Tag: music

The Orcs Of Congress

jono55

A preface to this post. One of my personal mythic/reality/dreaming/challenging places is the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. One puts a canoe in the water, steps into it and away from the land, and all is changed. You are on your own, responsible for your own life in a way that is restorative to the worn and tattered thing that urban living makes of your soul. If something breaks … there is no one to fix it but you. I have been lucky enough to visit this beautiful area more than thirty times. It is as close as I have ever gotten to the numinous.

So I am definitely taking this next affront personally. The Republicans just voted to overturn a ban on mining near the Boundary Waters. It’s another one of those billionaires versus the public good scenarios. This time it’s a Chilean conglomerate whose operation would threaten this area, whose beauty I frequently exploit to brighten the pages of this often colorless and meandering blog.

So this is a kind of particular mine that is a copper sulfide mine, and what happens is copper sulfur rock is brought up to the surface, hundreds and hundreds of millions of tons of it. And when sulfur is exposed to air and oxygen – oxygen and water, which we have a lot of in northern Minnesota, it basically turns into sulfuric acid, and then it flows into the watershed. This mine is literally a mile or so from water that drains directly into the Boundary Waters and then into Voyageurs National Park.

NPR All Things Considered: Newly approved mining in Minnesota may threaten waterways of a beloved nature preserve

I will repeat a challenge here that I made more than a year ago. When was the last time anyone heard or read about a mining company who did not damage the environment no matter what they might have said in order to be permitted to do their work? Basically it is a sad but oft repeated story, trite in its details. Rape and run. Do the damage and then let the people try to get satisfaction in order to repair the harm.

This next paragraph is for those who have read (or seen the movies) of the Lord of the Rings saga. In my view the Republicans have made themselves into Orcs wearing tailored suits. Manifestations of the worst of human impulses, seemingly no longer capable of doing anything resembling good works.

Too strong a statement, you say? Too melodramatic? Just answer this question: where is your data? I certainly have mine in abundance. Like I said at the beginning, this is personal for me. In this instance it is the GOP taking the baby out of the rear-facing car seat and tying it to the front bumper. Little good can come from such a maneuver.

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Her Love Was Meant For Me, by Richard Thompson

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All of the trails on the South Rim of the Black Canyon National Park are now open to hikers. We are cautioned not to leave the paths and tramp around on what has always been a fragile landscape and is now even more so as it is attempting to recover from last year’s fire. No problem for us. We’ve always respected those rules. If the large numbers of human visitors were allowed to roam everywhere they wanted to it wouldn’t take long for a great deal of the beauty of those trails to vanish underfoot. This trail system is moderately strenuous for us in a few places, but overall is just a great workout in a dramatic setting. We are eager to add those hikes to our attempts at maintaining something like fitness.

Really, when I hit the pillow at night I can almost hear my aerobic capacity falling away. There is nothing for me to gain by avoiding exercise but to acquire more than a passing resemblance to Jabba the Hutt.

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Speaking of his Abominable Huttness, I remember what a large deal it was when the first Star Wars film was released. Among the hordes that went to see it were son Jonnie and I. I think we went three times, and the following Christmas there were several Star Wars gifts with his name on them. It was a moment for him. One of Jonnie’s traits was that when he liked something, he dove in headfirst. Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings books, and the rock groups Kiss and Led Zeppelin were all recipients of his interest and devotion. If he was a fan of something you did, he bought all your stuff.

Jabba was one of the major heavies in that first movie, where his nasty physical appearance and poor personal hygiene were contrasted with Princess Leia’s lightly-clad attractiveness in several scenes.

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Buckle up and get ready for a two-minute assault on your memory. The unforgettable theme music.

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Someone came to the White House Correspondents Dinner last evening and fired shots, killing no one. He has been apprehended. As of this morning we don’t actually know who might have been his target, at such a dinner there are so many who have that potential. It could have been Cluck, a member of his cabinet, or a reporter who incensed the assailant for reasons obvious or obscure.

Deciding to go up against the Secret Service at a black tie event is not the hallmark of a mentally stable person. Perhaps he was sticking his head out of the metaphoric window, as Howard Beale suggests in the video below, and it didn’t make any difference to him who he killed or injured. Just to do something … . The world we occupy today tends to bring out the crazy in a person.

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Shoot Out The Lights, by Richard Thompson

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Profiles

jono55

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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Can’t Find The Snow For The Fog

jono55

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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Scratching On Rocks

jono55

There is a CNN article which is calling this a “freakishly dry spring” in Colorado. Here in Paradise so far this year we’ve had 1.6 inches, which is less than half of normal, and our “normal” is already on the dry side. We are tentatively watering our brown lawns and hoping for the best. Unless a drastic change occurs I am looking for water restrictions by early summer.

But of course this has nothing to do with climate change, which is a well-known hoax, according to our clodpoll of a leader. He encourages us to use more petroleum products, turn our air conditioners way down until ice forms on the glassware in the kitchen cabinets, and in general behave in a way which all but guarantees that next year will be worse.

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No Expectations, by Jim Campilongo

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I’ve been reading Tracing Time, a book about the rock art of the Colorado Plateau, written by Craig Childs. While I thought that I knew a little about the subject, it is by now obvious that I am little more than a tabula rasa where such drawings are concerned. The excitement of acquiring new knowledge is in the room every time I pick it up, and that doesn’t happen every day.

All of the books I’ve read by this author are collections of stories, rather than learned recitations. He puts what he wants you to know into some character’s mouth as that person is talking to him over a low fire on a winter campout in the middle of a mountain. And after you are done shivering at the thought of sleeping on bare rock in freezing weather you realize that now you have an answer to a question that only an hour ago you didn’t know enough to ask.

Where we live here in Paradise is on the edge of a treasure trove of such art. The Fort Knox of pictographs and petroglyphs, if you will. Robin and I have explored a few of the closer collections and it only makes us curious about others. On one of our hikes that we’ve taken several times, the turnaround point is a boulder covered with such markings that is right on the trail. Unfortunately its accessibility means that some of the art is stuff like: “Rhonda + Derek.” I’ve made the assumption that such carvings are not ancient and indigenous in origin, but I suppose that there could have been a romantically inclined couple back in the year 1000 with those names, although I strongly doubt it.

