fog – Little Home In The Valley

We’re going through a very chilly spell right now. here in Paradise, with freezing nighttime temperatures for several days. It’s not a predicted trend, so I’m not panicking. Spring is definitely here, although these cold evenings could be trouble for some of the prematurely blooming trees and plants around town and in the beautiful orchards around Palisade CO. Local lifelong residents tell me that this is just a normal spring for a mountain town, with these variations in temperatures the rule, rather than the exception.

Over our years together, Robin and I have evolved into two completely different creatures as far as preferred room temperatures. Robin definitely likes a cool room, while I will position myself near any radiant heat source that’s available. Our Subaru has separate temperature controls for the right and left sides of the car, which I think is a little silly in a room that’s only five feet wide. But there we go, Robin choosing 67 degrees and me pushing my button up to 74. I think it may be a placebo effect, but we’re both happier when we see such numbers on the dashboard.

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I think that our cat Willow may be coming out of her sad times since the loss of her companion, Poco. Hard to tell, it’s been just a month. Robin and I have been petting and brushing the poor thing within an inch of her life in our attempts to help her adjust to this new reality. It’s a wonder she has any fur left at all. She is spending more time outdoors now once again, and has resumed her old habits of being more active at night and sleeping most of the day.

It has been ten years since she came to live with us as a kitten and Poco was already here when she arrived, so this is quite a change for her. We aren’t looking to add any more pets to our household, so it looks like it will be two humans and one feline from here on out.

I think we’ll do just fine.

Grieving is such an irregular thing, for me. You’re walking along, you seem to have a grip on things then suddenly you’re just knocked over by a wave that came out of nowhere. And that wave just sucks the oxygen right out of your lungs. I’m dealing with the loss of a dear pet right now, but there was another dear pet years ago who died an awful death after having gotten into something she should not have. I took her body home from the vet, put her in a small cardboard box, and then buried her out in the backyard. We lived out in the countryside at the time, where such things were easily done.

Robin was away at the time and I sat on the edge of the wooden deck that evening with one song playing on repeat for hours. It doesn’t seem like it would fit, but that night it was a perfect accompaniment to the feelings I was struggling with. I was caught in one of those waves, one that battered hard and would not let go.

All Mixed Up, by Red House Painters

Honest to God, I don’t think I would have made it this far in this life without the support that music has provided. I’ve often joked when talking with others that one of the tragedies of real life as opposed to the movies was that there wasn’t a soundtrack. At a distance and looking back I can see now that there was one. But in each instance it had to be slapped together, rough as a cob and on the spot.

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Friday morning it began to snow and this continued until lunchtime, only dropping an inch or so, but hey – it’s water! By one o’clock, Robin and I were already getting cabin fever, so we bundled ourselves into the Subaru and took off driving south on Highway 550. We had planned to go to Ouray to walk around town and look at the fresh whiteness at 8,000 feet, but we had to pause at Ridgway and turn around because a combination of fog and snow produced such poor visibility. It was still a good trip, good to be out of the house.

Robin and I celebrated that day with purchased cheesecake. We may be cautious about snowstorms, but we fear no dessert.

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Lonely Girls, by Lucinda Williams

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We saw our first Hummingbirds of the year only three days ago. And that very night, the temperatures plunged down into the low 20s, which was the first of three such nights. I had wondered – how do these little birds survive such cold evenings when they return from their migration sooner than they should? So I asked the question of Google, and back came this answer, which I have now corroborated with recognizable sources.

“Hummingbirds survive freezing spring temperatures (20s°F) By entering torpor, a state of deep hibernation like sleep that lowers their metabolism by up to 95% to conserve energy. Their body temperatures plummet from over 100𝐹 to near air temperature, allowing them to survive cold nights. Yes, they can survive, if they find food quickly in the morning.”

RIght now, hummingbird food is to be found everywhere, with the early flowers and the blossoming trees, so I will relax and let Nature do the worrying. But I like the concept of torpor, which sounds a lot like what happens to me when I find myself trapped in conversations with excruciatingly boring people. I don’t know if my body temperature plummets, but the rest all seems quite familiar.

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Some Day Soon, by Ian and Sylvia

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I am presently re-exploring the delicious satisfactions of eating bagels. For quite a few years now they found no place in our pantry, being one of those high carb foods discarded way back when we were doing the keto thing. The keto thing went away, but for some reason bagels remained on the no-no list.

Now anyone looking at a map showing Montrose CO can see that we are about as far from a bagel-producing powerhouse as one could be, and the only choices here in Paradise are the dense things, fresh or frozen, that you can either eat or put under uneven table legs. Pale imitations, I know, of what one might find at a New York delicatessen.

