fishing – Little Home In The Valley

Floaters

September 11, 2024September 11, 2024jono55

The barbarity and perversity of the human enterprise known as war was again displayed openly on Saturday last when there were two news items published on CNN online. The first was a video purportedly of three Ukrainian soldiers being executed after they had surrendered. The second was an announcement that the Ukrainians are using drones to rain thermite, which is molten metal, on Russian positions as shown in this photograph.

I’ve never quite understood how they came up with some of the accepted practices of war. One moment ago you and your opponents are doing your level best to kill one another. But once a group of enemy combatants surrenders, you are directed to feed and house those people without using violence toward them of any kind. But let them try to escape and you are once again encouraged to shoot at them. The whole business is horrible. Having rules governing how we can legally slaughter one another is insane. Raining molten metal on other humans is evil.

We’ve already agreed not to use chemical weapons in war, why not go through the entire arsenal and keep on banning one item after another? There have been nuclear treaties to reduce the likelihood of one particular type of calamity. Much progress has been made in ridding the world of antipersonnel land mines, a project which most countries in the world are signed onto. Let’s not stop there, but keep shrinking the tools and means to make war until we get to war itself.

******

Masters of War, by Odetta

******

I’m not a fan of the Cheney family of Wyoming, especially Darth Dick, but I absolutely agree with Liz this one time, when she produced a quote worth remembering. Cheney made a statement on July 21, 2022, during her closing remarks at a public hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. As the vice chair of the committee, Cheney addressed those Republicans who continued to defend former President Donald Trump despite evidence presented regarding his role in the events leading up to and during the attack.

Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.
Liz Cheney

Amen, Sister!

******

I saw this cartoon in the New Yorker, and an old memory popped into my head immediately. You will soon learn why.

***

When I was about eight years old, I organized an urban fishing adventure and led a trio of boys of the same age into misbehavior. Yes, I admit it, I was the kid that your parents told you not to hang around with. Instead of going to the Saturday movie matinee as we did nearly every week, we planned instead to take a side trip to a nearby lake in Minneapolis. Of course we would not tell our parents of the change in plans, since we knew that they would not approve. Deception and mendacity were skills we had obviously learned early in life.

I rounded up the following materials that I thought we would need on the journey.

about ten feet of stout braided fishing line (we would not have a fishing rod because there was no way we could see to conceal it)
two lead sinkers
one bobber
several hooks of suitable size
a pocket knife
some matches
several earthworms
an empty butternut coffee can

Off we went, first taking the direction we would ordinarily use to go to the theater, but then doubling back and heading out to Lake Harriet, which was a mile or two away.

After some time we reached the lake, and after rigging our single line and tossing it into the water, we waited for the action to begin. When a half an hour had passed and nothing was happening, our spirits began to flag somewhat. After an hour we were becoming desperate. To have planned all this, to have taken the risks involved, and now to be denied the fruits of our disobedience seemed unfair.

And then we saw it. A small yellow perch, floating dead in the water. To us it still looked a pretty shade of bright green, not faded as fish will do when dead in the water for a long time. So after some discussion and by mutual agreement, we scooped up the fish, scaled and cleaned it with our knife. A small fire was built of available twigs, and when it seemed hot enough, we began to fry the deceased creature in the coffee can.

Turns out that we were about as proficient as cooks as we had been as fishermen. We learned that frying a perch in a coffee can without a lubricant of any kind can only lead to disappointments. The fish stuck to the hot metal, everywhere. Trying to turn it using more sticks was a minor disaster.

But the lesson here is never to underestimate the grit and determination of eight year-old boys who have already lied to their parents, walked a couple of miles, failed to catch a legitimate fish, and needed to leave in ten minutes to get home on time and avoid discovery. At some point we declared that our meal was cooked, distributed the set of fish fragments that had resulted from the cooking process, and ate them.

After stuffing ourselves on our diminutive “catch,” we returned home at what was our planned ETA. Looking back if I was to score our adventure honestly I would do it this way: Fishing = F, Cooking = F, being conniving little delinquents = A+.

