Category: music

Anyone Need Their Savage Breast Soothed?

jono55

A few months ago when I discovered that half my digital music collection had silently and irretrievably gone south forever, I did not lose my mind. Getting the info off the guilty eternal disc drive might have been possible with professional help, but the costs were prohibitive.

And yet I am still nearly sane and quite happy. It’s not the tragedy it would have been a few years ago, because in the digital era, especially with subscription music services like Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music, I can listen to music all day long for a few bucks a month. This includes every tune that I lost, and all for less than the price of one album. So I have let the episode go, decided it was a good lesson learned and joined the millions of people who say: music collection … why would I even need such a thing?

I had a fairly large vinyl collection once upon a time, but when compact discs hit the market I went with them immediately. (I am obviously not a vinyl romanticist, and do not ascribe magical qualities to any recording format.) I will let the purists argue over whether digital music is better or worse than the analog stuff on those old LPs. Arguing either viewpoint is just not interesting to me. Only the music is interesting.

Perhaps if I were younger I would care more. If my hearing were better and I didn’t have any of that blasted tinnitus, I might perceive meaningful differences. But with the ears I have, an mp3 is more than adequate to please me these days.

I have chosen Apple Music as the service to use, but not for any good reason. I would have been happy with any of the others, I am pretty certain. And as time passes I am becoming more skillful in getting out of it what I want. It is really a treat to be able to double down on a particular artist and explore all that they have recorded without needing to purchase anything and then having to store it somewhere.

Of course, if the apocalypse arrives and I don’t have the internet I won’t have any music to listen to. However, I suspect that in any apocalypse worth its name the power would go out and I wouldn’t be able to play what I had on the shelf, either. It’s sort of in the nature of apocalypses to be a drag, it seems.

******

******

It amuses me to listen to the discussions about the wonderfulness of vinyl records. While they were the best music source of their time, they were not without their issues. I had turntables that would apply a stylus weight of just a gram or two so as not to carve away any microbits of plastic with music on them. And yet they still did some of that carving, just more slowly.

And then there was the regular necessary cleaning of the disc surface with products designed just for that job. Heat could warp the discs, they were brittle in cold weather, and even if you did everything exactly right in trying to preserve their contents, there are fungi all about us that eat vinyl for breakfast that were ready to settle on your records as soon as you brought them out. Meaning that even unplayed discs were slowly degrading in their envelopes as these tiny creatures chewed away.

Vinyl albums also had mechanical limitations in their playback. You could only listen to one side and then had to get up and flip the disc over. You could only play the cuts in the order they had been recorded, and this included having to listen to that tune you hated located in the middle of side B (unless, once again, you got out of your chair and walked over to the turntable to move the arm). You could not mix artists, which is why making our own mixtapes became so popular when good quality cassettes and Dolby recording technology finally came along.

Those mixtapes provided us the opportunity to make our first playlists, where we could set up an evening’s listening the way we wanted it. And which we now take for granted, as if they’d always been there, courtesy of ol’Thomas Edison hisself.

******

******

Continuing our raking through the ashes of movies made about those madcap Tudors, Robin and I watched a film from the seventies called Mary, Queen of Scots. It starred Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, two acting powerhouses if ever there were any. The original story itself is quite a dramatic one, with schemings and plottings and beheadings enough to satisfy most people.

But we thought the movie was a dud. Redgrave played the role of the doomed Mary, and she came across as a dimbulb who became infatuated with nearly anyone in pantaloons who came within reach. By the time she was marched to the block and the axe fell, we were ready to be rid of her, truth be told.

But what a story the history books tell. Elizabeth (here played by Jackson), was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, another decapitee of note, and became one of the premier queens of all time. But she had no children, so that James, the son of Mary (whose head Elizabeth had caused to be lopped off) became king of England upon Elizabeth’s death. You couldn’t make this stuff up, folks. For a movie to take such tantalizing material and make it all seem dull and irritating really took some doing.

******

We had friends over Thursday for the evening meal. They have a daughter now living in Lima, Peru, and had made a trip to visit her just a month ago. We insisted that they bring their pictures of the trip with them, since our own visit to that city several years ago had been such a memorable one.

Now, I ask you, how often do you get asked to show pictures of your vacation? For myself, the answer is never. It may be because I was once famous for never throwing any photograph away, no matter how poor it was. Which made the showing of the vacation slides an event to be dreaded and avoided at nearly all costs. Here is what a sample of my voiceover for any slideshow in the past might have sounded like:

So here we are in … wait a minute … where is this? This picture doesn’t even belong here, it’s from another trip, for goodness sake. Here we are. This is a picture of me and Robin on a quaint street in Santa Fe. Can you see us back there … if you look closely … see, over there by the pillar? Here’s another one and I apologize for the blurriness, I tried to take it while driving the car and shooting out the window. This next one … well, you’ll just have to use your imaginations … it’s the entire cast of the movie Dirty Harry. Too bad the only shot I had was of them walking away down the block … there … that tall one … that’s the back of Clint Eastwood’s head.

Now let’s get back to Thursday evening. We decided upon a laid-back country-style meal, and we settled on meatloaf, a huge bowl of mashed potatoes, and enough steamed broccoli to have sent that famous brocco-phobe George HW Bush straight to the ICU.

Now, when we decided to feature something as homely and comfort-foodish as meatloaf, we felt we needed to find something a little special in that department. Something out of the ordinary. On the web I ran across a recipe for this dish that had a charming backstory. It was called the Market Street Meatloaf, and if you’re interested you can read that story here.

To be brief, the dish was a roaring success. It was almost embarrassing what with all of us trying to stab yet another slice of the loaf while trying not to become a victim of all those pointy implements converging on it from all directions. Words were exchanged that may require months for the wounds to heal, and Robin saw a side of me that was better kept under wraps. But we finished the meal without serious injuries, and that’s always a good thing.

When the evening was over, and our guests had gone home, what was left over from what had looked at first like a week’s worth of meatloaf was only enough for one sandwich. We’ll try to be civil about it tomorrow, but there is only that one sandwich possible …. .

I will share the recipe with you, but if you ever serve it to a group, make sure that the rules of engagement are clear before the meal begins. Better done that way, I think.

******

Saturday was nearly a record warm day for Paradise. So we decided to take one of our old standby hikes up at Black Canyon National Park as the first real test for Robin’s new knee. It turns out that we rushed the season a bit, because the trail was half snow/half mud. But we did two miles of it, puffing as we always do when we first exert ourselves each year at altitudes over 8000 feet.

And the verdict on the rebuilt knee – it worked very well, indeed.

******

Tumult

jono55

Some 36 years ago I was let go from a position as husband, and for several years I found myself with quite a bit of free time on my hands. I spent some of it in non-constructive pursuits that don’t need discussion in these pages, but one good idea that I had was to learn how to improve my cooking skills. My first action, and you might have predicted this, was to go out and buy a complete new set of pots and pans. Nothing too exotic, just sturdy Revere Ware which is still going strong. I also purchased a handful of recipe books to replace those that my former employer had taken with her when she departed, and away I went.

(In the past I might have mentioned here some of my kitchen misadventures where the cherry pie never set up, the pineapple upside-down cake refused to be turned over, and the unleavened bread never rose even though I followed Moses’ original recipe to the letter.)

With these failures solidly behind me, I decided to branch out into Asian cooking, and made a trip to Sioux City IA, where there was a good-sized Asian food market. In that store I walked past a thousand eyes in the freezer windows, eyes of various fishes who were all regretting the carelessness that brought them to a cooler in Sioux City, I am sure. I picked up two excellent meat cleavers for a song, and on one shelf I found large bottles of something called “fish sauce.” Those two words were the only ones on the label that were not in Chinese, but hey, this was an adventure so why not try it? I grabbed a bottle and headed for the checkout.

The woman running the cash register was Asian, tiny, and spoke halting English. She picked up the tall bottle (of whatever fish sauce was – I had no clue) and began to interrogate me.

You sure want this?

Why, yes, I do.

Is very strong … very strong! You still want?

More than you can imagine, my good woman.

You sure? Can’t bring back.

Why, dear lady, would I ever want to return it? I feel my kitchen fortunes are about to change, and it is this murky substance that is going to be the catalyst. So ring it up if you please, hand me my cleavers, and I’ll be off.

When I returned home it turned out that I could not find a single recipe that called for fish sauce as an ingredient in any book that I had on hand, so I began adding it willy-nilly in what turned out to be unwise quantities to a few dishes, all of which had to be discarded as inedible. The smell of the brown liquid was pungent enough to revive the dead and the taste could be described as a product born of the union of a bottle of soy sauce and a rag taken from the floor of an auto service bay.

I eventually tossed it out as a bad investment, and didn’t look back.

Flash-forward 33 years, and I am looking for a recipe for green chili sauce to make at home. The local bottled varieties had been disappointing so far, and I had as my lodestar the memory of a wonderful such sauce that I was served on a hamburger in a Montrosian restaurant which had unfortunately gone bottoms up. I found a recipe on the web, cooked it, loved it, and it is now one of my go-to condiments. And if you look carefully at the recipe it calls for a spoonful or two of asian fish sauce as an ingredient.

Today I find that I add fish sauce to many dishes, but in more conservative amounts than on my first go-round. It is a bracing addition to soups and stews and stir-fries, especially. The genie in this bottle swings an interesting umami bat at the plate. Yesterday I brewed up a big pot of minestrone that was anemic in character until I added just one teaspoonful of Red Boat to the cauldron. That made an amazing difference.

I also did some shopping around to get the good stuff, and have settled on this particular brand which is not sold here in Paradise, but is easily available on the web. It does not have that decidedly nasty taste that my previous bottle from at the market in Sioux City did. Red Boat is not inexpensive, but that first bottle lasted me three years.

What is fish sauce, actually? Don’t ask.

(Awright, if you insist – it consists of salted and fermented anchovies … I told you not to ask.)

******

While we are on the topics of divorce and fish sauce, I will tell you that I didn’t care for the experience much. Divorce, that is. In my case, I could only describe it as what I imagine having open-chest surgery without anesthesia might be like. There is a verse in Paul Simon’s song Graceland that fits well.

She comes back to tell me she’s gone
As if I didn’t know that
As if I didn’t know my own bed
As if I’d never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead
And she said, “losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you’re blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow.”

Those last lines … everybody sees you’re blown apart, everybody sees the wind blow … I so remember that feeling. Of being rootless and directionless as dandelion fluff on the wind.

Back then I coped by going to work, listening to a lot of music, sampling many fermented or distilled beverages, and writing poetry (some not bad, some not so hot). I walled myself up in my home/castle, and was considering having a moat dug around it when Robin burst through my door on a Sunday morning with donuts in her hand and a sparkle in her beautiful blue eyes. She offered to rehire me without the need for references and that, my friends, was the start of a whole ‘nother story, which has been nearly thirty years in the telling and is not done yet.

Graceland, by Paul Simon

******

A Dick Guindon cartoon

******

As my first marriage was coming apart in all of its seams, I sought guidance in the office of a counselor, a woman whose advice was a godsend for me at the time. She had an ability to cut through my verbiage and get to the heart of any number of posers that I tossed her way. One day, when I had said something particularly egregious, she cut me off, drew herself up, and said in the sternest of voices: “Jon, I want you to think of what I am about to say as coming directly from God! Don’t do that!“

I had no way of knowing it, but at that time there was another poor dumpee (in divorce-land you are either a dumper or a dumpee) being gently led through this same particularly confusing forest by the same guide. Time went by and one day my counselor told me that she thought that this client and I might profit by talking with one another, since we shared many experiences and were close to the same age.

