this gentleman have no clue what to do but to awkwardly stumble off.

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The summer days here in Paradise have been warmer than I would have chosen if I had been asked, but the nights … they are something else.

Take last night for instance. At 9 PM the temperature was just cool enough to be at the point where you might have put on another layer but are still okay without it. No wind. Just a few stars and the moon only half up. Bugs jamming around the lights (they seem to like LEDs just as well as incandescents).

Those insects reminded me of a camping experience we had. I don’t remember where we were, actually, but I do remember the toad.

It didn’t budge an inch as I walked by, and I wondered … how did it get so big? … but then I saw how. Several feet above its bumpy head the insects were fluttering around the light, and every once in a while one of them would fall to the ground. Where the toad waited patiently. No muss, no fuss, just putting electricity to good use. Every night that light would turn on automatically, and the feast would begin.

On the whole I don’t give toads credit for being very smart, but the one had something going for it.

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From The New Yorker

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I don’t like Mitch McConnell much. I think his partisan power-grabbing shenanigans went way past the point of okay when he refused to allow even a vote on Merrick Garland’s appointment. Basically he’s been an example of the worst sort of behavior in politics.

But I wouldn’t wish what’s in the video below on anyone. Notice how his aides are right there, showing no signs of surprise that their boss just lost it for awhile. Keep in mind that this man is one of the most powerful people in America.

There is a time, friends, when the elders of the tribe should retire to the shade of the great oak tree and spend their time chucking acorns at squirrels and telling stories to small children.

When are we going to get serious about dealing with the fact that human brains do burn out, and that it is neither surprising nor shameful when it happens, but a natural event. At present we are tiptoeing around the subject because it is an awkward one to discuss. Sooner or later those who try to bring it up are shouted down as “ageists”and discussion comes to a halt.

One cannot become U.S. President before attaining a certain age. How about one cannot do so after a certain age?

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I remember the first time I heard the song Rhiannon. It was on a day in 1976, while I was motoring in the UP of Michigan. I had my four kids in the car at the time, and they were all in fine voice that day as they were going through their back-seat arguing and infighting routines. Somehow the song’s melody made its way through the cacophony inside the automobile, grabbed my organs of hearing, and implanted itself in my brain.

On FM airplay the song had a haunting sort of melody, the kind that held up just fine under repeated listening, and caused me to actually spend a few bucks buying the album. It became my song of the month for at least three months.

But then I saw Fleetwood Mac do it on the Midnight Special, and I was never the same. No, I mean really, I wasn’t. This performance was perfect rock n’roll, and we knew it. It blew right past our eyes and ears and into our amygdalas, that strange small place in our brains where emotion and feeling mill around (and often cause us great mischief).

To watch this video is to remember. See for yourself.

Whew. I think I’ll get me a nice cold shower.

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From The New Yorker

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We’ve had some little rains this past week. Nothing of an order to make us wonder where we’d parked the Ark, but still, any rain in a dry country is cause for celebration. And the are some cool things that come along with it.

• the aromas of the plants and the earth are heightened to the point that even our limited human sense of smell can’t miss them
• the cats coming in through the pet entrance highly put out at their fur being wet, and somehow it seems to be our fault
• the thrilling sound of thunder and how tiny it can make us feel
• the gamble of standing out in the rain and watching the spectacle that is lightning (even more fun when somebody is yelling at you to “get in here right this minute, are you crazy?”)

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Cro-Magnon dialog to be read while above video is running

Hey kids, get those wet bearskins off you then go sit by the fire to warm up

Where’s Fluffy?

She’s not in the cave?

Dad, she will get all wet!

If she’s not in here, she is already wet. Go over by the fire and try not to set yourselves ablaze again, like last night.

I’m hungry.

Supper’s just about ready.

What are we having?

Squirrels and gruel

Can I eat over at Yarmik’s?

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I mentioned my friend Rich Kaplan in a previous post. Rich and I traveled to the Boundary Waters together perhaps thirty times over the years. Most of these trips were not the sort of epic journeys that make good story-telling, but they were satisfying in their own low-key way.

The last couple of times we went into the “BW,” we had made a deal with each other. Both of us were getting older, and the probability of injury or other health problems while in the wilderness was slowly but steadily increasing. So we decided that if either of us were stricken in some way, and could not be safely loaded into the canoe for a return trip, the other would leave him and go for help. Anything else, we thought, was Plan B.

Even as we made those terms with ourselves, they sounded rational, but harsh. No one wants to be left behind if they are hurting, no one wants to feel like they are abandoning a friend. But if there is something to be done for the afflicted person, it will more likely be found in a town, and not out in the bush, leaning against a stump.

Of course, once we had made that brave decision, the opportunity to see if we would carry out the plan never came up. One of those rules of life – if you bring your rain gear, it doesn’t rain. The opposite is also true.

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Had friends over for dinner last night, good people we haven’t spent nearly enough time with this past year. I had decided to grill some salmon on a cedar plank, something I’d done before, but it had been quite a while. And lo and behold, it turned out exactly the way I hoped that it would.

When it works, it’s pretty cool and you don’t have to worry about the fish sticking to the bars of the grill and being torn to pieces in the cooking process. After the cooking’s done you haul in a fragrant, charred board with your supper on it and make this beautiful presentation to your guests. It is kind of a cave man moment.

Morg bring meat to friends on burning board because frying pan not invented yet. Eat.

In preparing to cook the fish this way, I had boned up on the process, and in none of the videos I watched did the plank burst into flames. Nor was this potential catastrophe ever mentioned. Of course, you soak the board in water for at least an hour before you put it on the grill to prevent this. But I thought: Surely someone somewhere sometime put one into the cavernous maw of a Weber gas grill, closed the lid, and before you knew it the neighbors had called out the fire department, and the police were writing you a citation for disturbing their peace and creating a public nuisance.

But … apparently … doesn’t happen?

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From The New Yorker

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It’s 2:15 on Wednesday morning, and I stepped out onto the backyard deck where I was assaulted by a full moon so bright it gave me something of the feeling that a criminal must have when those helicopter spotlights pick them up and won’t let go. Amazing.

Terrifying. Our television weather people nationwide do a great job, I think. They have a tendency to overblow a little, their business being to cry “Wolf”whenever there is a chance of real nastiness. Many of those dire predictions don’t develop into anything serious and we begin to say: “Yeah, Yeah, I hear ya” and just keep going about our business.

But this thing called Hurricane Idalia which is roaring up onto Florida’s coast right now … winds of 125 mph and still gaining strength … this looks like the real deal and I hope that the people there have had enough time to get as far away from it as they can. What awesome power.

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I was raised in the Lutheran Church. For the longest time I was never told what being a Lutheran meant, except that it was better than being a Catholic. And what was the Catholic Church? When I was a little kid this question would prompt a lot of head-shaking and eye-rolling from the adults around me. Without much more to go on, I made a note to myself:

Catholics bad, Lutherans good.

Later, in my mid-teens, I met and fell for a Catholic girl. Since I was infatuated and thus she was incapable of error I had to make an adjustment to my thinking, and it came out like this:

Catholics great (also smell wonderful), Lutherans irrelevant.

That love affair fell through, and shortly thereafter so did my enthusiasm for attending daily mass and spending my Saturday afternoons trying to tot up my peccadilloes before going to confession. I had already decided that the number of “Hail Marys” I was being given as penances was excessive. Especially since at that point in life most of my sins were those of thought, and pathetically venial to boot. So it was back to Martin L. and the Lutheran fold for me.

Lutherans okay, Catholics tedious.

In college I read the book Here I Stand!, which was a best-seller at the time. It was a biography of Luther, and I remember that it painted him in heroic colors, and gave relatively little space to examining his “attitude” toward the Jews. Fast forward to my friendship thirty years later with Rich Kaplan, who referred to Luther one day, quite casually, as a “vicious antisemite.”

[A bit of background here. It was not uncommon for Rich to freely use phrases in general conversation like vicious antisemite, rabid antisemite, and antisemitic fuckstick. It was never clear to me which was the worst category.]

But later on I did some reading and found that Mr. Luther was indeed highly prejudiced against the Jews. In fact, he wrote a 65,000 word treatise entitled On the Jews and Their Lies.

Lutherans okay, Luther not so hot.

So how do we deal with the legacies of people who do very good and very bad things? Disqualify their positive achievements? Baby with the bath water and all that? I don’t have an answer. My own error-filled approach is to do it on a case by case basis. But I have no problem with those who topple the statues and erase the names. It may be the better way after all.

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Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, in his individual statement appended to the 1974 report by the Senate committee on Watergate, warned that “law alone will not suffice to prevent future Watergates.” Ervin wrote that “the only sure antidote” is to elect leaders who understand the principles of our government and display the intellectual and moral integrity to uphold them. Their election is not in the hands of prosecutors or lawmakers but of voters.

New York Times, August 24, 2023

So, friends, when the 2024 elections roll around, let’s all look hard for men and women “who understand the principles of our government and display the intellectual and moral integrity to uphold them.”

That shouldn’t be too hard. Anyone with those qualities will stand out from the generally unsavory herd.

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I admit that I didn’t watch the “debate “ this week. By now we all know pretty much what’s going to come out of those particular mouths, so it was unlikely that any surprises were in store for viewers.

