Tag: cats

Vigilante Man

jono55

When I go to the grocery store, I like to think that I am a knowledgeable shopper. I’ve received a smattering of nutritional teaching in medical school, can read most food labels without referring more than three or four times to an encyclopedia, and I can tell a parsnip from a carrot without fail.

But once in a while, serendipity takes a hand in things. Such was the case a few years ago when I was standing in front of the freezer case where the frozen pizzas were stored. Too many choices, thought I, and while some of the old brands that I recognized had memories of lackluster eating attached to them, I was willing to try them again, thinking “maybe they’ve improved in the past twenty years.”

When suddenly a hand was placed on my shoulder, and when I spun around to see where the assault was coming from I found myself facing a young man with wilderness hair, a full beard, cutoffs, and a t-shirt that really needed either laundry attention or to be discarded in the sort of bag one uses to dispose of nuclear waste. This unlikely oracle then spoke: “Screaming Sicilian, man, it’s the only way to go.” He then waited a moment without saying anything more, till finally I caught his drift and reached into the freezer to extract a Screaming Sicilian Supreme, and placed it in my cart. At that moment, he moved away and disappeared. I’ve not seen him since.

At first I was going to put the pizza back, but then I thought “Why not try it? What’s to lose?”

And it turned out to be the best frozen pizza ever. Within a couple of centimeters of being as good as a freshly baked one from the parlor down the street.

All thanks to that stranger’s exclamation: “Screaming Sicilian, man, it’s the only way to go.”

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Feel Your Love, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

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We’re finally getting some snow here in the valley. It started Thursday as those tiny flakes that might as well be raindrops because they melt on contact. It fell all day, mostly melting away as fast as it came down. At 5:30 a small group of people stood out in that snow/rain and held a vigil for Renee Nicole Good, who had been murdered by an ICE agent the day before.

Most of the candles being “lit” were LEDs and were thus invulnerable to the snow, but Robin and I had traditional candles that we’d purchased ten minutes earlier on our way to the vigil. Their tiny flames were threatened by each wet flake but never went out.

Some of Good’s own poetry was read, and many heartfelt things were said about the death of one of our comrades at the hands of a government thug. She had been doing nothing but non-violently protesting the unjustified and unconstitutional ICE occupation of Minneapolis. In our hearts those of us assembled know that there will be more vigils to come, with more empty chairs at family tables, before the horror passes. We know that the possibility exists that there will be a vigil one night where they say nice things about one of us. Such is life in a Cluckian country.

The ceremony was cut a bit short because of the unpleasant weather. Nearly all of us who were there were senior citizens who really should have been at home by our fires, not out on a Montrose street corner in danger of ‘catching our death.’ But it seems to be one of those odd paradoxes where the generation whose vision is daily failing is the one that can best see what must be faced. I like to think that we are blazing a trail that younger citizens can follow when it comes time to change regimes.

(BTW, I was proud of the Minneapolis mayor, who had used some colorful language at an earlier interview and when he was later asked if he wasn’t going a bit too far with his use of profanity, he answered that if we compare shooting a woman in the face for no reason with the dropping of an f-bomb … which gave the greater public affront?)

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Helpless, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

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Our cats don’t seem troubled by today’s politics at all. None of their habits have changed. None of their demands can be ignored lest they decide to rip open a sofa or forget where the litterbox is located. They trade purrs and snuggles for food and shelter and are content. As are we.

This snow that has fallen makes them think deeper before they venture out through the cat door to answer nature’s calls. They stare through the opening for a moment or two, and the expression on their faces is omigod … again? Were we not done with this?

One of the least lovely features of sharing spaces with cats and being responsible for their nutrition is a certain fickleness. A food that has been accepted for months or years is suddenly treated like it was nuclear waste and they walk away from it. A year from now that same dish of ‘toxic’ shreds might be just what it takes to make them ecstatic at mealtimes.

Now, the truth zone. I look at what I just wrote and realize that it applies to me as well. When Robin and I first got together she had two teenaged daughters still living at home. These three women had decided that the only meat that was safe to eat for any person who didn’t want to turn into a walking bag of suet was chicken. As a result, chicken was served at almost every meal but breakfast. After a few months of this, I had reached a point where even the mention of that medium-sized squawking bird was enough to provoke nausea and a near-seizure involving trembling of the extremities and paralysis of speech.

Once this trio was separated by time into three households and thus the influence of chicken monomania was broken, I slowly began to appreciate it as a part of a healthy diet. I can now hold a chicken sandwich without wondering where to throw it, and even occasionally order one in a restaurant without being forced or shamed into doing it.

