Little Home In The Valley

The British claim to have a laser that will shoot down drones and missiles for only $13.00 a shot. This compares rather favorably with the present approach using a defensive missile to down an offensive one at two million a pop.

This is all well and good but my question is can we scale it down so that it would be useful around the home? There are many vexing problems that could use a boost with technology.

For instance, a guided anti-mosquito laser that would continually search the air around a picnic table and blast each winged terrorist as it comes into range.

Or take the example of the children who have lately been ringing our doorbell and then running off before we can catch them and tie them up while we look for their parents. They do no harm, really, but I think a response more than just standing at the door like a dummy is called for, if only to add a little spice to the conflict.

I have also thought of installing a camera that would be activated by ringing the bell, and then posting the picture of their cherubic little faces on the community bulletin board by the mailboxes with the accompanying legend:

If anyone knows the identity of this little s**t of a bellringer, would they please have a talk with them?

***

In both of these instances I would be upholding the time-honored tradition of the old geezer yelling “Get off my lawn.” I think that traditions serve a useful purpose, and I would be glad to add my contribution, now that I have worked myself up to that esteemed status.

******

From The New Yorker

******

Robin left on Tuesday for a planned two-day visit to check in with grandchildren, but has been trapped there by an inconvenient snowstorm in the mountains between Paradise and Durango. It’s not likely that travel will be possible until Saturday, and in our conversations I remind her repeatedly that she is safe, warm, with a bed to sleep on and food to eat where she is, and doing anything riskier than staying put should not be on the table.

She chafes at this advice, and resents being held back from what she wants to do by anything as ephemeral as the weather. But we both know well that the weather is absolutely indifferent to our wishes. It holds all the cards.

******

From The New Yorker

******

A couple of years ago Robin and I were drawn into the air fryer universe for two reasons. One is that we didn’t want to appear to be just one more set of out-of-date senior citizens. The second is that one day we Zoomed with grandchild Elsa and she told us that she owned one and found it to be useful. That was enough for us, so we went out and purchased the exact same model that she was using.

Before plunking down the cash, however, we did a small amount of web research on fryers, and were amused to find that each review started out like this: There is no need for you to buy an air fryer if you already have an oven of any kind anywhere in your house because that’s all it is, a teeny version of a convection oven.

We did have a perfectly usable oven of large capacity in our kitchen, but went right ahead and got an air fryer anyway because we (mostly me) desperately needed to feel au courant. Sometimes you just have to go out and waste money to feel … I don’t know … alive.

But this morning I came across this article about Best Buy having to recall a quarter of a million of their air fryers, which if the stories are accurate, are the appliances from hell. Imagine having an electrical device on your countertop that can overheat, and if it does, several interesting things could happen:

• the handles could melt
• the handles could fall off
• the glass viewing window could shatter and slash you
• it could catch fire

Sort of makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, no?

******

Let me finish with something that might be a bit more uplifting. It is Sunday, after all. One of the pleasures of getting into a boat with my friend Bill H. is that if the fish are not biting every once in a while he will come at you out of the blue with a question so non sequitur that you are caught flat-footed. One such exchange went something like this:

Do you pray?

Yes, I do

I know that you are an agnostic and Buddhism is a non-theistic religion, so why do it?

Longish pause.

Because whenever I do, I feel better. Not at some unspecified future date, but right away.

Longer pause.

I don’t get it, really.

I don’t either. In Buddhism there is this kind of meditation called metta, where you say repeated phrases that are just like prayers, without the expectation that there is a deity that is listening.

Still don’t get it.

Believe I have a bite!

***

Leonard Cohen wrote so many great songs that I don’t even try to pick a favorite. But if I did, If It Be Your Will would be a contender. And it is a prayer.

When asked in 1984 which song, “you wish you had written?” Leonard Cohen famously replied, “If It Be Your Will and I wrote it.”

There are loads of renditions available to choose from, but one of the most distinctive is by the performer Antony, and I offer it here.

******

A metta meditation for you –

May you be safe
May you be happy
May you be well
May you live at ease

******

It was one of those magical unscripted moments in life. Robin and I were taking our first brisk walk of the year on unpaved paths. We climbed up a rather steep section and voila! We were greeted by a flock of about twenty mountain bluebirds.

As we continued to move forward so did the birds, fluttering up and resettling a few yards further along time after time. After a few minutes they decided to try another part of the park and at that point took off without us.

Beautiful birds with that iridescent blue plumage shining in the sun. Natural magic.

******

******

From The New Yorker

******

I am presently fermenting mushrooms and cucumbers, and am about to start some sauerkraut. Fermentation is an interesting discipline with its own lore. For me it’s a new hobby but once it was a large scale mode of home food preservation.

As hobbies go, it’s a very inexpensive one to get into. A few jars, some salt, a handful of vegetables and off you go. Wait a few days and get a (so far) pleasant surprise.

Unlike the heady aromas when I used to brew my own beers, lacto-fermentation produces only the mildest of odors, all of which are compatible with life.

One of the websites promoting this process warns that if you ferment for long enough one day you will likely get a jar that has gone off, and the odor produced is “putrid.” That is a word that doesn’t even look good on paper.

I’ll keep you posted. BTW, the mushrooms were delicious.

[BTW – that image above of the beautiful vegetables in jars on a shelf was taken from the internet to illustrate an article on fermentation. They only look like that for a day or so and then they begin to lose that bright color and appear much more subdued and dull. But it makes for a better photo.]

******

Watched yet another video clip of Caitlin Clark, as Iowa beat Nebraska for the Big Ten title. It is phenomenal what she has done for not only women’s basketball but for basketball in general.

When I was a teenager and watched tournament play I would afterwards be inspired to go out in the backyard, turn on the yard light, and play a game of 1 on 1 with my brother, imagining myself as playing in the game I had just watched.

That was, of course, men’s basketball. When I was a kid the women’s game was invisible.

Today if I were a teenager and had just watched Clark play I would be out there at that backyard hoop once again. Pretending I was sinking those dropback three pointers. Just like #22 did. It’s come to this. I have a girl for a hero.

******

******

The movie Barbie didn’t win much at the Oscar ceremonies, but let’s face it, the Oscars are a self-promotional exercise for the movie industry and why should you and I care about who gets what honor? But Barbie will be forever (which means at least until next Tuesday) remembered by me for this short speech by America Ferrera’s character. Not being a woman, of course, brings into question my legitimacy in even making a comment, but if it isn’t the truth … well … I bought it as the truth.

I thought it encapsulated the impossibilities and contradictions inherent in being a woman in America very well. I thought to myself how exhausting that life would be. How much easier to be a man, which of course has its own set of impossibilities and contradictions, but that’s another story for another movie character to tell in a movie that hasn’t been made yet.

Kudos to Barbie for telling truths and making them look so good we almost don’t notice that coloring gut-wrenching pain and sorrow a vibrant pink doesn’t mean that they hurt one bit less.

******

From The New Yorker

******

Back when I began to explore Buddhism, more out of curiosity than anything else, there was a recurrent theme that attracted me very strongly, and it went this way:

Wanting to be taller, better-looking, smarter, more athletic, a better dancer, more successful, and more empathetic are all just stories that you are telling yourself and they make you miserable. There is no reality to these unhappy tales that you don’t give them. So why not stop?

Now that I think about it, the way was prepared for me by reading the book The Four Agreements. Same theme. We daily judge ourselves by the laws written in an imaginary book that are read into our heads by parents, schools, churches, and random others throughout our lives. Rules and laws that are 95% wrong, but that we agreed to way before we would ever have been able to defend ourselves against them.

The book asked the same question: So why not stop?

******

******

For gardening 2024 Robin and I will probably focus on tomatoes and various greens, which have worked out the best for us. We’ve had poor luck with spinach, but some leaf lettuces and kale have done well. I read an article just the other day about the newest candidate for “superfood” status, which is collard greens. One of the original “soul foods.”

According to the advance notices, collards are so health-promoting that they need to be ingested with care and in small doses at first. One doesn’t want to take one’s body from sad sack to tower of strength in a few short minutes.

**

We have two gardening problems here in Paradise that we didn’t experience in the Midwest. The first is that there isn’t adequate rainfall, and so we have to be very consistent in our watering. Consistency, you may recall my mentioning in the past, is not my strongest suit.

The second is that there’s way more sunshine than is needed. Enough that it sometimes causes visible physical damage to the fruits of the plants. We move containers from place to place, provide sunscreens, anything we can do to run interference for the growing things. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. Some days are diamonds, some days are stones.

******

******

From The New Yorker

******

Several days a week I force myself to go to the rec center and accept the many small humiliations. Yesterday I waited at one station for a 220 pound muscle at least a foot taller than myself whose t-shirt read “Combat Ready” to finish his exercise. I know his height because the message on his shirt was at my eye level. His body rippled in a myriad of places where mine has only creases.

When my turn comes at such times it takes me several minutes to lower weight and resistance levels on the machine, down to numbers that I can deal with. Numbers, if you want to know the truth, that are sort of poignantly minute. But you do what you can, as Robin tells me over and over as she whips past me on the walking track with her titanium knees. Sometimes she goes by so quickly I can smell the odor of burning Vibram.

******

******

Let’s suppose that late in this autumn we can be blessed to be in a country where a racist fascist sexist immoral deplorable sexual predator of a candidate is soundly defeated. So badly that it wakes up the scapegraces, cowards, and fools in his party and they begin to actually act like a GOP and make this defeated person (who may or may not be an unnatural color) irrelevant.

What is obvious that even if we enter a happy day without this demented person in it there are millions of his followers who are filled with fear. Of what? Could be social change. Could be job insecurity. Could be that they really believe that there are Marxist hordes at our gates and only John Wayne Donald Cluck can keep them from overrunning the country?

Even if Cluck is exiled (0h joy, oh rapture), those millions are still here and we need to find the way to live with and work alongside one another. If not as soulmates, at least as countrymen.

******

From The New Yorker

******

******

One last thing this morning. I think that Mr. Biden nailed it on Thursday night. I especially liked when he called out the Supremes for downing Roe v. Wade. The expressions of the court’s members who were present looked like they were trying to swallow millipedes as the President spoke.

I haven’t watched a state of the union speech for years, but I found myself turning on the television with a heart full of apprehensions while waiting for the President to show up.

After the first five minutes of the speech I began to relax. This was not a doddering old fool in front of us, but a knowledgeable political warrior with way more experience than the majority of his listeners, punching hard at his opposition. And he was singing a song I longed to hear.

I am reassured. Count me in.

******

Lastly, do not call me, text me, or send me an email that requires a brisk response Sunday evening . I am going to watch the Oscar ceremonies and will not acknowledge any interruptions.

I know it’s a waste of several precious hours of my life but do I care a jot, tittle, atom, or whit? I do not.

******

For the longest time I have had an interest in fermented food. Of all sorts. In fact, one could say that I pursued my interest in wine, beer, and distilled beverages (which all involve fermentation) with more vigor than was good for me, and could have spared myself an embarrassment or two by being less of a fan.

But I also like sauerkraut, buttermilk, fermented pickles of all types, kefir, kombucha, tempeh, yogurt, kimchi, miso, and apple cider vinegar. And cheese. OMG – cheese!

So far neither my doctor nor the police department have shown any interest in how much I consume of this latter group of foods, which is a good thing.

******

******

There is a remarkable woman … hold on there … A remarkable woman? … let me rephrase that. Among the many remarkable women that I have met and never met, there is one that I would like to mention this morning, and her name is Jennifer Berezan.

