murals – Little Home In The Valley

Awright, here’s my opener for today. I have no idea who this woman is, where she is, and I could care less. She is one of the truth-tellers out here on the open range, and they are all over the place if you look for them. This is a saving grace of an otherwise gruesome time, the chance to meet people you admire and band together with them spiritually if not actually.

(sorry about the enormous size of this video, I can’t find a way to make it smaller.)

The ugliest among us are running the show today, but there is some serious reckoning coming, and I hope they all have a good retirement plan … they are going to need it. The man who killed Renee Good has become famous. I saw a video where his name was painted on the side of a van, along with details of his crime. I don’t know where he lives but many do, and his life has certainly changed since he pulled that trigger a few days ago.

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One of the pleasures of daily life here in Paradise has been the proliferation of murals on the bare sides of buildings on the Western Slope. I love it. In Montrose some enterprising artists have painted a bunch of new ones recently. No fanfare, just one day you look up and see something beautiful or interesting where there had been nothing. When it is warm again, I’m going to walk around town and photograph a few to share with you. Until then, here’s three examples.

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My coffee perfumes
The kitchen at four a.m.
Without being asked

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Our more typical and much colder weather this week has prompted some Canada geese who were thinking of setting up permanent homes here in our pleasant valley to get up and go. Large flocks were seen overhead yesterday, moving south.

I love the fact that most of the planet keeps to its ancient rhythms and movements while we humans seemingly cannot find our way. It’s not that there aren’t maps for us to follow, they are plentiful and available everywhere. What is our problem anyhow? Was it when we left the caves that things went sour?

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Both Robin and I are a little under the weather this week, with annoying coughs and just enough malaise to make us cranky. Since I was in my sixth day of this grayness and going about the house mewling about not feeling hungry and maybe we could just skip supper and all, Robin put on her big girl pants and went to the store for … chicken soup.

Two big 22 ounce cans of Campbell Chicken Noodle Soup appeared in the kitchen. I can’t remember the last time I had this particular food. Of course I make a decent chicken noodle soup myself, with fresh herbs and the whole show, but this stuff … a connection with the earliest food memories that I have.

Into the kettle went the can’s contents, along with an equal amount of water. That’s it. Apply some heat and you’re done. Campbell’s knew their people back in 1934 when they first put it on the shelves. Make it affordable, make it easy to cook, make it tasty. All of those things were in evidence last night.

One thing. There was almost a complete absence of chicken. From the bits I came upon here and there as I gobbled down my two bowlsful I would estimate that one could make at least three hundred gallons of soup from a single bird. (I am not complaining, just observing.) But no matter, this morning I already feel slightly better, and I look forward to finishing off the leftovers today.

[BTW, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup was also introduced in 1934, without which Lutheran churches all over Minnesota may not have survived in those early post-depression days. The sheer number of church-basement casseroles using this soup as a base, along with some egg noodles and a little tuna fish … astronomic.]

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There are days when I
Am no more than my anger
In wintry discontent

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Robin and I rented and watched the movie Spartacus this week. Originally released in 1960, it was hugely successful at the box office, took hard shots at the right-wing witch-hunts that were in progress in our country at the time, and was a young Stanley Kubrick’s first big-budget film.

It was the only film directed by Kubrick where he did not have complete artistic control. Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted at the time as one of the Hollywood Ten. Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the screenwriter of Spartacus, and President John F. Kennedy crossed American Legion picket lines to view the film, helping to end blacklisting.

Wikipedia

Soooo … a politically astute film filmed by some of the best technicians in Hollywood with an amazing cast, one that won four Oscars and whose creation and showing were surrounded by important off-screen dramas. Not too shabby an origin story.

The only problem for Robin and I was its running time … 197 minutes. This substantially exceeded our attention spans, which typically clock in at around 120 minutes. Therefore we watched it over two successive nights.

The film also had one of the strangest last scenes I’ve ever watched. A combination of horror and inspirational in the frame at the same time. Odd indeed. One felt two wildly disparate emotions simultaneously.