Plus my personal physician , Dr. Perpetua Longstocking, told me that my psyche was too vulnerable at the moment to watch big fat liars for more than ten consecutive minutes. So I stayed away. All of the accounts I’ve read so far make me feel that I missed only an acute bout of nausea.

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I saw a genuine Cluckster at the grocery store last evening. Strange-looking fellow, strangely clothed, strangely bearded. But with a bright, clean, red MAGA cap on. This on the day that Mr. MAGA’s mug shot was released. Maybe it was his only cap. Maybe he likes being played the sucker. Maybe anyone who gives the world the finger, no matter how phony that person might be, is his hero. Maybe he doesn’t give a **** what I think. Maybe all of the above.

Perhaps one fine morning he’ll wake up and say to himself – could I really have been that dumb all this time? That unconscious? That unaware? That big a chump? Maybe none of the above.

It would be nice if I thought, as a traditional liberal, that we human beings are all walking on the road toward perfection and are perfectly capable of seeing the truth if it is presented to us … but these guys in the red hats … I don’t know about them. What I do know is that they had the country to play with for four years and I really disliked the results, the tone, the ugliness. They are today’s equivalent of the fascisti, and no good can come of letting them back in.

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Robin and are watching an excellent series on Netflix entitled Amend. It deals with the origin and application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.

The story is told imaginatively and has captivated us more than anything we’ve watched recently. As a refresher to those who may not carry the entire Constitution in their heads, here is the first section:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The third section will be discussed much in the months to come, I am pretty certain.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

This amendment is a biggie. Huge. What’s obvious to me in viewing the series is that it is responsible for the America that I thought was always there, from the very beginning. Nossir, not the case at all. We’re still working on it.

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They are also not edible, it’s like trying to eat a mutant reddened sponge ball.

I have also given up on basil. Each time I tried, a plant would flourish and then one fine morning the leaves began to turn black from their tips inward. It was like watching a forest fire from an airplane, as the flames converged on the center of the plant leaving only burned vegetation behind.

This happened repeatedly in spite of my following all the good advice that I‘ve been given. Eventually I took pity on the world of basil and withdrew, leaving it for others to colonize.

Things have reached the point where my neighbors have taken out protection orders against me and I am not allowed within 50 yards of their domiciles. In an attempt to encourage me to move elsewhere, those same people are directing episodes of nighttime drive-by doggie defecation at our home. A blacked-out car with hooded driver will pull slowly to the curb, a door opens, and a masked dog rushes from the automobile to my lawn where it immediately relieves itself. It then jumps back into the car and the vehicle vanishes into the night.

One has to admire the time and effort it must have taken to train such animals.

Ah well, you’ll have to excuse me, one of those cars is driving up right now. I’ve saved the last ten canine deposits and built a small version of a catapult which is loaded with them and trained on the spot where the car is stopping.

Wouldn’t want to miss their surprised looks for the world. I call it setting boundaries.

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From The New Yorker

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We all have times that there are no words for, I suspect. Both of joy and of sorrow. Depths and heights … when we really need them we find that everyday life has already used up the special words. It’s like you come running to the end of the pier and there is nothing to do but jump and let the wind wipe away your tears as you tumble into space.

For me, tears have become the replacement for those missing words, as when I was a child and would cry when I was extremely frustrated for one reason or another. Tears can be symbols, the placeholders for words yet to be coined.

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Charles Whitman killed seventeen individuals and wounded at least thirty-one others over the course of thirteen hours before he was killed on the observation deck of the UT Tower on August 1, 1966. All but two of those killed and all injured sustained their wounds after Whitman reached the 28th floor of the main building less than two hours before his own death.

Wikipedia: The Texas Tower Shooting.

Funny, but not really. Back then, shootings like this were not the commonplace event that they have become. It was quite a sensation. There was even a movie made about the whole sorry business, starring Kurt Russell.

We’ve made precious little progress since then in curbing this particularly disturbing sort of violence. Too many of the people who buy these t-shirts out there.

If they would only just shoot at each other, and leave the rest of us alone, the problem would eventually solve itself.

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From The New Yorker

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How many times have you seen a line like this as clickbait on CNN online?

You won’t believe what a daring dress she wore to the Oscar ceremonies.

A hundred? A thousand? And what is it that is so daring … why, the draping of fabric in such a way, perhaps defying gravity, to conceal all but the tiniest peek at … a nipple. That’s it! That’s the whole huge and unbelievable deal! A few square millimeters of pigmented tissue.

Don’t you just despair, sometimes? We can be such a silly species. Well, I’m not one of those sheep, those gutless wonders. I do not fear a little bit of skin. Here is a photograph of a full-fledged nipple from a full-fledged person for you to start your day with. Think of it as a blow for freedom and sanity. 

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Remember the “disaster” that was the movie Heaven’s Gate? Way back in 1980? The critics piled so much manure on it in their reviews that you could have met the fertilizer needs of a small farm with it. Theaters pulled it. The public (possibly because the reviews were so bad) stayed away by the gazillions. The film’s tsunami of expenses killed a movie studio (United Artists) and permanently damaged the career of its director, Michael Cimino. Those early reviews said it was too long, fatuous, boring, repetitive, repellent, ugly, and aimless.

Maybe ten years ago I read about the movie and decided to watch it. Why? No reason but curiosity. Could a film be that bad?

So I bought it, I liked it very much, and now I watch about once a year. About five years ago, folks in the industry began to think more positively about the movie and now it is regarded as not only worth watching, but a classic (at least to some).

A few days ago I watched the movie Babylon. Critics have torn it apart, calling it too long, fatuous, boring, repetitive, repellent, ugly, and aimless.

I liked it. So did Stephen King. He thinks it may eventually be called (what else?) a classic. I vote with King. It is a fascinating look into a world that may or not have existed exactly as portrayed, but I suspect that it is pretty close.

The movie is loud and lusty and pulsating and shocking and highly improper. But if you are going to make a film about people who behaved shockingly and improperly, what to do? If you are going to tell a story about an industry that can be highly destructive of the people in it but produces objects that are often so beautiful, how not to make it sad and exultant at the same time?

It earns a strong “R” rating. No argument there. Perhaps an “R 2.0,”to be more accurate.

Where did I watch it? Amazon Prime, for free.

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Would you like to see something gorgeous? Silly question. Of course you would. As host at her last book club meeting, Robin served up this charcuterie board.

My oh my oh my. You shoulda been.

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Horror of horrors!

We should have guessed it, but we just learned that all that old, beloved, practical Tupperware we’ve been storing our food in for decades is loaded with BPA. Arrrrhggghhhhhh.

Hormone levels. Some experts believe that BPA could theoretically act like a hormone in the body, disrupting normal hormone levels and development in fetuses, babies, and children.

https://www.webmd.com/children/bpa

I might have suspected that I was being overloaded with estrogen when I found myself shopping for a training bra. And here I thought it was just due to my putting on a few pounds.

And when my voice went up a couple of registers and made me eligible to join a local castrati choir? I didn’t catch on then, either.

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There is a very small lake on the southern edge of town named Chipeta. While Robin hosted book club one evening, I went fishing there. The only things biting were micro-bluegills and mosquitoes, but the setting made up for it that evening.

Turn the photo on its side and it is a Rorschach test.

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One of my favorite cynics has for the longest time has been H.L. Mencken. But when his diaries were opened in 1981, we discovered that he harbored bigoted thoughts toward Jews and blacks and for a time I discarded him as a source on any subject.

Years later I began using his often outrageous quotes once again in this blog. Not to forgive his failings but to accept that very few have never uttered a prejudicial word or had a racist thought. Myself included. If all of us who have sinned in this way were disallowed the privilege of writing there would be some bare shelves in the public library, I think. When reading Mencken reminds me to re-examine my own blindnesses, it does me a service.

Some of our present political problems come from fanatics attempting to put their views up as edicts, and to burn (figuratively if not literally) the books containing alternative suggestions.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

H.L. Mencken

Some problems, of course, come from the fact that there are politicians who are complete idiots. Quite a few in there right now.

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Robin has started to make fun of me for watching them as much as I do. She’s right again, of course, because they don’t do anything special beyond sipping that sugar water, but they are doing it just outside our living room windows and I find their flight patterns to and fro are fascinating.

Also, I know sometime within the next month they will be starting out on their migration journeys, and I won’t get to gawk at them again until next May or June. So I soldier on with hoots of derision ringing about my ears.

If you’ve never watched it, there is a film entitled Winged Migration that is so worth your time. Maybe your public library has it, or you can rent it on Amazon Prime for $3.99. Beautifully photographed and mind expanding. The film makers actually flew with the birds!

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Let’s set the scene. The temperature is 80 degrees, the skies are mostly blue, and there’s just enough breeze to make the prayer flags flutter ever so slightly. Keola Beamer is playing The King’s Serenade, and if there is a prettier summer tune I don’t know what it would be.

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Our long hot summer here in Paradise is beginning to mellow just the slightest, as if it is getting tired of having its way with us. Daytime temps have returned to the upper 80s, falling into the 50s at night. Oh blessed relief! O happy meteorology!

If this isn’t happening out your way … condolences.