One of the recurring images found in these treasuries is that of handprints. The artist dips a hand in the paint and presses it to the stone. Like a signature saying I am here. I am always moved by these. Even more than by the drawings of warriors or mountain goats. I am here.

My answer is Yes, I know you.

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My plea to anyone out there in Washington DC with an ounce of courage and patriotism is to push the damn button. Push it hard right now.

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If it weren’t for the fact that people are dying and the huge amount of physical destruction involved as well as the economic disruption worldwide, the Iran War That Is or Isn’t A War could almost have been written by Gilbert and Sullivan as one of their comic operas. It is being conducted through whims and tweets and asides at press conferences by a draft-dodging coward and a puffed-up religious dimbulb who was once a minor officer in the National Guard. A horrible joke of a war, but a joke nevertheless.

Any member of our armed forces who dies in this conflict is a life that has been wasted. The billions of dollars that have been spent already – thrown away. When you put buffoons in charge this is what you get.

Even if we toss Cluck out tomorrow and are able to put an end to this tragic chapter in American history, there is no overnight getting back our national honor, prestige, or claims to leadership. We have allowed ourselves to become a murderous third-rate country in the eyes of the world. Or perhaps fourth-rate, who knows? Post-Cluck we will have to start at the bottom and work our way up for a generation before anyone can begin to trust us again.

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Each of us
one face in the crowd
One nose pressed
against the window
One body marching
Watching

One witness out of millions
who say Enough!
We place ourselves
Between the helpless 
And the oppressors 
We are implacable

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You can find much written about the origins and meaning of this beautiful song. But when you listen you will probably find your own message, as I do. And that message may change from one moment to another. Because when you listen the second time you are not the same person as the on the first audition.

There is that very old saying that “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” When I first heard it, I thought yes, of course, the water flows past and changes constantly. Later on I realized that the man changes as well.

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Joyful Journey

jono55

Living in the Land of the Mad King forces one into a sort of unreality mental bubble. Cluck does daily what would have brought down any other President in my lifetime. Or in the history of our Republic. He remains in office through the complicity of 95+% of the political party that put him there in the first place. This larger group has completely given up on what is good for the country and the rest of the world and focuses only on what will please their diseased potentate and keep each of them personally in office. Even thinking about them disgusts me and makes my food taste bad.

So down the road when His Rabid Imperialness finally succumbs, and he finally lies insensate on the floor of the Oval Office surrounded by the jackals who have kept him in power, remember that we need to extirpate the whole snarling lot of them. Root and branch, my friends, root and branch. This cannot be allowed to happen again.

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Could We Start Again, Please, from Jesus Christ Superstar

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A few posts back I mentioned briefly that I had just discovered that I harbored a malignant growth. Since then there have been many worried days, but now there is a happy resolution to report. There are cancers that are extremely difficult and there are those that are merely annoying. Two days ago the investigations finally revealed that I have the merely annoying kind. With regular maintenance examinations I will live until I unlive from some other catastrophe, such as a piece of the Space Station falling on me, or gluttony, or … you get the picture, I think. So, no more on this topic.

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Robin and I are now viewing the last year of the series The Gilmore Girls. The level of the writing has done pretty far downhill, and the latest episode “jumped the shark” when they placed two main characters in a faux Paris just so they could stare longingly into each other’s eyes while the Eiffel Tower glowed beyond their window. The series has always been entranced with the hyper-wealthy, and now there are Lorelei’s parents (hyper-rich), Rory’s boyfriend (hyper-rich), and Lorelei’s new husband Christopher (hyper-rich). We are beginning to watch merely because we’ve already put in so much time that we are morbidly curious about what will happen in the last episodes.

But we will stick it out, looking to the smaller characters for traces of what made the series charming in the first place.

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On Thursday, Robin and I rendezvoused with Allyson, Kyle, Justin, Jenny, Kaia, and Leina, at small spa outside of a minuscule town named Moffatt Colorado. The name of the spa is Joyful Journey. It was the sort of place where you could camp in a your tent or recreational vehicle, or you could choose to stay in a yurt, motel room, or a teepee.

Meals were included in the price of lodging, as were trips to take the waters. Everything about it was pleasant and low-key and would’ve been totally relaxing if it were not for the fact that there was a wind that blew continuously all day and until well after dark at 30+ miles per hour.

After walking around in a gale like this for a few hours, one feels totally beaten up by it and we didn’t stay up late to chat as much as we would have ordinarily. We basically walked from sheltered space to sheltered space as much as possible, but at evening the breeze relented in time for us to watch a beautiful moonrise. ‘Twas a good place to spend a day or two or even more.

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I Don’t Know How To Love Him, from Jesus Christ Superstar

Robin had taken a liking to one of my old poems and posted it on our bulletin board in the kitchen. When a friend noticed it, read it, and then commented favorably without knowing who had written the thing, I could almost feel my ego puffing up. It was written forty years ago, during a particularly stressful part of my life, when living in a temporary world of pain and disruption were producing some changes in me that forced my hand. I let out the poet.

That is my pattern. When things are going well, no poetry. When the feces has hit the ventilation device, out comes this person who writes two kinds of verse. Good ones and sappy ones. By now the sappiest have been long ago purged, and it does give me pleasure to occasionally go back through the remaining few, remembering the chaos that surrounded me when I wrote them. At this distance I am in control, when I wrote them that was often not the case. Today it is safe for me to read them.

I have been a fool many times in my life. Not always the same sort of fool, mind you, there is some variety there. In AA I hear often the phrase “I have no regrets” and I think … I could never say such a thing. Of course I have regrets, principally surrounding the hurt I have done others, especially my children. I wish fervently that I had behaved differently so many times, but at this distance all I can do is to try not to repeat the same mistakes.