I was introduced to her work by a fellow AA member quite a while ago, when he loaned me a copy of her album “Returning.” It is basically a meditative song/chant that lasts the entire album, and is a beautiful thing for someone to have added to the world. Someone put the entire 52 minute recording on YouTube.

******

As if that weren’t enough, Ms. Berezan put together a concert of yet another chant “In These Arms,” which is two hours long and when you have finished watching it, you have not subtracted those two hours from your life but added something special, I think. The concert is on YouTube along with some commercial interruptions.

It is a thing of joy, and the meditation that underlies the entire performance is one of lovingkindness, or metta. You’re all smart people, you can take it from there.

******

Perhaps my enthusiasm has overwhelmed you, and spending hours listening to/watching someone you never heard of before seems like a bit much. Here is a three-minute version of “Song For All Beings: In These Arms”

******

So far this year in Paradise we have had two kinds of days with regard to air flow. Either the air is still or it moves down the street at 40 mph or more, causing objects that belong to Robin and I to relocate into the yards of neighbors east of us. Occasionally they just vanish altogether.

Today is one of the breezy ones.

The cats hate windy days. They will stick their heads halfway through the pet door to sample the weather, and a wind velocity more than 15 mph will spin them right around and back into the house. I sympathize. If my nose was only 6 inches off the ground, I would do the same.

******

But it bothered me.

******

I learned this morning that our Supreme Court has revealed that they couldn’t identify an insurrection if it bit them on their robe-covered behinds.

******

Once again we have learned that the only Supremes you can count on to do the right thing have Diana Ross singing lead.

******

I look back fondly on yesterday, when the wind blew in up to 40 mph gusts, peppering our eyeballs with dirt and sand if we were unwise enough to venture outdoors. What?, you say. Fondly? How odd!

Let me finish. I can say that only because today the wind is still blowing but now it is colder and a sleety rain is falling as well. It is all very un-Paradisic.

So I sit looking out the window with my suite of discomforts to accompany me. A couple of weeks ago I caused injury to my lower back somehow, perhaps by picking up a dropped napkin or thinking an errant thought. You know how those things happen. You do nothing that you don’t do every single day but now you are suddenly a patient and can take care of yourself only if you don’t have to bend over, cough, or laugh.

So today I watch the rain and whine to Robin who is finding many things to do that keep her away from home just to get that annoying nnyyaaaahhhh sound out of her ears. I am popping my ibuprofen like a good boy, and Robin buzzes my complaining areas with a handheld electronic pounding device that could be used to drive fenceposts into soft ground.

One sunny day these discomforts will be gone, and my outlook on life will return to its baseline, which is a moderate level of crankiness.

Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. I have it on the best authority.

******

******

From The New Yorker

******

Moderator: Gentlemen, if you are ready then let’s begin.

Trump: I’m ready but you better wake up Joe, I think he’s nodded off

Biden: I’m more awake than you’ll ever be, you spray-painted ninny

Trump: Easy Joe, you might have a big stroke and need to be carried off

Biden: Remember your wife’s name yet, Donnie boy?

Moderator: Gentlemen! Let’s get back to debating, shall we?

Trump: Look, he’s drooling!

Biden: His Depends needs changing!

Trump: I don’t need any help down there

Biden: That’s not what Stormy Daniels said

Moderator: This your last warning. Obey the rules or we’ll shut this thing right down

Trump: I didn’t want to come anyway

Biden: Hard getting away from the “Home,” is it?

Trump: Pedophile!

Biden: Jackass!

Trump: Senile old fool!

Biden: Peckerwood!

Ad infinitum, ad nauseam

******

Each year I reach a point where I am so fed up with winter that I begin to resent all that I have to do to stay alive outdoors. And that happens even in this mild climate that the Uncompaghre Valley provides. I want to put away the puffy jackets and the flannel shirts and parkas and wear shorts and camp out and … whatever.

I’m at that place this morning.

It’s a juvenile thing, I know, but I don’t give a flying hoot if it is. I find that being juvenile at this age is much easier for two reasons.

One is that my acne hasn’t come back because of the behavior. The other is that younger citizens have such low expectations where seniors are concerned that acting childish is tolerated as long as you are continent.

******

From The New Yorker

******

The above New Yorker cartoon uses a coarse four-letter word, which is highly unusual for this genteel magazine. Of course it’s precisely the shock value of the word that makes it funny.

The New Yorker can be risqué, but (until now) it was nevah, evah coarse.

******

A tale of two jalapeños found next to one another in the same bin at City Market. Exactly the same length and firmness and color. Identical twins.

My habit when cooking with chiles is to take a very small bite at the tip to assess how hot this particular pepper is. They can vary quite a bit in ferocity, and I like to know what I’m dealing with in order to avoid the spectacle of our guests dashing from the dining table to the closest water faucet with those horrified looks on their faces.

I took that small bite of one of these and it immediately tried to burn my lips away, destroy my oral cavity, and somewhere I’m sure that I could hear the concrete slab over my grave being lifted into receiving mode. I applied various cooling agents and nostrums and within half an hour the drama was behind me.

It was the hottest chile I’d ever tasted.

It was the hottest anything I’d ever tasted.

An hour later and with much trepidation I tried the tiniest nip from the second jalapeño. It was mild enough that I could have eaten it like an apple.

My problem, of course, is that now I know that there is yet one more thing out there that wants to kill me. Or worse, something that might ruin the dish that I was preparing. And the only way that I can see to sort it out is to put my mouth on the front line as I have done for years.

******

Robin and I share an appreciation for beans here at Basecamp. They have so many things going for them and very few drawbacks. You could live on just beans and rice. You might not want to, but you could.

Good things about beans

• So many varieties
• Economy
• Versatility
• Availability
• Easy storage
• Excellent nutritional values

Less good things about beans

• Flatulence
• Bad breath (see citation below)
• Fewer social invitations as a result of the first two items in this list

*

When you block a fart from escaping, some of the gas can pass through your gut wall and be reabsorbed into your bloodstream. From there, it can end up being exhaled through your lungs, coming out of your mouth via exhaling.

Healthline

(Reading this short quote changed my way of looking at the world. To learn at my stage of life that not all halitosis is due to improper flossing was a mind bender and makes the thought of getting together in large groups even less appealing .)

******

From The New Yorker

******

******

Below is a great recipe for preparing pinto beans for those who are into pressure-cooking. Find the original recipe at From Valerie’s Kitchen

******

******

******

From The New Yorker

******

Alright, that’s about enough of this. Too silly by half.

******

I took that to mean that there were fish in the pool, and I flailed about in the water for 15 minutes before I yielded the space to the heron and made my way on down the river.

By the time I got back to my car it was so dark I had to use the interior lights to take down my Tenkara rod and stow it away. I had only one small bite that evening and no fish caught. But that line of bright orange clouds against a blue-green twilight sky and that grand-looking bird fishing nearby. Ay ay ay, too good … too good.

******

******

******

In 1974 I moved my family to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, to a small town named Hancock. We loved it there, but by 1980 it was obvious that if I was going to help my kids with college expenses down the road, I was going to have to work in a different part of the country. My pediatric practice in the U.P. was nearly 75% Medicaid, and without boring you with a lecture on medical economics, that is a number that does not equate with survival. It means that you go broke slowly but unrelentingly.

But while we lived there, we thrived in other ways. For me personally, the forests and lakes and craggy shorelines were the sort of stuff that were manna for my soul. I didn’t even mind the fact that five months of the year my head couldn’t be seen above the snowdrifts. Well, that’s not exactly true … but it was and is a special place.

******

I am still processing Alexei Navalny’s death. He joins the heroes in my personal pantheon, along with folks like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Thich Nhat Hanh, Harriet Tubman, Crazy Horse … it’s an ever- growing list. All of them people whose courage made me feel both large at sharing humanity with them and small at my own performances.

Not all of my heroes had to die to make it to the list. When I worked at the county hospital in Buffalo NY there were the grandmothers who brought babies in for well-child checks and immunizations and who had long journeys on buses involving the need to transfer twice to get to the clinic. These women were raising those kids at a time in their lives when they might have been slowing down and enjoying the shade of oak trees or putting up preserves from their gardens. Those buses traveled from and through some of the rougher neighborhoods in Buffalo, but the women came anyway and never missed an appointment.

******

******

******

Thursday a Democratic candidate for the US House stopped in Montrose for what was billed as a “meet and greet.” He was here for about an hour and a half and then zoomed off to his next event in another town nearby.

His name is Adam Frisch, he’s a well-heeled fellow from Aspen, and he seemed awfully sensible. Not exciting, but sensible. He is what is described as a centrist Democrat which means you couldn’t get a feather between him and a centrist Republican, back in the day that there were centrist Republicans. He calls himself a conservative which means that every twelfth word in his short speech was “business.”

But that’s all okay with me at this point, since most of what I’ve been hearing from nthe world of politics recently comes from people who actually should be in padded cells for their own good. And ours.

To listen to someone who speaks in complete sentences with nouns and verbs and everything was a real treat. Frisch was supposed to be running against the Happy Fondler from Rifle CO, but she smelled a loss coming her way and switched districts to try to avoid it.

******

******

Robin and I took a day trip this week to Crested Butte, which is a smallish ski town about a two hour drive from Paradise. We like CB a lot. Of course it is a touristy village, but it is unusual in that it is still quaint. Lots of pastel-painted buildings, unshoveled sidewalks, a nice little bookshop. There is a barn-like pizza joint called The Secret Stash that serves up excellent pies, and which we never miss on our trips there.

Before it became a tourist town, Crested Butte had a strong mining and ranching history, with its own versions of the cattlemen vs. the sheepherder tales. Most of those stories went like this: cattlemen occupy an area of the valley, sheepmen move in with 1500 sheep, cattlemen put on masks to ride out one night and massacre those 1500 sheep, sheepherder leaves town.

Summers there is grand hiking and sight-seeing, and some of the very best alpine wildflower viewing there is. Good place to visit, wouldn’t necessarily want to live there.

******

Monday morning I woke up early and in a mood, and sitting there in the dark I thought: I’m through with writing this blog, I’m going to sign off on the damned thing and give the world a break. I’m a silly person and it is a silly exercise and what’s the point?

I even had a quote from a Cole Porter song to finish up with: It was great fun, but it was just one of those things.

And then I read what was basically an obituary of Alexei Navalny, a man who had extraordinary courage. Who rolled the dice in a very dangerous game, standing in for everyone who believes that autocracy and tyranny must be resisted wherever they spring up.

I thought – is this the time to quit? Do we need fewer voices raised in that struggle or more of them? Please don’t think for a moment that I am comparing myself and what I do with Mr. Navalny and his work. He roared while I pule. He sacrificed all and died in a prison above the Arctic Circle, while I spend a few minutes a day in a warm room with a cup of coffee and a computer.

Nope, I thought, what I do may be trivial but I can see at least two reasons to continue.

• There might be somebody out there who needs encouragement in their own endeavors and can take heart from reading this and say to themselves – By god, I can do better than this guy without even trying – and who will then pick up the banner and carry it higher and better than I ever did.
• There might be some hard-core fascist out there who accidentally stumbles onto this blog and by the time they have read a few lines and realized their error their heartburn has already acted up.

I therefore resolved to continue my whimpering.