So without thinking much about it, I agreed to see him, phone numbers were exchanged, and that is how I met the guy who was to become my BFF. A the time we were two lost souls who had each been dumped by their former wives, wandering about the planet unmoored and mildly to moderately insane (at least I was). It turned out that sharing having been tossed onto a heap of marital rejects was a potent bonding agent, and together we explored the fringes of religion (bizarre), divorce support groups (scary), fast motorcycles (excellent!), and other things too numerous to recount. Out of this randomly assembled and slow-cooked stew came healing for both of us.

Looking back, I always wondered if perhaps my counselor had reached the point where she dreaded listening to my endless whining and tales of woe, and to escape from this fresh hell tried to steer me elsewhere, hoping that I might not find my way back to her office. Whether that was her plan or not, it is what happened and I couldn’t be more grateful that she succeeded.

******

******

Bravo to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell for telling Spotify adios as their protest against that music service doing nothing about the misinformation being promulgated by a fellow named Joe Rogan on his Spotify podcasts. We are surrounded by untruths being broadcast every minute of every day with most of it being fairly harmless claptrap. But when the public health is at risk we have now entered one of those shouting fire in a crowded theater arenas, and there is a need to find ways of holding guilty feet to the fire when their lies contribute to unnecessary suffering.

The first amendment to our Constitution is a grand thing, one of the stars in our national crown. So let the Rogans of the world spout their distortions hoping to profit from it, then let them find out that that same amendment doesn’t say anything about possible consequences. Tell enough falsehoods and you may suffer for it. This is as true for millionaire performers as it is for you and I.

We live in hard and uncertain times … there is a need to call out and walk away from those who attempt to make them more difficult or dangerous than they already are.

Hard Times by Ian Siegal

******

Good News Department

Robin has finished her long stretch of physical therapy appointments and graduated summa cum patella. She still has work to do but the Physical Therapy staff are confident that she can reach her goals from here on in by working at home with her personal trainer and nurse.**

Here is Robin on the day of graduation wearing her PT uniform. It consists of stockings that squeeze the bejesus out of one’s legs, a t-shirt that says “Ask me about joint replacement” on the back, and a pair of shorts made extra loose-fitting so that the therapist can do whatever they need to do without impediment.

** I have to say that no one on the staff asked the personal trainer/nurse if he felt up to the task. Nor did they ask Robin, who has her own set of misgivings about my skills. After all, you don’t hang around with a bumbler for thirty years without forming an opinion or two.

******

Late Night Rounds

jono55

The old Hennepin County General Hospital (formerly Minneapolis City Hospital) was a magnificent hodgepodge of a place, butting a few small modernized areas up against a big 19th century edifice with 30 bed wards where patients were separated only by drawn curtains. When the spaceship Medical School dropped me off there I was to begin my first clinical clerkship, which was surgery. Up until that time I had spent years cramming data into my definitely overcrowded pudding of a brain and I was looking forward with mixed dread and anticipation to what was to come.

The trouble was that I really didn’t know what was to come and ran headlong into my first conflict right away.

The four of us who were starting that clerkship together were issued some green scrub suits that were obviously made for some sort of creatures who were seven feet tall and whose knuckles dragged on the floor as they shuffled along. We four were human-sized and were forced to adapt by rolling up pant legs and pinning down waists.

The resident charged with orienting us took us to the outpatient clinic where he informed us:

  • we would all be working until six pm in the clinics that day
  • one of us would need to be designated as being on call that night, and by tomorrow morning we needed to provide the resident with our call roster for the next month
  • the on-call person would follow the surgical resident all night and do work ups on all admissions
  • instead of going home and going to bed the next morning like any person would do in a sane environment, that same on-call individual would be expected to make rounds with staff, attend clinics and lectures, and finally end the next day around six pm where they would be released to their families.

I couldn’t believe it! Barbaric! Who could function on such a schedule? What had I signed up for, anyway? A life of gloomy servitude loomed before me with no time for friends or anything other than medicine, really.

As I wandered the semi-dark and ancient halls of the old building that night I heard Diana Ross and the Supremes several times on radios around the hospital since this was 1964 and they were just breaking big. I ran errands to the laboratory, blood bank, emergency room, and surgical wards while stopping from time to time to roll up the damned cuffs on those scrubs from hell.

Next day I showed up for morning rounds, and the other three students came up to ask how the night had gone. I leaned back in my chair like the seasoned veteran that I now was and began listing the amazing things I had seen and done. It was a childish performance, looking back, but bloody fun at the time.

However, something had happened beyond my bluster and boasts. The events of that night had sunk a hook into me, and this turned out to be a serious addiction that took years to come to grips with. The addiction to the drama of night-time in a busy general hospital. The bad coffee, the three a.m. meals in the cafeteria, the camaraderie, the blood and the tears. And sometimes, the fear.

And all of this with a soundtrack that at least on that first night starred Diana Ross and the Supremes.

******

From The New Yorker

******

The singer Tony Bennett gave his last performances in New York in August of this year, in concert with Lady Gaga. The venues were sellouts. This, in spite of the fact that he has advanced Alzheimers’ disease, and often doesn’t know where he is or even who he is. But put him in front of an orchestra, and he didn’t miss a beat. There was an article about the concert on the CNN website recently.

Bennett is one of the true craftsmen of popular singing. His technique was so good he was one of the few that Frank Sinatra looked up to as a singer. High praise from another master.

What an interesting organ is our brain. Somehow the complex business of performing is still possible, even when daily life is often a washout. Those old paths must be worn so deep that they are the last to be erased by dementia. Remember that line in the chorus of “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell? Where she sings: “You pave Paradise and put up a parking lot?” Isn’t that what happens to people as dementia runs its course?

******

From The New Yorker

******

There is a variation on the theme of telling lies that occurs in some mental illnesses. The true memory of an event is gone, has been erased somehow, and the person’s brain goes into a sort of anxiety mode and fills in the gaps with new material. Material which is not true but is believed to be so by the patient. In this way the state of their disability is masked or obscured from them. The name for this is confabulation.

We were taught this as medical students during our psychiatry clerkship, that we might understand how we could be led astray in taking a patient’s history. No malice or harm was intended by the patient, but what we had been fed in our conversation with such a person was, well, little more than flapdoodle.

I suspect that my own brain is occasionally serving me up a plateful of this stuff, and how would I know the difference? I have a reference person who lives with me who can correct my recollections when I stray too far, but that covers just the last thirty years … how about all of the time before I met her?

Fortunately, no one’s life, property, or reputation depends on what I remember and how I remember it. So if my brain is from time to time making up parts of my story, my best hope is that the new tale is at least interesting.

(Wouldn’t that be a sort of hell on earth – to be forever telling one’s stories but they are so irredeemably boring that no one can stand to listen to them? A never-ending view of people’s backs as they hustle away from you. )

******

Cruelty

jono55

******

(From the Montrose Daily Press)

There is a herd of elk (the one in the article above) that lives in the valley leading into the town of Telluride. A couple of weeks ago we passed it as we were driving into the village, and what a beautiful group of animals it was. There was a stag in the group who had antlers that were as magnificent as any I’ve seen outside of photographs. We pulled our car over just to watch them for awhile. Because they are accustomed to people and cars, we were within 50 yards of the herd without seemingly bothering them at all.

Some days after our visit, a coward went into the area and killed a bull elk from the herd. It would have been as if one walked up to a group of cows and shot one. No more courage or skill was required than that. What they did was apparently legal but I wonder … how do you boast about shooting a cow?

No matter how one twists logic to justify it, the “sport” of hunting involves the killing of other creatures … for fun. The whole sorry business is despicable.

******

******

Robin continues to mend steadily but at a slower pace than she would like. At least that is how I would think about it if our situations were reversed. But then I have never claimed to be stalwart in the face of discomfort of any kind. When I was a child spending time on Grandpa Jacobson’s farm, I would often get slivers in my hands. Since I had been taught that leaving the splinter in there was going to either bring on the nightmare disease of “lockjaw” or my hand would swell up and fall off, I had to seek help. And the help available was Grandma or Grandpa.

Grandma’s approach was to sterilize a small needle in a flame and then carefully unroof the splinter and extract it with a tweezer. Grandpa, on the other hand, would pull a pocketknife from his overalls and set about carving out a chunk of my flesh that would hopefully contain the bit of offending vegetation. It wasn’t that he was anything but a kind man, but when such a knife is the tool you have to work with, that is what happens.

So whenever I had a choice I would hide the injury until we got back to the house and Grandma could take over. Even then there was an embarrassing amount of grimacing and whining on my part until the thing was done. I’m not sure, but I expect that I might do the same today in similar circumstances. Heroism does not run strong on my side of the family.

******

******

My favorite sort of cartoon is one that surprises me. One that takes me somewhere when I didn’t even know that I was traveling. The drawing above this paragraph is an example. It’s quiet, subtle, but is obviously taking place in some alternative universe. The clearest indicator is the dog being in the operating room in the first place. Such a thing could never happen, at least in the U.S. … or could it? There would be so many barriers to the animal getting in there, so many doors to get by and so many nurses and technicians trying to catch it and expel it from the premises.

Now look again. While the OR staff are all masked, none of their noses are covered, which is a totally unacceptable break in protocol. If we’re going to spread something from human to human, what issues from our noses is an excellent way to do it. Not everyone in the country appreciates this, though. I see it every day in the public square as one of the things our local drizzlewit population does when presented with mask mandates.

Lastly … those naked feet. God knows what microorganisms we carry about on our feet from day to day, but finding a pair of tootsies exposed like that in the operating suite would be enough to horrify any nursing supervisor to the extent that they would surely come down with a variant of PTSD.

No, this cartoon limns a place of fantasy where the beam from the overhead lights cuts sharply through the surrounding darkness and isolates the six characters (I include the dog and the owner of those feet) in their very own world. It’s a great cartoon.

******

Even for an operation on one’s knee, there are modifications of the home that are necessary. For instance, we’ve added several useful hardware items to the furnishings – a chair in the shower and a walker, for instance. Also we’ve temporarily retired several area rugs and put them out in the garage to prevent them from causing tripping and falls.

Said rugs are now piled high enough to pose hazards to anyone in that part of the building and may prove an effective burglary deterrent. “Honest, Officer Krupke, I had no idea that a stack of rugs could do that to a person. Do you think a good mortician … ?”

******

Krupke, Krupke … now where did I hear that name? Oh, yeah … right here, from 1961 …

******

I have a nomination for the best book title of 2021. It is Josh Ritter’s “The Great Glorious Goddamn Of It All.” I have it on my list for winter reading. How could I not?

******

Sweet, Sweet Jane

jono55

This one is for Lou Reed fans. The introduction to the vocal is several minutes long and is just outstanding. This album gets played often at my home address, and played as loudly as my equipment and neighbors will permit.

It almost goes without saying that the song Sweet Jane is about drugs. After all, this is Lou Reed we’re talking about. In this case the substance is heroin. You might miss that in the lyrics … I did for the longest time … but it’s there. Part of the problem is that the original and longer lyrics to the song were dropped from the most popular recorded versions. So I heard the sadness and longing and missed the rest.

But watch the video, check out the vintage hair and mustaches and clothes, and get in touch with your rock and roll side for a few minutes. You know you want to. That bass player … is he inscrutable or impassive or imperturbable or what?

******

The last spate of elections are over, and the Democrats are exhibiting their typical Brownian Motion, running around bumping into one another trying to figure out why they did so poorly this time around. Nobody asked me if I knew the answer. So I will put it out there anyway. Let’s say a political party spends an entire year and can’t come up with the equivalent of a mission statement. Who squabble so much among themselves that they can’t get the things done that they need to do to hold our interest, much less retain our loyalty. Why should we vote for them except for the fact that they aren’t practicing Cluck-ism? That might have been enough in 2020, but it’s not holding up very well as a reason.

If there is such a thing as an average American, their lot hasn’t improved one iota in the last two or three decades, while our “leaders” are enriching themselves so fast the money changing hands never gets a chance to cool off but is always slightly warm to the touch. The one percenters are so bored that they are climbing onto the Musk/Bezos rockets like they were a new ride at Disney World. “Excuse me, Elon, but I’d like an aisle seat if you please, and did I miss the snacks being passed out … I love love your peanuts!”