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While I am on the subject of body weight, I am going to have to drop a couple of pounds. To my chagrin I have discovered that I have exactly the same BMI as the Pillsbury Doughboy.

What happened to me can be described by the following equation: mildly plump + Halloween candy + Thanksgiving poundage + Christmas poundage + less activity = all my clothes have shrunk.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more …

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Political cartoonists have never had such riches to work with. It is impossible for them to keep up with the daily misdeeds and outrages committed by Cluck and his gang.

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Ry Cooder has always been one of the good guys in music. This video is from 1973 and was originally shown on the BBC. Rings just as true this morning as it did then, and also as it did in 1940 when it was first recorded.

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On Saturday Robin and I drove to Grand Junction to take part in yet another rally, this time honoring Renee Good and more than thirty others who have died at the hands of ICE. An affecting bit of cold weather theater was where each of their names was held up by a member of the local Indivisible group. There was a moment where each name was read aloud to the assembled crowd, which numbered pretty close to 1000 (by our estimation).

The anger that these senseless and lawless acts of our federal government provoke was obvious in the expressions of crowd members. We were told to take that anger and let it be part of the energy we bring to our engagement, in whatever role we are playing.

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Oh Happy Day!

jono55

Let me apprise you of a bit of cat behavior that I have found interesting. When our younger cat, Willow, decides to go out into the back yard through the pet door, she pauses with her nose at exactly the interface between in and out, sniffing, looking slowly from left to right and back again, studying the landscape with eyes and nose. This process might take a full minute and when it is deemed safe to do so, she exits. There is never a variation in this routine.

Curiosity may have killed a cat here and there, but it is wariness that has kept ours alive. Poco has been an indoor/outdoor cat for eighteen years, and you don’t hit that mark without having a care now and then about where you go and what you do.

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All Mixed Up, by The Cars

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I like Neil de Grasse Tyson, even though he can (like myself) be a little full of himself at times, but here is a fascinating short tale about who he thinks is the greatest scientific mind of all time. Love it.

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All Mixed Up, by the Red House Painters

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I have spent enough years on the planet that when I think back on my early career in pediatrics, even I am impressed at what has happened to the discipline during that time. Compared to the humming and beeping and LCDs flashing on the machines in an NICU today, those first years were like working in a cave without light or power, and poor access to water as well.

An example. When I was in my junior year in medical school, I watched the network news and followed a story along with the rest of the country. On August 7, 1963, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born prematurely. He was actually a good-sized infant at 4 pounds 10 ounces, but developed respiratory distress syndrome within a very short time. Today his care would have been almost routine, with survival all but assured.

But Patrick died at age 39 hours of his lung disease, although he had been given the best neonatal care in the country. Even being the son of the sitting President of the United States couldn’t save him, when pediatrics had little more to offer than to run oxygen into the incubator and hope for the best. There were no infusion pumps to control IV rates and maintain those precious lines. There were no ventilators of a size that could be used on small infants. There was no surfactant to give, a substance that keeps the alveoli of infant lungs open so that oxygen can pass into the baby’s bloodstream.

By 1967, when I was a second-year resident in pediatrics, I spent three months studying under the best neonatologist in Minnesota. How do I know this? Because Dr. Martha Strickland was the only neonatologist in Minnesota. And there weren’t any in either of the Dakotas, Wisconsin, or Iowa. The early versions of the machines had begun to appear that would eventually change the dismal neonatal picture, but the first ones were clumsy and unreliable. By 1969 we had some decent ventilators and early infusion pumps, but it wasn’t until 1989 that surfactant received FDA approval.

One more example. In 1967 the five-year survival rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia was 0%. Every child who came to us with that disease died, usually within a few months. Today, survival is 90%.

Like I said. I started working in pediatrics in the clan of the cave bear era.

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Oh Happy Day! Our little jewel of a national park will re-open tomorrow, August 18! The campgrounds will remain closed for the rest of the year due to damage to rest rooms, picnic tables, etc., but we will have access to most everything else. I am so curious I can taste it. It’s been just over 40 days since this drama began with those lightning strikes, and we would have usually been up there several times during this month plus.

So, Rejoice And Be Glad is the message for today! Our sins have been forgiven and the stone has been rolled away and tomorrow we will drive the length of the park with jubilation in our hearts!