The sad garden that came out of Spring’s optimistic startings is grudgingly giving up a tomato or two instead of the gold and crimson avalanche dreamed of in May. One does learn from one’s mistakes, however, even though the number I made this year almost choked up my learning channels altogether. Most importantly I learned that I won’t have much of a garden next year, if at all. Freedom from the chores of watering, fertilizing, watering, weeding, watering, and smacking grasshoppers is looking pretty good at the present moment.

Did I mention watering? Rain has pretty much been absent during this growing season. So of course I would try to grow one of the most water-hungry plants (tomatoes) that I could find. And not just one or two of them, but more than a dozen. Fools rush in, where … and now that I think about it, there have been no angels around recently, either.

This sort of weather is not good for growing things, at least not the things we usually try to raise in these parts. My very uneven tomato experience is echoed by that of my neighbors. Local strawberries are small and wizened things. One of our favorite seasonal delicacies is corn-on-the-cob, but this year the ears are half their usual size, with kernels that are shallower and less sweet.

Maybe … next year … bananas would work better? I would have to be aware of those deadly black tarantulas, but otherwise … .

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Visitors can play some classic old games at the booth by throwing darts at balloons or knocking milk “bottles” down by pegging baseballs at them. One very popular new game with Repubicans this year is Hide The Ballot Box. This is where a standard ballot box is hidden somewhere on the grounds, and if you can find it you win one of those oversized stuffed bears. White persons are provided an easy-to-follow map, while other visitors must search without the help of visual aids while wearing a ball and chain.

But, hey, it’s Iowa. What can you expect? I used to have a brother-in-law who was in the Iowa Chamber of Commerce for a while. One year he was on a committee which was assigned the task of developing a list of the Top Ten Best Places to Visit in Iowa. They could only come up with eight.

You have to feel a bit sorry for Ron DeSantis. Even if he were the only guy running in that primary, he’d still come in at Number Two in the polls.

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From The New Yorker

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Something kinda remarkable is happening in the world of country music. A song written and released by a black female urban folk artist more than thirty years ago is presently #1 on the country Billboard charts. It is a cover version by Luke Combs. A very respectful cover, I might add, with few changes from the original.

It’s like I always say (to the exasperation of everyone that I know personally), a good story well told never goes out of fashion. Fast Car is a ballad that tells such a story.

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I seem to have transferred my enthusiasm from motorcycles to bicycles, especially the electric ones. That was not a planned occurrence. But for a couple of decades the innovations in motorcycling had been trending toward more power, bigger bikes, and almost no environmental awareness or sense of responsibility. Last week in Silverton I saw a Honda Gold Wing trike that was almost absurd.

A gargantuan mass of metal covered with another huge pile of plastic. All to carry two persons who probably think of themselves as adventurers. The price of that thing was more than $60,000.

In using bicycles as transportation, however, there is a big reduction in carbon emissions, along with improvement in the rider’s physical strength and wellbeing. Developments to watch in e-bikes include:

• Efficiency of the motors
• Use of belt drives versus chains
• Transmissions instead of external gears and shifters
• More options for passengers and cargo
• Building safer and lighter tricycles for riders with special needs

Unfortunately with the explosion of interest in electric bikes, there has come a sort of horsepower race as well, at least among a few manufacturers. Just like back in the day you can burn rubber, but now it’s with a bicycle.

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Movie special effects people go to great lengths and use their fantastic imaginations to create screen monsters that will give us a chill. One of those that was particularly effective in causing me to feel unsettled was the one in Alien. But actually there is a critter here on earth that just looking at it makes me grateful to be here in Paradise, where they are not found. And that is the biggest reptile on earth, the salt water crocodile.

Now here’s a creepy fact that I came across this morning. They can sleep, and still keep a close eye on you, with one eye open.

Australian legend has it that crocodiles sleep with one eye open – and scientists have now proved it to be true. Australian saltwater crocodiles join several aquatic mammals and birds in being capable of unihemispheric sleep, which involves shutting down only one half of their brain at a time, keeping the other half alert to danger.

The central nervous system is wired up such that the right eye remains open when the left side of the brain is awake, and vice versa.

Discover Wildlife.com

Unihemispheric sleep … I think that I’ve got it, too. It would explain a lot of things. It would explain, for instance, why I don’t fall out of bed at night. Or why when I set the alarm for 6:00 AM I will wake up at 5:59 AM. Perhaps if Robin would stay awake and watch me for a few nights she could see if one of my peepers was constantly keeping track of everything around me.

That’s not going to happen, of course, because Robin treasures her sleep more than she is curious about whether I have yet another peculiarity for her to deal with. And truth be told, it would give me a shiver if I got up one night to use the bathroom and found one of her eyeballs tracking me even as she slept. I think I might begin sleeping on the couch.

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From The New Yorker

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A few miles past Silverton there is a sign on the highway we’ve ignored every time we pass it on our trips to and from Durango. It indicated that something called Andrews Lake was somewhere over there on the left and out of sight. On Wednesday we arranged to rendezvous with the Hurley family at exactly that place.

It’s a pretty little body of water formed by an earthen dam put up some sixty years ago. The views of the mountains on all sides are beautiful. We ate a simple picnic lunch and then did the 0.8 mile walk around the lake itself. Cool temperatures up there at 10,750 feet, with no flying/biting nasties to spoil the day.

Coming back home, Robin and I noticed a replica of an old wooden-wheeled cart at a roadhouse bar whose owner had obviously watched too much Monty Python episodes at some time in their life. A few miles further on we pulled over to watch three moose meandering along a ravine. All in all ’twas a fine way to spend a day.

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Robbie Robertson passed away this week. He was one of the founders of the music group The Band, and went on to make significant musical contributions once the group broke up.

The double album Rock of Ages, and the epic “rockumentary” film The Last Waltz, were personal favorites of mine. The Last Waltz was directed by some guy named Martin Scorsese, and I never heard what happened to him after that. Wonder where he is now, he seemed so talented.

There are many differences between the lives of the truly creative and we Ordinary Mortals. One that stands out today is that Robertson is just as alive to me now as he was last week. When an O.M. passes, those closest to them grieve, but no one else in the universe is the wiser or feels any sense of loss.

I never met Robbie, was not his friend or relative – all of my connections to him were through listening to his music, and all of those works remain behind for me to enjoy as his legacy, unchanged. I can sit down with my iced coffee this afternoon out under the ash tree in the backyard and crank up his playlist and – lo and behold – time and mortality haven’t intruded. That part of him will never die for as long as recorded music is played.

I do have one anecdote involving The Band’s music. In 1972 my family and I went camping on Kelley’s Island, Ohio. We took the ferry from Toledo to the island on a Thursday and enjoyed two peaceful, sleep-filled nights in our tent after spending the days exploring the area.

And then came Saturday, which is forever ensconced in memory as Black Saturday. All afternoon the ferry kept unloading boatload after boatload of revelers who moved into “our” campground, which was by evening filled to capacity with loud people and cases of Budweiser. At 4 A.M., as I lay unable to sleep while the speakers on the roof of the Volkswagen camping in the space next to our tent played The Band’s first album over and over, I contemplated violent acts.

The first such series of acts would be to take my (imaginary) sniper rifle equipped with a night-vision scope and begin shooting all of the boomboxes I could locate. The next series would involve picking off the owners of those pestilential boomboxes, one by one.

Looking back I am glad that I had no firearms with me, as I would probably still be a guest of the state of Ohio, in a barred-window accommodation that would almost surely afford me fewer opportunities to choose the music I would like to play than I now enjoy.

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Thought I would share with you a t-shirt I saw advertised recently. I broke out laughing when I first saw it, recognizing the basic truth of its statement.

Then I felt guilty for taking delight in what is really a depressing story behind the phrase on the shirt. That we are now down to a 1.3 party country, instead of the much preferable 2.0. That has been true ever since the GOP leadership joined the mob section of their party. (We all know who the guy at the head of that mob is, so we don’t need to dwell on him.)

Now what the mob section of either party wants to do is to burn everything to the ground and then build it back the way they would like it. Their problem is that they are so fractious they can’t work together or with others, having discarded compromise as a way of doing business.

So I won’t be buying the shirt. Why wear something that makes me sad … even if I would look damn good in it?

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From time to time I’ve mentioned bringing home the groceries via bicycle. If it’s just a few items, I will use panniers (saddlebags). But when it’s a full-bore trip I fall back on my trusty Burley Nomad cargo trailer.

We bought it nearly fifteen years ago when we were making plans to bike the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota (a beautiful trip, I might add).

It will carry 100 pounds of whatever, keeps some of the rain off the contents, weighs only 15 pounds and is easy to tow. It is covered with a coated fabric which will, of course, eventually need replacement, but it’s been fifteen years so far … . Its only real drawback is the price – $349 this year. About double what I paid way back when.

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I went looking for what could be done and the only real suggestion was to put up multiple feeders spaced as far apart as possible, making it difficult for the little brawlers to be in all those places at once.

That seems like a lot of work to rectify a problem that I created by putting up the feeder in the first place. Surely in these enlightened times there is a hummingbird whisperer somewhere who could be called in to work with us. The rufous duo may have unresolved fledging issues, perhaps dating from that awkward time when they had to leave the nest.

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There was an oddness tonight at supper. I had found a new recipe that would make use of two items taking up space on my refrigerator shelves, a head of broccoli and a chicken breast. The recipe: Chinese chicken and broccoli.