Though today my former Christian beliefs have undergone quite a bit of transformation, I have not lost touch with them. Easter is where it all comes together. Some of the season’s trappings are amusing, with the bunnies and the chicks and all, but underneath the dressing up in one’s finery and the ham dinners and the parades there is the most solemn of all the stories. The concept of sin, the sacrifice, the ideas of death and resurrection. Powerful.

This poem was entitled “Easter Sunday,” and was written in 1986, when my first marriage was flying apart at Concorde speeds.

A cycle  races through the countryside
White lines blur beneath the wheels
Gyroscopic forces hold us up
And keep our bodies from the road
I could have used a similar device
To guide me these past years
Whenever I was off the track
The wheel would right itself
Resisting that careen down
A painful and a witless path

No such luck was mine, or hers
We two pitched back and forth in time
Upon a vehicle already downed
I only heard the sound this year
A drawn-out grinding wail
As blood and bones of what we were
Were strewn along the road

People do survive these things
But never as they were before the crash
A part of me was left there on the ground
To dry and harden in the sun
The part of her that cared for me
Had hardened too
Out there on the road
Somewhere in territories west

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Everything’s Alright, from Jesus Christ Superstar

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Magic In The Machines

jono55

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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One Patch of Grass

jono55

The somber tone of the last couple of postings is because I am a bit more somber these days. I recently lost an animal friend who was very dear to me, and anyone who says that cats can’t be warm and attentive and affectionate … well, they lack knowledge and experience, because in a way cats are like mirrors. If we come at them with kindness and interest it is reflected back manyfold in our direction.

It’s like the Buddhist tale of the monk sitting at the side of the road with his begging bowl. A traveler came by and asked “What sort of people live in that village up ahead?”

The monk answered “What sort of people live in the village you have come from?”

“Well, they were spiteful and empty-headed and living with them was a struggle from dawn to dusk. I couldn’t bear their company any longer.”

“I think you’ll find the people in this village are much the same.” And that traveler continued on.

Later, another pilgrim came to where the monk was sitting along the road and asked the same question .

“What sort of people live in that village up ahead?”

“What sort of people live in the village you came from,” was the reply once again.

“They were the nicest folks you could ever want to meet. Always friendly and sociable, and if you needed help all you had to do was ask and several of them would step forward.”

“I think you’ll find the people in this village are much the same,” the monk said.

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The Grateful Dead song Ripple is an all-time favorite for me, ever since I first heard it on the soundtrack of the movie Mask. There are many cover versions out there, but I doubt there’s a better one than this. Two women respecting the music and making it their own. I was completely charmed.

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No Kings 3 is just three days away. There will be massive displays of peaceful protest and solidarity in the great cities around the US, and we will have our own smaller version here in Paradise. Each day Cluck does something ugly that gives more people the motivation they need to get up and out on the street.

There will come a day when the only people who will stand with him will be a handful of the MAGA cult members. They are a nasty bunch, and it is ultimately not possible to keep a group like MAGA together that is completely based on spitefulness, fear, and hate.

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The snake cartoon above says it all for me. Whatever the Republican Party once was it has ceased to be anything but a gaggle of Cluck enablers and lickspittles. Here in Paradise the politicians from that party are far too often of the dunderhead variety. Last summer a brand-new Republican county commissioner was successfully recalled for rampant stupidity and boorishness of the first order.

When this inept national regime falls, I could care less what happens to the present-day GOP. I would, however, very much like a respectable and honorable conservative political party to arise. Although the Democrats seem to finally be realizing that they are standing waist-deep in a manure lagoon that they helped fill because of fecklessness in their role as an opposition party, they seem to require a worthy opponent to keep them on their toes.

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The daily news is so rife with horrible that it is easy to get off to a bad start in the morning, when you are being served with what seems an endless procession of humans behaving badly. But if I walk out the door and talk to people about their lives, I find a different principle at work. One that is so very powerful and enduring. Love, actually.

There are parents sacrificing for their children and children sacrificing for their parents. There are people working selflessly for peace, the environment, and in the struggles against disease and ignorance. There are friends helping their comrades across streets when their strength is failing. People who leave anonymous gifts at the doors of the less fortunate. The courage, compassion, and determination of the people of Minneapolis who refused to yield their freezing streets to the thugs of ICE.

When I grow up, I want to be like those folks.

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This one is for RLC

You Take My Breath Away, by Eva Cassidy

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Inner Children

jono55

I can remember too few things from my early childhood, but some of the clearest memories involve feelings. I remember when a puppy who I had bonded with was killed by a passing car on an elm-shadowed Minneapolis street. The implacability and irreversibility of the loss were things I could not process. How monstrously unfair it all was. For a time I made a mental fetish out of the puppy’s short life, and each day for weeks my thoughts swung back and forth from the crushing sense of loss to brief episodes when I forgot for a moment or two about grieving and simply enjoyed something. Anything. Then when I realized that I was actually living a “normal” life I would feel a terrible sense of being unfaithful to the absent pet. Slowly time took over and life began to ease as those feelings took their proper place, a place one could live in.

The oscillations between nonacceptance to guilt to nonacceptance to guilt ad infinitum in a landscape of misery and self-pity … I recall them very well. So this week when I found myself doing the exact same thing eighty years later I was not completely surprised. My skills of compartmentalization are much better now and I recognized that when the episodes of chest pains and flooding silent tears come suddenly I know that they are not permanent states but are of grief that will ease with time. And the guilt of surviving and being happy once again will also alchemically change into a deep respect and appreciation for the life which had been shared.

But the grieving is still an awesome force. It is the price to be paid for loving something or someone if that precious bit of life is taken away. It’s not a case of me over here and my late friend Poco over there. Our lives had become intertwined, grown imperceptibly together over nearly two decades so that his death has been a ripping away of a part of myself. An amputation. A violent lessening.

And just as when I was six years old and that puppy was killed, today I find myself crying out “This is not fair!” It seems that I don’t have to look far for my inner child at all. He is right here typing away at a Macintosh.

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Ashokan Farewell, by Priscilla Herdman

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We’re having 80 degree days this week, the forsythia are blooming hard and fast, and the fruit trees are following their lead. The stores that sell seeds and plants are already filling their shelves.