******

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Mark Twain

******

On Monday afternoon the February temperature was 62 degrees. I dug out the trusty bicycle and took off for enough of a ride that I regretted it for the last two miles coming home, as the part of me that was in contact with the saddle was getting quite tender … almost to the point of needing to stand up to pedal. Those first rides in the Spring can be a caution.

Out of town a few miles I spotted a golden eagle at the top of a bare tree, with the late afternoon sun bringing out the gold and red in its feathers. These photos are not my own, as I was not expecting such an opportunity and was without a camera, but that’s how it looked. Magnificent bird.

******

******

******

Liz Cheney has coined a phrase that actually might stick when she refers to the “Putin wing” of the GOP. These people are challenging us to call them out and deal with them, with their behavior having crossed to the wrong side of the line separating out those “giving aid and comfort to the enemy” from the rest of us.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Arabian Proverb

******

Periodically, I feel the need to publish this photograph, taken in 1944, just to show my readers what they are dealing with. The arrow points to myself, standing in the middle of the Second Avenue Gang, who were heavily involved in cod liver oil trafficking and neighborhood espionage.

You deserve to know everything.

******

******

One of the least reassuring news items I’ve come across this week showed up on CNN online early Wednesday morning.

A European Space Agency satellite is expected to reenter and largely burn up in Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday morning.

CNN Online

This first quotation is only mildly alarming, with only the word “largely” to wonder about.

“As the spacecraft’s reentry is ‘natural’, without the possibility to perform manoeuvers, it is impossible to know exactly where and when it will reenter the atmosphere and begin to burn up,” according to a statement from the agency.

CNN Online

Still no need to panic, I thought.

The ERS-2 satellite has an estimated mass of 5,057 pounds (2,294 kilograms) after depleting its fuel, making it similar in size to other space debris that reenters Earth’s atmosphere every week or so, according to the agency.

CNN Online

Wait … 5,000 pounds? “Largely” burning up? They don’t know when or where it will come to earth? This happens every week?

At around 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth’s surface, the satellite is expected to break apart and the majority of the fragments will burn up in the atmosphere. The agency said that some fragments could reach the planet’s surface, but they won’t contain any harmful substances and will most likely fall into the ocean.

CNN Online

“Some fragments could reach the planet’s surface”? “Most likely fall into the ocean”? Does anyone see a pattern of quibbling here? I don’t think that words like “largely” and “could” and “most likely” belong anywhere near a news item about 5,000 pound things falling from the sky. Especially when even a doorknob falling from that height and onto your cranium would at a minimum make you forget where you put your car keys, perhaps forever.

Personally, I think that the people who put that up there should be a bit more responsible. We have seen that when space agencies want to know where something is going to land so they can meet it and get the pilot out, they can do that quite well. What this article is talking about is nothing more than space littering and someone being awfully careless, if you get my drift. In Colorado, if I toss a soda can out the window of my car, I can be fined from $20-$500. If the highway patrol saw me dumping out an ERS-2, the fine would almost surely be even higher.

All I know is that I’m not going outdoors until Thursday, and even then I’m going to start wearing my bicycle helmet on all such occasions. I will do that until someone in authority tells me that all of the large chunks of crap out there in space have already fallen to earth. Can one really be too careful? Really?

******

I wouldn’t consider myself a hard-core Frank Sinatra fan, only buying a couple of his albums back when that was what one did in order to listen to music at home. But there are some of his songs that enriched my young adult existence. I bonded with them and I can’t imagine anyone singing them better.

It almost goes without saying that my favorite of his albums would be a collection of songs of longing. Music well-suited to someone with a melancholic disposition. A soundtrack for suffering with themes like Oh I’m so lonely or I’ve just been dumped again or Where is my perfect person? … you know the drill.

Ay ay ay … just thinking about it I can hear a certain twenty-ish angst-filled man pacing in a basement apartment somewhere in my memory. Memories of nights with this record on a turntable, on repeat play.

Maybe I am a fan after all … Type 2.b, perhaps.

******

From The New Yorker archives

******

The elderly patient chuckles: Doctor, when you are my age everything is trying to kill you. The cars of impatient drivers leap at you at crosswalks. Every new infectious disease that comes to town has your name at the top of its list. All of your organs are hovering on that thin line between just being able to do their job and failing. Your heart and your brain are filled with plaqued-up and narrowed blood vessels that could plug up at any minute and that will be the end of your story.

All of us run a gauntlet between dangerous things all of our lives, but when you get very old, you slow down.You slow down, but those dangerous things do not lose one bit of their vitality. They are just as swift as ever, which means that the odds of one of them catching you go up rather steeply.

So I know that I should have come in earlier and I am grateful that what I have is something you can treat. But it was never the only threat out there I had to worry about. Only one of many.

******

From The New Yorker archives

******

David Brooks is a thoughtful man, which makes him quite an outlier in today’s raucous social and political scene. He’s also an aging white male, which positively marks him as someone to be ignored, because that makes him a member of a group that is being held responsible for everything that is bad in the world.

But let’s keep our minds open, shall we, and allow for the possibility that this old dude might say something worth thinking about.

More of us have to embrace an idea, a way of thinking that is fundamental to being a citizen in a democracy. That idea is known as value pluralism. It’s most associated with the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin and is based on the premise that the world doesn’t fit neatly together. We all want to pursue a variety of goods, but unfortunately, these goods can be in tension with one another. For example, we may want to use government to make society more equal, but if we do, we’ll have to expand state power so much that it will impinge on some people’s freedom, which is a good we also believe in. … these kinds of tensions are common in our political lives: loyalty to a particular community versus universal solidarity with all humankind; respect for authority versus individual autonomy; social progress versus social stability

Brooks, David: The Cure For What Ails Our Democracy

So why would I even bother to read his Op/Ed and recommend it to you? Well, there are several reasons, actually.

• He’s way smarter than I am
• He loves this hot mess of a country
• He refuses to make each social or policy question a matter of black vs. white, but finds the world to be everywhere shaded, and no one has all the truth on their side
• When on a televised panel he is invariably polite and respectful to everyone else, even the dolts
• He never yells at other panelists, and lets them finish their thoughts before offering his own

It’s difficult to see how we could get to the place he describes, but I agree with him that it is essential if we are to begin to get out of this poisonous stew we’re in.

I really hate to admit that, because it will mean that I have to lighten up on my strong tendency to use sarcasm and my assumption that I have always been and will always be right about everything … but, hey, if it means that the noise quiets down … might be worth it.

******

******

Just finished a massive housekeeping chore. I was running out of storage space on WordPress with hundreds of posts going back six years or so. Those tunes and photos and videos took up a bit of room. The next step would have been to move up to what was essentially a commercial-sized cloud parking area.

Time had caught up with me because I didn’t follow my own prescribed path. When I originally thought about writing this thing, my idea was to keep it short and sweet, and delete old posts periodically. Even in my most narcissistic moments I realized that there was nothing I was going to say that was worth preserving for very long. Truth is, I traffic in ephemera. Each blog entry is a pebble dropped into a pond which causes a small ripple that spreads out and eventually disappears.

So over the past several days I took down about 500 old posts and everything that went with them as I repeatedly pressed the delete key. Needed to be done.

I feel ten pounds lighter.

******

Native Americans have meaningful descriptive ways of naming full moons. The Moon of Popping Trees, for instance was the frigid December of 1890, when nearly 300 Lakota people were massacred by the U.S. Army at Wounded Knee. The “popping” was of frozen branches snapping off from bare trees.

February has been called the Snow Moon because it is the coldest and snowiest. During my student years at the University of Minnesota February could have been named the Moon of People Flying, because those gray days, frigid temperatures, and fear of spot quizzes would occasionally gang up on a sensitive student and they would jump from the old Washington Avenue Bridge into the dark cold water of the Mississippi River.

Now I had my down days while in college, but there was never a moment when an impromptu winter swim in Ol’ Man River seemed like a good idea to me. Because I knew with a certainty rarely granted to human beings that I would survive the jump and spend the last several minutes of my life astronomically more uncomfortable than I had ever been and I simply wasn’t having that.

Even when the winter dragged on and my car wouldn’t start (again!) and the pipes froze in my cheap apartment and the entire ancient plaster ceiling in the bedroom fell onto my bed and a 9/11-style mushroom cloud of dirt and asbestos and mouse poop and squirrel chewings going back to 1920 ballooned out through the bedroom door into the living room. Not even then.

******

******

From The New Yorker

******

I find YouTube to be a great resource, although these days I read a lot of sniping and sneering about it. But how else would we doofuses of the world learn how to take a bathroom drain apart to clean it? Or to properly sharpen a buzz-saw blade? Or jailbreak our iPhones? 

I now have thousands of bits of information and scores of possibly useful skills as arrows in my quiver that I did not have before YouTube came along. But be warned – there is nothing more dangerous than a half-educated man with a cordless drill in his hand.

******

(In the unlikely event that my heart softened and I opened my door to him, gave him dry clothes and a cup of hot coffee … even though I knew how … I would still not make him those scrambled eggs. Boundaries, my friends, boundaries.)

******

******

In the above scenario, if it were Mr. Cluck dripping on my doorstep, I would not even go that far. I might simply turn off the porch light and call the police to report a waterlogged trespasser. Might even sic the cat on ‘im.

******

From The New Yorker

******

Interesting article in the Times of New York on Monday about the company Patagonia, which makes excellent outdoor apparel that I can only afford when it is seriously on sale. I was given a Patagonia fleece pullover fifteen years ago that is cut better, sewn better, is made of better material, has a better zipper, and will probably outlive me. In addition, they have one of the best guarantees out there.

Patagonia will repair all our gear, covered by our Ironclad Guarantee, free-of-charge. Once your repair is complete, we’ll ship your item back to you with the return shipping costs covered by us. Please note, if your garment is not sent in freshly washed, you may incur a laundering fee.

Patagonia advertising blurb

(That last sentence tells me that some unpleasantly fragrant garments must have been shipped to them in the past, and they are guarding the sensibilities of their employees.)

What’s more, the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, is a promoter of simple fly fishing (Tenkara), and therefore a man after my own heart. He even wrote a book about it.

But that’s not the story the Times is talking about. That story is what they are doing with their profits, and that is to donate to projects and people that are working to better the environment. Good practice, that.

(BTW, that little jacket Yvon is wearing retails for $399.00. The waders are $699.00. I would have to be a much better fisherman to think that I needed to be outfitted in such raiment. I am much more the $100 angler than the $1000 version.)

******

******

One of the reasons comedians do as well as they do is because we humans are such a silly lot, and often all they have to do is report on our behavior. YouTube’s algorithms served up this gentleman last Monday morning so I could start the day with a couple of smiles, and I share him with you. 

******

I have a fondness for Steve Earle’s music. And since he’s quite a bit left of center politically, I admire much of his politics as well.

But there was a period in his life when drugs threatened his existence. Fortunately that hairy time is long behind him. While those addictions were active he put out a song called Copperhead Road, which is a fave of mine, and his biggest hit.

It’s the story of a young man who returned from his tours in Viet Nam to take up the family moonshining business and plans to add the illegal growing of marijuana to his portfolio.

In 1988 he was invited to do the song on the Letterman show, and a video of that performance is below. It is remarkable for two things.

One, it sounds nearly as crisp as the studio version. It is a fine rock and roll performance, with his band dressed in a motley collection of garments and everyone looking like they just got out of bed.