Once upon a time there was a guy named Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, a singularly courageous Russian writer. He dashed off a bunch of books in his lifetime, eventually winning a Nobel Prize for his work. Among the titles were The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich. The books were very good and they were very anti-Communist, so when he was kicked out of the Soviet Union and came to America we all thought he might become our new BFF. But then he gave some speeches directed at us that were the literary equivalent of a swift kick in the pants with a hobnail boot. He thought we were weak, effete, and had lost our way in a maze and haze of materialism and secularism. Basically we were doomed unless we saw the light … and he didn’t think we would. Three of those speeches were gathered into a book called A Warning To The West, and some excellent excerpts are published on the Goodreads site. They are well worth reading, and I think their lessons are as applicable now as they were unwelcome news in the 70s.

What we needed then is what we still need now. Different flags to fly, different songs to sing – those that lift our spirits and bring us together in the common work that needs doing rather than focussing on our bottom line, which can only drive us apart.

******

The music of Joni Mitchell’s Miles of Aisles album is doing its good work in my morning. That woman … what a talent … and what a fine double album this one is, recorded live in 1974. Music like this is never dated and sounds today as fresh as it did 47 years ago. The recording is clear and excellent as opposed to the mushy sound that live albums sometimes offer up. Here’s a photo of Joni and her backup band for the album, the L.A. Express.

It’s okay with me if you don’t rush out and buy this and listen to it just because I said you should. There is so much good stuff out there to listen to that it boggles the mind. As a matter of fact, I am having quite a bit of trouble getting unboggled this morning … perhaps the next cup of coffee should be intravenously administered rather than orally. I just wanted to let you know that this album was out there, in case you’d missed it the first time around.

******

Grandson Dakota took his leave of us Thursday, on his way to the rest of his life. His car contained everything he owned, so off he went in a VW Jetta version of that famous truck in the movie, Grapes of Wrath. He is a fine young man and we are so glad we got the chance to know him better. ‘Twas a gift to us.

******

******

As everybody knows, Paradise is located in Montrose County, Colorado. As of this morning our county is a Covid – 19 hotspot. Such news should not come, unfortunately, as a surprise to anyone. In the 2020 election, 2/3 of the county’s electorate voted for a presidential candidate who was completely unfit for the office, a charlatan of the first water. They knew it and they still voted for him.

Now, did anyone really think that having flunked Elementary Civics that these people would do any better at Preventive Medicine? The fact that we are now in a situation where nearly all of the deaths from this disease are in the unvaccinated segment of our society does not deter them from publicly refusing to be helped.

Denial? Death wish? Dumbassedness? Take your pick.

******

Soothing the Savage Breast

jono55

Here’s a question I sometimes ask myself. What would the cupboard in the world of music look like if we took away all those genres that were created or influenced by black musicians and composers?

Most of classical music would still be in the cupboard. All of those old English ballads would still be there. Much of the folk music of the European and Asian countries would still be there. A fair amount of what is called “pop”music would survive, but not all by any means.

And that’s about it. No rock, no R&B, no soul music, no jazz, no hip-hop, no reggae, no ska, none of those rousing spirituals coming out through the doors of the black church, much of what we consider Caribbean music, etc. etc. While you may be able to shoot holes in my analysis above pretty easily, I hope I make my point. And if you ask whether I would rather take the black-inspired stuff rather than the other to listen to when marooned on a desert isle, well it’s sorry to see you go Beethoven and hello Ray Charles.

My introduction to the world of music that was outside of the one that contained pop artists like Perry Como and Doris Day was that single R&B station that I ran across in Minneapolis when I was in my mid-teens. And the song that ran through me like a knife was Fever, by Little Willie John. I never recovered from the wound, BTW. The scar still itches when it rains. I had never heard anything like that song, because a young white Minnesota boy in 1956 lived in such a tight little musical enclave that he didn’t even know it.

Little Willie opened the door to that other world for me personally and then Elvis Presley just smashed the door down entirely for all of us in my high school that same year. It was pretty exciting time to be a teen-ager as far as music was concerned … overwhelming, actually. Like going from a steady diet of chicken noodle soup to some serious gumbo overnight.

Here is a little gallery of just some of the musicians that corrupted me musically in 1956 .

***

  • Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps
  • Little Willie John
  • The Platters
  • Sam Cooke
  • Elvis Presley
  • Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers
  • Jerry Lee Lewis
  • Bill Doggett
  • Ray Charles
  • Little Richard
  • Sanford Clark
  • Fats Domino

******

Another question that I have for myself is this one. I learned in Biology 101 that when the egg that was half of what eventually became me was fertilized, there was a fair amount of competition for that honor. I do not vouch for the numbers, but here are some from an article in Idaho Fertility. (Why Idaho, you ask. Why not, is my answer).

There are about 40 million to 1.2 billion sperm cells released with every ejaculation, yet only around 2 million of these persistent swimmers actually reach the cervix. For the 2 million sperm that enter a woman’s cervix, around 1 million actually make it to the uterus. For the 1 million sperm that reach the uterus, about 10,000 make it to the top of the uterus.

-For the 10,000 sperm that make it to this point, around half of them actually go in the right direction heading to the egg cell. For the nearly 5,000 sperm that make it into the utero-tubal junction, around 1,000 of these reach the inside of the Fallopian tube. For the 1,000 sperm entering the tube, only around 200 actually reach the egg. In the end, only 1 sperm out of this group of 200 actually penetrates and fertilizes the egg

Idaho Fertility.Com

So my question is this: Who would be typing this if another sperm had been the successful one? If getting to be born wasn’t a total crapshoot, I don’t know what one is. Only one out of the at least 40 million that started out became the other half of the fertilized egg that is now me.

.

If another sperm had done the penetrating, I wouldn’t have been the same person, although I might have been a lot taller, with a way better jumpshot. There’s always that.

******

******

Our weather here in Paradise has turned on us. Presently outside my window there is a 32 degree day. I want a different one, if you please. Someone goofed up my order.

******

BTW. The original phrase is “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,” not soothe the savage beast.

If you have your smartphone in hand and are counting on playing music to stop the charge of a buffalo or change the mind of a rapidly approaching grizzly, you will likely be disappointed, or worse.

(The photo at left was taken from Duncan Schmeltzbarger’s camera after recovery of his body. Investigation showed that the tune he was counting on to save himself was Old Town Road, by Lil Nas X.)

******

How To Get Drunker And Poorer Extremely Fast

jono55

I don’t write much about the world of ingestable ethanol, as found in wines, beers, and the like, because I am out of that game. My alcohol dance card was filled up way back when, and I am not likely to pick up at the unhappy place where I left off. But that doesn’t mean that occasionally I don’t come across an article on the subject that is interesting.

Such a piece was on the CNN website Monday morning, dealing with a limited edition of a Samuel Adams beer that reaches 28% alcohol, and that costs $240 for a 25 ounce bottle. Both numbers are outrageous in their own way, don’t you think? For one thing, who really needs a beer that will get you drunk 5 times faster than normal? And when you get home and you are asked what you did all evening with your buddies, your saying that you “just had a couple of beers” takes on a whole new meaning. Physically and economically.

Now, in another lifetime and before I decided to hang up my drinking shoes, there were several years when I made my own beers and ales. I thought it was a fine hobby, and unlike someone who made birdhouses, when I was done … well … I could drink the product. And they were excellent brews if I do say so myself, ranging from pale ales to near-stouts. I can say with pride that I never made anything approaching a “lite” beer, a beverage that I put in the category with “lite” coffee and insipid tea. (I was, and am, a beer snob, even if no longer a practicing one).

What I never knew, because I never ran the tests that would have given me the answer, is what the alcohol content of my beers and ales were. I know that they were nowhere close to 28%, but I suspect that they were well north of 6% by the effect that they had upon those who were courageous enough to sample them.

There was one other effect that some of my homemade beverages had on people. They were cathartic in a very real sense of the word. Calls back the next day from friends who had tried them frequently relayed the information that their problems with constipation were at least temporarily over.

******

I was out on the backyard deck blaring away with my music, and hoping that if my neighbors were troubled by it that they would let me know. But until that happened, better to apologize later than to ask permission is my mantra. Anyway, I was playing songs by a group that is presently one of my favorites, one that goes by the name of Lord Huron. Suddenly grandson Dakota pops out and says that this is his favorite group, and that he has seen them live on more than one occasion.

Lord Huron

What are the odds? Two generations and a world of experiences apart, and we are presently in synch with each other musically, at least at this single point. After giving it a bit of thought, and without a shred of evidence to prove it, we concluded that our musical tastes must be genetic in origin. Happy with this unscientific answer that we provided ourselves, we went on to talk about other things.

******

There are too many of us, and we do too many things to the planet that don’t give it time to recover. Which is something that it will do, when and if our numbers are reduced. We need to stop applauding when anyone admits that they have produced a family of twelve children. That is neither a good thing nor an amusing thing. It is completely selfish procreation. For being the parents of such a sad bunch is like carrying a tote bag that says to all you meet: “I care not at all that the brood I have produced is using up way more than its share of the earth’s resources. BTW, the rest of you can go jump.”

Comedian Bill Burr has a plan that features the sinking of cruise ships. According to him there are two good things that would come out of this – you reduce the population by 3500 at a time, and they are the sort of people that nobody will miss.

My own plan, which I have advanced over several decades now without picking up a single follower, is to put contraceptives in the public drinking water. If someone wants to have a child, they would have to apply to get their water from another source in order for that to happen. There is a problem with this idea, I admit, because it clearly benefits those who are good at filling out forms, and penalizes those who are not.

Thinking it through, should this plan become the modus operandi in the U.S., we might in a couple of generations become a nation consisting entirely of bureaucrats.

I retract my plan. Never mind.

******

Our weather has shifted a bit, with high temperatures suddenly no more than 75 degrees or so. Nights are sometimes dropping into the thirties. It’s a welcome relief from those wok-like 90 plus days of this past summer, but could we please have something more gradual in our weather patterns, please? Would that be too much to ask? I know that I am from the generations that have caused all of the upheaval in climate and everything else bad that has ever happened since the Garden of Eden closed its doors, up to and including the development of those plastic tomatoes (had to get my annual tomato rant in somewhere) you see in the grocery stores. So I have no right to hope for better days? Is that it?

Funny, but I don’t think that way. Human history is a series of wonderful discoveries and awful blunders and there has not been a generation so far that didn’t participate in both. Maybe the present youngest group will turn out to be carbon neutral and lead so pure a life that they can tsk tsk the rest of us to death and beyond. We’ll see. In the meantime I am just happy to be cooler for a few days, and living in a place where if I touch the outside of my car I don’t have to go to the emergency room for burn treatment.

******

Some Days Are Diamonds …

jono55

It’s nearly 5 AM and it has been raining lightly all night. The cats are wandering aimlessly around the rooms, occasionally stopping by my chair and looking straight into my face with a “Make it Stop” expression on their kitty countenances. They are impatient creatures about some things, accepting about others. But whatever keeps them from going outdoors when that’s where they want to go fits into the intolerable category.

Robin’s sister Jill is staying with us for a few days. She flew in on Tuesday evening and will be here until next Tuesday. That’s a nice-sized visit, I think, especially since years pass between her trips out here to the Western Slope.

******

This has been an interesting summer here in Paradise, one where we are glad to not have had travel plans. I’ve mentioned before how the mountains figure heavily into when and where you can take a trip. The problem is the paucity of highways going east/west. Mountain ridges basically are north/south things, so there you have the set-up for snafus of every stripe.