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Last night Robin and I watched the most unusual videotaped interview. It is apparently the first of a series, and it is presently available on Netflix. We thought it beautifully done. The title of the program is Famous Last Words. It was recorded in March 2025, and it had been deliberately planned that it would not be shown until after the interviewee had died. Throughout the hour there were numerous references to death, what it meant to her, what it would mean to those she left behind.

‘Twas a really remarkable summing up of the life of a really remarkable woman, Jane Goodall.

At one point she was asked if there were people that she didn’t like. Without missing a beat she listed several of them, and wouldn’t you know it, they were several of my least favorite people in the world as well.

Throughout the interview she sipped whiskey from a small and elegant glass, and she wanted us to know that she wasn’t an alcoholic, but that there were days where the cumulative insults to the planet called for a lot of sipping.

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Jane Goodall

Such a good program, such an interesting premise for a series.

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Leire Gotxi is a young woman who has made a career so far of. busking on the streets of London and posting videos of her performances. Her YouTube channel contains a surprisingly large catalog of covers and originals.

This one came to my attention quite by chance and well, it’s sharing time once again. This is a lovely cover of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.

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One of Colorado’s members of Congress, John Hickenlooper, is thinking of leaving the Senate and running for governor of the state. He is a Democrat, has actually been good for Colorado over a longish career now, but I hope that I don’t have to vote for him. He is not a “wartime consigliere.”

So far this year, he has largely been absent from the fray, posting perfunctory statements here and there. But we definitely need more vigorous prosecution of resistance to the Cluck regime than he is providing. We need warrior-statesmen, with emphasis on the warrior part.

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It’s the End of the World As We Know It, by R.E.M.

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Every once in a while somebody brings up the 25th Amendment to the Constitution as a way of removing Cluck from office. If he was deemed incapable of performing his duties, there is a mechanism for such removal, even if it is against his will.

One problem is that the mechanism requires that the vice-president and members of his cabinet must do the initial voting for removal. There is a built-in issue here, because it is this very group of incompetents that is part of the evidence for his incapacity.

This is Section Four of the amendment and has never been invoked.

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It’s uncanny how sometimes we will read of some new creature and then step out the door where BAM, there are two of them right on the lawn. Or think of a person who then proceeds to call you before you can even put the thought to bed.

That’s how I felt this morning, which was Robin’s birthday. Mine was just a week ago. But today I ran across a cassette which, if I can believe the identifiers on the tape, was recorded in the Garden of Eden. There is reason to believe that Adam and Eve set it up in secret, hoping to catch God out in some ungodlike pronouncement that they could use in the future. Politics was born right there.

But I digress. Here is part of the transcript, you can make up your own mind as to whether it sounds believable or not.

Adam: Birthday? What’s with that? Just this morning you told us that we were going to get old and wither and wrinkle and die. And for what? Stealing one apple. And now you say that each year we have to remind ourselves of our impending doom by counting off the trips around the sun.

God: Don’t come whining to me. We had a deal and you broke it. I can’t say “Oh Well Adam No Problem”, just go on as if nothing has happened and enjoy your eternal life in a body that will always be beautiful. If I let you two off the hook, one by one all the other animals will want special treatment.

Adam: It was all Eve’s fault, you know. I was happy with just the grapes and pomegranates. Didn’t need that apple at all.

God: You were in charge. You had the responsibility.

Adam: She’s not trainable

God: Part of the penalty

Eve: Hey, I’m right here! I can hear everything you say. It was a fake rule. The snake is probably a plant of yours. I agree totally with Adam. It’s bad enough to be mortal without having to talk about it every year in front of others. There is no good side to all of this.

God: Okay … because there is some truth in your feeling of being mistreated, I have created cake.

Adam and Eve: Cake? Wot … ?

God: I’ll send some over. You’ll like it.

And God saw that it was good, and Adam and Eve saw that it was good. And then God rested … with a small slice and some good black coffee.

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On our last trip to Grand Junction I snapped these photos in a single short alley. Murals are very popular out here in western Colorado, even in the smaller towns. This set has a definite indigenous flavor.