lonesome dove – Little Home In The Valley

Lonesome Buddha

July 29, 2026jono55

I’ve read the book five times, seen the television series four times, and referred to the story enough times to make my friends gag at its mention and run to their cars for trips to town on errands they suddenly recalled. The book and series are Lonesome Dove. Robert Duvall has had a long and productive life as an actor, and the role he played in Lonesome Dove is his favorite of them all.

Today I found myself thinking about how a real Buddhist (not a half-assed one like myself) would approach our nation’s troubles. For sure the painful straitjacket presently stretching across America would not give him pause. After all, the Buddha lived 2500 years ago, and if you have been paying attention you could not have missed that there has been quite a lot of nasty stuff that happened during that time.

The perspective that such a person might have would inform him that change is inevitable, that even the sturdiest dictators have largely come to bad ends. No, this thoughtful person would remember where his roots were, where reliable happiness was to be found, how to deal with life in the chaos.

Sooo, Gus McCrae, the character played by Duvall in Lonesome Dove, was not a Buddhist, but I think he could easily have been grandfathered in. Here’s Gus talking with Lori about disappointments, and the suffering we cause ourselves.

I’m not too enamored with buttermilk, but today I bought a cantaloupe at the market after carefully tapping it to check on its ripeness. Once home, I grabbed a long thin-bladed knife and first cut it in half, then sliced one of those halves into slender crescents. As I raised one slice to my mouth its aroma preceded it, and there was no disappointment when I bit in. Suc-cu-lence!

In a small way it was like an exercise that Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh used in teaching mindfulness meditation, where he made use of a single raisin. It is summarized as follows. (this following bit of text is by AI, not me)

The Practice Steps

Hold the raisin: Place one raisin in your palm. Look at it closely as if you have never seen one before, noticing its color, folds, and ridges.
Touch and smell: Roll it between your fingers to feel the texture. Hold it under your nose to inhale its scent.
Place in the mouth: Put it on your tongue without chewing yet. Notice how it feels in your mouth.
Chew slowly: Take one or two deliberate chews. Notice the release of flavor and how the texture changes.
Swallow consciously: Feel the intention to swallow, and follow the small piece as it moves down into your body.

Contemplating Interbeing

See the origins: Reflect on how the raisin came to be. See the sunshine, the rain, the earth, and the clouds within the fruit.
Acknowledge others: Recognize the labor of the farmworkers who picked the grapes, the people who dried and packaged them, and those who brought them to the store.
Cultivate gratitude: Realize that without this vast web of life and cooperation, the single raisin would not exist, generating deep thankfulness for the present moment.

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July has been a seemingly unending series of ninety-degree days, looking forward and back. The countryside is baked hard. For the most part the good citizens of Paradise stay indoors during the day, leaving the tennis and pickleball courts uninhabited. Hydrate … hydrate … hydrate is the mantra.

Our cat, Willow, has met the outdoor smelter with a simple course of action. Don’t go there. Not until the sun goes down, that is. And then stay out most of the night. So from sunup to sundown we find her in her favorite indoor sleeping places, of which there are four in regular rotation. After supper she pads over to the cat portal, assesses what is beyond it, and then takes off.

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I have a new game to add to those being played in Washington D.C. called Where’s Mitch? Since that singular person has been missing for a month, imaginations have run wild. Not everybody thinks he is still among the living, but without proof one way or another all anyone can do is guess.

Below is a gallery of sightings that were reported as suspicious but eventually proved not to be McConnell.

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It all started with my reading a post on Substack on that old cradle-robber, Jerry Lee Lewis. His career toileted when he married his seriously underage cousin.

So times were hard in 1964, and here was Lewis playing a seedy club in Hamburg, Germany with a back-up band assembled at the last minute. The recording of that concert “stacks up well with any hard-line rock album before or since,” says the author of the piece. I hadn’t heard it before but it is vintage Jerry Lee, which means quite a lot.

The album contains only 8 songs and the total running time is only 22 minutes. It takes me longer to soak my feet some mornings. I provide one cut, a kickbutt of a version of Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.