But you can only eat what is in front of you, and pining for what you can’t have is lost time you won’t get back. Because even the bagels sold locally are tasty enough when you toast them up, and most of the fillings used in Gotham City are available locally.

So here I go, chomping away. I am a little puzzled about the variety called the “everything bagel,” which seems to be designed for people who are unable to make up their mind which bagel they really want. They can eat this thing and tell themselves that what they truly desire is in there somewhere.

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At an Indivisible social event this week the question was raised “Why does everybody in this room have the same color hair?” The reference to the omnipresent gray hair was completely apropos. Everyone in the group was over fifty years old, most were over sixty. One member of this pleasant gaggle mentioned a documentary he’d watched recently about the Viet Nam War protests, and everybody at those events was in their twenties. He wondered aloud “Where are the younger people today?”

It wasn’t the sort of venue in which to have a longer discussion, partly because the poor acoustics made listening difficult. But since I was marching back in 1969 and now I am marching in 2026 I can give you at least a partial “Why?”

During the troubled years of that Asian war a twenty-year old had a lot on his mind. He was learning that the government had been telling lies about the justification and the conduct of the war. He saw that thousands of men his age were being killed or damaged by being tossed into the meat grinder that is war.

And most important of all, he saw that he very well could be next one to go. That at almost any moment his body could be snatched up, suited up, and sent off to someplace with a name he couldn’t pronounce properly. He saw the unfairness of the draft, where rich white boys were often not being loaded onto those transport buses and ships, while everyone else had to take their turn. He learned not to trust authorities, finding that their goals and his were not always in synchrony.

So when the call came to take to the streets, his motives for showing up and burning that draft card or carrying that sign were not just for some lofty antiwar concept, they were self-preservative.

Now think about today’s twenty year-old. These people have never seen an American government that wasn’t openly venal, cynical, dishonest, or power-hungry above all things. Why should they believe that one could exist because some white-haired and arthritic dude says so?

I can hear some of you saying “Hey, wait just a minute, how about _______, he/she was a good one.” You’re right. There have been solid and trustworthy individuals, but the overall mass of it smells to high heaven. Reminds me of my childhood when a pungent and putrid aroma surrounded us when the wind blew in from the slaughterhouses ten miles east of our home.

Obama keeps coming up as an example of the good in government, and I mostly agree with that assessment. But when it came time for him to appoint a Supreme Court Justice, which was his right and duty to do, he was unable to get it accomplished because the Republican leadership had the power to completely block it. To not even let it come up for discussion. And this was not some singular or unusual event, but part of a standing pattern.

So how to get younger people involved? Heck of a question. What would be my first suggestion? Get rid of Citizens United. Reduce as much as possible the influence of those unimaginably large fortunes. Make it possible for someone to hold office for the laudable reason of wanting to truly serve the people they directly represent, and the larger body politic as well. To elevate the influence of character, rather than connections.

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Transcendental Blues, by Steve Earle

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This week my blog got a “like” from Edge of Humanity Magazine. I wandered over there and found all sorts of artistic treasures. One of its recent posts was a photo essay entitled “The Seduction of the Invisible.”

The essay’s theme is the particular beauty and mystery that fog brings to a scene, where the edges of what one can see blend into something resembling infinity. Worth a read, and the photos are lovely.

I am into fogs, except when I am driving, when they make me acutely uneasy. I am way more worried about who is behind me than ahead.

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Who You Are, by Pearl Jam

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Friday evening Robin and I drove an hour to Cedaredge CO, a lovely mountain town of 2300 souls which is located in the foothills of the Grand Mesa.

We were attending the Fifth Annual Grand Mesa Arts and Event Center Film Festival. Only short films are shown, and those with some connection to the state of Colorado. That connection could be the theme of the film or one of the people responsible for making it.

We were motivated to burn some of our expensive Cluck Gas and make the drive because one of the movies being shown had been submitted by grandson Aiden. It ended up receiving the People’s Choice award on this evening. Son-in-law Neil had also come to Cedaredge for the showing, and we had supper with him at a really good Mexican restaurant in town, La Familia.

Some of the other showings were enjoyable, some were puzzling, some were just odd. But none of them were boring. Totally fun evening, but for one sobering artistic display.

And that was composed of 168 pairs of used children’s shoes arranged in a circle. They represented the 168 young people that our military, led by incompetents and madmen, killed at the start of the Iran war. The reporting on that tragedy has already vanished from the news cycle, but it should be the preface for any article written about the senseless Cluckian conflict we are still wading through. A war completely absent a rational plan. We should be seeing interviews with the grieving parents . We should be seeing biographies of the hundred and sixty-eight lives that were lost to no purpose. We should not be allowed to so easily forget what we have done.

Their deaths are yet more blood on the hands of Cluck and Hegseth. Our men in Washington.

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Tag: fog

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