It’s one a.m. and a light rain just started up which is passing through, having come from territories south of Montrose. I tried to remember the adages that go with wind directions, and this bit from the University of Wisconsin is what I came up with:
Wind from the West, fish bite the best
Wind from the East, fish bite the least
Wind from the North, do not go forth
Wind from the South blows bait in their mouth
I have no idea what to do with a wind that is not blowing from one of the four cardinal directions. If the wind is from the Northwest, for instance, and you don’t go forth when the fishing is the best … well, what kind of fool are you? It is just this sort of thing that keeps me awake at night, wondering first of all if there is such a thing as truth, and then if there is where does it lie?
At such moments I try to find something solid to grab onto to keep the tattered remnants of my mind from drifting away in the drizzle altogether, and today I settled on cornsilk.
What is that stuff, anyway? What purpose does it serve beyond vexing the corn-on-the-cob eater? Well, it turns out that without that annoying thread which eventually takes up residence between one’s teeth there wouldn’t be anything to eat at all on the cob. My source is from a blog called The Farmer’s Life, and the entry is named Corn Porn. (I caution that if you are a person of tender sensibilities and live a sheltered lifestyle you might not want to go any further. The blog entry pretty much should carry an “R” rating for its botanic bluntness.)
To summarize, each strand of cornsilk is a hollow tube that carries pollen to an ovule inside the ear. Once fertilized it will become a single kernel on the cob. I know, I know, sometimes earth is just too … earthy, isn’t it?
So later today as I am shucking the two cobs that will part of tonight’s supper I will be thankful for the presence of these wispy fibers. Of course, this will give way to the usual resentments as we are picking them from our teeth later on.
One more thing. I was also surprised to find is that there are potent medicinal compounds in cornsilk, strong enough to be of occasional benefit and to interact adversely with some medications.
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Readers of this stunted effort at literature know that I am delighted by many things. One of them is discovering a new (to me) species on this planet of ours. Another is learning more about the lives of cats, which are endlessly interesting animals to me. So when CNN published an article about a breed of cat that I’d never heard of it was win-win for the codger this morning. They are called sand cats.
Smaller than our regular old housecats in this country, they average just over 7 pounds.
These good-looking critters survive in one of earth’s least hospitable environments, the desert.
Sand cats primarily eat small rodents and birds, and they also kill and consume venomous snakes. They obtain moisture from their prey and can survive without drinking water for weeks. These little guys have enhanced hearing to detect prey underground and long, dense hairs on their footpads that allow them to move silently across the sand. They are also skilled diggers, enabling them to quickly unearth small mammals and birds.
Chad Gpt and his All-Stars
I won’t bore you with repeating more of what the piece says very well. If you’re interested, you will click on the link. If you’re not into such things, you may travel on. I won’t judge you.
BTW – here is a photo from the article of a sand cat lying in the shade of a bushy plant. Can you see it?
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Just in case you had trouble seeing the cat in the photo above (as I did), I outlined it in this retake.
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Apparently there were a few people who were miffed that Cluck left them on the plane that was thought to be marked for death when he scuttled off to masquerade as a soufflé. His substitute liar, Karoline Leavitt, was one of those left on the “doomed” aircraft. The entire White House traveling press corps was also served up to the hypothetical bad guys as victims du jour.
None of these people should be surprised. Cluck is a loyalty vacuum, not a loyalty dispenser. Everybody that comes close to him is tainted in the eyes of decent folk and cannon fodder in his eyes. There are no exceptions. Their belief that they will somehow miss the cut is a delusion. Cowardice and callousness are two areas in which he is perfectly predictable and reliable.
See, Karoline, you perjurious booby! We told you.
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I do not apologize. These sand cats are just too photogenic. Had to include a few more pix taken from an internet search.
“Why, Grandma, what big ears you have!”
“All the better to hear you with, my dear.”
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While doing a little waiting room time in Grand Junction, I luckily found a very nice little coffee shop only a block away, and with my years of intensive training in wasting time I can easily spend a couple of hours in one of these without blinking. I’ve been going to coffee shops since before they invented the barista, the decaf latté, or the 16 oz white mocha. My favorite hangout around the University of Minnesota in the middle nineteen fifties had the old wooden floors, high ceilings, and the proper once-you’ve-got-your-coffee-we-don’t-care-where-you-go-or what-you-do-with-it attitude. The established aroma was of aged wooden planking, cigarette smoke, and strong coffee. I loved it.
There were chess and checker boards sprinkled about the barn-like space. There were board games and jigsaw puzzles with pieces missing, there were people dressed in odd costumery with knitted brows, a table laden with heavy books spread out in front of them. Since this was an era before cell phones or personal computers, no one needed an electrical outlet for anything but a small reading lamp. I loved it.
It made me feel, for the first time, like I had a shot at being a more cosmopolitan person, or perhaps a mini-intellectual about to bloom. Whatever the outcome would be, I sensed strongly that I was a participant in an educational process that went far beyond the rote memorizations of my high school years. I was a young man going someplace other than where I’d been, and this dusty coffee shop seemed a perfect place to rendezvous with the interesting and exciting people that fate was certain to bring together. I loved it.
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I rented a movie back in 1989 during one of the darker periods in my life that turned out to be one of the darkest and grimmest films I have ever seen. So much so that I’ve never known anyone that I could really recommend it to. Its title is Last Exit to Brooklyn and it is the polar opposite of a date movie.
Words like hopeless, unrelenting bleakness, and degradation kept showing up in reviews, but it had some very strong acting performances, among them Jennifer Jason Leigh in the role of a prostitute named Tralala. Roger Ebert wrote the characters “are limited in their freedom to imagine greater happiness for themselves, and yet in their very misery they embody human striving. There is more of humanity in a prostitute trying to truly love, if only for a moment, than in all of the slow-motion romantic fantasies in the world.” His review gave it 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.
The movie had a fine score, written by Mark Knopfler. One of its pieces was A Love Idea, an achingly beautiful thing that still has the ability to haunt all these years later.
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Marindahl
The two of us took off
Threw old canoes onto cold water
With little concern for age and infirmities
The wind blew up
We didn’t care
Whitecaps on the lake
Troubled us not at all
Straining arms and shoulders
We’ll live with the aches
Friendship doesn’t need renewal
As much as opportunity
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Little Home In The Valley 