It is late at night and I couldn’t sleep so I took a cup of herbal tea out onto the backyard deck where it was a lovely 60 degrees. The slimmest sliver of a moon is nearly settled below the western horizon. The Big Dipper hangs right above my head. The heavens seem to be properly arranged. Kudos to whomever is in charge.

In the distance someone revs a car loud enough to possibly interest the local police, I don’t know. Maybe this sort of disturbance of the peace is one they let slide. Across the way from our house someone’s dog barks. Our cat Willow hasn’t come in from her evening rounds yet, nights like this one are just too interesting to her. So much night stuff going on.

During this afternoon I noticed a bunch of yellowjackets buzzing around looking for homesites. Time to get out the wasp traps. It is best if you can get them out early and catch the queens to shut down nests before they get started. Spring has sprung in full.

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Apple Tree, by Why Bonnie

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Our lives are like sweaters
Which are never finished
For as we add a row or two
Of length, to fit where we are now
A cuff or collar may unravel just a bit
And need repair

I think that sorrow is a time
When many rows are dropped at once
And slow replaced
The wind blows through the holes 
That have appeared for others
To appreciate

We stop, pull back
Repair enough to make it wearable
Then go on as before
All knitting
And unraveling
Together

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A Pillow of Winds, by Pink Floyd

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King Oscar

jono55

Well, we watched all 3.5 hours of the Oscar ceremonies on Sunday night. I was yawning by 2 hours, even though there were some entertaining moments scattered here and there. But hearing for the umpteenth time in my life about how important sound engineering is to movies has not made it interesting to me. Call me apathetic about the whole technical side of the business.

If someone has to explain to the audience why what someone else in the industry does is a big deal … well, maybe it isn’t … at least in terms of entertainment value. Of course the movie industry cares about those people and how well they perform but to most of the millions watching they are an interruption in the glittering fantasy we tuned in to see.

Why not break out the shiny beautiful people for an hour and a half, create a flashy program aimed directly at the mindless and drooling hoi-polloi (of which I am a charter member) and let those terribly important and worthy folks have their own separate, beautifully organized shindig. (BTW, I know that there already exists another such ceremony, I only suggest that it be expanded.)

Perhaps I am completely out to lunch here, but I shamefully admit that in the 70+ Oscar ceremonies that I have witnessed I can not remember the name of a single Best Cinematographer, including the person who won last night. Maybe, just maybe, there many other clots like myself out there in the audience who are the ones dropping out as the years go by.

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Travelin’ Riverside Blues, by Robert Johnson

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I went looking for why the ceremonies are called “Oscar,” and came away with the realization that no one knows, there are only attractive guesses.

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This is a sardine, and this is a story about them. They are a small, oily fish that lives in the ocean, which is a long way from where I live in Paradise. So basically the only sardines that I encounter on a daily basis are found in cans, headless and stacked in neat rows.

When I was a boy and spending time on my grandfather’s small farm in southern Minnesota, sardines and pickled herring were nearly always available. Because Grandpa Jacobson liked them, and he was one of my major heroes, I liked them, too. But when I became an adult, and tried to introduce others to the beauties of sardine-ness, I nearly always failed.

Tinned sardines available to Midwestern and Mountain landlubbers are basically headless, but otherwise they are presented as Nature made them. You take a fish out of the can and you eat it. On a cracker or a slice of bread, perhaps, or all by itself. It has a smoky flavor and very small soft bones and goes down quite easily. It also tastes like a fish. For some reason, a fish that tastes like a fish is disturbing to many Americans, and if you add that to the fact that the creature is being eaten whole, well … I long ago gave up my missionary work among the heathens in this regard.

Somehow over the last thirty years I have become a moderately overweight man, a state that I am now attempting to reverse for reasons of health and appearance. The turning point in my going from svelte youth to pudgy senior citizen was during a three-month stint at St. Paul Children’s Hospital where pediatric residents were given free and unlimited access to one of the finest hospital cuisines I have ever experienced. But that is another story.

Today a lunch of sardines on Wasa crackers is relatively low in calories and very high in calcium, protein, and those desirable Omega 3 fatty acids that nutritionists push at us at every opportunity. So I’ve added a few cans to my pantry. Robin doesn’t share my feelings bout these little finny things, but isn’t revulsed if I eat them where she can see me doing it, so our peaceful coexistence isn’t disturbed when I open a can.

I’ve added a photo of a can of King Oscar sardines for your education. These are the creme de la creme in the world of sardines. you can see that when you open the can everything is neat and tidy. They are uniform and uniformly delicious.

If you choose a budget brand, do not expect that they will look like this, but rather they will appear as diminutive victims of gang violence, irregular and thrown into the cans with little ceremony. They taste just as good, however, and are as good for you as the loftier-appearing variety. Usually at half the price.

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Travelin’ Riverside Blues, by Led Zeppelin

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Leonard Pitts Jr. writes so well … I’ve been a fan for decades. So when I found this piece on Substack this morning that was even better than his usual level of excellence I had to share it.

Title of the piece? “The Fatal Incompetence of Donald J. Trump.”

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From the ridiculous to the sublime. The production number shown at the Oscar ceremonies. Ay ay ay, what beautiful things imaginative people can bring into existence. There is a great line early on in this video, and that is: “You keep dancin’ with the Devil … one day … he’s gonna follow you home.” I will only say Amen to that, Brother.

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Writing Gibberish And Proud Of It

jono55

I just did something that I try to avoid, and that’s look at a long-term weather prediction. Long-term meaning anything beyond 48 hours. But the weather apps are fearless, and they will routinely take a shot at the next two weeks or even longer periods. Which is how I discovered that the high temperature this coming Friday is predicted to be 87 degrees here in Paradise.

Zounds … I say … zounds! There is still much of March to come! A handful of the trees in town are beginning to leaf out. Any minute now the forsythia will be blooming. The beaches will soon fill with tourists.

Merde! Wait a minute! There are no beaches here in Paradise! I speaketh gibberish!