Last year there was a fire along I-70 near Glenwood Springs which messed with travel somewhat at the time but eventually burned out. However, all it took was a heavy rain or two this summer to cause a gigantic mudslide in the burned area, and all of that mud landed on I-70, completely cutting Colorado’s main artery in two. The debris on the road was 8-10 feet deep in places. This all happened two weeks ago, and only just recently a single lane in each direction was tentatively opened, allowing cars and trucks to begin to flow once again.

The real nightmare behind the nightmare is that when this is finally cleared away and the highway repaired, nothing stands in the way of a repeat but the fickle finger of fate. Those steep and barren hillsides are accidents waiting to happen.

******

From The New Yorker

******

I missed my own deadline this morning, when I didn’t get this rag out on time. Ever have days when nothing gets started, when putting the old one foot in front of the other mantra isn’t working? This morning I couldn’t get my sense of humor started, and without it at my side I really hesitate to get out of bed. It is my shield against the thousand idiocies and stories of cruelty that greet me when I open any page on any of the online news outlets.

So this morning I had to dig into my chest of armaments for my secondary protection. And what is that, you say? Why, rock and roll, I answer.

I found two cuts from the live album Rock N’ Roll Animal, by Lou Reed. The “Introduction” goes along in a wandering way until 3:20, when the band gives us a handful of power chords to wake us up, and then Reed walks on stage to grand applause.

I swear, if I ever strayed from the true faith of R & R, this is the tune that would bring me back.

******

Is Anybody Out There?

jono55

The artist Nick Cave has been around for a long time now, making music that is not for the faint of heart, but those songs of his that I have listened to carefully come out of a special kind of intelligence. He was a favorite of my son Jonnie, and was one of those musicians that Jonnie employed to make me crazy.

But this past week I came upon a letter that Cave wrote to a fan a few years ago, who was asking how he was coping following the death of his own 15 year-old son in a fall from a cliff in England. I’m going to link to the letter for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there isn’t a one of us that hasn’t grieved something by now – the loss of a family member, a lover, a friend,or perhaps of part of ourselves. We’ve been stunned but somehow made it back to where we could function once again, although forever we are changed in some way.

I’ve never read anything more honest and insightful than Cave’s open letter back to the questioner. When asked if he believed that his son still existed in some form and was available to him Cave said that he talks to the boy all the time … but “he may not be there.”

You might read the letter and remember the link, if only to be able to send it along to someone who can use it one day. Life can be awfully hard at times, my friends, and my simplistic counsel would be that the more shoulders that are available to be leaned on, the better.

******

Found this critter when taking out the trash Monday morning. Mantises are common here in Paradise, coming in all sizes. They are fascinating little killers, aren’t they?

It’s that unlike a lot of insects they turn their head to look at you that gets me. You just know that they are trying to decide whether it’s worth the trouble to try to eat you or not.

“Let’s see … I know that thing is too big to drag around … but if I chewed it up into manageable-sized pieces … ”

(Perhaps you think that I’m being paranoid. But study the photograph. The bug was giving me some serious side-eye at the moment the shutter snapped.)

******

I could almost accept the fact that so many of my fellow citizens have decided to follow blindly an immoral fool of an ex-president and have thus donated their brains to non-science. Almost. If it were only the adults that were affected, you could say “Well, I warned them,” and let it go at that. It is impossible to police our part of the universe so well that stupid can’t break out at any moment and in any place. Que sera and all that.

But right now their folly places their children and everybody else’s children at risk because these kids are not yet eligible to receive the vaccines. That’s where a line is crossed for me, and I have trouble sympathizing with those putting personal “freedom” over the common good. One of our duties as adults in a society is to protect the children in our care. In 2021, this means getting the damned shots, and doing it yesterday. Anything less is neglect.

End of story.

******

From The New Yorker

******

In my family of origin a garment was almost never thrown in the trash, at least not before it went through at least one transformation. For instance, my uncle Elmer was a portly man who sold insurance for a living. This made him the only person in the entire extended family who wore a white shirt to work.

When Uncle Elmer was done with them, these garments were handed down to my mom, who took those very broad shirt-tails and made clothing for my brother and I. When we outgrew them or wore them out, they spent the next phase of their lives in the rag-basket, and finally were thrown away when they became too threadbare for even this homely chore.

Occasionally these economies didn’t work out as planned. When I was about six years old, mom decided to take an old wool sweater that had belonged to some adult and make swim trunks out of it for my brother and I. What possessed her I don’t know, but make them she did and the next summer we boys put them on for the first time and dashed into the lake.When we emerged, we found to our horror that although the elastic at the waist was holding just fine, the waterlogged woolen fabric now weighed several pounds and gravity had pulled it down so far that the crotch was at the level of our knees, revealing our private parts to anyone who cared to look in our direction.

I don’t recall how we got from the beach to a sheltered spot where we could rid ourselves of the distorted garments, but once we shed them we never saw them again. However, those swimsuits lived on for years in family legends.

******

You may have noticed a couple of changes in the weather listings. We closed the Washington DC offices of the Empire and opened up an outpost in Stockholm, Sweden. Granddaughter Elsa had been living in DC but felt she had to leave when the behavior of the Red Party threatened her mental health. Being that close to the seat of all power was more than a sane person could tolerate, so she chose a location about 3900 miles away and will now see if that’s far enough.

What I know is that Robin and I live 1900 miles from DC, and there are many days that I wish it were further – for instance, if that offensive political party could be relocated to a large ice floe within the Arctic Circle. We would give each member the health care availability and economic opportunities of a person living on public assistance and let them work it out. Oh, and we would give them all the handguns and assault weapons they wanted to assist in solving arguments, in marriage counseling, and in employment disagreements.

I think that I’d sleep better if that happened. Then we could devote our energies toward trying to help the Democrats become a functioning political party that consistently worked for the benefit of all of us, instead of the prima donna casserole it tends to be now.

******

Simple Tools

jono55

One of the most common misconceptions about electric bicycling that I run into is that the cyclist sits there and the motor does all the work. Many people are surprised that I pedal at all. What they have missed along the way is that the point of e-biking is to assist, rather than replace, the effort you make in getting from Point A to Point B.

The best description that I’ve come up with so far is that I do the same amount of work in a given amount of time but go faster and further with the electrical assistance. Now, it is true that if I dialed the assist level up to 5 that I wouldn’t be getting much exercise at all. It’s all in what you want out of it. It’s only a simple machine, after all. One simple tool riding upon another.

******

I ran across this music video recently that I found intriguing. It’s of a song by the Chemical Brothers collaborating with Beck. Once you start watching you can’t stop until the end, just to see how it all comes out.

******

I had suspected for a long time that I might be underestimating the level of thick-headedness in the good old US of A, but today’s situation … what the hell! To have nearly half the country, including many people who should definitely know better, abandon their wits en masse and refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19 is a situation that a year ago I would not have thought possible. C’est incroyable!

Here are some quotes from my favorite cranky S.O.B., H.L. Mencken. He would have loved the opportunity to comment on today’s news. I think that even he might be amazed at today’s goings-on. It’s all I can do to keep my inner cynic in check, and it causes me to wonder anew about the long-term future of the species homo sapiens.

H.L. Mencken

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

******

My friend Joe sent these along to me. I don’t know who to credit, but to whoever painted these … Bravo! There is a great deal of obvious skill involved in doing the painting, but what is even more impressive is the imagination that saw the possibilities present in an ordinary hand.

******

Tuesday afternoon was one of those perfect times to be out on the deck with an iced tea in one hand and a word processor in the other. I listened to new music on Apple and to some old music from my library, all the while being caressed lightly by a breeze that never got too rowdy. The contrast between sitting here under a shady ash tree and doing any kind of work out there twenty feet away in the brilliant sunshine is striking. I can do the ash-tree bit for hours. I can do working in the sun for perhaps 20 minutes before I fade. Kinda pathetic, actually, this weather-wimpiness. When, exactly, did that happen?

Oh, well.

******

There are some musical groups that stand out for me, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young is one of them. Maybe the premier one, actually. My appreciation of their music began when I was wearing a USAF uniform and listening to a San Francisco radio station playing “Four Way Street.” I wore out the original vinyl of that album decades ago. Their musical and social sensibilities meshed with my own in a way that has withstood multiple breakups and reunions of the group without flinching. At present it doesn’t exist as a functioning and touring unit, but no matter. Over these forty-plus years they have created a body of music that I can turn to whenever.

So when I ran across this album named CSNY 1974 (Live), what could I do? The album was put together recently, culled from many concerts played in that year, when they were young men and their future unclear.

******

One Hour Over Berlin

jono55

I have had a continuing fantasy for exactly as long as I have been driving a car. It came into being the first time I confronted a truly bad driver on the road. Someone who either endangered me or just plain p****d me off. I imagined that two 50-caliber machine guns were mounted on my car at bumper level, and that I could fire them with a button near the steering wheel. These were the same sort of armaments found on the P-51 Mustang aircraft in WWII.

By pushing that button I would never hit anyone in the cabin of the offending car in front of me, but the guns would be aimed so that a burst of fire would obliterate a tire and a rear wheel, forcing the vehicle to unceremoniously screech to the side of the road as I passed it nonchalantly. Perhaps I might even wear a leather flight jacket on these missions, with a scarf streaming behind me as I flew down the road. I was pretty sure that guns capable of bringing down a Messerschmitt 109 would have no trouble at all blowing the tire on a Chevvy Camaro to smithereens.

With the passage of time, my fantasy has become more civilized and less violent until nowadays I envision paintball guns mounted in the same place, and a sophisticated video control system that allows pinpoint aiming at whatever I want to mess up. When the offending driver reaches their destination, they discover that some serious clean-up is in order, perhaps even a complete re-painting of the rear of the car. Or I coat the rear window with something in a nice fuchsia to get their attention and make my point.

The theme is still the same, however. Someone has to punish these miscreants, and since one can’t always count on the highway patrol or local gendarmes to be on the scene, that someone might as well be me. It’s garden variety vigilante justice. As American as black powder and apple pie.

******

******

My favorite musical instrument that I don’t play is the guitar.* Whether it’s Andres Segovia playing classical, Eddie Van Halen doing superhuman things in rock and roll, or Johnny Smith cruising along with his jazz quintet … the guitar is what I go there for. So when The New Yorker had an article on a jazz guitarist new to me, I whisked myself off to find recordings he had made. BTW, his name is Julian Lage.

It was well worth the trip. His playing is aimed more for the cerebrum than the hormonal system, I think. The man’s feeling for his instrument is a lovely thing to hear.

*Actually, I play no instrument at all. I have briefly owned several guitars in my lifetime, but always quit the lessons when my fingertips became sore. (What is the opposite of dedication?) I am glad, however, that Mr. Lage persisted in his studies.

******

We recently bought some new panniers for our bicycles. They are the sort that are meant for carrying groceries, and I used them last evening for the first time. It went well. Driving the e-bike, I didn’t hesitate to take the four mile roundtrip in 98 degree weather to do the shopping. Hardly raised a sweat (relative humidity was in the single digits).

Each bag will carry the equivalent of what a paper grocery bag would hold, perhaps 20 pounds on each side. They are made by the Banjo Brothers, and this particular model is called the “market pannier.” The reviews were good, the price was not horrible (for bicycle equipment, that is), and they seem quite durable. I’ve put just short of 300 miles on my bike since purchasing it, about half of those were in exercise sessions, and the other half running the sort of errands where panniers come in handy.

All in all, this cycle project is working out better than I thought it might. My usual story is that I come up with an exuberantly positive rationale for a purchase like the e-bikes and associated paraphernalia, a rationale which is quickly forgotten once the item is in the garage and the rosy glow has worn off. For instance, when I discover that there is still work to do when one pedals the things.

But this one may have legs.

******

Ahem. I’d like you to know that at the present moment I am playing Beethoven in the back yard. I have decided to try to elevate the musical conversation along the neighborhood’s back fences, and am sending out the strains of the “Pastorale” Symphony for all to hear and to wonder – who in blazes is playing this stuff? They might well be thinking: George, isn’t that the same guy who was playing that damned rock and roll when we were trying to take a nap yesterday? What is the matter with him? Why don’t you take this broom and go next door and smack him a couple of times?