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Oh Happy Day, by the Edwin Hawkins Singers

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Changes

jono55

My friend Poco the cat is the same age that I am, according to the complex ways of comparing creatures. We share a great many attributes as a result. Some instances would be:

  • Entering a room and then realizing you can’t recall what you’d come in there for in the first place.
  • The act of running is problematic, and if either of us had to catch our own dinners to survive, we wouldn’t last a day.
  • Jumping vertically is something our minds bring up and our bodies immediately vote down … with extreme prejudice.
  • Our fur tends towards the scraggly.
  • We are much more demanding of comfort in places we choose to curl up. Quietness, warmth, and the sun on our backs are prized.
  • There are times when you just want to stand in the middle of the room and miaow at the top of your lungs. Poco does so with gusto. I whimper.

I will temper this slightly negative discourse with photos of the two of us when we were younger and none of the above applied. Again … when we were about the same age .

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Last evening we had just finished supper when I had the brilliant idea to go to the Dairy Queen for Dilly Bars. And somehow I was able to phrase it so well that Robin actually ended up paying for the dessert. These ice cream bars are an instant connection to childhood. So simple … a chunk of ice cream on a stick covered with chocolate.

But even those were a connection to yet another similar bar which I enjoyed as a kid. I had made a career out of returning pop bottles to get a bit of pocket change, and if it was summertime a Cheerio bar only cost a nickel and was an awesome way to spend five cents.

As you bit into it the chocolate coating fractured like a window hit with a rock, and as you continued to chow down those brown splinters fell onto your clothing, your hands, the table in front of you … where they instantly melted.

One such bar could produce a dozen tiny messes but, hey, I was young enough not to care about a stain on my tee shirt or some chocolate smeared at the corner of my mouth. The sublime nature of the treat was worth any indignities suffered.

Just like last night, when I bit into my Dilly Bar and then spent the next ten minutes dealing with melting chocolate bits.

But it was all okay, because grownups know about napkins.

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Talkin’ Bout A Revolution, by Tracy Chapman

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One of the big problems for Adolf Hitler was that early on he had some successes, which led a whole lot of MDGA (Make Deutschland Great Again) Germans to pat him continuously on the back and tell him what a genius he was. Which eventually led to him not being willing to take advice from … anyone. Because everyone else’s ideas were inferior and not to be trusted.

The blunders that ensued, from the invasion of Russia and continuing forward ended up with him cowering in an underground bunker in a ruined Berlin, all the while blaming the German population for not being worthy of his perfectitude. This was closely followed by suicide for himself and some of his close associates.

His co-fascist Benito Mussolini had similar difficulties with dealing with praise. But he wasn’t quite as impractical as Adolf was, so when he saw the end coming for his dreams of Italian empire he decided to make a break for it. He was headed for Switzerland with his girlfriend when he was recognized by some partisans and that was it for Benito. He and his paramour were shot and their corpses hung on display from a scaffolding in front of a Milan gas station.

My point? If you gain power through sowing hatreds, it is possible that it will one day bite you severely in the ass.

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While I’m on the subject of fascism, there is an editorial worth reading in Thursday’s New York Times. The title is We Should All Be Very Very Afraid. The first paragraph in the piece tells us what the fuss is.

“Of all the lawless acts by the Trump administration in its first two and a half months, none are more frightening than its dumping of human beings who have not had their day in court into an infamous maximum-security prison in El Salvador — and then contending that no federal court has the authority to right these brazen wrongs.“

Want a free plane ride to a tropical country? Fly Trump Air to El Salvador. And while you’re there you can stay (again, for free) at CECOT, an all-inclusive resort, for a totally unforgettable experience. You’ll like it so much you’ll probably never want to come back. Even if they would let you.

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Lawyers, Guns, and Money, by Warren Zevon

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No Bad News

jono55

It is so tempting for a weak-willed man like myself to say something about the World of Cluck every day, because the insults and outrages come at us just that fast. That is how that particular crapslinger-in-chief works, jabbing and then oozing away, leaving a slime trail and the listener off balance.

What I will say is that the healthiest thing for any one of us to do is step back, let Cluck flail away in a vacuum, and work hard to hollow out the ground under his feet.

We are now witness to the damage possible when two mentally unstable billionaires get together and run a country, so this would be one good place to start. I doubt that there has been any time in history when wealthy men didn’t have more power than the peasantry, but it is greatly magnified right now, and we can clearly see that it is not in America’s interest to let it continue unchecked.