Two, you need to take a look at his eyes. His gaze is that of a person who is not quite in the same universe you are. Definitely not the look of a man to whom you would lend your pickup for the weekend or put out the red carpet for if he wanted to date your daughter.

******

On Thursday the Supremes took up the case of Benedict Cluck’s incitement of an insurrection, and we get to watch history being made once more. One way or another.

Some people say that Mr. Cluck is a no-good lying sack of doo-doo, and that his continued existence is a complete waste of the planet’s oxygen, but I partially disagree. When, I ask you, have we had a better education in our form of government, as he has continually exploited its weaknesses at the same time he was butting his head against its strengths?

Now I happen to presently be a resident of the great state of Colorado, which has taken this matter to the Supreme Court. Some people say that it shouldn’t have been done, and that we should “leave it to the voters.” I think that’s a crock, to borrow a phrase.

When people are accused of crimes, we don’t have elections to decide whether they are guilty or not, we have trials. (Even so, there was a recent editorial on CNN which makes the case that we’ve already had a trial, where majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives already declared that there had been an insurrection and that Cluck incited it.)

******

From The New Yorker Archives

******

******

The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it’s been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.

Will Rogers

That line fits so well with today’s news it is uncanny.

******

Steve tells stories in the best traditions of that genre. His voice has been described as the place where Tom Waits meets Hank Williams. And this is only my personal opinion, but I think he looks exactly how a serious socialist/activist/troubador oughta look.

******

In the darkest hour of the longest night
If it was in my power I’d step into the light
Candles on the altar, penny in your shoe
Walk upon the water – transcendental blues.

Happy ever after ’til the day you die
Careful what you ask for, you don’t know ’til you try
Hands are in your pockets, starin’ at your shoes
Wishin’ you could stop it – transcendental blues.

If I had it my way, everything would change
Out here on this highway the rules are still the same
Back roads never carry you where you want ’em to
They leave you standin’ there with them ol’
Transcendental Blues.

******

From The New Yorker Archives

******

Most of my life I have been out of the loop. It explains a lot of things about me, nearly all of which aren’t interesting in the slightest, not even to me. But in my defense, at least I used to know where the loop was. That is no longer true. For example, I offer the following.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. I have never watched a Super Bowl, which makes me such a foreigner in my own country that I probably should carry a green card. Most Americans will line up in front of their television sets today to watch a group of highly paid athletes who are the playthings of a large group of billionaires run out the clock in a brutish game where the already scarred brains of many of those athletes will be further damaged by their participation on that very day. 

Next year or the year after we will read headlines involving some of these men as they lose control of their lives and minds and commit serious crimes. They may murder their wives or their girlfriends or other men after what might have been small arguments or no argument at all. Some will even murder themselves to escape their mental torment.

There are no crowds present at the commission of those crimes, but I am pretty certain that if they were being streamed, there are many who would purchase tickets for the event. And there would be commercials, you can bet on it.

This year I have read that commercial time during the big game costs 7 million dollars for a 30 second slot. They are yet another arena for billionaires to compete with one another.

Advertising agencies put out the best they can imagine for a “family” audience, and sometimes these are quite clever. The granddaddy of them all, the one that took commercials to a whole ‘nother level, took place 40 years ago in 1984.

And they wanted to have its coming out party be something special, so they made a commercial which was run only once, at Super Bowl XVIII. Here it is.

You can see that there is something strange about this commercial. You never see the product. They don’t even tell you what it is. And yet by the midsummer of 1984 I owned a Macintosh and so did millions of others. The Times of New York had a short piece dealing with the creation of the ad in Saturday’s edition.

I don’t know how many Macs I have purchased since 1984, but it’s a bunch. This blog is created on a MacBookPro which is now six years old, making it a dotard in the world of technology. It is not the biggest nor the fastest computer and it has a few highly annoying quirks, but I still love it when it does what I want it to do.

As an example of the threadbare Buddhist that I am, I cling to my Mac and thus it can make me suffer whenever it desires.

******

So much this week about the two old men running for president. Mostly negative. Although CNN did round up a few older voters to ask what they thought about it. One lady of a very certain age said “Well I’m eighty and I’m on our town council and I take college courses for credit …” as proof that not every octogenarian is drooling continuously and couldn’t find their feet without a guide.

Proves nothing. In fact, call me callous, but I think the demands of being POTUS might exceed those of a small town council member. For all of the glaring differences in their politics, what Biden and Cluck share is clear evidence of the significant wear and tear that time can bring about.

For them to pretend that it isn’t happening is neither reassuring nor evidence of good judgment on their parts.

******

There I was, washing up at the kitchen sink and looking out the window into the back yard. Six feet away from my nose, perched pertly on a bare branch of the ash tree, was a bird I had never seen before. It was blue and a little bigger than a robin. Suddenly there was another one in the tree, and another, and soon there were ten of them hopping from branch to branch. I had time to call Robin over to see them and marvel along with me before the whole bunch grew bored with our tree and moved next door to try the neighbor’s.

There were enough identifiers present, and I had such a good long look at these beauties, that I was easily able to identify them as Woodhouse’s Scrub Jays using the Sibley Guide to Birds of Western North America.

I consider myself a “birder,” even though I recognize that there is a great difference between me and the sort of person who deliberately plans their vacation around some spot on the globe where they hope to see a new bird species. I am the sort of birder (Type D) who, if he spots a bird he’s never seen before while reclining in a hammock with an iced tea nearby, gets excited and looks it up.

• Type A birder: will drop a baby they are carrying in order to grab their binoculars to identify a bird in the vicinity
• Type B birder: will plan a vacation trip to see a chestnut-sided tomtit and be depressed for months if they don’t find one
• Type C birder: never leaves the house without binoculars and a copy of Sibley, even if only going across the street to buy milk for supper
• Type D birder: as above
• Type E birder: regards all bird species as pests who might poop on their BMW. Cannot tell a crow from a peacock and doesn’t care.

******

******i

******

There are probably thousands of great books and videos about birds that I’ve never seen, but one of the most beautiful that I have viewed so far is the documentary Winged Migration. It is extraordinary. I found an extended preview for you to watch when you have the time, and if it whets your appetite for more, Prime Video will let you watch the entire film for the cheap cheap price of $3.99. 

Now if you rent it, and are anything above a Type E – your day will be improved and your life’s schema broadened for less than four bucks. That, compadres, is a banner deal.

******

It was my fifth grade teacher, Miss Behrens, who turned me on to watching birds. She brought her copy of John James Audubon’s Birds of America to class for us to look at, with its dramatic illustrations. I pored over that book, and still am drawn to the art even though it has come under some fire over the years because the birds were painted in postures at times that were inaccurate, and might have not even have been achievable in life.

(Audubon is said to have killed his subjects, then posed them. A common practice for naturalists of the day)

In spite of these criticisms if I were to find a copy of that big book on my coffee table later today, I wouldn’t be much good for anything else for the next several hours as I slowly turned the pages.

More recently Mr. Audubon’s name has stirred up yet another controversy when it became more widely known that he had been a slave owner and slave trader, and some of his writings have been described as racist. Although several chapters of the Audubon Society around the country have changed their names to avoid being associated in any way with these abhorrent practices, the national organization has retained the name Audubon, as has our local chapter here in Paradise.

Personally, I think a name change is probably inevitable and it would be good thing for the organization to go on and get it done.

******

******

******

I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but the grand old disease of syphilis is back in style once again. It was never completely eliminated, but the incidence was low enough that a graybeard like myself only saw one case in his professional lifetime.

The CDC statistics tell the story pretty well, I think. There were 5,979 cases in the USA in 2000, and 133,945 cases in 2020. A 2,140% increase!

Some historians believe that it was Christopher Columbus’ Crew that brought syphilis back with them to Europe, since prior to his voyages it had been a disease only of the Western Hemisphere. What is certain is that when it hit Europe, every country blamed it on a neighbor, especially one they might have had hostile relations with.

So, the inhabitants of today’s Italy, Germany and United Kingdom named syphilis ‘the French disease’, the French named it ‘the Neapolitan disease’, the Russians assigned the name of ‘Polish disease’, the Polish called it ‘the German disease’, The Danish, the Portuguese and the inhabitants of Northern Africa named it ‘the Spanish/Castilian disease’ and the Turks coined the term ‘Christian disease’. Moreover, in Northern India, the Muslims blamed the Hindu for the outbreak of the affliction. However, the Hindu blamed the Muslims and in the end everyone blamed the Europeans.

NIH

******

And I personally would round up some sackcloth to wear and start in with self-flagellation this very afternoon if I thought that was all there was to the story. But wait … how many Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, or Gen whatevers do you know whose lifestyles and choices are more environmentally sound than those made by the “boomers?” I see little difference between the consumer habits of different generations.

It’s one big boat and we’re all in it, friends. If people want to argue about seat assignments I won’t interfere, as long as they pull on their oars.

******

******

From The New Yorker

******

HOPEFUL SIGNS THAT THE APOCALYPSE MAY NOT BE UPON US AFTER ALL

• The noxious censorship battalions traveling under the name of Moms For Liberty may at last be losing ground and influence. School boards and librarians aren’t caving like they used to do. BTW, the name of this group is right-wing newspeak pure and simple.
• E. Jean Carroll’s day in court was a huge win and she gets 83 million dollars from her rapist. Yay for the lady!
• Lauren Boebert’s campaign is having many difficulties which surprisingly don’t involve the fondling of her male companions in public places. The other wolves in the Republican primary pack have tasted blood and are eager for more. Howls of “carpetbagger” fill the air on each full moon.
• The National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre is being tried for corruption involving his misuse of millions of dollars of association funds. Other good news on that front is that the NRA itself is losing membership and revenues are dropping. For way too long the NRA has vigorously opposed sane discussion on how to work together to deal with the issue of firearms.

******

From The New Yorker

******

We’re halfway through winter and I’ve been barely blooded by it. Still have all my fingers and toes, no visits to emergency rooms have been necessary, and my mood is not nearly as sullen as usual by this time of year (I do not have independent confirmation of this last point). It certainly doesn’t hurt that each day has a few minutes more of sunshine in it than the one before.

We’re planning a trip to the Midwest this summer to connect with family, and I’m looking forward to that. Most of our trips are by car, which is my preferred travel mode.

I like air travel less each year. Even before doors started flying off airplanes in mid-flight the problem is that what used to be a pleasant adventure had become a slog involving being bullied by TSA tyrants, bamboozled by airlines, and shoehorned into seating spaces more suited to something the size of a gerbil.

Not to mention that those sleek but self-destructing aircraft are responsible for 3% of carbon emissions worldwide. Not a good thing, that.

Much of the romance of flight has definitely been lost. A favorite genre of old films is those involving the early days of flying. Movies like Wings, for instance, with intrepid men and women all over the place, fluttering about in cloth-covered aircraft .

Never mind that Wings (1927) was made even before my time, and was a silent film as well. It was all about the planes, man, the planes … and the freedom of the skies.

******

******

******

We’ve not talked much here about mindfulness, but I wanted to alert you all to an opportunity. Sharon Salzberg is offering what she calls a 28 day challenge. Basically an online meditation course, free of charge (although there are instructions as to how to donate if you are so moved).

She’s an excellent teacher, and one of the premier American lecturers in mindfulness meditation and Buddhism.

The link to the series is here: https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/real-happiness-challenge

The course starts on February first, and January 31 is the last day to sign up.