******

Magnolia, You Sweet Thing …

jono55

A small summer extra for this Sunday morning. J.J. Cale wrote an ode to someone special named Magnolia, and I have provided his excellent recording here.

But Lucinda Williams’ cover is just so perfect for listening to on a hot summer’s day that I had to send it along. Lucinda is at her mannered singing best, and sometimes even a super-fan like myself can’t understand what she’s saying. (That’s what lyric sheets are for, I guess) The backup band is outstanding, and the long musical breaks a joy to listen to. I can play it over and over, even though the recording is almost 10 minutes long and my attention span has been clocked by the U.S. Naval Observatory at 11.7 seconds.

It’s a sweet sweet version, and provides all the summer languor a person could possibly want, or handle.

******

Summahtime

jono55

It isn’t summer yet, as far as the calendar is concerned, but we are completely into the phase where you can no longer go barefoot outdoors in the middle of the day. You know that old business about frying an egg on the sidewalk that keeps coming up (even though I don’t personally know anyone who has tried it)? Well, it applies to feet as well.

You go to the beach and the asphalt parking lot has already passed broil, the sand at the water’s edge is now set at scorch, and after swimming you have severe misgivings about running the twenty yards from the lake to the blanket where your sandals are parked. You are pretty sure that first degree burns on the soles of your feet are a guarantee and wonder why the hell you came out here in the first place.

These are those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. Emphasis on the crazy.

******

From The New Yorker

******

So … sitting out back in the shade of the big ol’ ash tree for which we are eternally grateful I am listening to music that is cool … low key … nothing that encourages effort of any kind. Right this minute that means Riders on the Storm by the Doors, followed by Fade Into You (Mazzy Star), Pink Moon (Nick Drake), and … you get the picture. No tunes that make you want to get up and dance or do anything that might raise a sweat. Music that goes with iced beverages and leaning back and letting the wafting breezes do their thing. I love a good wafting as much as anyone.

******

Yesterday I spent more than an hour with advisors on Apple Support. First I had to “talk” to a very junior person in a chat, where I laid out my problem as clearly as I could. After 15 minutes of showing no understanding of what was bothering me, #1 asked if I minded if they sent me along to someone more senior. Please do, I responded and there was a minute or two before #2 junior person came into the chat and asked me what they could do to help.

I said that they could start by reading what had already been covered in the chat history instead of our having to start afresh. Five minutes later they asked if I minded being transferred to a senior advisor. No problem, I repeated.

Minutes passed and I was directed to a third junior staff member who said that the “senior” was coming any day now, that in fact she might be trying to call me on the phone. I mentioned that this might be difficult since I hadn’t given them my phone number as yet, and I proceeded to share it with them.

More minutes elapsed until the phone rang. The lady who was on the line asked “How can I help you today?” Again I suggested that she first review the transcript and the images I had sent along. Ten minutes later she asked if we could bring in someone more senior. By now I am weeping audibly and trying to keep the tears from getting into my keyboard. Finally, a woman with a strong Southern accent named Ambrosia came on the line. From then on we worked together until the problem was solved.

Total time spent in chat and on phone = 80 minutes. Final piece of advice from the woman who actually helped me was that the problem would most likely recur, and if it did I should feel free to call anytime and we’d get it sorted out once again. My verbal response to her was “Yes, yes, I will do that.” My internal and silent responses were along the lines of: “When Hell freezes over ,” or “I’d rather die,” or “Just shoot me.”

It just took so long to get to Ambrosia.

******

Jill Biden apparently was charming and did a creditable job of representing the mentally healthier part of America at the G7 this past week. She was able to do this because she is a real person and not the cardboard cutouts of human beings that we’ve sent out in the previous four years.

Ms. Biden has a fan here in Robin, who read at least one of her biographies during the campaign months. When it comes to such things, I trust Robin’s instincts and accept that Dr. Biden is indeed a winner. It can’t be a bad thing to have an educator as First Lady, can it? Our schools need help, our teachers need support and guidance, and to have someone who actually understands the problems in her position … how refreshing and encouraging.

Of course it was Joe who was elected and not Jill, but there is some reason to believe that he actually listens to her.

******

Inch by inch we’re adding to our involvement in the local Democratic Party activities. We’ve volunteered to do voter registration at the county fair for a few hours later this summer. Someone called me today looking for a body to be precinct chairperson. She thought that I had all of the qualifications needed to do the job. Apparently this means having a pulse.

I told her that I might not be the right candidate, since my pulse is quite irregular at times. Skips beats quite often. We agreed to put off deciding about this particular task right now.

Being by nature a hermit, moving out into the public sphere in this way is working solidly against that nature. But I want to add my small voice to the multitude that says No More. And if that means being uncomfortable once in a while, doing something that I dread just a little bit, so be it.

The yahoos have had the stage for too long now, and I will be very happy to one day to have a hand on that trusty vaudeville hook as we drag them off into the wings.

******

What’s That Smell?

jono55

I caught part of an NPR broadcast a couple of weeks ago where the chef from Noma, one of the most famous restaurants in the world, discussed his new book. It was all about fermentation. In the interest of truth and all that, I admit that I never heard of him or his restaurant before listening to him on the radio. That’s not altogether surprising because it is in Copenhagen.

But he made fermentation sound so interesting, and it sounded like it had all the attributes of being a great hobby. One where at the end you can eat your output. That’s what cooking is to me, and why I find it such great fun, even though my skills are still so rudimentary. (For myself, here is where I separate cooking from meal planning. The former is what I enjoy, the latter is a chore that I have to do.)

After the broadcast I thought of the ways that I had already used fermentation without thinking about it. Baking bread, feeding sourdough starters, making kefir, brewing my own beers (which were excellent), and one stab at making my own wine (which produced a horrible beverage).

There was that time when I tried to make unyeasted bread, just like in the Old Testament. I mixed up the dough and then left it uncovered for days, as the recipe directed. Nothing seemed to be going on, with no evident rising of the bread-to-be, and eventually I baked the lump of dough to see what would happen.This produced a rounded, beautifully browned, and totally unyielding flour brick that could not be sliced or torn. I could not even drive an ice pick through it.

I finally gave up thinking of it as a food. What if I did eventually break off a piece? Obviously, I was not able to eat rocks. So I tossed it into the back yard to the two Siberian huskies that I owned at the time, and they were able to gnaw it down to nothing, but it took the two of them a week to do it.

I ordered the book today and look forward to adventures in sauerkraut, kimchi, and other more exotic delights. I will study each recipe carefully, especially the mortality rates that come from eating the foods produced. I want to keep that number on the low side, if I can.

******

Nandi Bushell, a 10 year-old Englishwoman, is some sort of drum prodigy, and apparently has a considerable YouTube following, especially in the UK. She challenged a favorite of hers, Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, to a drum battle. This is the result.

I’m sorry … she wins the cute part of the duel instantly. Grohl never had a chance. They even dressed alike. Can’t stand it.

******

Life is not fair … we pretty much all know that this is not true by the time we’re teenagers. It can be interesting, hard, joy-filled, complicated – but not fair.

But what I read on Thursday morning went so far from fair that I am speechless. Almost. Remember just a couple of weeks ago I reported on studies that showed that alcohol shrinks our gray matter? The stuff that we think with? Researchers have found out some new stuff about coffee, and it seems that in regular drinkers, coffee shrinks the gray matter as well, although it seems to rebound if you quit drinking it. Whaaaaaat? Hello, Great Spirit … what is up with that?

At any AA club, if a fire broke out, the first thing the members would save would be the coffeepot. It is an essential part of the meeting, when we are newly out of the swamp and blinking like bats in a bright light. And now they are telling us that this life-altering beverage may have a dark side of its own? Not fair.

Chalk another one up for the Trickster, that spirit found in many forms in Native American legends and stories. Just when we are feeling we might have a handle on things, he pulls out the rug.

******

You may have noticed that I talk very little about the talents and intelligence of my fellow physicians. That is because the garment that is the medical profession is cut from a very big piece of material. For example, some physicians are outright idiots. Here Sanjay Gupta and Jake Tapper are discussing a doc who is in a class of her own. As she speaks, you will find that you understand magnetism much better than the good doctor does. Probably a lot of other things, too.

Oy.

******

Once in a great while something peculiar happens, and I suspect that others have had the same experience. Out of nowhere I will be struck with the most intense feeling of longing. Enough to pause me in whatever I am doing in order to give the emotion my full attention.

But it is not longing prompted by anything I can put my finger on, nor is it for anything specific. No golden day of yesteryear or place that I have been or person who has been lost to me. The feeling is not attached to anything that I am conscious of at all. It is always accompanied by a light sense of melancholy. If I were a composer I might write a song that could bring those feelings out where they could be shared, and some of the sharpness of the poignancy eased.

Wait … someone already wrote that song for me, and his name was Francisco Tarrega. The song is Memories of the Alhambra. The yearning for something intangible is right there in this excellent short piece of music.

******

From The New Yorker

******

For three days now, we’ve been privileged to have Aiden and Claire as house guests. Ages 16 and 11 years, respectively. All in all, I think it’s going pretty well, with the kids being very tolerant of our foibles, and Robin and I returning the favor. They brought their bicycles along, and the four of us have been cruising the neighborhood and the trail along the Uncompahgre River. Later this morning we’re headed for the reservoir at Ridgway, where one can rent paddle boards and small kayaks and such. The temps are right around 90 at the hottest part of the day, so we have definitely been pacing ourselves.

Aiden had it in mind to make a short movie during his stay here, and so we are filming that epic one scene at a time, in between doing other enjoyable things. He’s quite proficient in filmmaking and very serious about the project. Watching him at work has been a lot of fun. He is a very good kid – smart, polite, talented, and self-aware. When I think back on how surly and selfish I was at the same age, I am embarrassed for my teen self.

Claire has revealed a side of herself that I had not noticed before, that of being a wise observer. She’ll be yakking on the phone with friends, turning cartwheels in the living room, singing songs in a language she made up, and then suddenly and quietly she becomes this real-life wise woman and says just exactly what needs to be said at that moment. It’s a startling transformation when it happens, and a delightful thing to behold.

******

There is good news from Lima, Peru. Daughter Maja continues to make progress toward independence in her recovery from Guillain-Barre syndrome, although slower than she would like. She has also been offered (and accepted) a job at the school in St. Paul where she worked before she took positions first in China and then in South America. Couldn’t happen to a nicer person. She definitely deserves a break or two after the past months. Maybe three breaks, come to think of it.

Speaking as the overprotective old fool that I seem to be at times, I will be glad to have her back in a country that is not in total lockdown, and where the possibility of visiting her exists. There are a lot of foxes out there in the world, and when the sun goes down I like to think that my chicks are safe for the night.

******

Daughter Kari alerted me to the fact that one of the most perfect foods in the world is 100 years old this year. Cheez-its. I am talking about the original flavor here, of course. There have been many new ones brought out in the past decade, but that original … my oh my … .

Other companies have tried to imitate this paragon of cheesy crispiness, but they have all fallen way short. That’s not just my opinion, by the way, that’s the honest to god truth.

So I plan on celebrating the centennial of Cheez-its by cracking open several boxes in the coming months. I see it as my sacred duty.

******

Good Will(ow) Hunting

jono55

Willow is our hunter-cat. Poco used to be one too, but age and infirmities have slowed him to the point where everything else runs faster than he does. I know exactly how he feels.

But to get back to Willow.

She is now four years old, and catches small rodents regularly. One of the ways we have of telling is when she comes in through the pet door with something dangling from her mouth. Half the time she drops it and it stays put, the other half of the time it doesn’t, but gets up and runs for cover. When this happens it energizes all of the humans in the room and elicits many loud cries and expostulations.