***

Fishing, by Widespread Panic

******

Last night’s presidential debate was a balm to my psyche. As sweet as the wine of the gods. VP Harris was in charge the entire evening, as she prodded what’s his name into one furious falsehood after another. She looked confident and comfortable up there, smiling or laughing a good deal of the time. He squinted, fumed, ranted, lied profusely and continuously, and looked ancient.

I admit to being highly prejudiced but I would score it this way: Harris = presidential material, Cluck = malignant fool. I grant that the MAGA universe has the right to vote as they wish, but I do not respect anyone who will vote to turn this country over to the “leadership” of such a man.

******

Black Bearable

June 5, 2024June 5, 2024jono55

I knew it was too early to be able to go all the way, but I had the time and thought I’d see how far I could go. There is a lovely hike up to Black Bear Pass, but you have to hit the time of the year just right, because when the snow is finally completely gone the jeeps appear by the score, as this is one of those jeeping trails where middle-aged men who own four-wheel drive vehicles get to imagine themselves as adventurers. Even if they are in a line of forty or more vehicles just like their own coming down the mountain.

The first pic is of the trailhead which is located less than a quarter-mile from Red Mountain Pass on Highway 550. BTW, this starting point is at just above 11,000 feet.

After slipping about in the white stuff for a mile or so I met a young woman coming back down the path, who was packing her back-country skis. She said there was still enough to ski on, but that it was melting fast and it wouldn’t be long until the season was over for her.

Later on I reached the point where I could see the tracks she had made, and the second photo shows them. I was impressed at how fit she must be to have climbed, skied, then climbed again. Six decades do make a difference.

For myself this was the turnaround spot. From where I stood the snow got deeper and the trail got steeper. Visions of me trying to struggle up that slope included only one likely result, which is where I make a misstep and set new records in the alpine downhill face-plant-position slide.

So my total mileage was only about three miles, but it was enough for the day.

Count of least chipmunks seen on the walk was > 40.

******

Us and Them, by Pink Floyd

******

I didn’t moisturize this morning, thinking I could get by for one day without that greasy process. Wrong again! The surface of the skin of some seniors turns to a powdery gray in less than four hours in this dry climate (8% relative humidity today) and is … what can I say … less attractive as a result.

If there were only some sort of trough like a sheep dip where I could wade through a pit filled with beneficial oils every morning. With coffee cup held high, perhaps. Even better, perhaps a longer channel while I relaxed on a float tube, drifting along.

It could even be perfumed with something manly, like the scent of bacon frying mixed with that of an old leather saddle.

******

******

It’s been windy again the past several days. Nothing remarkable, mostly in the 15-25 mph range. But I tried to go fishing and had to quit early because I am using only lightweight gear these days, and I soon tired of having a straight-ahead cast ending up in the tules to my right.

Back in South Dakota, such a breeze would have been no problem. We jigged from small boats, and so were immune to such things. For those of you who are not pescadores, jigging means baiting a reasonably heavily weighted hook and dropping it straight down from the boat. Not much finesse required. No artful or pinpoint casts. Just let it down until it hits the bottom, then reel it up a couple of inches.

The art comes in deciding whether you have a strike or are only hooked up on rocks, grass, timber, sunken boats, or any of the thousand types of interesting items that can be found on the bottom of lakes and reservoirs.

My angling friends in South Dakota really were not general fishermen. That word suggests that they might be after a variety of finned creatures. They were not. They sought only walleyed pike, and all other sorts of fish were regarded as something nasty that they caught accidentally and would rather not have had to deal with.

They were walleyemen. Sometimes if I grew weary of sitting there staring straight down into the water I would suggest to friend Bill that perhaps we could try trolling or some sort of more active fishing. The look that I would get said volumes. He was mentally measuring the distance from the boat to shore and calculating whether I could make it if I were asked to swim back home. For him it was hard enough to put up with a slow fishing day, and there was little tolerance for mutiny among members of the crew.

On each of these occasions I would quickly resume staring down into the water. Swimming for miles has never seemed all that attractive to me.