******

I mentioned the movie The Holdovers a couple of days back, but neglected to include one of my favorite lines from the film. I was reminded of it this morning as I slogged through CNN online where they were interviewing Cluck voters in New Hampshire.

(This does not mean that I think all Cluck voters can be described in that way. Not my intention at all. I think that there might have been some selection and editing going on because all of those being interviewed on CNN this morning … well … every one of them could have used a boot check.)

******

******

There aren’t too many things that instantly get me riled up. Well, that’s not actually true, there are quite a few of them, come to think of it. One of them is stories about infectious diseases making comebacks, diseases for which we have effective immunizations.

It’s one of the most harmful things that can happen when politics intersects with public health. Politics can be a mindless beast that thrives on controversy and vituperation, and we saw so much of this during the pandemic years that it became an experience painful enough to sear itself into my shrinking brain.

At the onset of the Covid 19 story, I thought there would be a period of fear, confusion, and a lot of deaths at first, but in a year or two a vaccine might be produced that would carry the day for us. I was wrong twice.

First, I did not realize that there was new technology for vaccine production just waiting for such an opportunity to be used, and a vaccine was put into play within months rather than years. (That seemed miraculous to me, who once had waited 25 years for the chickenpox vaccine to come to where pediatricians had access to it for their patients.)

And then the second mistake in my prediction. Some of the meanest-spirited and most ignorant mouths in America opened in a collective yawp and instead of having a good chance of throttling this viral invader, we found a large contingent of our “leaders” shouting down the scientific community in the absolutely most witless and venal sort of way, attacking those workers who were doing their best to protect us against this threat.

You know the rest. We are still dealing with Covid and we still have a large number of people who refuse to be vaccinated and that are providing the population needed to keep the disease going.

Meanwhile, those citizens who are not suckered in by the mountebanks and the politicians are still getting their shots and are still doing much better as a result.

When you read the stories of people over these past several years who are literally dying of Covid-related disease but refuse to accept that they even have it because they have been told that the whole thing is a hoax … well … what can I say? The gap here seems almost unbridgeable.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

H.L. Mencken

******

******

What got me going on this rant this morning (Thursday) was a story in the Times of New York about measles making a comeback. Vaccination rates have fallen in Europe to the point where it was absolutely possible to predict that an outbreak would happen soon, and it appears to be doing just that. No surprise at all. 

Viruses have no brains, the only thing they seek is to reproduce, and the only thing needed for that to happen is opportunity. Too many parents have listened to the anti-vaxxers and now … the predictable whirlwind is being reaped. It is children who will suffer, children who depended on grownups to do the right thing for them.

******

As a child I had measles, rubella, mumps, whooping cough, and polio. If you had told my mother that there was a vaccine available for any of these and did she want her child to receive it she would have laughed at you, because the answer was so obvious. OF COURSE I WANT MY CHILD TO BE IMMUNIZED, she would have said, because these diseases were not hypotheticals to be argued about over afternoon coffee, they were potential killers that were right then tearing up the family three houses down from ours.

******

******

Here’s the good news. 

Thanks to vaccines, measles, rubella, and polio have officially been eliminated in the United States. But that could change due to imported cases of these diseases and low vaccination rates. None of these diseases have been eliminated globally, and there have been measles outbreaks and rubella cases in the United States in recent years. Efforts to increase vaccination rates are critical for maintaining elimination of these diseases.

Health.gov

Here’s the worrisome news. Immunization rates for these diseases are below the 95% threshold necessary to eliminate the possibility of epidemics. Which means that should a case be imported from another part of the world, we are becoming a fertile ground for that virus to grow in.

In the political climate of today, where scientific ignorance is not only bliss, but often rewarded by election to public office, I don’t see these numbers changing any time soon. I earnestly hope that I am wrong in this, and that we drop the glorification of nonsense and the lines start to go around the block at the immunization clinics. 

******

******

******

Drove to Grand Junction to see the movie American Fiction, having decided that although Paradise is 99% perfect, part of that 1% that is missing is in the film department. To make it short, AF was a fine movie, and Jeffrey Wright got his chance to be the lead and really show us what he could do.

Since we hit “Junction” with some time to kill, Robin and I walked over to a strip mall where there was a store she wanted to visit. I forget the name of it, but it was devoted entirely to cosmetics, and to a person like myself – it was a foreign country. Bewildering. Not sure how a real customer could ever navigate such a place.

But I was fascinated by how you could get a cream, balm, ointment, or oil for basically any part of the body. The question I kept asking myself was is this variety really necessary?

My insecurities started to mount, as they always do when I find that I’ve been unaware and ignoring something completely that might be important to my life.

I wondered … do I need some B-Tight? Have time and gravity been doing anything back there that I can’t see but everybody else can and that needs my attention? Am I too late in discovering this product? Are there limits to the power of the unguent and I must now remain un-lifted and un-firmed for the remainder of my days?

It was all too depressing, and I had to leave the store. There are some questions that I am just not brave enough to hear the answers to.

******

******

A piece in the Times of New York entitled Train Yourself To Always Show Up deserves mention, I think. It tells the story of an old Judaic practice. There are many good lessons here, and the author writes so well that I will only quote from it and not thin it out with my scratchings.

A somewhat obscure text, about 2,000 years old, has been my unlikely teacher and guide for the past many years, and my north star these last several months, as so many of us have felt as if we’ve been drowning in an ocean of sorrow and helplessness.

Buried deep within the Mishnah, a Jewish legal compendium from around the third century, is an ancient practice reflecting a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: When your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and inclined to retreat, you show up. You entrust your pain to the community.

Sharon Brous: Train Yourself To Always Show Up

We desperately need a spiritual rewiring in our time. Imagine a society in which we learn to see one another in our pain, to ask one another, “What happened to you?” Imagine that we hear one another’s stories, say amen to one another’s pain, and even pray for one another’s healing. I call this the amen effect: sincere, tender encounters that help us forge new spiritual and neural pathways by reminding us that our lives and our destinies are entwined. Because, ultimately, it is only by finding our way to one another that we will begin to heal.

Sharon Brous: Train Yourself To Always Show Up

Reading this I became interested in the author, who I found out was a rabbi of a Jewish community named Ikar, located out there in wicked, wicked Los Angeles. Going to Ikar’s website led me to a recorded talk she gave, and I am glad that I took the time in the early morning hours and listened. Really, it is amazing what listening can do for a person … perhaps I should do it more often. But how to do this when I have so many wise things to say … a puzzlement … indeed … when my mouth is open my ears seem to close up.

******

******

******

The title of George Will’s column in the Washington Post on 1/16/24 really says it all, at least for him:

Iowa nudged the nation closer to a revolting rematch next fall

***

While the title of Will’s op/ed is catchy and may be the opinion of scads of folks in both parties, it also raises some questions that perplex a certified moderate and highly sensible individual like myself.

• Is this the best that a country of 300 million can come up with as choices, or is it finally revealing that both parties have become little more than shiny but vacant shells of what they portray themselves to be?
• What if President Biden had spent time finding a good and solid replacement for himself, and then began working for the election of that person? Think what a service he would have done for his country, instead of dragging us kicking and nauseous and screaming into a Who’s more senile, you or me? contest.

******

******

At long last our local theatre was showing a film that was not based on a comic book. So of course we went to the movies.

The film was “The Holdovers.” The action took place at a posh prep school in Massachusetts during the Christmas break. Held over at the school are a cook who is grieving her loss of a son, a curmudgeon of a professor, and a snotty and over-privileged kid.

It’s a story you’ve seen parts of before, but a story is all in the telling, and here the telling is very good.

In fact, Paul Giammati’s pipe-smoking professor was done so well that I began to get the itch to go pipe shopping, after quitting smoking thirty-plus years ago.

I thought … seriously … if I added a major vice at this age … wouldn’t be much of a big deal at all, would it? Of course I’d have to puff away outdoors, and not in my comfortable den like the professor did. Nahhh. I forgot about the coughing and the stained teeth and the burned tongues.

******

Sometimes like this morning I am overcome. Images, regrets, confusions of the past wash over me like a monstrous wave as when the Atlantic Ocean shows its truest face, black and cold and green and terrible. I am drowning before I know what is happening and can get my defenses up. There is sand in my hair and tears and saltwater in my mouth and I am swept from my chair with time to take only one long breath before I wash up against the wall and then the wave recedes, leaving me gasping and shivering.

I think … what a small thing I am to have worn so completely through my welcome here on earth. 

And then I wonder, what’s for breakfast?

******

******

[As I post this it is one o’clock on a Sunday morning and my refrigerator just sent me a message that it is quitting as of
right this minute, and immediately after I read the manual in order to interpret the error code on the appliance’s door,
our older cat walked over to where I was sitting and threw a couple of ounces of his last meal onto the rug in my office. 
Things come in threes … right?]

Finally we have some snow that will last a while. Just a couple of inches fell but the weather has turned colder. Single digits recently. Nothing remarkable. Winter.

Not enough on the ground yet for XC skiing here in the valley. There are more reliable conditions up at Black Canyon National Park and on the Grand Mesa. Because of knee surgeries we’ve skipped skiing for two winters in a row now, so we’re way rustier than usual.

The snow conditions on the Grand Mesa are uniformly as beautiful as anywhere I’ve ever been. You ski in mixed evergreen/deciduous forests in areas where the nearest snowmobiles are miles away. A local club maintains excellent groomed trails, and they accept free will donations from non-members.

There are hundreds of lakes on the Grand Mesa, but Robin and I generally steer clear of them unless we’ve been assured by a panel of at least three people that there is adequate ice thickness. In 2019 there were two drownings in lakes on the Mesa when incautious people went through the ice.

One of the nicest things about winter on the Grand Mesa is that it keeps the mosquitoes down. There are still a few around, but only the biggest and the strongest can handle the cold weather. These hardy bloodsuckers are about the size of robins, and make a sound like a Stuka dive bomber as they come at you. Fortunately they are slow and awkward fliers that can fairly easily be stabbed with one’s ski poles.

******

******

A pathetic thing to watch is the belief of the Cluckists that they are following in the train of the Glorious Orange One, and when he comes to power they and theirs will be well cared for as The Second Coming starts to roll.

The thing is that there is no train, but only a heap of bodies, including theirs, that he is treading on to get what he wants.

If they would only take a step back and look at the damaged followers he has already left behind, licking wounds and mourning damaged careers … but they don’t, or won’t, do this. It couldn’t happen to them, they think, as they mortgage their integrity, common sense, and occasionally the family farm.

******

I have been told that I sorely neglect whole genres of music in what I post here on the blog. I freely admit it. Actually there are musicians and types of music that I don’t like at all, some that I dip into and take what I admire, and some that I fully enjoy. The latter variety is what I usually post.

This day I am going to share a piece of classical music by a guy named Vivaldi. It’s the violin concerto Winter, from his larger work The Four Seasons. To introduce it I have invited a guest post-er named Chad Griffin-Porter-Theroux to describe the chosen piece. Take it away, amigo.

…

Thanks, Jon, this is an easy one to talk about because so many people know these works of Vivaldi that they are almost classical pop. His “The Four Seasons” is a set of violin concertos, each representing a season. It is renowned for its vivid musical depictions of nature and is a baroque masterpiece.

“Winter” is captivating with its brisk, icy atmosphere. The violin’s depiction of cold winds and the warmth of the fireplace creates a vivid musical experience. Vivaldi skillfully captures the essence of darkness in “Winter.” The haunting melodies and intense passages evoke a sense of cold and solitude.

