drought – Little Home In The Valley

The Virga in Spain Ain’t Falling Mainly On The Plain

August 23, 2026August 23, 2026jono55

Toward suppertime recently I checked out the sky and saw areas where it was raining on high but no water was reaching the ground. Somehow I knew that meteorologists would have a special word for this, and I was right. It is called virga, or precipitation that evaporates or turns into gas before it hits the ground. The precipitation can be rain or snow.

I remember first reading about this effect long ago in a book about the dust bowl years in Oklahoma, when farmers standing on their desiccated fields would look to the sky and see the rain they desperately needed almost, but not quite, coming to them. Like a very bad cosmic joke.

Virga happens most often in arid deserts and high-altitude climates where the lower atmosphere is incredibly dry. For virga to form, you need a unique setup: plenty of moisture high up to create clouds, but a deep layer of parched air right above the ground. The rain starts out but hits that warm dry layer of air near the ground, and the dry air drinks up the water before it lands.

It is common in the desert southwest (like Arizona and New Mexico) and high-elevation states like Colorado and Utah. In these areas, storm clouds form very high up, giving the rain a long distance to fall through bone-dry air. You can easily spot it as it looks like gray streaks or fuzzy curtains hanging down from the clouds. I’ve seen it often since moving to Colorado, but rarely when I lived in the Midwest.

Here are some examples of virga.

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Stormy Weather, by Billie Holliday

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It occurs to me that the thugs of ICE might want to consider other employment oppprtunities … soon. Perhaps even a name change or two. When the Cluck cabal is eventually tossed to the political curb, ICE will be one of the first groups to undergo serious scrutiny and those among them who have committed crimes can look forward to well-deserved prison sentences.

If they think their scabrous behavior will earn them some special protection from the cowards and criminals running the show right now, they are sadly mistaken. The brutes of ICE will find that they are considered completely disposable by their masters, who are a genre of creatures that are unable to think beyond their own needs.

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Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet was first published in 1923. It has never been out of print since then. It is one of the best-selling books of all time. Why? Because it is a very cool book.

I first read it at a vulnerable time of my life. There were many changes happening seemingly at once in the year of 1962. I had just been married that Spring, I was to start my first year of medical school in the Fall, and I was going experiencing one of those short-lived but intense waves of interest in things spiritual that have happened several times in my life. I read not only the Prophet, but two books by Sholem Asch entitled The Apostle and The Nazarene. I know that I opened up the Bhagavad Gita, but I believe that I almost instantly closed it, thinking that it looked like really hard work. I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I actually read some of the Bible, at least the New Testament. The Old Testament was entirely too grim for my delicate sensibilities.

On the seventh day of this grueling search, of course, I rested.

Remember this ancient proverb? It sounds positively Etruscan but was actually contained in a popular book of 1970, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

This phrase was all over the seventies. T-shirts, room posters, bookstores, graffiti on fences … . Even if you hadn’t read the book, you couldn’t avoid being exposed to the words and sentiment.

When I first came across it, I thought it may have come from a similar expression in The Prophet, but I was incorrect in that, although there were a couple of quotes that carried a similar message. These are both from the section: On Marriage.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together …

Kahlil Gibran; The Prophet

So what was the message? I took it as BE NOT GUILTY OF SMOTHERING.

(But look at that poetry. If you couldn’t melt your way into a girl’s heart in 1962 by memorizing and repeating these verses, you really weren’t trying. They should have been sold with a warning label and the purchaser required to take a chastity pledge.)

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I now have two favorite versions of the song “Wicked Game.” The first was by Chris Isaak, and is firmly established (in my mind) as one of the sexiest and most sand-encrusted music videos of all time. The latest addition I found just recently, when I ran across this one by Larkin Poe. They do it wonderfully, without any visible sweat at all. I like the Mona Lisa smile on the face of the slide guitarist.

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Robin and I were in Grand Junction yesterday for an appointment. It was a glaring 102 degrees. Everything outdoors that was in the sun and made of metal was basically untouchable. It was one of those afternoons when I had some time to kill and it was just a two minute walk from the clinic to a coffee shop. One of the good ones. Not totally shiny and plastic. Middle-aged scholars thinking great thoughts, freshman college girls livening the air with a constant patter consisting of half OMGs and half giggles. A couple of tall young men looking like they’d just come from a GQ shoot.

What was missing was the scruffy element. Missing, that is, until I showed up. It is a banner that I carry proudly wherever I go. I can truthfully say that I know of no instance in my entire life when someone said to me: “Would you teach me how to dress and move about? I just love your bedraggled gestalt.” Especially since the years have piled up and I have become invisible. You know that about geezer men, don’t you? No one sees them.