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Every Day Is A Winding Road

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I recently had to admit to myself that I’ve never given Sheryl Crow proper respect as an artist. Which is odd, since I’ve liked almost everything she has recorded. Fortunately for Ms. Crow, there are millions of people who are smarter about that than I. My favorite album of hers so far is entitled Sheryl Crow and Friends, which was recorded live in Central Park in NYCity in 1999, and I’ve provided three cuts from it.

She is one tough lady, having survived breast cancer, a brain tumor, and Lance Armstrong.

When Crow wanted a family and a reliable man could not be located, she adopted two boys who are now young men. A strong move for a single woman in the entertainment industry. Reminds me of this feminist poster from way back then.

Leaving Las Vegas

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Cartoons to warm the heart of just about anyone with an intact soul. Love the George Washington quote.

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It’s less than two weeks now until No Kings 3. If you are anywhere near our corner of the world and wish to poke your metaphoric thumb into the figurative eye of the MAGA cultists, come and join us on March 28. We’re going to have a band, a good long honk and wave session along Highway 550, and some appropriate (but brief) speechifying. It’s shoestring grassroots resistance at its best.

There will also be a contest based on the theme: Where the hell is Congress? The winner will be anyone who can tell us the location of this important and woefully impotent body of representatives.

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If It Makes You Happy

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Saturday one more of my letters to the editor was published in the Montrose Press. I was a little surprised because it is the crankiest one yet, and there have been less fiery missives which have not seen the light of day in that newspaper. Here it is.

As we enter yet another phase of our national Trumpian nightmare and invade yet another country, the consequences of which could be very bad indeed, I find myself wondering again how anybody could support such a man.  Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, should we?

  • Maybe they don’t know what a pedophile is
  • Maybe they don’t know what human trafficking is 
  • Maybe they don’t know what a felony is
  • Maybe they don’t understand what a traitor is
  • Maybe they can’t see grift and corruption as the enemies of democracy that they are … maybe they don’t care
  • Maybe they don’t have the imagination necessary to see the importance of living in a country based on economic and social justice and the rule of law
  • Maybe they haven’t looked up the meaning of the word degeneracy yet

So many questions come to mind. But one thing is clear.  If anyone supports this man and his cronies, they share the blame for the harm that is being done to our country and the rest of the world, and it is legitimate to make judgements as to their wisdom, their morality, and their fitness as American citizens. 

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Return to One Meat Ball

jono55

We are looking forward to watching the repopulation of the plants in the Black Canyon National Park. Readers will recall that last year there was a significant fire that torched much of the park, and has left us with fewer options on our visits. For instance, the campgrounds are closed, having suffered much damage to structures and campsites. The road down to the canyon floor at East Portal remains closed with no re-opening date set as yet. Concerns about rockslides and mudslides on this steep stretch of highway have kept visitors from having access to the Gunnison River.

But it is the plant life that I am interested in. The Gambel oaks and the serviceberries and the grasses and the lupines and the piñons … what are they going to do this coming Spring? Will they all come back? It’s a hard life for a plant up there, with rocky soil and scant water, even in good times. A story is about to unfold and I am ready to learn from it.

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One for My Baby, by Josh White

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The South Rim of the Black Canyon Nation Park has a single road of about seven miles in length that runs the length of the park. During the cold weather months the road is blocked off from the Visitor Center onward and becomes a cross-country ski trail. Each Spring there is a short period between when the narrow two-lane road is completely free of snow and when it is opened to automobile traffic. If you are lucky and can make it up there during that time, it is a wonderful and dramatic bicycle ride, completely un-bothered by cars. You have the road to yourselves.

You can ride your bikes the rest of the year, of course, but there is little in the way of a shoulder for much of the road, and there are few areas where cars can safely pass you, so they tend to pile up behind your bike and make you nervous. This makes for a lot of getting on and off the highway whenever possible just to let those frustrated drivers get on with their trip.

But that golden window is just about upon us when we have the trifecta of good weather, a dry road, and no cars. Can’t wait.

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Jelly, Jelly, by Josh White

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Robin and I have been using electric bicycles for the past four years, and really enjoy them. I don’t want to overplay the geezer card, but these machines really flatten the hills and enable us to take longer rides than we ordinarily would on non-motorized cycles. They only have two major drawbacks. One is that unless you are able to fork over more than about three grand for a luxo model you will be riding a heavier bike that weighs about 60 pounds or more. The second is that if you really want to cover a lot of ground on your ride you are limited to how far your particular bike will go on the battery’s charge. For the machines that Robin and I are using, the range is around 40 miles, depending on terrain.

The Optibike R22 Everest is presently  the e-bike with the longest range, boasting a 300-mile capacity (482 km) via a 3,260Wh dual-battery system. To acquire this technological marvel all you have to do is give the dealer something over $18,900.

I did give it just the briefest consideration but eventually decided against buying one, deciding that it was better for Robin and I to be able to eat.

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Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dyin’ Bed, by Josh White

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Josh White has been a favorite of mine since I was sixteen and first heard him sing One For The Road while I was sitting in my car and gnawing on a bag lunch on the University of Minnesota farm campus. At the time I knew nothing about him and his life, just being entranced by the voice and the guitar. Turns out that he had a fascinating life and played several important roles along the way.

White was in many senses a trailblazer: popular country bluesman in the early 1930s, responsible for introducing a mass white audience to folk-blues in the 1940s, and the first black singer-guitarist to star in Hollywood films and on Broadway. On one hand he was famous for his civil rights songs, which made him a favorite of the Roosevelts, and on the other he was known for his sexy stage persona (a first for a black male artist).

He was the first black singer to give a White House command performance (1941), to perform in previously segregated hotels (1942), to get a million-selling record (“One Meatball”, 1944), and the first to make a solo concert tour of America (1945). He was also the first folk and blues artist to perform in a nightclub, the first to tour internationally, and (along with LeadBelly and Woody Guthrie) the first to be honored with a US postage stamp.