The opening movement resembles a shivering person, stamping his feet in rhythm to stay warm. The middle movement portrays the pleasure of getting warm inside through a crackling fire. The final movement offers people outdoors walking down icy paths, while people inside houses feeling the relentless chill finding its way inside. 

ChadGPT 1/10/2024

***

…

(BTW – if I remember to do it, I plan to play the other seasons when their time comes around.)

******

******

Bradley Cooper starred, directed, produced, and co-wrote the screenplay for the movie. This guy is moving up to be one of the more creative ones in this industry. A couple of years back he remade the movie A Star Is Born, and darned if that wasn’t awfully good as well.

There was some mild controversy a few months ago because his makeup preparation for his scenes included a bigger nose. Its purpose – to make him look more like the composer, and it did its job. The problem was that quite a bit of antisemitic cartooning over the years Jews has portrayed them as people with exaggeratedly big noses. 

There’s a particularly good review in The Saturday Evening Post that you could check out if you’re interested. As the quote below indicates, there is one scene that is like nothing I’ve seen before. Outstanding.

As memorable as Maestro is as a whole, the sequence that will follow you for weeks is one that comes near the end of the film, as Lenny conducts Mahler’s Resurrection at Ely Cathedral. It’s a legendary moment in 20^th century music history: You’ll find the entire original concert on YouTube, and it is clear Cooper studied every frame of Bernstein’s performance: that great head of hair flying, the rivulets of sweat on his brow, the conductor nearly bursting from his tuxedo, the Incredible Hulk of classical music.

Bill Newcott, Saturday Evening Post, December 21,2023.

Actually, if every movie were as engrossing and took as much energy to watch as this one did, I would soon be exhausted, depleted. So it’s good, I guess, that there are so many lesser films out there to act as diversions.

****** 

This morning, like a burst of lightning, a plan came to me for dealing with the ongoing mess at our southern border. I can’t imagine why it hasn’t occurred to anybody before. We need to take a cue from Vladimir Putin (an unsavory source of inspiration, I’ll give you that) and annex Mexico.

There is ample precedent in that we already took 55% of that country back in 1854, and then just for good measure we invaded them one more time in 1914. So after the annexation – presto! Our present way-too-long border becomes history, and the much more manageable one with Belize and Guatemala on the other end appears.

Mexico could become our fifty-first state, instantly reducing Texas to an also-ran in the size department, and we all know that Texas needs some serious shaking up. Oh sure, there would be commentaries in the world’s media, but the attention span of humans has become so short that within a week the globe’s attention would turn somewhere else.  In fact, if we could time the annexation to the opening ceremonies of the World Soccer Cup Finals it might not be noticed at all.

Just think how happy we would make the FBI. They’ve not had a solid enemy they could get their teeth into since the Mafia became a television series. We’d be giving them the Christmas present that keeps on giving with the newly-opened opportunity to work on taking down the cartels. 

All those presently seamy and troubled towns like Tijuana, Matamoros, and Ciudad Juarez would have the chance now to become gentrified. It shouldn’t take too long to push out the present impoverished residents and replace them with a more affluent population looking for sunny places for their third home.

I think I’ll collect my thoughts and put them in a letter to our senators and representatives in Congress. I probably won’t send a copy to Rep. Boebert who I understand still can’t find Mexico on a map.

And then I’m signing up for Spanish classes.

******

From The New Yorker Archives

******

This is not unusual, since I have long ago discovered that my education has been truly a hit and miss affair. The number of worthy books that I not only haven’t read but am not even aware of must be awfully long since hardly a week goes by that I am not put on notice of my deficiencies.

But why be excited about Pedro Paramo? Because it was the novel that inspired Gabriel Garcia Marquez to write his beautiful One Hundred Years of Solitude, that’s why. And One Hundred Years of Solitude has two distinctions for me personally. It opened my eyes to the wonders of magical realism, and is the only book that no one I recommended it to ever finished. Most of them grumble and turn away whenever I ask how they are coming with their reading. Some of them have stopped returning my calls.

The world continually surprises me.

******

Yesterday a small amount of snow fell, just enough to cover the ground completely and put our cats into a funk. They hate stepping into anything that gets their paws wet. At such times the usage of the litter-box increases greatly, as does the chore (for me) of keeping it presentable.

I haven’t been keeping up with how the ski areas in Colorado are doing regarding snow depths. My interest in this sport fell off years ago when the rituals of wearing those uncomfortable boots and standing in lift lines began to tip the scales toward “What am I doing here?”

******

From The New Yorker Archives

******

******

It’s always hazardous to have litmus tests for voting, and letting them be the kicker in one’s decision. It’s a closed-minded thing to do. But here I am suggesting one for you to consider. Any candidate who doesn’t promise to wear themselves to a nubbin through working on climate change from the day they take office should not be considered, no matter what other opinions or positions they hold. If we don’t solve the big one, arguing about the others becomes sort of moot.

******

 

Cooking rice should be easy, right? It’s only a smidge more complicated than boiling water. You put dry rice in a pot, add the suggested amount of water, and turn on the burner. One problem is that you are sort of locked into the area near the stove to watch for spillovers, scorching, and other minor kitchen catastrophes. You also have to watch to see when the rice is at the point of tenderness that you wanted in the first place and has not moved into the area of unattractive mush. 

Enter rice cookers. You add rice and water, push START, and off you go to take a nap while it creates a perfect mound of fluffy grains ready for whatever you want to do with them. More than a decade ago, when I decided that such a cooker was worth having around and taking up space in the pantry, I scorned the cheapest versions and went with an upscale model. More expensive means better, more sophisticated, bigger smiles on the cook’s face … right?

Wrong. Although the internet suggested that the higher-end machine would be a much better choice, when it was delivered I discovered that the English portion of the owner’s manual was written by someone who was obviously an extraterrestrial. It was less than useless, because whenever I tried to read it I ended up irritated and unhappy. Through trial and error I figured out how to turn the device on and cook some rice, but I never discovered what all that extra money I’d paid would do for me because one day in a fury I took it out into the driveway and reduced it to rubble it with a sixteen pound sledge. Then I started a campfire with the manual. 

******

******

From The New Yorker archives

As I wrote the above entry I was reminded of Robert Pirsig’s book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. One of the topics touched on was the art of writing technical manuals, and how important (and rare) it was to find really excellent ones as you journeyed through life. Many of these were opaque, some were foolish, some were actually dangerous. 

When I was involved in teaching medical students, I structured my lectures and discussions along lines similar lines to what he had suggested. Instead of taking everything I knew about a subject and compressing it into a sixty-minute diatribe, I took a step back and asked the questions:

• What did I want the student to take away from spending that hour with me? 
• How could I communicate this in the clearest way? 
• Since I wasn’t really an “expert” but a generalist, what was worthwhile about my perspective?

 Once I had answered these questions for myself, I could then work backward and build that hour of educational interaction. I used much the same approach to patient care in my office. For example if the child had an ear infection, and required medication as therapy, what did the parent need to know to feel competent and to follow my instructions?

• How to store the medication I’d prescribed
• How and when to give the medication
• What and when to look for in improvement
• When to call back if things didn’t seem to be getting better
• Why followup was a good idea

Unfortunately I had to learn the value of such a list piecemeal, often by making the error of thinking that somehow the parent would absorb everything I said and remember it entirely when they got home, and had also spent two years in a medical education setting before becoming a mom or a dad.

******

******

I have become a winter wimp. I’ve reached the point where temperature, wind velocity, humidity, and depth of snow cover are all fit into a formula that decides whether I will go out for a romp. Most of the time my formula tells me to sit in my recliner, pull an afghan up around my neck, and stare out the window in the most creative manner that I can muster.

I don’t know when or how this happened. I tried to look up the subject in Egregious. P. Gallbladder’s immense book, How To Explain Everything That Ever Happens To You. Although the book is 2100 pages long and can give you a hernia just moving it from place to place, there is a common thread that runs through the entire tome. 

Everything nasty, painful, awkward, troublesome, messy, and embarrassing happens to a person exactly one hundred times more often when they become a senior citizen. The term “senior citizen” is actually a euphemism for Dartboard of the Universe.

Therefore, I’ve given Robin a large pointed stick and permission to jab me with it whenever I pause at the open front door and start to claim an infirmity of any sort at all as a reason to stay indoors. I do have one small concern, and that is the gleam that came into that worthy woman’s eyes when I mentioned the word “jab.”

******

******

From The New Yorker archives

******

In a well-written article on owls in our local paper today, the writer used the phrase “ethical hunter” when referring to himself. These words appear to be used by hunters as a salve for their consciences when at some level they sense that killing another sentient being for fun says something about who they are that needs defending.

I googled the phrase and found this interesting piece on the subject, written from a philosopher’s perspective.

******

Ally and Kyle were guests at Basecamp this week. Entertaining in January does not play to the strengths of life here in Paradise, but they operate a small farm, and winter is their “free” time. In spite of cloudy skies and chilly temperatures, we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. 

Their farm grows vegetables for market and local restaurants, and if you want to see how beautiful a well-tended garlic plant can look like, schedule a visit. 

During one conversation, the subject of the “Barbie” movie came up, and when I learned they hadn’t seen it, I wished that somehow we could have set it up. Because it’s hard for anyone who hasn’t been to accept that that there was so much meat there in what could have been only a superficial film comedy. This clip is part of what I am talking about.

I find myself wishing there was such a movie for men. Not to take away anything from the struggles that women go through, but they are not the only ones living with unreasonable expectations and impossible contradictions. When Buddhists talk about suffering that we cause for ourselves, this is some of what they mean. 

Knowing how difficult life can be, why are we not more supportive of one another? Why should anyone have to deal with low self-esteem when this is a concept created entirely from whole cloth? On a ferociously crowded planet, why is loneliness so pervasive? 

You can play life as a zero-sum game, but you only have to take a glance at this morning’s newspaper to see where this approach has gotten us. There are other ways to live. 

******

It’s January of 1970. I’m stationed in Omaha, Nebraska with the US Air Force. When I arrived at Offutt AFB in late July, I replaced a man who had been only a year ahead of me in my pediatric residency. We seemed about the same size, so I bought all of his uniforms. Turned out that I was a teensy bit taller than he was, but the USAF didn’t care if my pants were slightly of what used to be called the “high-water” variety.

The war in Viet Nam was still cooking awfully well, and although I seemed relatively safe in Nebraska, where no Viet Cong had been seen in months, there were never any guarantees in the armed forces in wartime. There were 37 draftee physicians at that hospital, and we knew that any one of us could be picked up and deposited in Southeast Asia if a need was felt. It happened twice to guys who were serving there with me.

******

******

Earlier in the week I had read about a new album done by Simon and Garfunkel. Up to that time, I knew them only for the tune Sounds of Silence. But this new effort of theirs was getting raves, so I bought the album, and one icy afternoon I finally had time to put it on a turntable for a listen. The album title was Bridge Over Troubled Water, and I positively loved it.

******

******

For the next couple of years it was in constant rotation at our casa. It has held up well, and when I put it on yesterday I felt that old connection. I remembered how it had cut through the gloom I had felt in 1970, serving during a war I knew was the result of a series of bad choices by our government. Lethally bad choices. 

******

******

******

Of all the ballads I’ve listened to in my life, there is none that I have liked better than Simon and Garfunkel’s version of The Boxer. Its durability is revealed by the scores of covers out there, and that they each reveal the core of truth in the lyrics in their own way. A song of the human spirit, and a view that I happen to hold. We are a mongrel lot, we humans, but we are an absolute bugger to completely beat down.