I read a very funny piece a couple of weeks back, where another senior man was describing what happens when an old guy goes to the gym. He is surrounded by the young and fit, and often astonished at how blatantly sexual the dress of some of the young women was. They were there both for aerobics and to try out their attraction skills. But when they noticed they’d attracted the gaze of geezers it became a case of: Eeewwwwww! Stop looking at me! I am so out of your league it should be illegal for you to even be here.

But today I treated myself to a mocha, enjoying my anonymity, and took a seat outdoors under a sweet shade tree where I sat quietly reading as a little breeze did its best to cool me.

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Header photo: taken from a public recreation area near Presho SD. My son Jonnie, a friend of his, and I were camping alongside a small reservoir that was stocked with bass and panfish. We caught a few, and here the boys had been assigned the job of cleaning them for supper.

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Taking It Slow

June 10, 2026June 10, 2026jono55

When an alcoholic walks in out of the swamp that is addiction and is looking for a chance at a new life, one of the first things they are told is that they must stop drinking. That without taking that all-important step nothing else they do will matter. The addict looks down the road at the rest of their life and groans, “Never? Forever?” And that’s when some very wise advice comes wafting in through the haze of a hangover: “Don’t worry about forever … stay sober just for today.” Break obstacles down into small enough chunks and now they begin to look … possible.

That’s the advice we can give ourselves when we wake up each morning and look out at our country’s plight. “But there’s so much wrong … how will it ever be made right.” The answer is that we don’t have to do it all at that moment, we only need to do what we can and then rest, even if briefly, gathering our strength for the next challenge. But in this particular present moment, we just need to do the next right thing. All of those “next right things” done by all those other outraged souls will add up to the change we want.

I’ve decided that Robert Reich must be writing even while he is eating and using the bathroom. There is no other way he could continue to turn out the volume of material that he does. His Sunday essay on Substack: The Coming Revival of America, was one of his best yet. The thesis? That America had been heading in several wrong directions for a good long while before the Clown King came along, and that we the people needed more than a gentle wake-up call to see that.

The clarity of Reich’s opinion makes one want to hit their own forehead with an open hand and cry Yes, yes, of course you’re right! How could I have missed that? One possible answer is that as long as we weren’t the victim, directly, perhaps we didn’t care as much as we should have.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemoller

He does not underplay the dangers and the national trauma that beset us daily. We can still be rounded up and imprisoned without cause by a masked army of thugs, our government has been subverted and may well be used against us even further. These realities may not vanish overnight but Cluck has definitely turned over the rock and shown us where things need to be fixed.

Maybe we needed this horrific wakeup call in order to get back on the road we should have been on. We needed to see how fragile the institutions of self-government are in order to know why we must strengthen them. We needed to be reminded of what America is all about — what it should be about — in order to revive it — and reclaim it, for and by the people.

Robert Reich, Substack

Good man, Reich. At four feet eleven inches he stands taller than the thousands of sycophants and toadies who have either caused or enabled our present sea of misfortunes.

BTW. Reading this piece made me realize that it is not really this country that I love. What I love is this country’s ideals. I am not even certain, after the past several years, what this country is today. Is it still a democracy? Or is it a fascist fever dream? Or is it only the playpen of the unimaginably rich? Or is it something so malleable that at any given moment it is what the people who care most want it to be?

For the past couple of decades or so, it was the MAGA-leaning crowd that were excited, who suited up and showed up with their wrecking bars and their disdain for almost everything that people like me thought was good about America. They walked right in and took the prize and immediately began tearing it apart in order to reassemble it in their own special way. A way involving white supremacy, cruelty, and bigotry. They covered the floor of their birdcages with copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

But we are awake now. WE being a beast that roars and remembers. WE can see clearly what we’ve lost, what we’ve given away to these charlatans and mountebanks. WE are the ones who helped beat back tyranny in WWII. WE are the ones who marched on Selma, who were beaten and hosed and arrested by thugs in uniforms and thrown into jails. WE are the citizens of Minneapolis who took care of one another when ICE came with their masks and guns and lawlessness. WE read those two precious documents that constitute a the libretto of an opera of freedom that works when enough of us sing it together.

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Blowin’ In The Wind, by Peter, Paul and Mary

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We were promised a windy day on Tuesday, and we got one. We were also promised a warm one. Paradise is dry as tinder and a space where one spark could do much damage. At times like this we don’t need human error to produce a fire. Last year there were half a dozen fires started here on the Western Slope in a single night of lightning strikes, including the one that did its work in Black Canyon National Park.

I recall conditions like this several years ago, when Robin and I were in Santa Fe during a prolonged dry spell and it had been made illegal in that city to smoke outdoors. Not just campers out there in the boonies, everybody.