Speaking as a lifelong peasant, getting rid of Citizens United would be my first step. Allowing another farce like this past election, where one man bought himself a president, should not be allowed to happen again.

Right now Congress is too weak to do the job, so my question would be – what do you and I do to change the composition of those two bodies in the upcoming mid-term elections? Where best to put our energies?

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No Bad News, by Patty Griffin

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When a limited cook like myself looks for something new to try, these days the internet is just too tempting as a resource. But what has become obvious to me is that the old and disciplined recipe books of the past provided something that an internet search on “How to make the best omelet in the universe” does not. Reliability and editing are the differences.

Generally any book-published recipe has been tested and retested over time, and the text has been proof-read. All sorts of mischief can come into play when these are lacking. For instance:

  • You may find that following the recipe faithfully and executing each step perfectly produces a nice plateful of heartburn
  • You may find that there are ingredients listed that never show up in the Directions section, and then … where to put them?
  • You may find that tablespoonful measurements are inadvertently substituted for teaspoonfuls – chaos being the result
  • You may find that although all of the nutrition is there in the final product, it is simply too ugly to eat

And yet, there is at least a 30% chance that later today I will look for yet another version of Mac n’ Cheese out there in the ether. I will type it into Google and trust to the result to feed my wife and I. It’s a mystery to me why I keep doing this. My grandmother would have said that I was soft in the head.

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Come On In My Kitchen, by Crooked Still

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Richard Chamberlain died this past week, after reaching the ripe old age of 90. Actually, when you get to that point you are past ripe, and well into the fruit leather category. I wasn’t a big fan of his, although I thought he did a good job in the original “Shogun”series back in the early 80s.

What I remember very clearly, though, was his effect on middle-aged American womanhood in 1983, when he was the male lead in the television series “The Thorn Birds.” He played a priest in that series, and each week millions of women tuned in, hoping with all their hearts that this would be the week that he broke his vow of chastity.

At work the nurses and female staff would recount the previous night’s episode in detail, and you could tell from their conversation that they were having a bit of trouble with the line that runs between reality and make-believe.

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Go Wherever You Wanna Go, by Patty Griffin

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Our cat Willow is on the road to recovery from … whatever she had. After seven long and heart-wrenching days she is finally up and about and beginning to eat once again. She is far from thriving still, and perhaps I am jinxing things by claiming victory … but it is her victory, we humans being mere cheerleaders.

A sick pet can be emotionally draining, because wherever love goes it goes full tilt and that is not a rational act but a step into a place that is neither wise nor completely sane. At each of the times in my life when my heart had been bruised I resolved to get out of the love business from then on. Too painful when it goes awry, I would say to myself.

A resolution that I never kept.

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Monday our beautiful weather took a turn from unusually nice to far from pleasant. The wind blew hard all that day, and that fast air passed over dry and open fields, carrying dust into our noses and eyes. Even though the temperature was around 60 degrees, wind chills were much lower.

Then on Tuesday we received the double blessing of even colder weather plus a snowstorm. Tonight the temp is headed for 20, and that can do some serious mischief among all those blossoming trees in Paradise.

So we’re socked in for the moment, but with a warm home, food, coffee, two cats, and absolutely nowhere we have to be. Life is good.

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One Word … Plastics

jono55

Robin and I just finished up the series Adolescence, on Netflix. There are only four episodes, for which I am oddly grateful, because at the end we were both wrung out, which is a testament to the skill and passion of those who brought the story to life. There was not a wasted moment in its telling.

I have witnessed enough real-life tragedies to have developed some defenses, in order that I don’t become a salty puddle on the floor with each one. But this one got to me, and at the end, the very last words uttered brought tears.

“I’m sorry, son … I should have done better.”

I suspect there are many parents out there who have said exactly these words at one time or another in their lives. I know that I have.

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From The New Yorker

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Fire On The Mountain, by Jimmy Cliff, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart & Bill Kreutzmann

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Since I last mentioned it, there have been more articles where investigators find microplastics in our body organs. It seems that wherever they look, they find.

Perhaps we shall soon be required to wear tattooed-on labels that read something like this;

  • Do not microwave
  • Do not put in oven
  • Not dishwasher safe
  • Use only mild detergents
  • Dispose of properly

Cremation may eventually be forbidden because of the toxins released when plastics are burned. We shall have to be recycled instead and be reincarnated as travel cups.

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The Graduate (1967)

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In the post just previous to this one I put up a music video that starred the Badlands of South Dakota in the back ground. The Lakota called this place mako sica, the early French trappers named the area les mauvaises terres à traverser, or difficult lands to cross. It’s one of my favorite places, and has much to offer in beauty and uplifts to the spirit.