Willow! Go outside! Take that with you! Get it! There it goes! Don’t let it get under the couch! Open the door! Where is it now? I see it behind the TV! Willow – there it is … aaaahhhhhh, she’s got it, now take it outside, Willow. No – don’t drop it! There it goes again …

That’s one of the ways we can tell what she catches. Another derives from the fact that if she catches something during the hours that I am sleeping, she will consume it entire except for one part, which she leaves behind wherever she has dined. That leftover is the creature’s cranium. Leading to the repeating scenario where I pad barefooted to the refrigerator in the pre-dawn darkness and step on something hard. I think I need not dwell on this further.

To use a phrase borrowed from St.Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Willow does not suffer fools gladly. And in her eyes all humans are fools. She is not a cat that one can pick up, place in one’s lap, and pet it. To do so is to invite bodily damage of various degrees as she brings those eighteen claws into play.
On the other hand, if on rare occasions that lap looks pretty good to her, she will march right over and stare at you until you clear away whatever else you are doing and make room for her. Then she curls up and goes to sleep and what does a person do?

But when she wants to be petted, she will walk back and forth beside your outstretched hand for the longest time, purring away. The look upon her small face at such times is bliss. We find it irresistible.

******

Three from the New Yorker Archives

***

***

******

Monday afternoon I was swept up into an immobilizing time-warp as my ears were being bathed in the music of another era. Robin says that my pupils were fully dilated and although I was breathing evenly and had a regular pulse she could not break through to me. So she did the best she could on a holiday and called some of her girlfriends to ask their advice.

One of them, a nutritional cosmetician, said that it sounded like Vitamin E deficiency to her, and Robin should do what she could to insert capsules of that substance into every orifice she could reasonably reach. Then she was to rub the oil onto my face and chest.

Friend Adele, a behavioral podiatrist, said she had no idea what was wrong with me at all, but shared that her uncle once had a certain tick which paralyzed him for hours and that Robin should turn me about and tip me over to look for ticks. If one were found, removal could effect a cure.

Yet another amie who leans toward the occult began to warble about demonic possession, but Robin hung up on her when she got going on animal sacrifice and the proper strewing of entrails.

Keep in mind that I knew nothing of any of this, although I do remember clearly every tune that was played. This continued until around dinnertime when I spontaneously returned to my senses and frightened Robin nearly half to death because I came up behind her in the kitchen and asked “What’s for supper?”

I still have the lump where she caressed my head with the skillet she had in her hand at the time.

I put some of the tunes that had transported me over on the right in the Jukebox area. Listen to them with care, or you could wake up slathered with Vitamin E oil.

(BTW, if Atlantis isn’t one of the trippiest tunes ever written, I’ll eat my vaccine passport.)

******

I’ll have to re-watch it to be sure, but in my memory Body Heat is a movie that conjures up the feeling of heat and humidity like none other. Even in an air-conditioned theater you found yourself wiping non-existent sweat from your brow. And then there was this scene … a hymn to lust if ever there was one.

Every time I watch this I need to take a cold shower afterward.

******

Someone Else’s Hard Work

jono55

After listening to a few Bob Dylan songs this afternoon on a perfect backyard 80 degree day with the cats swatting at the insects buzzing within range, I found myself wondering. What would be the appropriate recognition for a man whose music was the background for most of one’s life? A man whose lyrics … what did they do … they didn’t so much tell you the next right thing to do as they indicated the territory where you might profitably look for it.

It’s a legitimate question to ask myself, I think … what sort of person would I have been if Mr. Dylan hadn’t been gifted in the way he was? If I hadn’t internalized the lyrics to songs like Blowing in the Wind or A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall or Mr. Tambourine Man or Masters of War or Things Have Changed or Shelter From The Storm … the list does go on. When you put that stuff into your head it changes you. Perhaps each song molded me only a little, but many hundreds of songs and their repetition … that had to make a sizable dent, for sure.

So add Bob Dylan to the list of folks who I would happily invite in for coffee and a warm-up if they showed up late at night on my doorstep during a snowstorm.* (There is a second list, those to whom I would say Begone, Wretch!).

*I would ask Bob in even though I have heard that he can be a cranky S.O.B. at times.

******

******

What do you know about Critical Race Theory? Before I read Andrew Sullivan’s piece I knew absolutely nothing. After reading it, I know a tiny bit. But the piece is interesting in its summary of what Western liberalism consists of and the fact that what I take for granted today could very easily be lost.

In his forth coming book, “The Constitution of Knowledge,” Jonathan Rauch lays out some core principles that liberal societies rely upon. These are not optional if liberal society is to survive. And they are not easy, which is why we have created many institutions and practices to keep them alive. Rauch lists some of them: fallibilism, the belief that anyone, especially you, can always be wrong; objectivity, a rejection of any theory that cannot be proven or disproven by reality; accountability, the openness to conceding and correcting error; and pluralism, the maintenance of intellectual diversity so we maximize our chances of finding the truth.

Andrew Sullivan, Removing the Bedrock of Liberalism

Those four principles are so basic to my own view of the world that I don’t even notice them. They are the air I breathe, the sea I swim in. They are what is and what always will be, I thought. Apparently that is not the case, according to Mr. Sullivan. A very different universe could come to exist, and the other possibilities look pretty damned ugly.

******

My land, but this is a performance. Mr. Cash took this song from Nine Inch Nails and made it his, cell by cell. I play it once a year for the benefit of my soul.

******

Once again Robin and I have challenged the fates and started our garden. It’s only a tiny one, a few tomato plants, some greens, a pot of basil. But it gives us something to fret about and chores to do, just as a larger one would. In this droughty country, watering is the constant duty. For the past couple of years, there has been very little rain to help us out, so the plants’ survival comes from the end of a hose.

Our garden is a small thing, but it is a strong reminder of how our survival depends on somebody out there growing the food that keeps us alive. Those people are doing their own fretting, their chores, and worrying about the rains coming. We never get to thank them in person.

There is a table prayer that I learned at a Buddhist gathering that says it for me.

We give thanks to the sun and the rain and the earth, and to someone else’s hard work.

******

Ahhhh, Them Last Chance Power Drives

jono55

Sleepily listening to the radio the other day I was jerked awake by the opening salvo of Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen. I listened to the words carefully, and it is a wonderful hymn to a way that I once felt. That time was at the peak of adolescence. A time when my thoughts ran to stylishly morbid (not going to live to age 25) and my hormones were the very definition of chaos. A time when cruising the summer streets with the car window rolled down and a song like this cranked up would alter my DNA to the point that when I stepped out of the car I was at least temporarily a whole new character. (One that was much more interesting)

This song was a perfect anthem. One that could have made me feel taller, stronger, indestructible … all those qualities that I was looking for at age eighteen. The only problem is that it came out when I was thirty years old. By that time I was married, had four children, and was temporarily the property of the United States Air Force. So instead of being the song that made me feel like a contender, it was now a wistful reference to an earlier time.

It’s a great song, though. Telling the story of a last chance power drive … man oh man … can you dig it?

(NB: note deliberate use of ancient cliché)

******

From The New Yorker

******

We probably all have our own private mythologized places. Locations we have visited once or many times and which for some reason occupy their own special space in our minds, one that is often both haloed and hallowed. One of mine such space for me is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of northern Minnesota. I’ve been there on trips with my own children, a grandchild, and perhaps thirty times with Rich Kaplan, an old friend. Robin and I have paddled and camped in the BWCA several times together. I go there every year in my head, even if it’s only every several years that my body tags along. Everything I use on these trips becomes a part of the mythological whole.

One of these items is Dr. Bronner’s soap. I first purchased a bottle for a canoe trip long ago because it was such a quirky product. Piragis Outfitters of Ely MN was happy to sell me a bottle, which I used as hand soap, body wash, and shampoo for the next several days. Since then it has become a regular part of each trip’s outfitting. At some point I discovered that you could get the stuff in local grocery stores pretty much everywhere, and that was all she wrote.

Now every time I shower using Dr. Bronner’s soap, I am gifted with some random recollections of the BW, and they are all good, even those involving drenching rainstorms and a wall of mosquitoes that you have to hack through to get to the water. Above is the label from a bottle – as you can see, it contains homilies and exhortations as well as a list of ingredients.

Like I said, quirky … but quirky good.

******

Here’s a little gallery of pics the BWCA, taken over a fifty year period.

  • OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

******

Two years ago I followed the advice of online home repair enthusiasts, and attacked the two outdoor faucets of our home, which were leaking. All of the gurus I encountered told me that the repair was so simple that any fool could do it. So I purchased kits, watched the videos, and although it didn’t go quite as smoothly as the in the pictures, when I was finished the faucets did not leak and seemed to work just fine.

Until this Spring, when the backyard faucet failed me. Little more than a dribble comes through when I crank it up, and I have the uncomfortable suspicion that my work was not as successful as I thought it had been. Apparently there is a special variety of fools who cannot do this repair properly and I am one of them.

The plumber comes later today.

******

Holy Fools In Short Supply

jono55

Once in a while I meet extraordinary people who might be classified as holy fools. They don’t come along every day, and definitely not often enough. Such a man was Herb (not his real name), who I met in AA meetings in Yankton SD. When it came time for him to share, even the littlest things like his name, you never knew what would come out of his mouth. Where I might say in a meeting “My name is Jon, and I’m an alcoholic,” he might say “My earthly name is Herb but who really knows who and what I am.”

As a result, there were some who groaned when his turn came to speak, and waited impatiently for it to pass. I admit that at first I did not appreciate what he had to say. But for whatever reason, Herb would sometimes seek me out at meeting breaks, and much of his conversation was scrambled and hard to follow. But then there would be an amazing flash of clarity. A sentence that would stop you right where you were and show you something that had been there in front of you for the longest time but you never saw it.

So when Herb rushed up to me one day and pushed a recording into my hands and said “You’ve gotta listen to this, it will change your life,” I paid attention. I listened to it, and while I’m not sure that my life turned at that moment, I am still grateful for his gift.

Such was my introduction to the work of Jennifer Berezan. The recording Herb recommended was Returning, a 50 minute-long chanted meditation of layered beauty. You won’t find it on iTunes, but on her website, along with a lot of other beautiful things. Stuff that can be the antidote to some of the poison we take in every day through our eyes and ears without meaning to.

Since it is Sunday after all, I will share a short clip I took this morning from another long work of hers, entitled In These Arms – A Song For All Beings. The full work is more than an hour long. The last three lines of this clip are basically a short metta, or lovingkindness meditation. It is my gift today to you. You don’t have to take it, my part was to make the offer.

May everyone you love and everyone you never met be happy, safe, and free.

.

I cannot turn my eyes, I cannot count the cost
Of all that has been broken, all that has been lost
I cannot understand, the suffering that life brings
War and hate and hunger
And a million other things

 
When I’ve done all that I can
And I try to do my part
Let sorrow be a doorway
Into an open heart

 
And the light on the hills is full of mercy
The wind in the trees it comes to save me
This silence it will never desert me
I long to hold the whole world in these arms

 
May all beings be happy
May all beings be safe
May all beings everywhere be free

******

From The New Yorker

***

***

******

We’re watching a series from Iceland called “Trapped.” It’s a murder mystery set in a small port town, and it definitely has a flavor all its own. I won’t say anything about the plot here, so don’t worry about spoilers. Suffice it so say that it is said to be of the Nordic Noir genre.

What we love about it are the characters, exemplified by the chief of police. He is a quiet man, looks like he dressed in the dark in someone else’s clothes, and has two deputies who are very nice and very ordinary people. There is no Omigod you’re right moment, as officers dash to their cars for a wild ride to save lives. There is no tactical assault on an apartment building as a SWAT team piles out of a personnel carrier with guns drawn.