Wikipedia: Josh White

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One Meat Ball, by Josh White

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There is a struggle going on right now between humans trying to do their best and humans doing their worst. The good in us will triumph, I am certain of that, but there will be hardships enough along the way to satisfy the most masochistic. And when those standing for compassion and justice and tolerance once again take the reins those virtues will have their moment for as long as we are willing to fight for them. For as long as we can remember that they are maintained only by constant struggle.

I recall when I first read The Lord of the Rings that at the end there were still bad guys out there, and definite suggestions that they would come out of their hidey-holes one day down the road and mess things up once again. It was part of Tolkien’s genius to see that comfort could be the enemy of vigilance, which always gave evil renewed opportunities.

He didn’t give me the unmitigated hopeful ending that I wanted. It pissed me off. Never mind that this good/evil cycle had already been repeated during my own time on the planet, I wanted the happy ever after. Eventually … but grudgingly … I forgave him for telling me the truth.

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A Sneak of Weasels

jono55

Brothers and Sisters, let’s have a moment together in a place where music and words of the Spirit and art and technology come together. Brought to you by those whose ancestors were very definitely here first.

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My journey into the history of the Native American peoples began with this book. It was in the library of the father of a high school friend of mine, and it was my first exposure to the knowledge of the cruelty and treachery involved in the early dealings with Europeans.

It was to be the first time, but far from the last, that I felt shame for crimes in which I had no direct part.

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Well, I won’t be watching Cluck’s State of the Union Tuesday night. Why not? Let us count the ways. To watch a pedophilic dotard malignant narcissist rapist idiot read from the teleprompter to a fawning audience of weak-minded sleazeballs … I know that this sounds too attractive to pass up, but I just don’t have two hours that I am willing to completely toss away.

Instead I will watch the People’s State of the Union, which sounds like a lot more fun. It’s being put on by the Meidas Touch Network and Move On.

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I have my own candidates for a new term I’ve discovered, but if you ever have need of it, be my guest.

One of the names for a group of weasels is a sneak. How perfect! Any ideas where the phrase a sneak of weasels might come in handy?

I have several.

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Johns Hopkins is doing a great deal of research in psychedelics, and part of that studying is keeping tabs on people while they are taking full transformative doses. It seems to be important that a nice quiet place without disturbing activity is necessary for a trip to go smoothly. To this end, they have developed the “Johns Hopkins Psilocybin Research Playlist.” It is nearly all classical pieces, and the tunes are grouped like this:

  • Opening/Settling
  • Deepening/Emotional Peak
  • Resolution/Integration

It’s all slow-moving, a little mournful at times, but listening to it does induce a pleasant ‘I believe I’ll just become part of this chair’ sort of feeling. One suspects that the researchers might have taken such care in the selection of the music for their own benefit, for use on their personal psychopharmacologic journeys. This playlist is just under five hours long, so you know that somebody did a bit of work.

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I have an upside-down schedule as far as sleep is concerned, primarily because our old friend Poco keeps really odd hours, and can summon a caterwaul capable of waking the dead if he chooses. Last night, for instance, he was walking around just doing his normal vocalizations and although it woke me up I had hopes of not having to leave the bed. Suddenly he went full throat and there was no avoiding getting up and finding out what was needed to make him happy. Or, if not happy, at least quiet.

But once I am up I have the privilege of watching the night stories being told outside my home. Sometimes it is the red fox padding up the street. Sometimes it is a young neighbor getting home at a scandalous hour. Sometimes it is a surprise wind strong enough to move the big trash containers out on the street waiting for the morning pickup.

Sometimes, although very rarely this winter, it is a snowfall with those big flakes drifting through the beam of the yard light out back. Much of what you find in this blog is written at those hours. I love the night, at least when safe in the house. There are enough mountain lions out here in Colorado to make one cautious, and if you check out the menu at Cafe Puma you will find that humans are on it.

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We started out today with a work by Indigenous people, we’ll close with one as well. I have never seen anything quite like the performance of this woman, Snow Raven. I found it boundary-moving for me, to realize that there is so much more that is possible than I knew.

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Viva Los Lobos

jono55

Poco is not as happy these days as he once was. He’s nearly 20 years old, has arthritis, cataracts, and some variety of kitty neurologic decline. He is very slender and less steady on his feet. At times he seems to take fright from things I can’t see.

But he sleeps well, still goes outdoors when the weather is clement, takes care of his litter box needs without requiring any help from Robin and I, and l.o.v.e.s to be brushed. His appetite suits his activity level, and he is not fussy about what we serve up.

It is not hard to imagine that his fragile situation could change fairly quickly. An injury, a stroke, a serious illness … any of these could put the thumb on the scale for an old guy like him, and I have wondered … when does the subject of euthanasia become part of the conversation?

If you search the internet for help with these sorts of questions, you aren’t much smarter at the end of your queries that when you started. And don’t even bother to ask “Is there some way I could help my old friend along if I ever decide that it is the kind thing to do?” Because you will only be apprised of the dogma that you should let your veterinarian decide such matters and manage whatever medications and treatments are needed.

I bristle at this a bit. If I were to follow that advice here in Paradise I would have to bundle Poco into a carrier (which frightens him), load the box into the car and drive for ten minutes to the vet (which terrifies him even more), and then hand him over to relative strangers ( very alarming) for an IV line to be placed. Then a barbiturate would be pushed in and that’s all she wrote.

All of this unpleasantness reeks as far as I am concerned. If the need arises, and I hope that it does not, why should a pet’s last hour be so distressing? Surely there are less traumatic ways to take one’s leave.

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Mas Y Mas, by Los Lobos

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I am letting the political cartoons tell most of the story for a while. Our present government is a monstrosity, contaminating everything it touches, and I’ll get back to railing at it again one day. But some of these drawings, my my my, don’t they go straight to the heart of things?

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One of my favorite posters of the anti-Viet Nam War years was this one. I thought it struck just the right balance – the heart and the head at the same time. For me, much more effective than any tirade. I was able to identify without too much trouble that the original was created by a woman named Lorraine Schneider.

Two by two inches — that was the space allotted to artist Lorraine Schneider when making work for a miniature art show at New York’s Pratt Institute in 1965. In that small space, the artist, printmaker and peace and civil rights activist found a message that filled whole worlds.