… Or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his pain
I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains …

***

Here’s an a cappella version from England.

A version done by Portuguese musicians.

Waylon Jennings does a fine country-western version.

It’s all in how you tell the story, non?

******

One Sunday morning at the Unitarian Church in Omaha NE, there was a part of the service where members of the congregation were given the opportunity to share. I had to miss that particular meeting because of being on call, but when a fellow stood up and said he had puppies to share, my family voted to accept his offer.

She turned out to be an excellent and well-behaved member of the family. Maybe the best-behaved of all of us, actually. She had one quirk, and we have no idea why this was so, but she only tolerated people with fair skins. There was a dark-skinned meter reader who came to the house periodically and we had to bring the dog in and put her in a room until he had left because she would go into a fury. 

And a young boy in the neighborhood had a hereditary liver disease which made him perpetually jaundiced, which also put him on Lady’s short list of people I might very well bite. Whenever Peter was nearby we were especially watchful.

When we lived in Buffalo NY there was a power line that reached from the alley to our home, and which passed through the branches of a huge butternut tree. A squirrel would regularly traverse that line from the alley as far as the tree to gather nuts, and Lady would run back and forth beneath the line, barking as the rodent made its rounds. She was frustrated every day that this happened, until about a week before we moved out of that house. When the squirrel made a misstep and fell to the ground, where Lady waited. 

End of story.

******

 

When I started college at the University of Minnesota I was sixteen. I was not ready. At an orientation session the speaker told the 1200 students assembled to look at the students on their left and right. “A year from today only one of you will still be here,” he said. I looked at my neighbors and thought “You poor schmucks, why not give up right now.” But a year later it was me that was gone.

The coursework was not the issue. I had been a good little high school student and had rote memorization absolutely down pat. Ask me a question and I could regurgitate pages of information without necessarily understanding what I was saying.

When I hit campus I was on my own, no one to tell me where to go or where to turn and it wasn’t working for me. I kept taking turns westward and walking down to the river road to breathe in the earthy pungency of the Mississippi River while I read poetry and imagined that I was the bastard soul child of T.S. Eliot and Anna Akhmatova, kept hidden all these years.

The university wasn’t going to reward my personal variety of independent study so I dropped out in early Spring.

This time I lasted less than six months before the river called my name again and I answered. Taking a year completely off finally cured me of those wandering urges and I began to buckle down and do the work. Never looked back.

And all the while, down at the Big Ten, this tune was in frequent rotation.

******

******

I’ve got a problem. A couple of years ago I was introduced to a condiment that absolutely improved my life in the kitchen. When one adds a spoonful of this stuff to a soup, stew, chili sauce … a myriad of dishes … there is quite an umami kick.

I found it to be such a flexible and delectable ingredient and yet, in this entire time I have failed to get even one person to try it. It goes like this:

You like to cook? Well you really ought to try this the next time you make that stew.

What is it, then?

******

New Year’s Eve approacheth. We have no plans. We usually have no plans. The last times we hosted parties everyone had gone home to bed by 10:30. If one is not drinking alcohol, the excitement of watching a mechanical ball drop or televised strangers displaying embarrassing behavior somewhere in the world palls a bit.

We could take up my grandfather’s practice and write 2024 on the pipe leading from the oil heater in the living room with a piece of carpenter chalk. If we had an oil heater, a pipe, and a hunk of blue chalk, that is.

New Year’s is really the only holiday affected by my living sober. In my family of origin it was the generally recognized excuse for getting inebriated, if one chose to take that route.

I have recollections of spending more than one New Year’s morning worshipping the porcelain god back when I was quite a bit more foolish than I am now. I miss those times not at all.

******

******

******

We don’t make New Year’s resolutions here at Basecamp. Actually, if you are in a recovery program, you’re making them off and on throughout the entire year. Any goal that I set these days is a modest one, and has to be something achievable within a fairly short period of time.

Part of the reason for doing it this way is that my memory has made a shift from a remarkably reliable instrument to one that is barely worth squat, and if I say I’ll do such and such by twelve months from now, when that deadline rolls around I may not even notice it, much less adhere to an old pledge.

But you insist that I make at least one New Year’s resolution? Okay, here’s one I think that I can keep: During the year 2024 I will work very hard at improving the level of discourse here on the blog. I will do this by becoming as politically neutral as I can, and stop calling former president Cluck a malignant blowhard. Henceforth he will be referred to as the Turncoat in Chief.

******

******

.

******

******

Robin and I spent Christmas in Durango this year. The weather was mild but there were enough icy patches that it took us three hours to cover the first 120 miles. While we basically have no snow on the ground here in Paradise, there was a thin layer on the other side of the southern passes.

I had a long talk with my friend Bill H. yesterday, who reminded me of times when my acrophobia caused some awkwardness in our travels together.

These days I am much more … I was going to say “comfortable” but that’s not quite right. I can now drive across the Red Mountain Road (also known as the Million Dollar Highway or Forty Miles of Abject Terror) in either direction without freezing at the wheel in a panic. I can even appreciate some of the scenery as I motor along.

This didn’t happen by accident. When we moved to Paradise, I found a small book on “curing” oneself of acrophobia entitled Overcoming Fear of Heights, and followed its instructions. Basically, they went like this:Walk out as far on the path as you can go until you just barely begin to feel distress, then stop and just stand there. Wait. If panic rises, go back two steps and pause there.

[Clicking on the link above will take you to a downloadable PDF of the entire book, if you know someone who might benefit from reading it.]

The advice has worked, although progress was by millimeters and not miles. There are places I cannot and probably never will be able to go, and I accept that. But I am not nearly the prisoner of geography and topography that I was when I first came to this country.

******

******

******

Our pets have adapted to winter pretty well so far. It’s been mild enough that they can make short forays outside without too much inconvenience.

It was obvious that she needed emergency psychiatric help, so I tapped her just behind the right ear with the sap I carry for special occasions and self-defense. Gently loading her into the Subaru I took her to see Dr. Hermione Crock, who we keep on retainer. She’s not an MD, but a practitioner of ayurvedic socialistic humanistic opportunistic fairy dust quackalism.

Listening to my story, her august brow became so deeply furrowed that it began to trap lint from the atmosphere. She then raised a single finger and I was quickly subdued by two large and white-suited orderlies and whisked away to a comfortable room with the softest walls you’ll find anywhere.

“You can’t keep bringing your wife in whenever you disagree with her,” she said to me. “It’s just not done.”

It’s really not too bad here. Robin comes to visit every day, I was allowed to keep a crayon and some writing paper, and my only real complaint is that because I don’t have a belt my pants keep falling down. But they tell me that if I behave myself, I’ll be out in a fortnight.

******

******

Yesterday afternoon I betook myself down to the stream that runs through our village, and put on the costume that on other person’s bodies might indicate a skilled fisherman, including waders and boots to keep a person from sliding about on mossy rocks. I then proceeded to vigorously flail the waters with my Tenkara rod and line while doing absolutely no damage to the fish population thereabouts.

There was a young couple upstream from me who were having the same luck, and were still enjoying themselves as much as I was. It was mid-December and the three of us were out there, with no shivering, no frozen fingers, no snow or ice … a complete absence of misery.

I wear sunglasses with Polaroid lenses when fishing, allowing me to cut through the normal glare on the clear water and see fish if any are present. I saw none at all. I have no idea where they went and why they weren’t on that particular stretch of water. I know that if I were a trout, that’s where I’d be, no doubt about it. It was lovely.

Walking around in flowing rivers is not the perfect milieu for a geezer. You know how it is to watch an infant who is just learning to walk? How they careen unsteadily across the room looking as if at any moment they will take a header into the furniture? I’m pretty sure that’s how I look walking in streams. Seniors like myself have enough problems navigating on dry and level surfaces, and our balance issues are magnified when walking on slippery and rocky-bottomed streams.

Yesterday I felt as if I were going to go in swimming … let’s see … about a gazillion times during my two hours on the river. Somehow that never happened, but I think that I am realistic in accepting that if I go out there enough times I will eventually take a cool bath.

******

******

******

Biting The Hand That Feeds Me Department

Most of my posts over the years have contained at least one purloined cartoon from the New Yorker archives. That wonderful storehouse is an amazing thing to wander. Type in the name of your subject and be rewarded with the best that the art form can offer. I publish a handful of them here because I love them, and try always to attribute them properly, hoping to be given a more comfortable prison cell when the magazine gets down to prosecuting small-change thieves like myself.

But when I get to the present-day version of the magazine, I find nothing worth stealing. Every week I go through these cartoons and am saddened by how pathetic they are, how unfunny, how they are repeatedly guilty of terminal archness. The old guard cartoonists have died off one by one and been replaced by, I don’t know, unimaginative people who draw fairly well. Don’t look for the lovely dementedness of a George Booth panel like the one above because you won’t find it in today’s bland drawings.

So how ungrateful can an unworthy burglar be, to criticize the people he is stealing from? It’s an upside-down world my friends, is the only explanation I can offer.

******

******

A Repeated And Enormous Puzzlement

Not infrequently I will order cole slaw as a side when eating out in casual restaurants. This, in spite of the fact that most of the time I will be brought a highly disappointing bowl of chopped and undistinguished cabbage that remains uneaten when I have departed my table.

I love cole slaw. It is a simple dish, requires no cooking, and asks very little of the preparer in order to be attractive and tasty. But over and over the words tasteless, insipid, plain, weak, unsavory, watery, thin, and dead come to mind as the first forkful reaches my taste buds.

It’s an affront of the highest order, and can mean only one of two things. Either the cook never tasted what they were sending out to the customers, or they did but didn’t care. Their eyes were on the main entrée and not on the sides.

The world of recipes available on the internet contains hundreds of formulas that one can follow to make excellent cole slaw. A few ingredients and no cooking skills are all that is required. We’re not talking Michelin stars here, just the most basic kitchen stuff.

I have begun to regard a limp and tasteless bowl of cabbage as an indicator, and marking the whole meal down as a minus score for the establishment.

******

******

******

I am a morning person. More so every year, with my tendency these days to rise before 0500 hours. I never thought of it as something to be concerned about, the world was divided into early people and late people, and that was that. Until today, that is.

This morning the New York Times published a piece in their Science section that stated:

***

***

What I will not do is get one of those DNA analyses that purport to show who dallied with who a few thousand years ago and eventually produced me. My self-image is fragile enough without having to accept that just because I like to rise early every day that my distant ancestor’s name was likely to have been Glurk rather than Olaf. 

However, the more I look at the photograph, the more I realize that the guy is a dead ringer for a second cousin on my father’s side.  He was a little slow in school but by God he could throw a spear like nobody’s business.

******

.

‘Twas not always so. There were many years when there were emergency trips to shops on the afternoon of the 24th, plugging gaps in a doomed attempt to create the seamless fabric of a perfect Christmas.

It never happened, of course. Last year, for example, our guests arrived and within hours I had developed a febrile illness which I spread to several others before I knew I was ill.

Then there was the Christmas Eve a couple of decades ago when one of my children was stuck in Morocco of all places, as a coup was under way outside her hotel door.

Or when I was eight years old and I inadvertently tripped over the bicycles that Dad had hidden in a stairwell, and as I recall I received at least three undeserved swats to a tender behind before I could convince him that it was an innocent act on my part, and that I wasn’t trying to see what my present was ahead of time.