The first few episodes occur during a blizzard, which cuts the town off from the outside world, and is a great plot device. Freezing Icelandic citizens running around town in their little Isuzu SUVs, getting stuck, shoveling out, going into ditches, lost children, trying to solve a murder against significant odds … there was so much cold and blowing snow that I had to get out the afghan to stay warm for the hour each episode requires.

It’s on Prime. Season One was watched by 86% of the people of Iceland. That could either mean that it is pretty good, or that those people have way too much time on their hands.

******

The Old Testament

jono55

My son had returned home from college for a few days, and on the second morning of his too-brief stay he came up from his basement bedroom and declared: “And to think that this was a home where rock and roll was once played.”

I blinked like a deer in the headlights, because I had no response. He was right. In my as yet unfamiliar-to-me life as a divorcée, I had drifted waaaay too far from the real stuff, and into New Age music. Without thinking, really, over a period of several months I had effectively replaced Led Zeppelin and Neil Young with the tunes from folks like David Arkenstone and Enya, and that’s what I had playing in the background since the young man’s arrival. Oh, the shame of it all!

No Mas! I cried, as I flew to the turntable with an album by the J.Geils Band in my hand, and tossed whatever dreck was already on there over the loft railing. As the opening notes of “Hard Drivin’ Man” began to fill the room, I felt renewed, cleansed, and oh-so-repentant. I thanked Jonnie for reminding me of who I was and pledged right then and there to never again fall away from the true faith.

He looked over at me and said something like “Rise, father … go and sin no more.” (I think he borrowed that line from somewhere, for it sounded very familiar but it was highly righteous and very much to the point on that special day.)

I have been the truest of disciples since then. I carry a large staff with me everywhere I go and whenever I find a New Age adherent I ply that stick about their head and shoulders until they see the light. It’s a thankless job … but someone’s got to do it. We’re saving souls here!

******

I have had so many very wise and urgent things to say recently that I have sorely neglected what it probably the best part of this blog, and that is when I don’t write anything at all but only share a few cartoons from the New Yorker magazine. I do this whenever my personal thoughts are an undecipherable clutter. Today I am going to pass along a murder of cartoons. It’s a lot like a murder of crows, but more fun.

**

**

**

******

As I read the headlines for the past two months, and think about the office of POTUS, I wonder all over again – who in hell would want the job? President Cluck left things in an unusually messy state, to be sure, but even if he hadn’t totally mucked things up the world is a certified perpetual bucket o’disorder.

Let’s see … take a sample of the problems that the U.S. faces domestically, for instance. What shall we choose … how about racism, income inequality, gun violence, immigration, and the large number of special interest groups, which at last count was equal to the population? And to accomplish anything in any of these areas POTUS must do something that is much harder than herding cats, he must herd politicians. At least with cats you can fairly easily understand their motives and behavior. They like to be fed, they don’t like to get wet, and they sleep most of the day.

Unfortunately, politicians don’t sleep nearly enough, so that when we go to bed there is always the chance that they will do something so bad during the night that it takes us years to get over it. I refer you to the quotation by Gideon J. Tucker: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”

Who wants that job? Not a normal person.

******

Sunday Morning

jono55

I know that it’s Sunday morning and you have a God-given right to be left alone … but here I am anyway. Let’s face it, you clicked on something to get here, so face up to your part in all this. Ever hear of folie a deux?

Folie a deux (‘madness for two’), also known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder, is a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief, and sometimes hallucinations, are transmitted from one individual to another.

Wikipedia

******

First of all, here’s more on Dr. Seuss and taking books away, by Ross Douthat, a generally morose but occasionally thoughtful columnist. He thinks that liberals should care more about what is going on.

******

Another page in the movement toward alternate foods made of stuff we didn’t even know existed. For instance, do you know about the supremely hardy extreme fungus from Yellowstone National Park that is taking off right now? You don’t? Your ignorance could stop right this minute, should you so choose. Up to you. But know this – there might be, right this minute, a fungus burger out there with your name on it.

******

From The New Yorker

******

One of Billie Holiday’s signature songs was Strange Fruit. Biography has a short piece about the song and how singing it probably shortened Holiday’s life, while it certainly impacted her career. A sad story of the bad things that bad men in government can do and of the power of music to frighten them.

If you’re up for it, here is the song, sung by Ms Holiday herself.

******

V-Day Hath Come ‘Round

jono55

A few tunes for anyone who has been, who is, or who will be, in love. You’re welcome.

Songs by Carly Simon, Don Shirley, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita Baker, and Rickie Lee Jones.

******

And one romantic poem for fisherpersons …)

The Song of Wandering Aengus

By William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Mud Season

jono55

Yesterday Robin and I scored a sighting of a golden eagle, circling above the Ute Museum on the southern edge of town. We can’t take a lot of credit for our birding skills, however, for we only saw it because we came across a woman outside the museum who was pointing heavenward. When we asked her “What are you pointing at, my good woman? “she answered “Golden eagle.” Thus our discovery.

We’re not too proud to take the scraps that others toss us.

******

I find myself marveling at the courage of Alexei Navalny. To be poisoned by agents of the Russian government, airlifted nearly dead to Germany for treatment, and then when you finally have recovered the strength to walk about you get right back on a plane and return to Russia. Where you are promptly arrested, as you knew you would be.

For generations, people arrested in Russia have had the habit of disappearing into huge and ugly prisons, anonymous graveyards, or camps in Siberia. And still he went back. I am in awe. It’s as if he is some completely different species of man … Homo intrepidus, perhaps.

******

A Dick Guindon cartoon. I repeat this one every winter.

******

It’s mud season here in Paradise. The remaining dirty snow and ice melt very slowly at the temperatures we are experiencing, just enough to keep the gumbo damp and treacherous. So we walk on concrete and asphalt 99% of the time. Maybe 99.9%. Word has reached us that the snow levels up on the Grand Mesa have finally reached the point where the XC-skiing is great. We’ll try to get up there this week and take advantage of that. It’s a favorite winter activity for us, even though we don’t pretend to be anything but perpetual beginners.

So far this winter has been an unusual one. The snowfalls have not been not epic anywhere, making travel more possible and predictable than ever. Of course, we’re not supposed to be traveling and who would we visit? We don’t have any friends in the dim-bulb section of the American populace … those people who walk about unmasked and show up at vaccination centers trying to prevent others from getting the care they need and want. So if we did show up at anyone’s house they would meet us with doors barred and refuse us entry. As they should.

The gods are laughing at us once again. Keep the roads open and take away the reasons to travel on them.

******

In 2008 Leonard Cohen recorded a live concert in London, where his backup singers were The Webb Sisters. One of the songs performed was If It Be Your Will … a quiet prayer. Cohen reads a few lines, then turns it over to the Webbs.

.

Thought you might like it. It’s kind of slow and hushed, as prayers tend to be. While it sounds as if it might have been written in Cohen’s last years of life, when he dealt often with themes of mortality, it actually showed up for the first time on an album of his that was issued in 1984, Various Positions.

******

On our walks we typically encounter about thirty people and 45 dogs. And even though I complain whenever we come upon some unattendeddog droppings on the hiking path, it’s obvious that the majority of dog owners are picking up after their pets very well. Because if they weren’t we’d be ankle deep in doggy doo-doo for certain. There are that many canines out there in this state.

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that each new resident of Colorado was issued a dog when they applied for their new drivers’ licenses.

Well, Sir, here’s your new driver’s license. I think the picture turned out pretty well, don’t you?
It’s okay, I suppose, but why wouldn’t they let us smile?
And here’s your Colorado welcome gift.
Wait, that’s a dog. I have no use for a dog.
Come now, Sir, you want to fit in here, don’t you?
Well, yeah.
Then I need to tell you that anyone seen walking in Colorado without a dog on a leash is assumed to be a tourist.
Really?
Yes, really. So here … take the leash. The dog’s name is Heraklyon, and he is a new breed, called a peke-a-poo-a-lhasa-a-doberman, and they are no trouble at all.
This one has its teeth fastened in my ankle right now, is that normal?
Awwwww, he likes you already.

******

Interpreter

jono55

Once upon a time there were people who wrote songs, and other people sang them. The singers were called interpreters. Think Frank Sinatra, for instance.

That was pretty much how it was in popular music until the sixties, when the genre of singer/songwriter came along. Now I know this will be a hopeless generality, but we tended to forgive the singer/songwriters their often unlovely voices as the tradeoff we made to get to hear their music. Think Bob Dylan, for instance.

Eva Cassidy was a singer. There were only two reasons to listen to her. One was her beautiful voice … and the other to find out what she heard in a song that you might have missed.

The selections over there on the right have been long-time favorites of mine. For the longest time I wasn’t happy with anything but the originals. But Cassidy changed my mind about that. When Sandy Denny recorded the wonderful song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes,” I didn’t think I would ever hear as fine a rendition as hers. But what do you know, now I have. Eva Cassidy’s interpretation melts the heart in the same way.

Gone too soon, at age thirty-three.

******

Tripping Badly

jono55

Robin and I watched the movie Phantom Stitch the other night, a film in which mushrooms play an important role. Now, one of the basic hazards of life (for listeners) is that when a person attains a certain age, nearly everything reminds him or her of something in his or her past. So here’s a personal mushroom story.

I was living and working in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and had been there for a couple of years. There was a substantial “counterculture” contingent living up there, who enjoyed the natural gorgeousness and lack of close supervision by authorities.

One summer afternoon I was taking my turn covering the Emergency Room, when I was called to see a young man with a beard and shoulder-length hair, attired in well-worn jeans and a faded flannel shirt, and who had ingested some mushrooms that had made him quite ill. He had been vomiting for hours and was moderately dehydrated as a result. I examined him quickly and then turned to the nurse, who happened to be a person who had quite a lot of knowledge of local fungi.

“Did he bring in any of what he ate?” I asked.

“No, but I’ve been saving what he threw up in case we need to send it away for study,”the nurse replied.

“How to find out what it was … ?”

At that point, the patient, who had been lying there motionless but for the rise and fall of his chest with his breathing, eyes closed and looking as completely miserable as you care to imagine, said two words in a low and groaning voice:

“Amanita muscaria.”

Amanita Muscaria is not “poisonous” per se, rather it is a hallucinogen/narcotic. When you eat it dried, freshly cooked, or drink water it has been cooked in, you will become intoxicated, or possibly just get sick and vomit all over the place.

Forager Chef.com

Et voila! It turned out that the man had been seeking hallucinations by ingesting that fungus but instead ran headlong into a common effect which was to become extremely nauseous. He was provided with intravenous hydration, moved into a quiet space, and discharged a few hours later in good condition.

Amanita muscaria

So the first and last case of mushroom poisoning I ever saw was diagnosed by the patient himself, and that diagnosis communicated to me in Latin. You might not believe this, but that didn’t happen every day.

******

A Dick Guindon cartoon

******

Love this song, from 1986. The video is by a group called ‘Til Tuesday, which was fronted by Aimee Mann, a very talented woman who has gone on to do some beautiful things in music.

******

One For My Baby

jono55

A couple of weeks ago, when gas for my car cost me $0.25 a gallon, and I was earning the princely amount of $0.75 an hour at a part-time job, I heard a song on the radio sung by a man I’d never heard of. It was a smooth and soulful rendition of One For My Baby, and the man turned out to be Josh White.

I set out to find and purchase that recording for my very own, and eventually succeeded. You have to remember that once upon a time, there was no internet, no Google, no iTunes, and no Spotify, and this kind of research was a slow process. What took the place of all these things was locating a record store with a knowledgeable owner. A person with a headful of what you needed to know, and who could point you in the right direction.

But let’s get on with it. Josh White became a favorite, and I have quite a few of his songs in my library. Where I can listen to them whenever I need to, even if the internet goes down and I am far from everything but electricity. There are days when his music bears me up, brother. It bears me up.

.

******

A Dick Guindon cartoon

******

On Saturday we rendezvoused with Allyson and Kyle at Rifle Falls State Park. Perfect weather for it. Winter picnic included hot soup and cheese. Life is good.