******

The question here is not Do I Exaggerate?, because of course I do and freely admit it. The question is … how much? These are my stories and I get to tell them my way. If I get started with a tale and as it develops it seems a bit pale and anemic I might add a bit of color to enliven it. After all, life does have more than a few drab days so why should we be limited by them?

For instance, in the fishing story I told earlier, friend Bill never asked me to get out of the boat and swim to shore. It is possible that he never even cradled that thought for an instant. However, he might have had it and how would I know for sure? It might even have been much worse than the episode I related. He might have been thinking – I wonder how well he would do swimming with the boat anchor tied to one leg? It would be easily understandable because I can be (you may not credit this) annoying at times. Irritating. Fingernails on the blackboard sort of thing.

Or he might have thought: Poor Jon, he doesn’t appreciate that this is the way, the truth of the angling life. Walleyes are the purest form of fish in appearance, intelligence, fighting abilities, and flavor (when fried properly). Jigging is the purest form of fishing, where it is only lead + hook + bait + you + time. Jon would rather we motor about aimlessly from place to place without a thought in our heads. The poor fool doesn’t know any better, and is to be pitied by all.

*****

******

We come into this world alone, and we leave it the same way. In between those dates we are mostly guessing.

******

The Coast, by Paul Simon

******

The graphic below is from a news item that is truly stunning. It is from a June 1 article on Page 12 of our local paper, the Montrose Daily Gazette. Robin and I live in the 3rd District, but we are kept from feeling too superior by the fact that the 3rd has sent Lauren Boebert to Washington. Twice.

An ignorance as profound as the article describes suggests a severe developmental deficiency, and if the topic weren’t so important I would probably let it pass with a tsk tsk or two, not wanting to pick on the less fortunate among us.

But the difference is that this is the paper bag sort of ignorance, where the Party passes out those large brown bags that used to be found in every grocery store. After cutting out holes for eyes the member is pushed out into society and exhorted not to read anything that they can’t take into the bag with them. And not to listen to anyone who doesn’t have a bag on their head.

It doesn’t help that this past Christmas season the local Republican Party made the following gift suggestions:

A Block The Boogeyman kit for their children’s bedrooms which is absolutely guaranteed to keep those pests from collecting under beds and in closets. It also comes in adult models to be used against anything that makes you nervous.
Subscriptions to the popular Russian magazines PlayComrade, Gulag Review, or The National Interrogator.
A locator device programmed to alert you when you are close to the edge of the Earth so you don’t fall off.

******

I Am, I Said

April 1, 2024April 3, 2024jono55

I am a writer. I’ve denied it for years because I once thought that it didn’t count unless you wrote the novel of the year. But I write short pieces and string them together to make this blog, and that is the niche I occupy. It’s not Tolstoy. It’s not even Stephen King. It’s a sort of blather that I started to amuse my children and then found that those children were not easily amused and I was going to have to work at it to keep them reading.

Then it was something that I also did for myself, like writing a journal that you allow people to see, rather than keep it secreted away in a leatherette volume protected by a weak lock that will open with a tiny golden key (or you could just cut the flimsy leather strap with any household scissors). To me it was saying, like the Neil Diamond song – I am.

I Am, I Said, by Neil Diamond

I suspect that there are others among you who have had times in your lives when you wanted to say I am. Writing has been helpful to me, and you can see how little talent it takes to do it by reading my stuff. So write without fear, friends. You have nothing to lose but your dignity, and you may say something that resonates with a stranger on the other side of the world.

A change has occurred in my own thought life as the years have passed, and now I find myself saying more and more as my bucket o’days accumulates – We Are.

The horrorshow that reading the daily newspapers has become is never going to improve if all of the bozos like me do nothing but run around saying I Am in our separate and desperate identities. Except for those among us who are card-carrying psychopaths, there should be enough common ground for the remainder to stand on while we roll up our proverbial sleeves and get to work.

For me, at least, that means thinking more in terms of We and less in I. Alone I can make little progress in any of the problem areas America faces. But WE can.

*****