Iran – Little Home In The Valley

I had the good fortune this past week to attend a lecture/presentation by a polymath. Yes, a polymath, and I know what I’m talking about because I just looked up the word and now I am allowed to call myself an expert.*

A polymath is a person who knows a lot about a lot of subjects. If your friend is not only a brilliant physics student but has also published a poetry collection and won prizes at political debates, you can describe her as a polymath.

Vocabulary.com

Robin and I had been invited to a talk about small owls in Colorado by our friends, the Evanses. The local chapter of the Audubon Society was sponsoring the evening’s program. The speaker, Scott Rashid, was a slender middle-aged man in a baseball-style cap, plaid shirt, and the sort of pants one wears when camping or hiking. He seemed eager to get started, so was handed the microphone and a remote control, and off he went.

What followed might have been the single best Powerpoint I’ve seen, and I have seen hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, mostly of the stunningly boring kind, each image stuffed beyond measure with more information than one human being should ever have to bear. This presentation was smoothly constructed and filled with imaginatively arranged images that appeared without fail due to his mastery of the remote control. His knowledge of the four owl species that collectively made up his topic seemed encyclopedic to this rank amateur. I don’t believe he took a breath during the entire hour, keeping oxygenated somehow by absorbing gas through his skin.

Why do I call him a polymath?

Great fund of knowledge of his subject and related birds
Has created an organization dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation, and release of injured and orphaned birds (CARRI)
Author of several books
Skilled wildlife photographer
And the killer is this – he is a gifted artist who paints scenes which combine principles of cubism and wildlife painting

Yep, you heard me, cubism. And the paintings are beautiful, like nothing I’ve even seen, combining several views of the same bird, for instance, in a single portrait. Like this one of the northern pygmy owl.

This art is for sale in several forms, and the proceeds help to support his work.

You might be interested in a short video about Rashid and need a link to his website, so here it is. Once there, take a look at his art work. It is extraordinary.

*When I was in pediatric residency training, the working definition of an “expert” was: an SOB from out of town with slides.

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Ladies and gentlemen, the Heartless Bastards play Gates of Dawn for your listening and dancing pleasure. Cranking the volume is allowed.

(As an aside, is this the best name for a rock band or what? Seriously!)

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Water warm as blood
Drips along the paddle shaft
Ducklings hide in reeds

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This next weekend Robin and I are driving down to Santa Fe for the weekend. The occasion is our 34th wedding anniversary. It’s the second marriage for both of us.

During the years immediately after our divorces, we both sought counseling at times. The counselor who Robin was seeing wasn’t sure about her re-marrying relatively soon after going through such a traumatic period, and expressed the view that she and I getting together was probably only a “transitional relationship.” Meaning that once she came to her senses and took a good long look at me she would toss an “Adios” back over her shoulder as she moved on to the real thing.

Well, the “transition” will be starting on its 35th year next Sunday, so either he was wrong or Robin is really slow at making up her mind. Either way, I am a clear winner.

(Here we are on that excellent day in 1992. I can hear you thinking and you are quite right … I definitely married out of my league.)

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We’ve visited Santa Fe several times before, and have enjoyed ourselves each time. For us, the town has such a pleasing vibe. Art galleries and museums galore, the Santa Fe Opera, the historic plaza, the presence of adobe buildings everywhere you look. Good restaurants, great food.

There is also the important connection with Los Alamos during the years when the Manhattan Project was operating. The small but busy office that managed access to Los Alamos and everything that was going on up there was at 109 East Palace, in Santa Fe. Before you took that rough mountain road and drove 33 miles to your new home you had to walk through that doorway. There is a bronze plaque that reads:

109 EAST PALACE
1943 SANTA FE OFFICE 1963
LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
All the men and women who made the first atomic
bomb passed through this portal to their secret
mission at Los Alamos. Their creation in 27 months
of the weapons that ended World War II was one of
the greatest scientific achievements of all time.

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Santa Fe, by Tough Country

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Well, Dipstick Donald got his butt handed to him in Iran. He seems to have been caught off guard when the Iranians quite unfairly started blowing up the entire Middle East and blocking off of 20% of the world’s oil shipping. Every day there has been a new justification coming out of the White House for starting the whole mess, the latest being that Cluck was coming down with a cold and was out of sorts. If Melania would have been kind enough to rub his chest with a mixture of beef tallow and Vicks Vaporub we might have been spared the whole bloody mess and the deaths already accumulated.

How pleasant it will be when he is finally stamped with the letter “P” (for pedophile) on his forehead and can be placed on a sexual offenders list. That way we can keep track of him once he’s been booted out of office.