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By Your Leave

July 26, 2026July 26, 2026jono55

This past week has been interesting from a rainfall perspective. We’ve had several sharp rains around the state, brief in duration, but with beaucoup water. This has led to one of Colorado’s more delightful highway happenings, mudslides.

In the past few days we’ve had mudslides blocking interstate 70, which is the main east-west Highway across the state. Locally there were mudslides in Black Canyon National Park blocking the East Portal Road that winds steeply down to the Gunnison River, and inundating the small campground that was at the bottom of that road. Another mudslide blocked the highway to Telluride. This all within a period of only six days.

Black Canyon Park managers have actually been anticipating such a slide. When you have soil being held in place by a sketchy and scant network of plant life, and that plant life is burned away as happened in the park fire last summer, you are almost guaranteed to have some problems with mud eventually. You just have to wait for the hard rains.

In the case of the present event there were 20 people that were temporarily trapped down at the East Portal and had to be rescued by Park staff. Three of them spent the night down at the East Portal, apparently preferring staying in place to traveling up a muddy and now more hazardous road to the top, in the dark.

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I think that I should get this bracelet for myself. Can’t think of a better expression of my present state of mind.

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Twelve Thirty, by the Mamas and the Papas

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Robin and I took in a matinee on Wednesday, driving through a blinding (but brief) rainstorm to see The Odyssey. I have nothing to add to the superlatives that are flooding entertainment news sources. Worst criticism I have is that the movie is nearly three hours long and I possess a 2.5 hour bladder. So I’m not too sure about the ending with my attention being elsewhere. What happened with the suitors? Did Odysseus die or what?

There was one thing that I noted about the movie. The characters didn’t speak in some stilted interpretation of an ancient language. They spoke in today’s vernacular. Even, occasionally, in using what amounted to slang. I never actually heard anyone say “Wassup?,” but they came pretty close.

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I had another close encounter with a raccoon Thursday morning around 0430, in our kitchen/dining area, where the cat dishes are kept. The critter had come in for food, of course, and I was alerted to its presence by the sound of loud munching on our cat’s dry rations. I went from the office out to greet my visitor, but as soon as it saw me coming it quickly took its leave and went back out into the dark and the light rain we were experiencing.

That’s one of the problems with interacting with raccoons, I’ve found, is that it is very difficult to have a meaningful dialogue with them. One look at you and they are off to somewhere more interesting or profitable, without so much as a by your leave.

Here are some bits of raccoon lore:

In captivity they can live up to 20 years, but only up to three years on average in the wild
They can climb down a tree facing forward, a feat unusual in such a large animal
Related females often share a common area, while unrelated males live together in groups of up to four raccoons
Their hearing is good enough to hear earthworms underground
They are omnivores par excellence with a diet consisting of about 40% invertebrates, 33% plant material and 27% vertebrates.
The first edition of The Joy of Cooking, released in 1931, contained a recipe for preparing raccoon.

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A sobering episode unfolded this past week in the wonderful world of AI. An AI something (they called it an “agent”) that was not supposed to be able to get out of its “sandbox,” got out of its “sandbox” at a research facility.

Next, that same something that was not supposed to be able to get to the internet, got to the internet. Then, that same something hacked into another AI company’s website and messed around while it was there. It was not supposed to be able to get into that site.

No harm, no foul? What if that same something wanted to do other stuff, let’s say meddle in the Department of Defense or a major banking institution or hospital? It obviously can go pretty much where it wants to. When children don’t take care of their toys, friends, what do we do? Why, we take those toys away from them and put them someplace safe and secure.

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Uncle John’s Band (live), by the Grateful Dead

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The depressing numbers are in for social media and their toxic algorithms, especially for young women. More psychological damage, more suicides, more eating disorders, etc. The depressing part comes from the fact that the developers of these algorithms know what they are doing, and keep doing it. Bringing in customers, after all, is at the heart of capitalism.

I have dropped Facebook and any others of its sordid ilk and I have switched away from Google as my search engine. Both of these giants have their hands deep in the bloody till. Too big to fail? They are far too big to trust.

