abuse – Little Home In The Valley

Robin and I have a delightful guest for a few short days, granddaughter Elsa flew in Wednesday night from Washington D.C. Wednesday was a chilly and rainy day here in Paradise. Not a doom and gloomy one, just enough to make us happy to have a non-leaking roof and central heating. Willow the cat, however, took the rain personally and stayed indoors where she complained in her own subtle ways. Thursday morning she was properly indignant when nature’s demands forced her out into the back yard. We used to keep a litter box in the laundry room when we had two cats, but while Poco would use it Willow never got the habit. Ergo = wet feline from time to time.

There is a fair amount of rain that could fall over the next several days, but we will run between the drops and explore our surroundings. Elsa has never been a hard one to entertain. I hope that isn’t because she has low expectations, but I’ve never had the courage to ask.

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Orleans, by David Crosby

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Our national politics are daily becoming more savage, with new lows being hit nearly every day. Our triumphant and omniscient leader, Donald Cluck, is leading the pack by taking umbrage at anything and anybody who isn’t constantly singing his praises. Every day a new video is published showing him walking into a meadow or saluting a helicopter or something else just as daft.

But our man on the way to Hell, Vivek Ramaswamy, has set a low bar that will be hard to beat. Candidate Amy Acton was sexually abused as a child by her stepfather and the courts had to remove her from her home, along with her brother. At the time Amy’s mother sided with the abuser, not her own children.

Now Vivek’s people (may his name be spoken only when one can spit freely afterward) have put out a campaign video where that same warmhearted and pedophile-enabling mother is recorded saying that her daughter has been a terrible liar ever since childhood.

I believe that I will file this episode under “Ugly moments I could easily have skipped.”

My, my, my. The Republican Party has completed the move toward becoming one with that material which one scrapes from the bottom of one’s shoes after walking through the dog exercise park. No difference at all.

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There are rare days when even the composition of one of these perishable posts seems very difficult. Sometimes those reasons are clear, sometimes they are invisible. Such a moment came along this morning. I do not remember the content of all of my dreams, or if I do it is for the briefest of times before they slip away, but I do know that dreams can created a mood, an emotional leftover.

The brain never stops working … most of the time it goes about its business willy-nilly whether we are conscious or not. Buddhists are fond of calling it “the monkey mind,” swinging from tree to tree. The purpose of all this swinging is certainly unclear to me, with all that monkey-swinging, but there is always the possibility that I’m just not wise enough to perceive the meanings.

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Dreaming, I lost track of where you were

And the ache

Stayed with me all morning

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Orphan Girl, by Suzi Dian and Robert Plant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tag: abuse

The Bottoms of Shoes

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