That artwork, titled “Primer,” features the sentence “war is not healthy for children and other living things” in childlike script, juxtaposed with a black and white sunflower. It was made in response to the Vietnam War, but like other great works of art, has found a life well beyond that moment in history …

Kveller: Lorraine Schneider

Substitute “ICE” for “war” and you have something perfectly applicable to today’s news headlines. In fact, I have done just that for, what else, a button.

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On a wander along the Uncompahgre River last week I was reminded of how little fishing I’ve done over the past year, and how easy it would be to get out there and annoy some fish to no end. I don’t catch very many, but it must be very distracting to the fish to have me bouncing artificial lures of various sizes and colors off their heads. The heads of perfectly serene trout who want nothing more than to eat an occasional insect drifting by and who clearly know the difference between a real bug and a fake one.

But I love the rituals, the casting into tree branches and onto power lines, the regular insertion of sharp hooks into soft fingers while attempting to tie on a new fly. My angling experience has advanced to a whole new level since there is now a tiny hole in my waders, and I am too cheap to buy a new pair. An hour in the stream produces one cup of ice water in that right boot, and from then on it is a race between how much of a cold wet foot I will tolerate and how many fish I am catching. Usually the discomfort wins out.

No matter. Most waders will eventually leak, whether they are the bargain basement variety or a primo set made by Simms or Patagonia. Sun and storage and time are enemies of whatever is used to keep the water out. Part of the game.

BTW, I’m still using the Tenkara style of fishing, rather than a traditional rod and reel combination, and I enjoy it very much. The rod breaks down to fit into a 20 inch case, and with that and a line or two and a handful of flies you are good to go. The whole rig is so easy to throw into a car or a backpack as it is small and almost weightless.

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Emily, by Los Lobos

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Valentine’s Day came arrived and departed. We actually have a pair of chocolatiers here in Paradise, whose services are heavily utilized on this holiday every year. These artistes love their work and will fill your ears with information about every single piece you buy. I made my purchase on Friday and hid the box in a safe place overnight in the garage.

These are not the sort of concoctions you jam into a pocket and munch without thinking as you walk along. They are tenderly taken from the box one at a time and slowly savored. It is not only women who are vulnerable to the mysteries and charms of the cacao bean.

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We have a new restaurant in town, named La Michoacána. It is an ice cream shop, with a few twists Robin and I sampled the ice creams last Friday, and they were very good. While we were eating out treats, we notice a couple of things. One of the menu items was nachos, and here’s how that goes. You take a bag of Doritos or Tostitos, slice open along one side, top to bottom and then pour the queso and extras right into the bag. Then you take your prize and a fork and sit down to stuff yourself.

The other interesting thing was that all of the posted menus were in Spanish. Totally. No English whatsoever. It was Bad Bunny deja vu. We loved it! Takes some cojones to do that in a red town in a red county where ICE might have more supporters than they did in Minneapolis. But for me, one sweet day I’m heading back for one of those nacho bags, and I will report to you all about it complete with any medical complications that might develop. With photos.

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In the Land of Zoom

jono55

Robin and I attended a Zoom conference this week on taking risks and staying safe. These might seem contradictory goals, but … not really. When authoritarianism descends on a society, there are two basic choices. One is to accept the darkness, and the other is to promote light wherever one can. There is no 100% safety in either choice.

If a person chooses the latter path, they will stand out like candles burning in a darkened church. This would be taking risks, but doing nothing brings its own set of penalties. One of the speakers tossed out a phrase that stuck with me, and still is echoing around my brainpan three days later. The phrase? Joy is coming. That’s it. So simple.

But it helps me focus on the why of resistance. It’s not hard to get disoriented when the insults and assaults come at you as rapidly as they have this past year. Like dried morsels of cowflop fired from a Gatling gun. It’s also easy to become disheartened, until you hear someone start talking about joy. About finding some of that precious substance in every day. Small bites. The hand of a friend or a song that cuts right through the noxious fog emanating from Washington DC. “Joy is coming” resonates because those in the resistance believe that we will eventually succeed, and what a day that will be!

The only questions are when that will happen and how many more tragedies like the murders of Renee Flood and Alex Pretti will take place before it does. The deaths of these two people are drawing much attention because of the their brazenness and the so-easily disproven lies of the administration. But last year there were 32 deaths of men and women held in custody by ICE. Thirty-two! If these ICE goons act so brutally when out in the open, one wonders what horrors are happening inside their walled-off detention centers.

However … joy is coming. Do not wonder if it is. Do not forget what needs doing.

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I recently learned that there is a frontline warrior in our own family. I have a granddaughter who lives in south Minneapolis. Yesterday her mom emailed me this update on that young woman’s daily reality:

“I thought you all would like to know that ***** (and *****) are on the front lines of the Mpls protests. They are trained in safety/medical and carry rapid response gear. ***** has witnessed two abductions and a car ramming by ICE. They have organized grocery delivery for 8 families. They set up a Go Fund Me for their neighbors too afraid to work. At her job, ***** works directly with low/no income brown and black staff and interns under deep stress. She is struggling with keeping a hopeful and helpful attitude. But doing ok. There are more heroes than demons in Minneapolis!”

Warms my heart and gives me so much hope. I am sending every good wish, every scrap of metta that I possess to her and all those who are doing such good work for the rest of the country out there in Minneapolis.

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Ahhhhh, once again, Bruce Springsteen takes his art to the streets, this time those of Minneapolis. His heart has always been with the people, rather than the princes of the world.

And one more thing, my friends. On Friday Bruce went to Minneapolis and played this song on the stage of the First Avenue, a landmark bar and music venue. The First Avenue was where Prince played whenever … .

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A story. I was living and working in Hancock MI, which was at that time a town of 4600 souls located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. One evening a woman delivered a healthy baby boy in the local hospitl, but I was called immediately because the child and mother had a problem with Rh factor incompatibility in their red blood cells, and the child was affected. I won’t go into detail on the mechanics of this disease but what happens is that the child can become severely jaundiced, to the point where its brain can be permanently damaged if the jaundice level gets too high. Lab tests done on the infant shortly after birth revealed that an exchange transfusion was indicated, the earlier the better.