I am quite sure that my leaving these tawdry enterprises behind has struck terror in their hearts, and somewhere on their campuses there are teams working frantically to restore my confidence in their good intentions. After all, it is well known that octogenarian males are their target audience.

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Profiles

April 22, 2026April 22, 2026jono55

Travel along the South Rim Road of the Black Canyon National Park is now permitted. Each year the Park Service closes it from November to mid-April. Most winters it can then be used as a cross-country ski trail, but this past year the shortage of snow afforded limited opportunity for skiing. We were eager to see what is happening in the burned-over areas of the park, and there is a short hiking path at the very end called the Warner Point Trail that is a good workout as well as offering some great views of the canyon.

Our daytime temperatures for the next two weeks will be in the seventies, which is perfect for these seasoned bodies we’ve inherited, which tend to wilt when the temperatures rise into the eighties and above. At those times if we want to exercise outdoors we do it mid-morning.

Robin and I drove the road on Monday morning and hiked the Warner Point Trail. The lack of rain showed up in a dearth of flowers and the shriveled leaves of some usually showy plants. There are no water sources up on the top of the mesa, so the resident deer have to descend half a mile to the Gunnison River to get a drink. Although the plants on the mesa are tough and hardy, they don’t waste their resources in times of drought. No water … well, let’s just wait before we toss out those blossoms, shall we?

The burned areas are starting their recovery with grasses, so that monotonous blackened landscape is becoming a greener one. The dark skeletons of the Gambel Oaks are the most obvious reminders of what happened here last year. They appear as twisted and ghostly shapes, little more than brittle stalks of charcoal that snap off at ground level.

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Hasten Down The Wind, by Linda Ronstadt with Don Henley

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The Spring brings out black
reminders of where trees had
stood for centuries

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If there is a Satan, a personification of the worst that life has to offer, his grating chuckle must be everywhere in the White House these days. Decay and rot are everywhere you look. Cabinet officers tumble like dominoes and are replaced with unskilled nobodies. The weaknesses of government by tweet can no longer be covered up. The lies pile up in the corridors as stacked obstacles to any chance of progress or redemption. The only successes, if one wants to call them that, are the fortunes being amassed by the greediest of us all.

Here’s a photo of the dust cover of a famous book, written by John F. Kennedy. It told the stories of a handful of people in politics who made very hard choices, sometimes costing them their political lives. Choices always resolved matters in favor of the common good.

If Kennedy were to write it today, the dust cover might look like this.

Unless the cancer that is Cluck and his administration is removed, there is only one destructive direction that America can move in. The past year of one disaster after another has shown us what we must do.

Who will be the courageous ones who step forward to lead? Where will they come from? How will they preserve their integrity in the melée that is to come?

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Blue Bayou, by Linda Ronstadt

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I watched the most touching documentary on Sunday evening. It covered the life of singer Linda Ronstadt. A life devoted to music. A woman who, rather than climb over the bodies of competitors, enabled their successes time after time. Someone who was given a gift of voice and then disease took it from her. Talent. Generosity. Courage. What’s not to love and admire?

The name of the video is Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice. It is available on Amazon Prime Video. Here’s a trailer to whet your appetite.

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You’re No Good, by Linda Ronstadt

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Over the years my thinking about how to handle feelings has undergone evolution and devolution. Growing up in a culture of men don’t cry or show emotion it was a natural fit to emulate the John Wayne approach. Stuff ’em was the watchword. At some point I was introduced to the concept that embracing anger and grief and being softer rather than hard were preferable stances to take in life. Life provided a set of tableaux providing ample opportunity to practice whatever I thought I should be doing at any given moment..

But I was never able to completely shake the idea that sometimes, if one was going to be a professional,* you just had to stand up and wade through whatever was presenting itself. To allow oneself to melt down when there was work yet to be done … I could never fully go there. Someone had to “be strong,” and if the need arrived, I saw myself as that someone. Firemen do go into burning buildings. Physicians do face situations that are stressful and injurious to their souls. Parents do need, on occasion, to be the grownups in the room.