I have camped there, hiked there, ridden motorcycles through there, suffered dehydration there, been repeatedly awed there.

Whenever offered an opportunity to visit this unforgiving land, I take it.

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Ripple, by The Grateful Dead

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Our younger cat, Willow, has given me a few more gray hairs this week (actually, that is impossible as there is nothing but gray strands up top). I am typing this while waiting in the veterinarian’s exam room.

This is the fifth day of an illness without a clear-cut origin or resolution in view. Blood work, urinalysis, abdominal X-rays, subcutaneous fluids given twice, two visits to vets … it all adds up to a metric ton of concern.

I was going to write that this business of worrying is one of the drawbacks of loving something or somebody, but … not really a drawback, I think. It’s where I get to put to good use those muscles of compassion and empathy that I haven’t used recently. Growing pains is what it is.

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From The New Yorker

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The Ugly American

jono55

(The Ugly American was a best selling novel of the late fifties. It detailed blundering and arrogance in the US diplomatic service ini Southeast Asia, and its message is completely relevant today)

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David Brooks is just plain smart and a sensible conservative. In Friday’s New York Times he published an op/ed piece entitled: “It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.”

This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist.

David Brooks

The article rings both sad and gut-wrenchingly true. My advice would be not to read it unless you have a strong cup of coffee at hand and your affairs in order. As for me, I have no intention of letting the sonofabitches just walk away with my America and I plan on being as big a pain in their ass as possible.

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From The New Yorker

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Every once in a while I place several versions of the same song on these pages just because I find them interesting. God’s Gonna Cut You Down is one of those. Basically it promises that even though “the long-tongued liar, midnight rider, rambler, gambler, and backbiter” may seem successful today, eventually they are due for a celestial kneecapping.

Since I personally know several people who I feel roundly deserve such attention from God, I find that the song has a comforting message. My hope is that I live long enough to see it happen, on a blue-sky day where I have a front row seat and a big box of popcorn.

It goes without saying that I hope the Deity doesn’t get around to my particular sorts of sins and my own exposed kneecaps, but focusses on those of others.

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Odetta

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Okay, I’m going to ask quite a bit of you in this next section. While wandering in the internet dreamscape (nightmarescape?), I came across a longer video. Against my will I watched it, because my natural inclination is to never watch a video more than 17 seconds long. I find that my personal attention span cannot be stretched further than this without mental pain, and I avoid that like the plague.

But the video purported to discuss some of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work, and he is a hero of mine. Hero because he stood against Naziism when it meant his life, for he was hanged in a Nazi concentration camp. So I endured the discomfort, and mirabile dictu, was rewarded greatly.

The video is about a theory of stupidity, and at the end of it I said smugly to myself: Well, that explains a lot about _________ ! Now I get it!

And then, I thought (again to myself because who wants to get caught thinking about anything deep and thus becoming a terrible bore) – wait – could what I have just learned apply to me as well? Could I … cough … grumble … gasp … possibly … be stupid as well?

Unfortunately all I had to do was to review any week of my life to get the answer to my own question. The most gracious interpretation that I could come up with was it seemed that my own lengthy stupid periods were interrupted, however briefly, by rational thinking. But still …

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(Bonhoeffer said some good stuff. Here’s one that fits well with the present-day)

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Johnny Cash

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The past week the weather has been extraordinary. The temperature yesterday peaked at 63 degrees. I stared at my three snow shovels leaning against the inside garage wall, and wondered if I should store them out in the small shed to get them from underfoot. And then I thought: Fool! Dunderhead! You would ignore Life’s Axiom #42?

“Whatsoever thou puttest away in a hard to get at place, verily thou wilt need it immediately thereafter.”

So they are still leaning against the wall, occasionally sliding down to where one could trip on them. Perhaps in July sometime …

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Larkin Poe

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From The New Yorker

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Around 0100 some wet snow falling caught Poco out when he was attending to Nature’s call in the back yard. He returned through the pet door as indignant as an 18 year old cat can be. Which when one has the vocal gifts that Poco can lay claim to, is quite the racket.

I happened to be awake, and sprang into action before the noise he was making woke my bride up. Never a good thing, that. Robin takes such an event personally, and since I am the only other human around to blame … you can see why rapid action is the only course to take. I shushed Poco, rounded up something for him to eat, and brought him into my office, where he calmed down.