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Where Have All The Flowers Gone, by Peter, Paul and Mary

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Okay. I wasn’t going to mention this thing, but really, I have to. This is the Corvette ZR1X. It is a hybrid. Believe it or not, at almost a quarter of a million dollars as its sticker price it is by far the cheapest entry in the supercar category of automobiles.

Here are the numbers.

Zero to sixty mph = 1.7 seconds (at 1.9 seconds my head would snap off and roll about the cockpit, leaving my torso with some hard choices)
Top speed = 233 mph (I have never had a reflex anywhere in my entire body that was quick enough to cope with this)
Horsepower = 1250 (my Subaru has 182 of these)
Price = starts at $207,000 (A Maserati or a Ferrari in this category would cost several times as much, so don’t complain)
Gas mileage = completely irrelevant to buyers
Usefulness in hauling groceries = nil
Coolness factor just sitting there on the asphalt = killer to dudes of a certain age

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Robin and I awarded ourselves an all-expense paid trip to the local Dairy Queen this week, and as we were spooning frozen delights into our mouths I happened to notice a couple of images on the wall. One was an abbreviated history of Dairy Queen itself, and the other of the beverage chain Orange Julius.

I thus learned that the beverage Orange Julius got its name from the fact that in 1926 “Julius Freed and his partner Bill Hamlin opened an orange juice stand in Los Angeles.” Apparently Bill didn’t feel the need to have his name included. Either that or Julius was just plain evil.

More interesting were the two items listed below.

1938: Americans discover McCullough’s new, softer and tastier kind of ice cream called “soft serve.”

1940: “The Cone With The Curl On Top” lights up for the first time in Joliet, Illinois.

Why interesting to me? Because if that image were more complete, there would be an entry right in the middle that read like this.

1939: Jon Flom born in Faribault MN, a man destined to be one of DQ’s most devoted and notorious customers

End of story.

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The accident of the timing of my birth meant that I have been privileged to be surrounded by some of the best music ever written, pop and otherwise, as I grew up and grew older. The big bands were still playing concerts in Minneapolis when I was a teenager, even as rock and the folk revival took the stage from them in the sixties. R&B was everywhere stitched into that rich fabric, and the blues … under it all and above it all.

I don’t really claim a favorite genre, as all of them have meant something different and important to me. But I have to admit that the one that grabs at my heart each time one of its songs comes on the air is folk music. It’s a big tent, and nobody ever did it better, IMHO, than Peter, Paul and Mary.

500 Miles, by Peter, Paul and Mary

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Scratching On Rocks

April 15, 2026April 15, 2026jono55

There is a CNN article which is calling this a “freakishly dry spring” in Colorado. Here in Paradise so far this year we’ve had 1.6 inches, which is less than half of normal, and our “normal” is already on the dry side. We are tentatively watering our brown lawns and hoping for the best. Unless a drastic change occurs I am looking for water restrictions by early summer.

But of course this has nothing to do with climate change, which is a well-known hoax, according to our clodpoll of a leader. He encourages us to use more petroleum products, turn our air conditioners way down until ice forms on the glassware in the kitchen cabinets, and in general behave in a way which all but guarantees that next year will be worse.

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No Expectations, by Jim Campilongo

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I’ve been reading Tracing Time, a book about the rock art of the Colorado Plateau, written by Craig Childs. While I thought that I knew a little about the subject, it is by now obvious that I am little more than a tabula rasa where such drawings are concerned. The excitement of acquiring new knowledge is in the room every time I pick it up, and that doesn’t happen every day.

All of the books I’ve read by this author are collections of stories, rather than learned recitations. He puts what he wants you to know into some character’s mouth as that person is talking to him over a low fire on a winter campout in the middle of a mountain. And after you are done shivering at the thought of sleeping on bare rock in freezing weather you realize that now you have an answer to a question that only an hour ago you didn’t know enough to ask.

Where we live here in Paradise is on the edge of a treasure trove of such art. The Fort Knox of pictographs and petroglyphs, if you will. Robin and I have explored a few of the closer collections and it only makes us curious about others. On one of our hikes that we’ve taken several times, the turnaround point is a boulder covered with such markings that is right on the trail. Unfortunately its accessibility means that some of the art is stuff like: “Rhonda + Derek.” I’ve made the assumption that such carvings are not ancient and indigenous in origin, but I suppose that there could have been a romantically inclined couple back in the year 1000 with those names, although I strongly doubt it.

One of the recurring images found in these treasuries is that of handprints. The artist dips a hand in the paint and presses it to the stone. Like a signature saying I am here. I am always moved by these. Even more than by the drawings of warriors or mountain goats. I am here.

My answer is Yes, I know you.

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My plea to anyone out there in Washington DC with an ounce of courage and patriotism is to push the damn button. Push it hard right now.