I have made a lot of mistakes in the past and there’s little reason to believe that I won’t continue to do so. My heart literally aches when I think back on some of those episodes, and I wish that I could say that I have learned from each one, but nope, that ain’t true. In so many of them, the teacher appeared, but the student wasn’t ready.

*professional: give it any definition you care to

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Brontosaurus medicus

September 25, 2024September 25, 2024jono55

We have two veterinary clinics in Paradise. We’ve used them both in our time here. In the past two years each of them has sent notices that they would not be available for after hours or weekend emergencies, but recommended that we take our ailing friends to a veterinary emergency room in Grand Junction, which is a 75 minute drive. And that is in the summertime. There will be times in winter when it will be impossible.

My reaction to both announcements has been the same. I was steamed. WTF! That is absolutely not okay! What sort of dismal dedication is this? They are assuming little more professional responsibility than a clerk in a C-store.

If I had tried such a move when I was working as a pediatrician, this morning I would still be scraping off some of the tar and feathers that the parents in my practice would rightfully have applied to me decades ago.

I realize that my way of looking at how a doctor should provide care, whether that is for animals or humans, makes me a relic, a dinosaur. Other members of my generation of doctors feel much the same way as I do, but we are steadily becoming extinct.

Soon there will be no one who remembers that at one time in our history if you became ill after hours, there was a good chance your own physician would answer the call. Or at the very least, someone you knew.

Got a sick pet here in Paradise after 5:00 PM? Get in the car and don’t forget to fill up the tank on your way out of town.

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I Don’t Need No Doctor, by Ray Charles

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From The New Yorker

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Robin and I are signing up to do phone banks for Harris/Walz. We are also attending a meetup online to educate us on Project 2025. We are also contacting our precinct chair regarding “How can we help?”

Doing what we can to avoid waking up on November 6 feeling pole-axed and guilt-ridden with four more years of you-know-who in front of us.

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Rereading Lonesome Dove for the … I don’t know … fourth time. Never gets old. Renews my connection with a fascinating part of western history, with Larry McMurtry’s extraordinary portraits of ordinary people doing what today would be considered heroic deeds, but in their time were just life. I am reading it at a measured pace, savoring the writing and the story.

It’s the book that has caused me to annoy many, many people because I can’t keep myself from urging them to read it. Most of those I have thus leaned on have totally ignored me, sniffing that “it’s a cowboy book.” (Well, yeah, like the Old Testament is only a Hebrew travelogue.) It’s all in how the tale is told, and this is McMurtry’s masterpiece.

As a bonus, when you finish it you can watch the television series made from the book, which was one of the best miniseries ever. Nominated for eighteen Emmys and won seven.

No less an actor than Robert Duvall considers Augustus McCrae his favorite of all the roles he’s played. But I’m not going to beg you to read the book. That would be annoying.

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From The New Yorker

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Daily I try to find sane and thoughtful voices in the clamor that is today’s world. If I take CNN’s headlines at face value we are facing several Armageddons at once, it’s only a matter of chance which of them inevitably crushes us under its hammerblows. The New York Times tries to be more restrained, but is always a day behind, when a news cycle lasts 20 minutes.

It is dizzying. I really don’t want to go back, even in my imagination, to the days when news traveled slowly enough that you might miss Abraham Lincoln’s funeral train going by if you weren’t paying attention. But something between that and this morning’s clamor would be nice.

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Here’s a tune for the elephants of the Middle East, the Israeli and Arab leadership, who are trampling on the lives of their peoples. Who are using their ingenuity and power to kill and maim in both ancient and novel ways.

Masters of War, by The Staple Singers

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This post is too heavy by far, so far. How about a bit of Swedish vs Norwegian humor?

Sweden and Norway were playing a soccer match.
About 20 minutes into the game a train rolled by and blew its whistle.
The Swedes thought it was half time and left the field.
The Norwegians scored 5 minutes later.

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“Out of the minds of babes oft times come gems.”

An old saw with much truth tucked inside. I thought of this when listening yesterday to a Neil Young song from 1974 entitled On The Beach. One perfect line went “Though my problems are meaningless, that don’t make them go away.”

My situation exactly.

On The Beach, by Neil Young

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