My own preference would be to haul him to Mar-El-Lago, lock him in there and never let him out. Only adult family members would be allowed to visit, that is, if any of them want to do so. He would be assigned the duties of PLO (permanent latrine officer), with regular and rigorous inspections by that loony Kennedy over at Health and Human Services, who could thus resume his old habit of sniffing cocaine off toilet seats to his heart’s content.

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Ghost of Your Guitar Solo, by MJ Lenderman

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Thursday we received a new refrigerator. When we moved into this house the departing owners left us a nearly-new fridge, but that new one became 13 years old and about two weeks ago turned itself off. Then on. Then off. Then on. We read up on the matter and learned that the average lifespan of such an appliance is around seven years, so ours is ancient by those standards. After much pondering we decided to replace it, rather than beginning a cycle of expensive repairs that were strongly suggested were coming our way.

To me these things are still a marvel, with their automatic defrosting, in-door ice dispensers, deli drawers, and mostly awesome reliability. As a very young child I knew only the word “icebox.” This was essentially a large and very well insulated cooler. It was not electrified and thus had to be fed ice periodically to do its job.

Such ice was available from two sources, one of them being a building three blocks from our home where you put in some money and blocks of ice came sliding down from somewhere that you could put in your wagon to transport home. The other source was a medium-sized truck that made deliveries of ice to the homes, and in the summertime there was a steady dripping of melt-water behind it as it slowly made its rounds, since the truck was not independently refrigerated. On a hot July day we kids learned that if we looked pathetic enough and held out our hands the driver of the truck would give each of us a large chip of ice to suck on. For FREE!

Then came the refrigerator. Magic. Bye-bye to the ice houses and the ice trucks of the world. You now had something you could plug into the wall socket and forget about all that mess … until it frosted up. The freezer compartment would build up a thick layer of ice that ultimately brought the machine to its knees and then there was nothing for it but to take everything out and open the doors to thaw things.

Anyway, Thursday we get delivery of a new fridge, and all we had to do is come up with a couple of grand to make it happen.

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My having some surgery a few days ago means that I’m missing No Kings 3! Damn. COVID already kept Robin and I out of No Kings 2. How in the world will the revolution go forward without me there to carry my spear, raise my dudgeon, spew my vituperations? It will be a pale thing indeed if this pattern keeps up.

I’ve been gathering Old English curse words and phrases, since the sturdy old f-bombs are so over used these days. I think that some of those in the following list show real promise, but now I will have to wait until another time to use them fully. Too bad, because we have way more than our share of jobbernol goosecaps here in Paradise, and they deserve to be pointed out.

Wærloga: Meaning “oathbreaker,” which evolved into “warlock”.

Bædling: An insulting term for an effeminate man or hermaphrodite.

Fussock: A fat, lazy, or scruffy woman.

Saddle-goose: A foolish person.

Puttock: A greedy person.

Gnashgab: Someone who complains constantly.

Scunner: A loathsome or horrible person.

Fopdoodle: An insignificant or foolish man.

Whoreson: A common insulting term.

Sard: Often cited as the Old English version of the F-bomb.

Fuccian: A weak class 2 verb, indicating an early form of sexual profanity.

Lickorous glutton: A lascivious or greedy person.

Jobbernol goosecap: A fool or blockhead.

Ninny lobcock: A foolish, clumsy person.

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An item touching on the recent death of our cat friend, Poco. A few days after his final office visit, we received this card from the veterinarian’s office. I thought it was a lovely gesture, and perfectly suited our present mood. Forever, of course, would have worked only if he could have still been young and strong and not living in pain and confusion. Loved the card, though.

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Awright … one more gallery. These images of Poco were photos taken by Robin and I that were then manipulated with ChatGPT to have a particular appearance, which they call the “Norman Rockwell”” effect. Cheating, right? But isn’t any alteration of a photo, whether by Photoshop or other editing programs, much the same? I know that this is carrying it quite a bit further, but it’s all along the same line, I think. What it means is that a rather inept guy like myself can produce interesting photo effects by clicking away without knowledge or understanding.

I am posting them because somehow these imitations of life are no longer specific to a time or place. They mean something particular to me, of course, but in a way they have become representative of the life of a tabby cat in general, and it could be one you have met, a cat who was looking out of a window or walking in fall leaves in a yard.

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Here are the originals, for comparison.

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I first heard the song Ashokan Farewell as the main theme for the Ken Burns series: The Civil War. I always assumed it was a period piece, perhaps dating back to the 1860s. But no … it was composed in 1982, by Jay Ungar. Such a lovely and wistful and evocative piece it is. One of those tunes that you’d have sworn was present, playing in the back ground, during your entire life.

Until I ran across this cover by Priscilla Herdman, though, I had not heard the lyrics. Of course they are sad. It’s a farewell, for God’s sake.

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Tag: Iran

Whooo? Me? Cubist?

Magic In The Machines