Sacrifice For The Good …

jono55

There are a lot of frustrating moments involved in reading the Times of New York on a regular basis. It’s worth it, of course, because then you are able to say “I saw in the NYTimes this morning,” a phrase that immediately stamps one as a person of culture, discernment, and general superiorness (at least to one’s own way of thinking).

But you have to wade through quite a lot of dross to sort out what you came there for. You have to read about hundreds of plays that you will never see, poetry readings that you will never attend, restaurants where you will never be seated, and excellent-looking movies that will never make it across the Rockies.

.

You end up reading all-too-frequent love letters to NYCity written by residents of NYCity who really can’t imagine why the rest of the country has to exist at all and what kind of dullards would ever live anywhere but NYCity? There are the stories about weddings that you missed where the couple was too charming for words, real estate that only the 1% could aspire to owning, and a food column that is at least one-third about the intricacies of which wine you should be buying at which shop (wine may be a lot of things, but it isn’t food).

So when I say “I saw in the NYTimes this morning,” I hope you all realize the sacrifices that I make in reading this newspaper just to be able to name-drop an article or two each week.

******

There is a song by the group Talking Heads that deals with those of us who don’t live in NYCity. It’s called “The Big Country,” and the chorus goes like this:

I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.
I wouldn’t live like that, no siree!
I wouldn’t do the things the way those people do.
I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.

The Big Country, by Talking Heads

I have liked the song since first I heard it, snobbish little ditty that it is. It is almost perfect in its attitude, and helps keep my sense of humor honed.

******

I saw in the NYTimes this morning that there are people lining up to be upset about Joe Biden’s cabinet picks. Of course they are. They should be. We really aren’t simply divided into red and blue factions, but to all shades of those two colors, each with its advocates for a point of view.

So when Biden picks a retired four-star general for Secretary of Defense, he stirs up any shade of blue that thinks the man is not as civilian as he should be to hold this post. After all, we have a long-established principle involved here, the control of the military by civilian authority. I think personally that this principle is a good thing, and find it helpful to be reminded of it through the present controversy.

Whoever Biden picks for whatever cabinet post will not please all of us. It’s possible that when they have all been selected that each will be a disappointment to you, or to me, in some way. From then on, we will watch to see what they do, won’t we? I wasn’t happy when Robert Kennedy was chosen by his brother as Attorney General, even though I liked JFK. I thought – NEPOTISM – in all caps. But in his abbreviated career his actions pleased me in too many ways to count.

******

******

It’s not common knowledge but my navel is off slightly more than one centimeter to the right. And I lay it all off onto the medical/industrial complex.

When I was retiring from practice, I had excellent health insurance, so I decided that before I left for parts unknown that I would have as many of my defects repaired as time would allow and my insurance would cover. It turned out that I had a hernia in many of the places that a person can have one, and they totaled three. So I visited a surgeon of good repute and we made the required arrangements. One of those defects was at my umbilicus, where during the repair the physician would tunnel in and patch the problem area with … I don’t know … some burlap or pieces of recycled radial tire belts.

The surgeries were all small ones, and I went home a happy man. Until I took a shower later on, and noticed that I was no longer symmetric. Either my navel had shifted to the right or my entire body had shifted to the left, but something unplanned had happened. At my first post-op followup visit, I brought this up to the surgeon.

I don’t know if you noticed, doctor, but my umbilicus is askew.

Why, so it is. Has it always been that way?

No, not until my surgery.

Have you proof of this?

Yes, many photos in my family albums show an admirable centering.

Well … ?

I didn’t want to talk bout legal action, but I remember reading about a woman who had a similar problem after plastic surgery, and she received a handsome settlement.

I know of the case. Of course, she was an attractive woman in her forties, while you are a rather plain man in your sixties.

Your meaning, sir?

There’s not a jury in the country that will think that the proposition that you are less attractive than you were holds any water. In fact, the case could be made that you are now more interesting than ever.

So I should be grateful?

Indeed you should, especially since there will be no additional professional fees involved.

Thank you so much, doctor, you are exceptionally kind and considerate.

Don’t mention it. On your way out, could you send in the next post-op patient? He’ll be the one whose right ear flops about something terrible.

******

Telling Good News & That Ain’t Bad

jono55

On Tuesday I went to the neurology clinic in Grand Junction for my last followup visit. The good doctor had just finished a session with a patient where there was only terrible news to share, and for me to be able to tell him only good things was at least some small relief in a trying day.

You remember that I wore a heart monitor for a month after my time in hospital? My neurologist had the results and they were normal but for one interesting feature. When I sleep, my heart rate dips into the low 30s. He asked me if I had noticed this on my own, and I told him that since I was sleeping at the times these low rates occurred … no, I didn’t.

So when I got back to the car and talked with Robin, I mentioned the low heart rate. I suggested that if she ever woke at night and wanted to see if I was still among the living by taking my pulse that she give it a while before calling 911. And we agreed that she would always wake me and ask if I wanted help before starting CPR.

******

Covid is ramping up here on the Western Slope. Grand Junction is in the red zone, while Montrose is still on orange status. If the number of bare faces we encounter on our uncommon trips away from home means anything, we’ll be red here soon as well. Merchants in town all have a sign on the door indicating that a mask must be worn before entering, but not one of them enforces it once the person is inside their establishment. The instances of violence around the country when people were admonished to put a mask on appear to have given them pause.

I think that I have a solution for this. If a shopper or store employee sees anyone above the age of consent wandering in the aisles without a mask, they should be allowed to walk up and tase those persons and then call to have their limp forms hauled out the front door. You would hear on the overhead sound system:

Attention WalMart security – please bring a freight cart to the candy aisle for removal of another bozo.

Seeing a stack of stunned persons on the sidewalk outside the store would at least give other potential no-mask miscreants something to think about.

(I’m kidding. I’M KIDDING!)

******

From The New Yorker

******

There was a piece in the Times of New York on Wednesday about the musical group The Kinks and their most famous and enduring song “Lola.” It might be the first rock and roll tune about a transgender person, and is still in regular play around the world. Ray Davies thinks that it grabbed straight listeners by the ear and they grew to like it before they actually puzzled out the lyrics and realized what it was about.

No matter. Great tune. Ahead of its time.

******

Lastly, this is the kind of article that I am inordinately fond of. About a huge collection of rock art discovered in the Amazon and the fascinating story that it tells. For whatever reason the article was in the “Style” section on the CNN website. Go figure.

.

.

******

The Wishy-washy Need Not Apply

jono55

Monday morning I was peacefully reading the Times of New York when I came across an article that mentioned the Democratic Socialists of America. I don’t really know much about those folks and therefore I spent a couple of hours wandering through the website of the organization , and it was interesting.

They are serious people, passionate people, and … well, I’ll let you read a paragraph from their Constitution to get the flavor of what they are about.

Article II. Purpose.

We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power, discrimination based on race, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, disability status, age, religion, and national origin, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo. We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality and non-oppressive relationships. We are socialists because we are developing a concrete strategy for achieving that vision, for building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America. We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest between those sectors with enormous economic power and the vast majority of the population.

Constitution, dsusa.org

I won’t claim to have read everything on the site, but what I did go through left me feeling that perhaps I wouldn’t join up, that a group of 70,000 such firebrands weren’t out looking to recruit wishy-washy octogenarians like myself as members (I could be wrong in this). While I agreed with a great many of the points they made, there was a doctrinaire flavor about their prose that reminded me of … Strelnikov.

You remember Strelnikov, don’t you? He was a character in the film Dr. Zhivago who was a true believer. Now, he was also a Communist, not a Socialist, and I do recognize that they are very different entities, so using him as my illustrative example is unfair from the get-go. But that flavor …

But hey, let me introduce (or re-introduce) you to Commander Strelnikov, who I found to be one of the most fascinating characters in a movie filled with them. Here he is in his office in a train car, interviewing Zhivago, a person who his soldiers have just arrested.

******

I know that I have talked previously about the book, The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements, by Eric Hoffer. Hoffer was a longshoreman who had an amazingly fertile brain and a keen eye for the quaint habits and delusions of human beings. It was published in 1951 and was one of those you have to read this sort of books in that decade, especially for college types who were practicing their intellectual pretensions, as was I.

It’s a book that may help explain Cluck’s populism to those who are still puzzled as to the why? of the past several years. True Believers are not troubled by inconvenient opposing facts, they just run right over them as fables of the other side.

******

For a piece of good old-fashioned far-left-wing music, I offer you The Internationale for your listening pleasure. It is played here by ani di franco. Don’t worry about being corrupted by it, it is an instrumental. As to the words, well, it depends on which translation you are following. There is a long article on the song, in Wikipedia, that makes for very interesting reading.

******

Monday morning I went back for my last checkup following cataract surgery. You could tell how pleased the clinic staff and the surgeon were that I got such a superb operative result, so I’m glad that I kept the appointment, if only for their sake. I will still need glasses, and still do not have Superman’s X-ray vision, so at this point in life I think that I’ll finally give up on that particular fantasy. It was a much more intriguing concept to a young man … these days I really don’t care to see my friends without their clothes, nor do they, I suspect, have any hankering to see me au naturel.

I may have mentioned that the eye surgeon, whose name is Bennett Oberg, looks to be about twenty years old. He is tall, good-looking, slender, youthful … let me just say that you would have no trouble telling the two of us apart. In fact, he appears to be so young that as I was leaving I leaned over toward him and said in a conspiratorial voice: “Just between the two of us, Oberg, you’re not really a doctor at all, are you?

******

******

You may have noticed in the weather box in the sidebar that some of the outposts of the Empire are becoming quite chilly. This morning, for instance, the Evelethians will be getting dressed while huddled around the woodstove, in their six degree air.

Of course, such an experience can be oddly pleasant, except for the person who has to get out of bed first, to stoke the fire in the stove. To all such stokers in the world, we offer a hearty thank you.

******

Encore, Mr. Cohen?

jono55

After writing and publishing a paragraph or two on Saturday about Leonard Cohen’s last album, I ran across this video which is a short movie. It’s of a little more than nine minutes duration, and is about how the music came to be recorded. It is a lovely little thing in its own right.

******

We are coming to the end of four years of a political administration that has been a disaster. It will still gasp and wheeze for another couple of months, and wreak the kind of harm that a gushing firehose can do if you drop it, whipping its head back and forth willy-nilly and threatening everything in its vicinity.

But on January 20 we move into some other gear. We don’t know what it will be, not exactly, but the first set of appointments that Mr. Biden has proposed have been both reassuring and worrisome at the same time. They are capable and tested people who will probably not make some of the blunders of the Cluck years. They are smarter than that.

The worry comes from the fact that so far they are all members of the club. Comedian George Carlin used to say in his act that America was not a free country at all, but fully owned and controlled by those who wielded corporate wealth and power. He would admonish his audiences with the phrase: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!” Perhaps I wouldn’t mind being controlled by these folks (I might not even notice … I’m not the most perceptive person on the planet) if the world were going along really swell. But it’s not.

So we should all pay close attention to Mr. Biden, to his appointees, and to how they conduct themselves in the months to come. We should not just hope for better things from his administration, we should demand them.

Take nothing for granted.

Question everything.

Mottoes for a troubled time.

******

Sunday Morning

jono55

A new recording just came out that some of you might be interested in, entitled Crossroads Guitar Festival 2019. These events are held irregularly, but often feature some outstanding music.

The Crossroads Guitar Festival is a series of music festivals and benefit concerts  founded by Eric Clapton.  The festivals benefit the Crossroads Centre founded by Eric Clapton, a drug treatment center in Antigua. The concerts showcase a variety of guitarists, selected by Eric Clapton personally.

Wikipedia

Today I picked out two classics, Layla and Purple Rain. I could easily have picked a dozen others. Enjoy.

******

From The New Yorker

******