It looked good, and I followed the instructions to a tee, even though it seemed that there was an awful lot of cornstarch used, at not one but two steps in the recipe. But hey, what do I know, eh? The authors were both Chinese and they looked so happy and trustworthy … .

However, when it was finished the food was filled with those big gelatinous globs of cornstarch that I not only detest but am made nauseous by.

People talk about certain “mouth feels” that disgust them, but a cornstarch glob repels me from the moment I set eyes on it. God forbid one would ever get as far as my mouth. I don’t know what the world record for distance emeses is, but in that instance I have no doubt that I could hit thirty feet without a problem.

And I don’t know how it is in your house, but in my family it is considered bad form when the cook throws up from looking at the food they’ve prepared.

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From The New Yorker

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Last Friday we visited a park belonging to the city of Montrose that is 22 miles away, and is at an altitude of 9700 feet. It lies on the shoulders of Storm King mountain, south and slightly east of us. Its name: Buckhorn Lakes.

There are two small lakes, a bunch of picnic tables and some fine views of the Uncompahgre River valley and the San Juans. People do fish there, but we had gone to check it out, have a picnic, and get away from the heat in the valley. Once you reach the park there is a maze of old roads, many of which require 4WD vehicles, but just about any car can make it to the park. Our Subaru had no problems, although the last three miles were rocky, bumpy, and the road was narrow. Not quite 4WD territory but slow-driving for certain.

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Let’s talk about CardioPulmonary Resuscitation, or CPR, for a minute. There’s a very thoughtful piece in the New Yorker dealing with what the author refers to as a “brutal” procedure. It’s worth a read, because if you enter a hospital for any reason, and you suffer an arrest, unless you specify something different your body will be probably subjected to CPR by default. Which may not be what you want at all.

When I had a stroke a couple of years back, my treatment in the emergency room had already cleared the vessel blockage that had produced my symptoms, but I was admitted for observation. I felt fine and was back to my normal self. But when the nurse came around to officially admit me to the unit, I made sure that Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) was clearly noted on my chart and wherever needed. Why? Because the statistics regarding doing CPR on persons my age are so dismal that having someone pound on my chest and shock me would be akin to elder abuse.

One anecdote doesn’t prove a thing, of course, but I’m going to relate one, anyway. I was a junior medical student on my surgery clerkship, rotating through the county hospital. One of the patients on the service I had been assigned to was an octogenarian woman with well-advanced dementia. This was in the dark ages, when DNR guidelines weren’t talked much about as yet. At least not where I was, or to me as a student.

So when the woman suffered a cardiac arrest, my resident ordered me to begin chest compressions while he rounded up the defibrillator and the CPR cart. On my very first compression of this woman’s chest, I could feel the snapping as her ribs broke away from her breastbone. And that was the end of things. Everything stopped. Being so inexperienced, just for a moment I was afraid that I had done the procedure incorrectly and had indeed killed her.

The surgery resident quickly calmed me, and assured me that there was actually nothing that could have saved this poor soul, and that was my eventual takeaway. But the emotional charge of that first thought of mine hung on for the longest time, and it was not a good feeling to have.

But keep this in mind … it is often the default to begin CPR in hospitals, unless we do something to prevent its happening.

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While putting together our first caprese salad of the season, the tearing of the basil filled the air in the kitchen with that wonderful aroma.

I swear, if there was a cologne that smelled like basil I would wear it. The only problem would be that I would probably have to fight off “foodies” all day long, as they would be drawn to the scent.

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(The disclaimer first. If I mention a product on this blog by name I get nothing out of it. No money, no job offers, not even a coupon good on my next purchase. It’s not that I wouldn’t prostitute myself if the offer was a good one, but I’ve never received any. Turns out that it’s quite easy to maintain your virginity when no one is after it.)

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From The New Yorker

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Teaching myself how to cook, which is a project I’ve been involved in ever since my first wife gathered up the Le Creuset cookware and headed for the door, has not been made any easier by the fact that Scandinavians are born with only 25% of the taste buds that other nationalities possess.

You all know how evolution works, right? Over long periods of time a species drops what it no longer needs and acquires characteristics that improve its survival chances. Taste buds were one of those “no longer needs” things. Living in a cold country surrounded by cold water and basically living on hake and herring … well, who needs a broad palette of receptors?

Normally the taste buds include those for sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and savoriness (umami). Extensive research has shown that Norwegians have no umami receptors at all. Which works just fine when your spice cabinet contains only salt and pepper, but puts you at a disadvantage out in the larger world. For instance, there are very few Norwegian foodies. Online you can spend months and months watching videos of people cooking Chinese, Korean, French, Latin American, Jamaican … but Google Norwegian cooking shows and see how few sites come up. It’s a bit sad.

But what can a guy do but soldier on and pretend he knows what he is doing and what he is tasting? When a plateful of coq au vin or a wok-ful of General Tso’s Chicken taste to him pretty much the same as a bowl of cornflakes.

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We’ve put out a hummingbird feeder in front of the house this year, and it has proved very popular. The critters are pretty to look at and fun to watch. There are at least two species, maybe three, that are coming to the feeder. My problem in identification is that from the living room window they are all backlit, so subtle color variations are hard to distinguish.

Interesting how aggressive they are. Even though there are five little perches on the feeder, there is almost never more than one bird present at a time, because they drive one another away with their dive-bombing.

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Interviewer: We haven’t talked in a while, but I would really like to know what you think about a couple of things going on down here. I realize that you must be quite busy up there in Valhalla, what with your daily battles and all, but if you have the time, could you tell us what you think about the Cluck affair as it now stands?

Ragnar: Please, I was just quaffing a flagon of mead when you broke in.

Interviewer: Drinking in the morning?

Ragnar: It’s not morning here, thou dimbulb, we’re a few time zones away from where you are.

Interviewer: Sorry, didn’t mean to judge. Not my business.

Ragnar: Don’t do it again, or these little conversations will come to a pretty swift halt. But your question … I’ve been talking about your problems with some friends recently, namely Halvor the Toothless and Sven the Malingerer. We are unanimous in thinking that what you need is a good defenestration*.

Interviewer: I miss your meaning.

Ragnar: You’ve got the guy dead to rights, right?

Interviewer: Well, yes.

Ragnar: There is really no doubt as to his guilt, the only problem is what to do with him, right?

Interviewer: Well, he is innocent until proven guilty.

Ragnar: Are you going to waste my time … ?

Interviewer: Okay, there is no doubt.

Ragnar: So he’s a snollygoster** and a traitor to boot, right?

Interviewer: Yes. But, violence? Throwing people out of windows?

Ragnar: Mmmmmm … Okay, then just use a window on the first floor. He’ll get the point.

*

*Defenestration – the action of throwing someone out of a window

**Snollygoster – a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician. Not to be confused with a snallygaster, which is a mythical bird-reptile hybrid associated with rural Maryland

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Looking Up At The Clouds Department

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After I’d placed that silhouetted image above, I studied it more deeply and realized that what this leaping figure is doing … the only part of that posture that I could have achieved at any time in my life was the curving downward of the foot in front. And that would happen only when I got a cramp in it.

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I’ve noticed that Robin and I are getting some of the signs of cabin fever. You know, the kind you’re supposed to get in winter when the snowdrifts build up around your home and you are stuck indoors for waaay too long?

Cabin fever is not a medically defined condition but a ‘folk syndrome’ commonly understood to refer to a combination of anxiety, lassitude, irritability, moodiness, boredom, depression, or feeling of dissatisfaction in response to confinement, bad weather, routine, isolation, or lack of stimulation. A person subject to cabin fever may suffer from sleeplessness (insomnia) or sleepfulness (hypersomnia). They may even develop paranoia and difficulty in rational decision‐making. At its extreme, people may feel compelled to escape their spatial restrictions or limited routines, regardless of external conditions or the cost to themselves or others.

National Library of Medicine: Cabin fever – the impact of lockdown on children and young people

But this time it is the heat that’s trapping us. The relentless, unforgiving, dad-blasted rays of good ol’ Sol. Here in Paradise we’re not experiencing the awfulness of some places in Arizona and Texas, but even when it’s in the nineties for weeks on end it pinches off your possibilities.

Every day in the media we are treated to the Dr. Sanjay Guptas of the world telling us that, really, we codgers shouldn’t go outdoors at all, because we will die of a heat stroke within five or six minutes and then the city will have to come out and scoop up our inert forms for disposal. An unnecessary expense for the taxpayer that could be avoided if we would just stay indoors with all of the shades drawn like well-behaved senior citizens.

But eventually we must go out, because it is either that or homicide begins to be a real possibility, and we must take enough water along to drink a cupful every few minutes to try to keep up with the body’s losses. That’s an easy plan if we’re only going to walk from the car to the grocery store, but not if we’re out there for a while.

Robin and I have small backpacks containing water bladders that hold 2 liters that we carry on most of our walks, even when the temperatures are less dramatic than they are at present. Both of us have had experiences with dehydration that have made us cautious. Nothing life-threatening, but each time they were enough to definitely diminish our endurance.

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David Brooks has a very good piece in Friday’s New York Times entitled “What If We’re The Bad Guys Here?” I think it might be good reading for anyone who wonders about the direction our democracy has taken.