Poco is a very vocal animal. He has several mewling and meows that we have come to recognize:

  • Food, I want food!
  • I am not feeling well, and within fifteen seconds I am going to throw right up on this rug
  • I am going to the litter box now (Lord knows why he needs to announce this)
  • There is an interloper (strange cat) on the deck outside the kitchen door, threatening entry
  • You are about to sit on part of my anatomy, usually a foot or my tail. Take care

Sometimes he will converse. He catches your eye and meows something whose content is a mystery. You answer “Sorry, old fellow, I don’t know what you want.” He answers. You say something again. He answers. And on and on, with him always having the last meow.

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Murmur

jono55

Okay, here’s a lesson, something to ponder. The lowly European Starling is not the most gorgeous bird, walks like it’s got a stone in its shoe, and has no song worth mentioning. A few of them were brought over in the nineteenth century and now their range is nearly all of North America. Hundreds of them can take over a tree in your front yard and literally rain feces on everything and everyone below. 

Why on earth does it exist at all, some might ask? What is the point of starlings?

Well, for one reason, they can do this. Something that might be thought unbelievable if it hadn’t been recorded as often as it has. A murmuration of starlings, they call it. Visual music.

Birds, by Neil Young

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From The New Yorker

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If I really want to upset all of my personal biological systems at once, all I have to do is check to see what the Republican-led states are doing these days.

Recently one of those benighted places decided not to prosecute a woman who had a miscarriage. Imagine that! How progressive of them.

There seems to be something about being a member of that political party that drives one to run around sniffing bedsheets and shining flashlights into cars just to see if anyone might be having the wrong kind of s-e-x in there.

The Party of Family Values is also trying to remove books from libraries that mention s-e-x as well, but have recently run into problems with dictionaries and encyclopedias which persist in reminding us all that s-e-x does exist. And not only does it exist, but it can be enjoyable, does not have to result in pregnancy, and is nobody’s business but the people involved.

There has been a persistent rumor that the GOP is planning to issue social security numbers to individual spermatozoons as part of their program of removing anything resembling science, common sense and reason from family planning and reproductive medicine. So far it is only the sheer numbers involved that have held them back.

The American Dream Is Killing Me, by Green Day

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From The New Yorker

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The Ballad of the Empty Creel

How many times does a man go down to the river, put on those awkward waders and adjust those suspenders, squeeze into hobnailed wading boots and rig up a fly rod, tread clumsily up that same perilous stream, suss out the perfect places for trout to hide, flick the fly to land perfectly into the one quiet patch of water in the middle of a tumult … and then return home without so much as a passing nibble?

How many times before despair sets in?

How many times before he questions his skill and sanity?

The answer, my friends, is as many times as it takes.

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An amazement. I have often bemoaned the sorry state of the cartoons in the present-day New Yorker magazine. They have been largely unfunny, self-indulgent, arch, and bleah. It is of some importance to me because I pilfer from them regularly and must therefore turn to the New Yorker archives for the totally excellent and imaginative cartoons from issues of years ago.

Even thieves have standards.

Imagine my surprise to find not one, but three in this week’s edition that I actually liked. Three. It gives one hope. One of the panels was particularly interesting to me. Fifty years ago I proposed (but did not follow through on) two innovations that I thought would be boons to parents. One was the Velcro wallpaper shown below. The other was shoes for hyperactive children that weighed five pounds each. In this way they could not only avoid being placed on drugs, but they would develop hip flexors like you wouldn’t believe.

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From The New Yorker

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For the first time since her knee surgery Robin and I went XC skiing on Friday afternoon. Snow conditions were excellent and the temperature hung right around 40 degrees. Where we skied was a place with groomed trails a few miles outside the hamlet of Ridgway called Top of the Pines. It is 175 acres up on a ridge with spectacular views of the San Juan Mountains. We had a great time, and there was a total of only 0.5 falls per person for the outing. 

Below are pix borrowed from Top of the Pines’ website because I did not have the foresight to bring my camera and take photographs of my own.(This follows a lifelong pattern of having excellent hindsight but a significant deficiency in its opposite.)

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Catapult, by R.E.M.

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This is for people to whom cats are interesting, even thought they may not live with one. The rest of you are done for the day.

There is a short story in this week’s New Yorker magazine entitled Chance the Cat that I found moving.

The author’s insights were especially intriguing, since they were all about the humans in the story, and whenever the story pointed at the smaller animal he could only describe what he saw. Because who knows a cat?

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