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If it weren’t for the fact that people are dying and the huge amount of physical destruction involved as well as the economic disruption worldwide, the Iran War That Is or Isn’t A War could almost have been written by Gilbert and Sullivan as one of their comic operas. It is being conducted through whims and tweets and asides at press conferences by a draft-dodging coward and a puffed-up religious dimbulb who was once a minor officer in the National Guard. A horrible joke of a war, but a joke nevertheless.

Any member of our armed forces who dies in this conflict is a life that has been wasted. The billions of dollars that have been spent already – thrown away. When you put buffoons in charge this is what you get.

Even if we toss Cluck out tomorrow and are able to put an end to this tragic chapter in American history, there is no overnight getting back our national honor, prestige, or claims to leadership. We have allowed ourselves to become a murderous third-rate country in the eyes of the world. Or perhaps fourth-rate, who knows? Post-Cluck we will have to start at the bottom and work our way up for a generation before anyone can begin to trust us again.

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Each of us
one face in the crowd
One nose pressed
against the window
One body marching
Watching

One witness out of millions
who say Enough!
We place ourselves
Between the helpless
And the oppressors
We are implacable

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You can find much written about the origins and meaning of this beautiful song. But when you listen you will probably find your own message, as I do. And that message may change from one moment to another. Because when you listen the second time you are not the same person as the on the first audition.

There is that very old saying that “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” When I first heard it, I thought yes, of course, the water flows past and changes constantly. Later on I realized that the man changes as well.

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A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight …

August 13, 2025August 13, 2025jono55

Our guests of the past weekend came and went. Our home is returning to normal as everything that was shifted has been moved back to its rightful spot in the cosmic scheme of things. The refrigerator is half-filled with leftovers of good foods that somehow were overstocked at meals and were too tasty to throw out.

No matter. Prudence and parsimony require that those leftover baked beans must be consumed right down to the last gaseous molecule. The old gag line: “We had a thousand things for supper … all of ’em beans” was never more true than at supper the last two nights. By Friday we should be able to look once more ahead rather than backwards in our menu planning.

Even though the teenagers largely ignored the adults, it was good to see those kids at play and to hear all that enthusiastic giggling. And as I went through the paces of cleaning my bathroom, which had been turned over to them, I was reminded of a constant thread that runs through all the generations that we are so fond of naming. Teenagers might be meticulous in their appearance, but they are positively slobs at the makeup mirror. Thorough cleaning required my use of a firehose and a strong right arm.

Good to know that some things remain the same.

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It has become so depressing to read the news. We have become a nation where the only thing that other nations can trust about is that we can’t be trusted. We are the bad guys in all corners of the world. Perhaps not the only bad guys, but … damn. I find myself cheering for Canada every time they stick it to us in yet one more way. When British Columbia threatens to shut down the trans-Canada highway to Alaska, which is our lone land connection to the 49th state, some little interior voice says DOITDOIT!

Of course this regime will eventually fall apart, it is too villainous and selfish to last, but when will that downfall occur, and what amount of damage will have been done in the interim? What a shame. How many lives wasted, torn apart, spent in pain and sorrow that is completely unnecessary? It is truly our age of dishonor.

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Hurdy-Gurdy Man, by Donovan

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Well, that’s it. I’m tired of global warming and there’s no going around it. This endless succession of 90° days is making it impossible for me to grow my one tomato per year, and have become very tiresome.

I’m sure there must be some way of turning it off, and I would like the government to get about it as soon as possible. This just won’t do.

Right now, of course, our government is consumed with trying to decide whether the president is a pedophile or not. The insiders in his regime have decided that of course he’s not and is instead quite a wonderful person. Never mind that the rest of the world knows that he is almost entirely abominable.

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Runaway Train, by Soul Asylum

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Colorado is in the midst of a looooong drought. It has made things very crispy out here in Paradise, and one result was that bundle of wildfires that started a month ago during a dry thunderstorm. But we are not the only ones dealing with this natural but uncomfortable phenomenon. Right now the Lee wildfire near Meeker has consumed more than 110,000 acres, and there are many smaller ones scattered about. Here is a map of their locations as of yesterday.

The Lee wildfire, the fifth largest in Colorado’s history, has caused many people to have to leave their homes, and an entire prison needed to be evacuated and the population moved to one far away from fire activity. Schools are closed, parks are closed, some highways are unsafe to travel … it’s all a large and dangerous mess.

The only real bright spot is that to date no lives have been lost, neither of residents nor firefighters. Each year I marvel of the courage of those battling to contain the blazes. Whenever a fire is nearby, I will see these young people in the grocery store, shopping for supplies in small groups of very fit-looking men and women wearing a variety of uniforms. They are a cadre, proud and resourceful.

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