The ideal that we’re all in this together was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.

The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.

On Anti-Trumpers and the Modern Meritocracy, David Brooks, New York Times August 5, 2023

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Looked at the moon this morning, which was veiled by clouds. Still quite visible but the borders are fuzzy, as if dodged lightly with Photoshop. It’s a full moon, and a beauty. A brilliant icy white.

Since it was one a.m. and I knew that it would be at least an hour before sleep would return, I was maundering about the premises when I looked up and noticed our old friend in the sky.

Maundering? I come from a long line of maunderers, going all the way back to Olaf the Feckless around 700 CE. He was supposed to be caring for the hogs on a hardscrabble farm in Norway, but lost interest and instead strolled idly away. When Olaf finally snapped to and paid full attention to where he was, it was on the coast of Greenland.

He sat down on a big chunk of driftwood, pulled a herring from his pants pocket, and began to munch. Always being careful to avoid those little bones, just as his mother had told him to do a thousand times.

Olaf, slow down, you are eating that fish too fast. You will choke on a bone and just die! And I won’t even help you because you are such a dumbcluck!

While reciting this litany his mother would mime someone choking and it was such a ghastly spectacle that Olaf never forgot it.

When he tried to put down roots there in Greenland, though, he realized that the night life was severely wanting in just about every way imaginable, and there were no women at all. This set him maundering again and before he knew it he was in Minnesota where he opened a C-store to sell stuff to the Native residents. It wasn’t much … some firewater, jerky, books on woodcraft… but it was a living.

And he spent time looking at the moon. We know this because of runes that were discovered on some large rocks on the shores of Lake Minnewaska. Olaf had scratched them onto the stones while admiring lunar displays, probably much like the one I am looking at today.

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As regular readers know I started plants from seed this Spring, and at first everything went swimmingly. They sprouted, became strong little seedlings, sturdy plants, and before long all of them together formed a jungle of tomato vines that were a bit dangerous to walk past, as they would make a snatch at you if you weren’t cautious.

But then came BER. Not to all of them, but only to the varieties that were to provide the allstars. The kind you bring out to show off when the neighbors come by.

And here’s where you can start to hear the guffaws emanating from above. There were two identical planters containing the identical tomato variety, watered and fertilized identically, and located side by side. Both had been given calcium supplementation of the proper sort in the recommended amounts.

One plant is turning out beautiful fruit, the other … every single tomato a loss to BER. One planter 100 % success, one planter 100 % loss.

Go figure. I can only explain it through the concept of adverse divine intervention.

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Not quite sure where this summer is going. We’ve had two Augusts already in terms of heat and aridity, and you have to wonder what this third one will be like.

Apparently this summer has been an eye-opener to a handful of local Republicans, who brought the matter up at a recent conclave. Their resolution read something like: “Resolved that there may actually be such a thing as global warming, and furthermore it is possible that humans had something to do with it.”

They were, of course, shouted down by the rest of the attendees, who far outnumbered them. (It helps to remember that we are in Cluck Country here on the Western Slope.) Once the tarring and feathering of these upstarts was over, the conference concluded by issuing a statement denying that anything of the sort was happening at all.

Their thesis was that the problem is that the Chinese-made thermometers that we are using to measure the temperature are faulty, and that every one of them reads at least ten degrees high. All the rest is hysteria raised by the liberal mob that is ruining America by woking it to death.

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On one of our trips to the Yucatan peninsula, we rented a small casita right on the beach near Tulum. There was a day when we bought a few groceries to nibble on when we tired of sun and ocean and watching pelicans and acquiring a tan. We bought a couple of mangoes, which were grown locally.

The expression “to die for” is terribly overused, but it would describe these things to a tee. After eating the two we had purchased, we returned to town to buy all we could find. Then we returned to the casita and … there is no other word for it … we pigged out on fruit. Our shirtfronts were soppy with dripped-on mango juices, our eyes were glazed, our speech thickened and clumsy. Anyone walking in through our door and seeing the growling, crazed beasts we had become would probably have called the Mexican equivalent of 911, or perhaps the police.

Now … this week … there was a sale on mangoes in our local market. And they were just as miraculously delicious and melt-in-your-mouthy as those in Tulum, all those years ago. A total flashback. The only thing missing was the Gulf of Mexico.

A small matter, really, but one we noticed.

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In my never-ending quest for a wide, thin layer of knowledge of all sorts so I can annoy the hell out of anyone within earshot, this week I revisited a short piece of classical music. It was written by Johann Pachelbel a few hundred years ago, but never quite caught on at the time and remained obscure. A pity because it is quite hummable.

Obscure, that is, until 1980, when Robert Redford decided to direct his first movie, which was called Ordinary People and was an excellent film. The soundtrack of the movie featured Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major and made it a flat-out hit. Go figure.

Whenever it shows up on radio I will still pause and give it a listen. Beautiful.

But … there’s more. I learned that many pop songs have been written which were based on this tune. It’s not unusual for a pop composer to rip off the classics, but sooooo many? Here’s a nice British guy named David Bennett, to give us a little education.

Quite a little talker, isn’t he? But interesting.

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No rain that amounts to anything for more than a month now. Everything in town that isn’t watered is crispy. ‘Twas not the best year to have a large bunch of tomato plants, perhaps, they are thirsty little devils. But the first fruits are now ripening.

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I’ve not been a fan of Nikki Haley’s. She left me behind when she joined the Cluck team, and it doesn’t help that she is a member of a political party presently in thrall to its most rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth faction. But at a political event this past week she gave a compassionate and thoughtful response to a serious question.

The question was:

“You said on TV that women who get abortions should not be put in jail and should not be subject to the death penalty. But how exactly should women who get illegal abortions — women like me — how do you specifically think we should be punished?”

And Haley’s answer was:

“In order for us to have a federal law, we’re going to have to have consensus. What does that consensus look like? Can’t we all agree that we don’t want late-term abortion? Can’t we all agree that we want to encourage more adoptions and good-quality adoption so that children feel more love, not less? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion shouldn’t have to perform them? Can’t we all agree that contraception should be accessible? And can’t we all agree that a woman who gets an abortion should not be subject to the death penalty or get arrested? That’s where I think we start — we start, and we do it with a level of respect. No more demonizing this issue. We’re going to humanize this issue. I had a roommate who was raped in college. I wouldn’t wish on anyone what she went through, wondering if she was OK. Everybody has a story. Let’s be respectful of everybody’s story, and let’s figure out what we can do together instead of sitting there and tearing each other apart.”

I couldn’t agree more with her – “No more demonizing this issue”.

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Went to see the movie Oppenheimer this week. It did not disappoint. Christopher Nolan directed the film. It’s amazing, but he has managed to put together a body of work that contains no comic book characters at all. Who knew you could do that?

I know that we aren’t done with the comic-book franchise movies yet. That point will be announced by a film title something along this line: Donald Duck versus the Fantastic Four – Quackalypse!

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A woman with a stronger moral compass than most of us passed away this week. Sinead O’Connor has died at age 56. Hers was a unique voice that often cut through the hypocrisy and deliberate blindness that we use to keep ourselves comfortable. In 1992 she became famous (or infamous depending on your point of view) for her performance on Saturday Night Live, a brave performance that harmed her career and caused her to be banned from the show.

Here is that SNL moment.

When she tore up the picture of the pope, the child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church had already been roaring for five years in Ireland, but America had been sleeping through it all, and was still able to be shocked at a photograph being torn. Of course we learned that O’Connor was right, that there was a world of children whose lives were being damaged, all around us. A world so large and so repugnant that at first we couldn’t believe its size and its horrors.

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For me, there is a song of hers that could be her epitaph if music could somehow be inscribed on a stone. It is from the musical Evita.

Brings a tear every time.

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I mentioned the movie Oppenheimer. It is a full-bore three hour sensory assault on the viewer’s brain, one where you are rarely given a moment to relax and compose yourself. The soundtrack is a mixture of music that is recognizable as such, along with a bewildering cacophony of clanks and hammer sounds and boots stomping and I have no idea what else, banging around in those surround speakers.

Christopher Nolan doesn’t love linear moviemaking, where one scene neatly segues into the next. In fact, there isn’t a single good segue in the entire three hours. He goes back and forth in time and memories and imaginations and events and somehow the bomb gets built and dropped off. We are spared all but a filmy suggestion of how dreadful it all was at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We went with friends, and while we each said that we liked it, all four brows were furrowed when we exited the theater. The group conclusion was that we had experienced something extraordinary, but we weren’t quite sure what it was. That we should see it again was our concluding advice to one another.

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But, and here is the cautionary note, they still pressed the button when the time came.

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I’ve been trying to see if there isn’t a bright side to our climate changing, which hasn’t been easy. But as we heat up, I suppose that some of nature’s creatures who have always thought Colorado too cold to be attractive might change their minds.

It might not be beyond the realm of possibility that the corpses of armadillos will begin to decorate our highways as they do now in south Texas, and that when we shake out our sleeping bags in the morning we find that we’ve been cohabiting with new and exciting reptile varieties. Jaguars may move northward from the Mexican border to locations here in Paradise, which would be interesting since they tend to run bigger than our resident mountain lions and could decide to sample the local cuisine, which includes us.