And yet I remain an absolute sucker for Christmas. For the stories, the legends, the traditions, the foods, the music. Especially the music. Robin’s tolerance for my playing the same tunes over and over during the season has grown a bit shorter over time, and who can blame her? Even I have a problem with hearing Jingle Bell Rock more than once a year.

******

******

Those darlin’ congressional Republicans are just chunks of fun, aren’t they? They have just opened a congressional inquiry to see whether President Biden has done anything that they could impeach him for.

******

Vignette #1

Spring day in Buffalo NY, 1972. I am out on the backyard patio at the gas grill. Behind me is my young daughter.

She says: What dat white tuff? What dat boo tuff?I am puzzled for a moment, and ask her to repeat her question.What dat white tuff? What dat boo duff? This time she points at the sky.

Then the answer dawns. The skies have been gray and gloomy for weeks on end. Today is the first day with blue skies and white clouds in months.

******

******

You know how an odor can just snap you back into a room in your memory? I just had one of those. I was making yogurt this morning and lingered over the pot of hot milk that was being set to cooling until I could add the cultures. That aroma was linked to one of my mother’s remedies for nearly everything. Warm milk and saltine crackers in a bowl.

That concoction carried me through measles, rubella, whooping cough, mumps, and a host of nameless maladies. Obviously it worked, because here I am.

Since I left home and went out on my own, I haven’t used this amazing curative at all. Lord knows how much suffering I have experienced unnecessarily. I believe I’ll resurrect it during my next illness, whatever that turns out to be.

(BTW. Mom had two remedies in her arsenal. The other one was Canada Dry Ginger Ale.)

******

Vignette #2

Thanksgiving Day in Buffalo NY, 1972. I am once again at the grill, having just finished doing the ceremonial bird out there.

I set the platter containing the turkey on the picnic table behind me and turn to attend to closing down the grill.When I turn back, our large Siberian Husky is standing on the table with the entire bird in its mouth.

Without thinking I give him a swat with the spatula I am holding and he drops the turkey back onto the platter.

I carry the bird indoors and we go on with the meal. Only I have the secret knowledge.

******

******

******

Most of the people I know well in AA are looking for spiritual connections of one sort or another. Some are Christians who found that the straight ahead approach in their churches of origin didn’t help at all when they discovered they were addicts. There was a lot of being judged, a lot of bad advice given (just STOP, for cripes’ sake!), and a loss of the feeling they once had that there was a God and that he/she cared for them.

Nearly all of those whose recovery is solid have found a source of personal … power … for lack of a better word. I tend to believe that these strengths, this power was always present in us, and what happened was that we became able to access it. Approaches were unique to individuals, but the result was the same.

You admitted to being lost. You admitted having hurt others, and made resolutions to make amends to those people when it was possible to do so. You let go, and you emptied yourself. You began to meditate in one form or another, and replaced bad self-talk with a better variety. You talked about this process as it was going on while in meetings, and welcomed the stories of other members’ journeys, borrowing practices of theirs that seemed to apply to your situation. You kept coming back and sharing what you had in hopes that someone else might benefit from hearing of your successes and errors, and in this way you were aways polishing, paring, shaping your own internal life and thought.

Those simple acts were enough to bring me back to that moment, instead of doing what I had been doing which was rushing ahead in my mind to tomorrow … next month … next year … all of them absolutely uncertain, none with a guarantee.

But all I had to do right then was to accept the companionship that this small animal was offering, and not to try to solve the rest of my life in an evening.  Over and over again, the process was enough to maintain a smidgen of sanity and the rudiments of direction. With the passage of time, I began to see the truths in the Zen proverb:

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

If you are intrigued by this proverb, there is a really good article I can recommend: On Enlightenment: 3 Meanings of the “Chop Wood, Carry Water” Zen quote.

******

I’ve started in on War & Peace, and I believe this will be the fourth time I’ve read it.  It’s an amazing novel, an all time favorite.

It’s quite a fat book, and thus completely unsuited to putting under the odd leg of a wobbly coffee table. It would, however, be great for throwing at intruders should the need arise. Used in this way I think the force generated would be similar to that produced by a brisk swing with your average truncheon.

There are quite a few famous people who think that War & Peace is the greatest novel of all time, which is an interesting thing to say, since there is no one on this planet who has read every novel. And even if they had read everything up until last week, there would be enough new ones published since that time to keep them so busy they wouldn’t have time to write book blurbs at all.

Since I am not an intellectual or a serious writer, I can’t comment on the writer’s art, the book’s form, or anything else smacking of pretensions that I know what I am talking about. What I can say is that each time I read it I was swept up in the stories and came to care about the characters too much to comfortably leave them behind when I finished my reading. Each and every time, I grieved a little that I was done with the book. ‘Nuff said.

******

From The New Yorker

******

******

When I was a lad one of my favorite things to eat was green olives. We rarely had them except at holiday meals. I recall one Thanksgiving that I sidled out to the kitchen hoping to score one more olive, but found the serving dish on full empty.

My spirits fell, and then I spied the bottle that the olives had come in, but there were only a few ounces of liquid in it. I stared at it, wondering … could a kid drink that stuff? Would the kid croak? There was no one around, and cautiously I raised the bottle to my mouth and took first a sip and then a great swallow.

It was delicious.

At that very moment my mother snatched the bottle from my hand exclaiming “Don’t DO that, there’s too much salt in it and you could get sick and you could just die!”

(At this point I should mention that this was my mother’s standard exclamation whenever we kids ate something-anything-that she would prefer we not ingest, which included many perfectly safe substances and foodstuffs).

Why tell this story now? Because yesterday when I retrieved a jar of green olives from the refrigerator, there was only one left, which I quickly and quite selfishly ate. But it was not enough olive for me for that particular moment.

I looked at the jar, with that couple of ounces of faintly green brine within. Checking to see that I was alone, I raised the bottle to my lips and swigged away for the first time in more than a half-century.

It was delicious.

******

As far as I can tell, our federal government is presently doing everything it can to avoid governing. There are now scores of proceedings where one bunch is trying to unseat, impugn, impeach, or otherwise do harm to another individual or group. Too many to keep track of, really. This keeps them so busy squabbling that they can’t possibly have time to even go to the bathroom at proper intervals, which accounts for some of their irritability.

They seem to have completely lost their minds, at least the part that would allow them to do the people’s business. It has also become obvious that the word “impeachment” has lost whatever negative meaning it ever had, and now is about as important or useful as the airplane you made from a sheet of paper in the fifth grade and tried to sail into the hair of the student in front of you.

In fact, I can foresee the day when if you haven’t been impeached for something your status will be considered diminished, and people begin to wonder just what you are doing in Washington, anyway.

It’s enough to make you want to drink an entire quart of olive brine and kiss the world goodbye..

******

******

From The New Yorker

******

It’s only a couple of weeks now until the old guy in the red suit makes his rounds. We don’t go through the routine of chimney, fireplace, milk, and cookies. For one thing we have a hot water baseboard heating system, so it’s come in the front door or fageddaboudit.

One year I had the opportunity to talk with him for a few minutes as the sleigh was getting a stripped bolt replaced on a runner, and I asked him how it was to be still working when no one believed in him anymore.

He said: “First of all, there’s not 100% disbelief, but more like 75%. That’s really not so bad when you compare it to some others. Check out this chart I carry with me to refer to whenever I’m on feeling a little low.”

BELIEVABILITY PERCENTAGES

• Lawyers. <1%
• Parents. 10%
• Grandparents. 50%
• Monster under bed. 93%

“So you see, I’m not doing all that bad, really. Context, me bucko, context,”

******

******

Livin’ large at that time of life when every Christmas there is at least one less friend at the table than there was last year. It’s a perfect time of life for a natural melancholic. When I was twenty and walked around brooding about things even I recognized that I was a fraud, and that I hadn’t lived long enough to be wearing such world-weary garments. But now there isn’t any need to pretend. I ran out of fingers and toes to count the rings on my trunk a while back.

One problem is that when you achieve geezer status, and have all that experience to share, no one wants to hear about it. The young can’t relate to anything emanating from something as ancient as you, and your older friends simply wait for you to take an in-breath and then they break in with their own stories before you can finish your own.

I find myself gravitating toward the wistful music of the world more than I once did. Not exclusively, but more often. Like this one.

******

From The New Yorker

******

As a general pediatrician, I was frequently called in to stand by at the delivery of a child whenever there was a possibility that the baby would need more than the usual support and care. Gowned, gloved, and masked I would stand over in the corner of the room by the infant warmer, making sure that it was ready to receive the infant. Since I had nothing to do when things went well, I stood there, hands clasped in front of me so I wouldn’t inadvertently touch something and contaminate the gloves.

After one such delivery where the baby was just fine and needed no help from yours truly, the exhausted mother was giddy and thanking everyone in the room for their help. At the end of her litany she said: “Oh, and thank you to the priest over in the corner for coming.”

That masked clergyman in the corner, of course, was me.

******

Even though it’s not really about Christmas, and only mentions the holiday very briefly, I still have it in the corner of my poorly assorted mind as Christmas music. YouTube served this up to me this to enjoy on a December morning. One of Joni Mitchell’s beautiful tunes done beautifully.

******

Tuesday friend Joe and I went fishing at Pa-Co-Chu-Puk State Park, near Ridgway. It was a bluebird day, temp in the lower 50s. Right now the river water flows are down at winter levels. I managed to do three things that morning: catch a nice rainbow, get a nasty aircast that cost me half an hour to straighten out, and come within a hair of dumping myself in the Uncompahgre River.

If it hadn’t have been for a convenient boulder that I fetched up against, my spirits would definitely have been dampened (the water is low enough that all that would have happened is that I would have become cold and wet and used up my curse word allotment for the entire month).

At one pool we could see 8 large trout just hanging out together in some slower water. Seeing us didn’t spook them at all. Nor were they enticed by anything we tossed at them, but for one moment when a trout the size of Jaws wandered slowly over to my fly, took it in his mouth, and immediately spit it out again. Too quickly for me to react.

I never take my camera/phone while actually out in the river. Eventually I know that I will make a misstep and stumble into the drink so I don’t carry anything that wouldn’t tolerate being immersed. Therefore, I haven’t any photos of my own of the river in this location, but here’s a handful that I borrowed from the web.

******

Just got a seed catalog in the mail. An odd time of year for such a thing, you might say, and I’d agree with you. Since It’s snowing here and the temp is 40 degrees, it’s hard to put myself into an agricultural frame of mind.

I received it because I ordered two packets of seeds from them last Spring, from their website. After last year’s poor experience I wasn’t even sure I wanted to have a garden next year, but hey, mebbe I will.

Here are scans of three sample pages:

So if any of you would like to grow your own wasabi to clear your sinuses with, or cabbages that weigh 25 pounds, here’s the address.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

2278 Baker Creek Road

Mansfield, MO 65704

(Disclaimer: I get no remuneration from manufacturers of products that I might mention in this blog. Although several of them have offered to pay me money if I promise never to mention their wares ever again. Apparently they fear being associated in the public mind with substandard literary endeavors.)

******

From The New Yorker

******

And here it is, the full-bore, two-hanky weeper from Les Miserables that you might have known was coming, had you taken the time to think bout it. Here is Marius returning to the tavern where he had spent hours planning a revolution with his comrades, who then perished while he was saved.

******