If all of this turns out to become a real thing, I’ll have to learn about these critters and how to deal with them. As of today, I don’t have a plan. Except to run away.

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When I read up on the music’s history, I found that it was written to celebrate the Russians finally turning Napoleon’s Grande Armée around and sending it packing.

On 7 September 1812, at Borodino , 120 km (75 mi) west of Moscow, Napoleon’s forces met those of General Mikhail Kutuzov in a concerted stand made by Russia against the seemingly invincible French Army. The Battle of Borodino saw casualties estimated as high as 100,000 and the French were masters of the field. It was, however, ultimately a pyrrhic victory for the French invasion.

With resources depleted and supply lines overextended, Napoleon’s weakened forces moved into Moscow, which they occupied with no delegation to receive the conquerors. Expecting a capitulation from Tsar Alexander I, the French instead found themselves in a barren and desolate city. To make things worse, 48 hours after Napoleon’s entry to the Russian city on 14 September 1812, three quarters of Moscow was burned to the ground.

Deprived of winter stores, Napoleon had to retreat. Beginning on 19 October and lasting well into December, the French Army faced several overwhelming obstacles on its long retreat: famine, typhus, freezing temperatures, harassing cossacks, and Russian forces barring the way out of the country. Abandoned by Napoleon in November, the Grande Armée was reduced to one-tenth of its original size by the time it reached Poland and relative safety.

Wikipedia, 1812 Overture

Well, it wasn’t enough for the Russians to lick these guys in 1812. They wanted to beat up on France a little more in 1880, with Tchaikovsky’s assistance. And so, this overture was commissioned. Listening to it today I found an amusing tidbit that I missed when I listened in 1959. At 11:12 you begin to hear quotes from La Marseillaise, the French national anthem. That short phrase is played twice without incident, but on the third repetition at 11:45 the Russian cannons blow it to smithereens.

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Robin was away for four days this past week, preserving the well-being of two semi-abandoned children in Durango, so I decided to make things easy on myself re: meal preparation.

So I cooked up a half gallon of clam chowder, and ate it at every meal. This gave me the opportunity to think quite a lot about clams, something I ordinarily do rarely. Each night before retiring I have been dragging out the Water Pik and trying to dislodge clam bits from between my teeth.

It took a while each time because the motes of mollusk refused to be dislodged. They are like barnacles in the mouth. I came to the belief that canned clams really were the soles of old running shoes that had been run through a blender and then packed in sea water.

I’m pretty sure that if you were to take a canful and spend a few hours rearranging the pieces the way archeologists do when they go through bone fragments to reconstruct a skeleton, you would find that they spell out the words Adidas or Nike. Maybe a vowel missing here and there, but you would get the picture.

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The other day my one remaining functional neuron took a day off and I decided to ride up to the Black Canyon and back, something I’ve done twice before. The round trip distance is 37 miles, and with electrical assistance is ordinarily a breeze.

Coming back I ran out of juice about a mile from the park boundary. You can still pedal the unelectrified bike but it is a heavy beast indeed, and I began to pay careful attention to that turkey buzzard circling over head, since the temperature was now 90 degrees.

I began to wonder … was my will in order … had I left food for the cats … did I have any water left … would I be forced to drink my own urine to survive? Would I soon drop by the wayside and my dried husk found by the highway department tomorrow?

I cried out, I’m too young to go … not today … not when I haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet!

And then I crested the hill and realized that it was all downhill now, right to the door of my house. Soon I was balancing an iced tea on my knee and reaching for the remote control.

As my old mentor Scarlett O’Hara used to say – “Tomorrow is another day.”

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For instance, Robert Oppenheimer led the project in a town that Army engineers created on the top of a mesa that was accessible by a hazardous mountain road. A large group of the best scientists in the country were hauled up there, along with their families. They could not tell anyone the truth about what they were doing or where they were living for the 27 months that they were up there.

Oppenheimer’s story is dramatic, and many of us know at least part of his story. But he had a wife. What happened to her during these two years? How did all of these people get through what must have been a sort of madness when they were thrown together in the middle of nowhere?

So when the movie comes to town we will hustle down to see it. This is a great story and we can hope that the film does it justice.

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A little ditty from the early sixties when “the bomb” was very much on people’s minds.

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Utilitarian? This means riding to work, school, shopping, the public library, movies, meetings, etc. Our town lends itself very well to bicycling because there isn’t a lot of change in elevation from one section to the next. From our home on the eastern edge of town it is a long sloooow downhill west to the river. Probably drops less than 200 feet in that 2 miles.

Our weather also makes bicycling an option for most of the year. The streets are free of ice and snow all but, let’s say, 15 days of the year. (Unofficial figure). So if you don’t mind the feel of a cold saddle on a warm behind on a chilly January morning, why, you can bike year-round.

But one can easily cycle 8 months of the year without being a weather hero. It has made being a one-car family much easier for Robin and I. Rain and snow? On average, Montrose gets some form of precipitation only 79 days a year. And it never rains all day … we are an arid spot on the planet surface.

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From The New Yorker, a smattering of past covers.

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While musing last week after listening to yet one more person ask the question “How can those people still follow Cluck?” it occurred to me that I might know the answer. Or more properly stated, where someone else wrote the answer down. Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman who wrote a book that described his view of how mass movements arose. (And Cluckism whether we want to accept it or not, is a mass movement.) The book was called The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, and was published in 1951. The book has become a classic in socio-politics. It’s a sobering read.

Here is a paragraph from the Wikipedia article about the book that I thought put things very well.

Hoffer states that mass movements begin with a widespread “desire for change” from discontented people who place their locus of control outside their power and who also have no confidence in existing culture or traditions. Feeling their lives are “irredeemably spoiled” and believing there is no hope for advancement or satisfaction as an individual, true believers seek “self-renunciation”. Thus, such people are ripe to participate in a movement that offers the option of subsuming their individual lives in a larger collective. Leaders are vital in the growth of a mass movement, as outlined below, but for the leader to find any success, the seeds of the mass movement must already exist in people’s hearts.

The True Believer, Wikipedia

Doesn’t that all sound familiar? Loss of control, lack of confidence in existing traditions, feeling that life has been “spoiled” somehow … isn’t that what’s at the heart of MAGA territory, along with bigotry, white nationalism, and various sorts of felonious behavior ? But note that last sentence: for the leader to find any success, the seeds of the mass movement must already exist in people’s hearts. These people were there before Cluck came along, and will still be there when and if the orange man takes up residence in Cluckcatraz.

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What is it about our brains that they are not content with befuddling us during the day, but must mess with us during sleep as well?

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At last, someone has truly nailed the ethics mess at the U.S. Supreme Court. And it’s a judge who does it, for god’s sake. In Sunday’s NYTimes, that stout fellow published a piece entitled:

A Federal Judge Asks: Does the Supreme Court Realize How Bad It Smells?

It makes awfully good reading, a little on the depressing side, but well worth the time put in. To find this immensely powerful group of people who have been so corrupted by the privilege they have been given that they can no longer see for themselves how rancid their behavior is. So far not all nine of them have been outed, but where is the outrage of those members who have not? We are way past the stage when you could ask the question with a straight face: Do I trust that I could obtain justice if I came before this court?

The operative word here is trust. That is the precious commodity that this court has squandered. It is not the fault of the citizenry that the reputation of the Supremes has suffered, they have brought this upon themselves. And it is not a good thing for anyone, this diminished trust. The Supreme Court has no army, no police force, no mechanism to compel us that we do not grant them.

I think we should start their return to reality by moving them to less palatial offices. Something like the space left behind by a defunct Anytime Fitness franchise.

Give them a tin desk, one four-drawer file cabinet, and ask them to provide their own robes. Let them know that the only ones who believe them to be princes of the realm are themselves.

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Warning to viewers. By the end of the video you may find that you have fallen in love with Brittany Howard. Even if you don’t like kick-ass electric blues at all. This is something special.

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One of the quaint things about the Santa Fe Opera is, believe it or not, the tailgating in the patron’s parking lot before the performances.

Yes, tailgating, although it is not beer, BBQ, and a large gang variety as it would be, say, at a Vikings game.

No, in these cases it is a couple who are wearing clothing that did not come off a rack anywhere, and who are sitting at a card table and chairs behind the open back door of their Land Rover Defender.

Out comes a linen tablecloth, candles, crystal glasses, and full table service. There are wines and delicacies, and an attitude of “Try to ignore those peasants passing by, dear, now would you please pass the champignons?”

It all did seem competitive and very show-offy, but we liked it as performance art. The only element missing was the servants, who presumably set everything up and then were told to vanish until it was time to clear it away.

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Relationship Tip

If you have a significant other who at times becomes enraptured with their own thinking and the sound of their own voice, you might consider a technique that Robin has found very effective.

Whenever I enter such an “emote” mode, she looks me in the eye, and when I pause to take an in-breath will say quietly in that tiny space of silence : Pedant! Pedant!.

Works every time.

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Sometimes in the rush of day to day activities, I forget to pause and hit the gratitude button. To say thank you to the people who have affected my life. I’m going to try to catch up a bit this morning.

I would like to offer thanks to the climate change deniers for their foot-dragging and/or outright obstructionism which has hindered efforts to make the progress needed to address the serious problems that now hit us in the face at every turn. They have made a magnificent contribution to the fact that each year we now set new records for high temperatures around the world.

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• Some of them are deliberately ignorant, and worked as hard as they could to stay that way
• Some of them were in too deep to those who profited by the suffering, like the fossil fuel industry
• Some of them are lunatics and thus might actually be forgiven for the pain they are causing
• Some of them are just plain dumb as a rock

Did I leave anybody out? Would hate to do that, because you do deserve recognition for your important part in this slow-motion disaster movie we are all in. You are the headliners.

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I don’t know if you have noticed, but it is quite warm out there in the land beyond the front door. Our ten day forecast here in Paradise goes like this:

Yesterday I had to make some hard choices. You remember my tomato plants? Well, I finally had a lucid moment about the whole thing. I had twenty gigantic plants, with hundreds and hundreds of little green spheres growing all over them. As I saw it I had three choices:

• Throw half the plants over the back fence
• Find new homes for half the plants
• Keep them all and go buy hundreds of dollars worth of canning supplies. Then learn how to can tomatoes according to the manual written by Dr. P. Tomaine
• Run away

There I was, shears in hand and about to commit herbicide as the plants turned their soulful faces up to me and tried to smile even as they grappled with bravely accepting their fate. “The children,” I could hear them whispering, “think of the children.”

I couldn’t do it.

I ran out into the front yard and grabbed the t-shirt of a neighbor sitting on his porch and begged him to take some of the plants. The poor fellow was blind-sided and nodded “yes.” Before he could change his mind I had placed six specimens on his doorstep.

A woman was walking her dog past our house and ended up with four. Another guy took two. And it was done. I could handle the rest.

When you give someone a plant you give them a job to do, and after some reflection these fine folks may decide that they want nothing to do with an instant garden and its responsibility. They may quietly and under cover of night consign them to the trash. That is entirely up to them. I’ve done what I had to do. Just like Pontius Pilate, I have washed my hands of the matter.

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Toady Of The Week Department

Once again, our nominee is Senator Lindsey Graham. He was giving a speech to a MAGA crowd in his hometown in South Carolina, the place where he was born, and he was loudly booed. Do you think he gets it yet? He has made himself into a living, breathing, caricature of a politician that is a completely empty suit. There is no longer anything inside there at all.

One day the clothing will collapse and that will be the end of his story. Can’t wait, actually. It’s painful to watch.

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We drove to Durango today, going the long way because of construction activities on the Million Dollar Highway. There is no plan for any day of the remainder of my life that would include my navigating that road if it were narrowed down to a single lane.

The route we took was beautiful. Not much traffic at all once we got past Telluride. Forests, mountains, creeks and rivers and not a lot of civilization.

On an evening walk, we saw three young deer, all of them bucks. They were striplings, with bodies that had yet to attain that massive muscularity of an older male. When you see one of those guys, you marvel.

Of course those handsome beasts are prime targets for a lesser sort of creature, the hunter. On that same evening’s walk, we passed an open garage door, and there, mounted on the wall amidst a din of clutter was the antlered head of what had once been a magnificent animal. A pathetic display for certain, but only what you should expect when you make a sport of killing.

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To the opera Friday night, in Santa Fe. Overheard this faux conversation, which I took as directed at me:

Doyenne #1: Here, dear, let me open that car door for you.

Doyenne #2: Why, thank you for your kindness

Doyenne #1: Don’t look right this minute, but behind you is a man exiting his car wearing shorts and sandals … and old sandals, at that

Doyenne #2: You met that aged fellow? With the spiderwebby leg veins?

Doyenne #1: That’s the man. No pride or consideration for others, that’s for certain

Doyenne #2: Well, dear, it was inevitable. One of the shortcomings of living in a democracy is everyone thinks they can come to a performance wearing any old thing they choose. Standards are out the window when the hoi polloi are involved .

Doyenne #1: Too true, too true. Let’s do go in though, I’m tired of looking at him. Now where did I put my lorgnette?

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A few pix from the Santa Fe Opera. Photography is not allowed during performances.

WordPress keeps track of such things, and has informed me that today’s post is the 501st since I joined them. Before that I employed another piece of blogging software for several years. You’d think that by now I’d be better at it, wouldn’t you? Oh, well …

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(A note on the header photo. When our fearsome foursome flew into some beautiful Canadian lakes, like Loonhaunt, we didn’t waste a minute. Here an exhausted Sid and Ron have collapsed from having so much fun, but you can see that even though they are comatose their lines are still in the water.)

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Recent conversation with a dermatologist:

Dermatologist: Hi there, how ya doin’?

Patient: Quite well, thank you, doctor.

Dermatologist: What’s your problem?

Patient: My problem is my feet.

Dermatologist: And?

Patient: Well, I used to have remarkable feet. Handsome things, really. In fact, there was a time when I seriously considered becoming a professional foot model.

Dermatologist: I’ll be darned. But now … not so good?

Patient: No, doctor, something is destroying my toenails, as you can see.

Dermatologist: Let’s take a look. Well, they are damned ugly, that’s for sure. What do you think is causing it?

Patient: That was exactly my question for you.

Dermatologist: To be sure, to be sure. And I have answers for you, don’t think for a moment that I don’t.

Patient: Perhaps you could share that information with me.

Dermatologist: It’s a fungus.

Patient: I thought it might be. I’ve been soaking my feet in various concoctions and applying all manner of antifungal creams, to no avail.

Dermatologist: Yah, yah, those never work .

Patient: Your suggestion?

Dermatologist: Well, to begin with, if we were going to treat it the first thing we’d have to do is a culture to find out which fungus it is.

Patient: Okay

Dermatologist: Once we have that data, we can prescribe the correct pills.

Patient: That sounds good.

Dermatologist: Well, yes, but they only work half the time.

Patient: Ohhhh

Dermatologist: And even if they do, there’s a 70% chance it will come right back.

Patient: Ahhhhh

Dermatologist: And there are side effects to the medications … quite a few of them … hair, stomach, testicles …

Patient: Noooooh

Dermatologist: So my suggestion is to fageddaboudit.

Patient: Whuh?

Dermatologist: It’s not painful, it’s not climbing up your leg, it just looks disgusting

Patient: But to keep my feet hidden all the time …

Dermatologist: Your choice

Patient: Thank you, doctor, for your time

Dermatologist: We’re done then, please have the decency to put some socks on immediately, there may be children in the waiting room

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Here’s a tale that reinforces the ancient adage that no good deed goes unpunished.

A couple of years ago sales began to drop steeply and continued to do so until this year the Instant Company entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

The problem? Analysts say that (among other things):

• Everyone had one that wanted one
• They never wear out
• They never break down

There you go. Make something so well that it doesn’t fail and where needing a replacement is a rarity and you may have the dubious distinction of killing off your own business.

We are still using ours 5-6 times or more each week. It is a blessing not to have to heat up the kitchen stove when the weather is as hot as it has been. The device uses much less energy and cooks faster than our range. Converting recipes I already possess for pressure cooking hasn’t been much of a chore at all, and new ones are available by the thousands on the internet.

If mine ever does burn out, by the time the neon light has faded forever from its display I will be at Target buying a replacement.

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I’ve finally been able to put it all together into a framework that makes some sense. What’s that, you say? Well, the Republican right’s war on sex. Or rather, everything other than good old two-gender-wearing-proper-clothing-and-all-that sex. It helps to keep in mind that they have nothing else going for them. They are a party without the foggiest notion about how to govern and all this noise they are making is an attempt to cover up that fact.

But sometimes I feel just a bit sorry for this demented fringe, and would like to offer some tried and true suggestions from Ye Olde Puritan Manual for further forays in the culture wars.

• Bring back the dunking stool, it’s such an excellent crowd pleaser for misogynists
• How’s about an old-fashioned witch hunt? Not the faux, limp variety we read about these days, but a real one, with trials and forced confessions and convulsions and everything?
• How about resurrecting the scarlet letter program? We’d need some new letters for today, but that shouldn’t be an issue.

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We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.

Louis Brandeis

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Yesterday Robin and I took a real hike for the first time since her first knee surgery. It was up and up along the Spirit Gulch trail, a few miles only, but strenuous ones. When it is steep going up, it is careful work going back down. The stones roll under your feet when you descend and do their level best to set you down hard.

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As we approached Ouray on our way out, Robin idly mentioned that there was a perfectly good donut shop along its main street, and did I think that there might be any donuts left when we got there? From then on I counted the inches between me and that establishment.

So we stopped, we bought and ate, and we did not stroke out. Not this time, anyway. I don’t want to sound cavalier, but it if is a donut that is destined to carry me off the planet, I can only hope that some kind person will brush the crumbs out of my beard to make my remains look more respectable.

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One of the tasty phrases that Leonard Cohen left us to chew over is this one: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Another man named Otto von Bismarck is quoted as saying (although he many not have been the first who did): “Law and sausage are two things you do not want to see being made. To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.”

I agree with both of these guys. Sometimes there is just little too much light that gets in for that particular day.

I have friends who just love to watch documentaries that are exposés (and the streaming universe is full of such programming). These friends positively quiver at being able to relate indignantly how this or that politician has been caught out lying to us, for instance.

In my callow youth (which to some degree still persists in hidden niches in my brain, making me a callow senior as well), I was shocked one day to find that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had fibbed. He had told the nation one unhappy morning that a spy plane piloted by a man named Francis Gary Powers, and which had just been shot down over Russian soil, didn’t belong to the U.S. and he knew nothing about it. A couple of days later he admitted, when the attempts at deception were too obvious to be maintained: My bad, America, that was our plane after all.

That was the moment I lost my political maidenhead and became the world-weary and cynical soul that I am today. Since that sad time I have been lied to by every single president of the United States, and I know this because so much of that damned light gets in.

That’s why I am at least partially sympathetic to the followers of Donald Cluck when they give such astoundingly foolish answers to questions involving his probity and honesty.

At some level they know that they would be blinded by the light, so they stick their fingers, chewing gum, and well-chewed tobacco plugs in the cracks to avoid this happening. I get it. I don’t respect it, but I get it.

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We celebrated the Fourth of July this year by not blowing anything up or making any explosive noises at all. Our plan was to to get together with friends and to eat the kind of food that belongs on paper plates and is often found in your lap as a result.

There are no real bargains in paper plates, you learn early in your career as an adult. Trying to save money here is like buying the cheapest parachute you can find. Finding out you’ve made a mistake can be embarrassing at the very least.

We brought pulled pork sandwiches and baked beans as our contribution. I have recipes for both of these that are foolproof, and I am just the fool to prove it. All one needs to do is to measure the ingredients properly, toss them into the Instant Pot, and turn the blessed thing on. Magic happens, and the contents of the cooker are transformed.

It’s hard to remember when sitting on a blanket in a park to watch fireworks began to pall for me, but perhaps it was when (for the numteenth time) some juvenile delinquents ran through the crowd tossing firecrackers to the right and left of themselves and thus burning holes in the hair and clothing of the other attendees.

So on these occasions I now prefer to remain behind and spend my time in the kitchen stirring pots, thus avoiding revealing the grumpy old cynic that I am and spoiling the fun for others.

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The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

John Adams

Mr. Adams was only off by two days, but his heart and enthusiasm were in the right place, certainly.

By a remarkable coincidence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the only two signatories of the Declaration of Independence later to serve as presidents of the United States, both died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration.

Wikipedia: The Fourth of July

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This morning is another bright and sunny one in a string of bright and sunny mornings that goes back nearly two months. A bit more precipitation would have been appreciated but it has otherwise been a lovely early summer.

Our tomato plants in general resemble nothing so much as smaller versions of Audrey II, the dangerously carnivorous plant in the movie Little Shop of Horrors. This week they are showing tiny fruits.

I tread carefully as I water them and never put one between me and my escape route. I really can’t imagine a more ignominious end than being masticated by a vegetable.

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Here is our local 10 day forecast. Remember, this is Paradise, so heaven knows what the rest of you have to endure.

Every day is to be somewhere in the nineties. Dreadful. And the trend is slowly upward during those ten days. Gruesome. I know that it’s been much worse already in some places, including Texas, but Texas is being punished for being such a backward state, so that doesn’t count.

We do have quite a few visitors from Texas who come to Paradise to get away from living in what is essentially a slow cooker. They are not regarded highly by our local residents. Texans have a reputation for being awful drivers, especially among the people who love to drive Jeeps up along alpine goat trails. Apparently Texans have a habit of putting their vehicles crossways on a single lane jeep trail, blocking traffic in both directions.

There is a genre of “Texan jokes,” which are similar to those targeting ethnicities elsewhere in the country. I will share one of them with you.

An old prospector shuffled into town leading a tired old mule. The old man headed straight for the only saloon in town, to clear his parched throat. He walked up to the saloon and tied his old mule to the hitch rail. As he stood there, brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes, a young gunslinger stepped out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.

The young gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, “Hey old man, can you dance?”

The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, “No son, I don’t dance… never really wanted to”

A crowd had gathered as the gunslinger grinned and said, “Well, you old fool, you’re gonna dance now!” and started shooting at the old man’s feet. The old prospector, not wanting to get a toe blown off, started hopping around like a flea on a hot skillet. 

When his last bullet had been fired, the young gunslinger, still laughing, holstered his gun and turned around to go back into the saloon.

The old man turned to his pack mule, pulled out an aged double-barreled 12 gauge shotgun and cocked both hammers. The loud clicks carried clearly through the desert air. The crowd stopped laughing immediately. 

The young gunslinger heard the sounds too, and he turned around very slowly. The silence was deafening. The crowd watched as the young gunman stared at the old timer and the large gaping holes of those 12-gauge barrels. The shotgun never wavered in the old man’s hands, as he quietly said;

“Son, have you ever kissed a mule’s ass?”

The gunslinger swallowed hard and said, “No sir… but…. I’ve always wanted to”

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Buddhism has quite a lot to say about sentient beings and our responsibilities toward them. Which means at the very least, toward each other. Of course, being the argumentative species that we are, we haggle about what “sentient” means, exactly. But whatever species we regard as sentient, we are exhorted to do no harm to them. To not exploit them, to not be cruel to them, to not eat them.

In Buddhist thought there is not nearly so much made of distinctions between man and the “lower” animals. In fact, in some of its traditions, there are no “lower” ones at all. We are equals in our right to be treated with kindness and compassion.

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When one’s belly is full, the evening is soft and warm, and the after-dinner chairs are comfortable, there is a tendency for the conversation to wander a bit more freely. That is what happened on the evening of the Fourth of July just past when four sentient friends were gathered together and began to discuss the world around them, especially from a political standpoint.

It turns out that it’s not all about us. For instance, we in the West have a very long and strong habit of using up earth’s resources at an exorbitant rate. Often we take those materials from countries where the local inhabitants have had little say in our appropriating their stuff. That era is coming to an end, and a newer era of sharing those resources more equitably is being worked out. This will not happen without dislocation and pain, certainly, and perhaps not without bloodshed. Our species reaches for our guns entirely too quickly.

Eventually we may be better off as we learn to live within our planet’s means, but the choice is being forced upon us, and when that happens our tendency is to behave at first like the two-year old who climbs onto the table and declares “Don’t tell me what to do!”

That approach won’t work this time, I think. We are bumping up hard against realities that we have ignored or pretended did not exist. The bill is coming due.

(Bob Dylan was twenty-one years old when he wrote A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. How prescient was that?)

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From The New Yorker

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I was a deprived child in so many ways. Deprived of things that I would definitely have benefited from but never received, For one thing, no one ever read Goodnight Moon to me. Of course it hadn’t been written yet, but still … .

Not everybody has liked Goodnight Moon, as evidenced by the following quotation from a Wikipedia entry.

From the time of its publication in 1947 and until 1972, the book was “banned” by the New York Public Library due to the then head children’s librarian  Anne Carroll Moore’s hatred of the book. Moore was considered a top taste-maker and arbiter of children’s books not only in the New York Public Library, but for libraries nationwide in the United States, even well past her official retirement.

Wikipedia: Goodnight Moon

My own read on Anne Carroll Moore is that she must have been a colossal sourpuss.

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From The New Yorker

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Friday Robin and I took our bikes to the Grand Mesa. Since these are not mountain bikes, we limited ourselves to traveling on the roadways.

Our first choice had been to take the 24 mile ride round trip to the Lands End Observatory, but gave up on that after less than a mile. The road was washboarded gravel that was so unpleasant to ride on that we weren’t having any fun at all. With such a violent jarring there was a fear that the fillings of our teeth would loosen and fall out as well as all the screws on our bicycles, so we returned to good old asphalt and did a dozen or so miles up there at 10,280 feet altitude.

I had packed a picnic lunch which we carried in panniers, and when the time came to eat we pulled off into the Spruce Grove Campground, looking for a table.

Which we did find.

But.

In less time than it took to type this sentence we were surrounded by thousands of mosquitoes all humming in anticipation of a sumptuous blood meal at our expense. We paused not for a moment, but mounted up and rode further on until we found a place in the sunshine where the breeze could get at us and blow the insects away. It’s a blessing that these pests are such weak fliers that almost any wind can provide some protection.

(Really, it was thousands of them. They formed a cloud around us.)

Our lunch was a simple one. An apple, an orange bell pepper, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Neither of us had eaten a PB and J in many years, but that particular day it was was the perfect thing.

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Doonesbury is pretty good this week. If you’re woke, that is.

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We watched the opera Tosca last night, on Prime. Robin had been curious about it, we had a couple of hours to burn, and so it went. It wasn’t free, but for five bucks is was certainly something different from the run of the mill streamers.

The production was from 2022, done in modern dress, and was easy to follow once we found the key to the subtitles. I will here insert that my Italian is very week, basically consisting of the names of three sausages. The story line … well … it has everything. Lust, murder, torture, suicide – they are all there. And gore, did I mention gore?

The lady is desired by yet another man who wields quite a bit of power, and who wants to spend some serious canoodling time with her. He cares not a whit how that happens, or whether she is interested.

Before you know it there is blood flowing, amputated fingers on the floor, knives flashing, and a firing squad that forgot to use the blanks they were issued. By the end of the story the three leads are all dead, which pretty much wraps things up.

I enjoyed it even though I try to avoid becoming becoming cultured whenever possible. I’ve heard there are other operas, maybe we’ll do this again.

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