Pediatricians of that era were nearly all experienced in doing this procedure, and I went to talk to the parents of the baby about what needed to be done. The problem was, and I knew this before I entered their room, was that they were members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses church, which forbids transfusions of blood of any size at any age. I told the parents that my duty was to safeguard the health of the child, and in this case there were no medical alternatives to what amounted to exchanging the child’s blood with that of a donor.

The parents refused to allow me to do the procedure, I told them that I would then contact legal authorities to attempt to override their wishes. By now it was getting pretty close to midnight, so when I called the judge on duty to procure such permission, he was a bit put out at me at having wakened him, and proceeded to instruct me in why it was not a good idea to wake judges from a sound sleep. None of this improved my already low opinion of the legal profession, but I listened with all the humility I could muster to his tirade because I needed something from him that could not wait until morning, and I finally got it. Now all I had to do was to round up the blood and equipment and personnel to do the transfusion and get it done as soon as I could.

But while I was receiving advice on dealing with judges, there was another drama in play. The OB/Nursery area was immediately adjacent to the passenger elevators. The child’s mother, dressed in a nightgown, asked to be given her baby for a feeding. She then walked to the elevator which was being held open by her husband.

The door closed and the trio was whisked down to ground level and from there they walked quickly to the hospital exit, where a warmed car was waiting, being driven by a member of their church.

And off they went into the winter night. In effect, since the courts had just taken custody of the infant, she had kidnapped her own baby.

Down the hall I came still smarting from the judge’s lecture, and when the nurse told me that my patient had now disappeared, I … well … maybe the best characterization would be that I lost my composure. Pretty completely. My normal cool and professional demeanor was nowhere to be found. I ranted, I raved, I asked to be given the papers needed to file a child neglect report. And then I was informed of something I found even more unbelievable. The baby’s father had remained at the hospital after his wife had been driven away, and would like to talk to me.

He and I had an uncomfortable conversation where he repeated his belief that the transfusion would have caused irreparable spiritual harm to his son, and that was why they had acted as they did. He apologized to me for not following medical advice, but was firm in believing that he had done the right thing. I had calmed down quite a bit by the time he was finished, but I told him that I would be reporting him and his wife to social services for exposing the infant to possible great harm, and we went our separate ways.

Six weeks later I was working in my office when my nurse informed me that the family was now in Room 3 with their baby, for a routine well child visit. The child was still slightly jaundiced, but otherwise seemed healthy. One caveat was that if there had been neurological injury caused by a high jaundice level, it might not be detectable at such an early age, so I can’t say that I know the true end of the story, because that was the last time I saw the family or heard anything further about the baby.

And my new BFF the judge? Well, I always hoped that some evening when I was on emergency room call, he would be brought in with some painful malady or another (perhaps having been shot in the ass by Dick Cheney), and that I could have moved oh so slowly, and delayed over the longest time possible, to provide him with the comfort he needed. That opportunity never presented itself.

Petty? More than a little, I’ll grant, but can you recall any time that I claimed I was perfect?

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Another song inspired by the heroic uprising in Minneapolis, this time written by someone less famous but no less skillful, Marc Skjervem.

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May I Have This Dance … ?

jono55
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When the news is merde piled upon merde
what’s left to do but dance
shaking off those flooding tears
and dancing

Angel Dance, by Los Lobos

take your bad knees and your trick hips
and put them through their paces
dancing, forgetting nothing
while body blows are dealt to flooring
and rhythmic shoes and boots pound yesterday’s
unvacuumed mirk into resolve

Mary Jane’s Last Dance, by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers


dance like fools, like motes in sunlight
like lovers parting
dance for those whose time is up
their names pressed into ice and asphalt
dance for the Renees that were
and the Alex-es that are yet to come

Cosmic Dancer, by T. Rex

dance for kindness
dance for hope
dance for when you were
a child at a party
unbound, unaware, unafraid

When You Dance (I Can Really Love), by Neil Young


dance that good old Brownian motion
that you do when no one’s looking
dance for those who would but can’t

Dance Me To The End Of Love, by The Civil Wars


in the firelight
in the moonlight
in the floodlights

Dance the Night Away, by Van Halen



in the middle of a berserk world
why, look at us,
with tremors, rage and fear
we’re dancing

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Heroes

jono55

Something I’ve noticed recently out here in Paradise. The nearly complete absence of MAGA caps. For years they were one of the core items of Montrosian male dress. Why, on any trip to the grocery store I would see at least five men wearing them, and interestingly, they were mostly cross-looking senior citizens.

The same thing has happened with the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia , the stars and bars. I would guess that a decade ago at least five percent of pickups in town were daily flying these emblems of slavery and treason. While this might seem a small number, keep in mind that pickup trucks are the signature vehicle of our community. Five percent of a bunch is a bunch.

I don’t know the reasons for the decline, I just make observations. Those crabby-looking older dudes might just have died off of advanced constipation. The flag-waving yahoos might have actually taken a closer look at those banners and decided to be offensive in some less complicated manner. Either way, it is getting that much harder to easily identify the dim bulb segment of our community.

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Lord, this is good. Until today I thought no one would ever touch Emmylou Harris’ rendition of her beautiful song Boulder to Birmingham. Dead wrong is what I was. Here’s Jessie Buckley.

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The pickings were sooo good this past few days. Here’s a prescient prose poem from 2011. Honestly, how could we not see this coming? Terry Ehret did and put it down clear as spring water.

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Wade In The Water, by The Rigs

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ICE in 1933 (reverse metaphor)

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Heather Cox Richardson’s postings Letters From An American have been like flashlights, something to find your way with on darker days. On Martin Luther King Jr. day, Monday, she posted this beauty:

You hear sometimes, now that we know the sordid details of the lives of some of our leading figures, that America has no heroes left.

When I was writing a book about the Wounded Knee Massacre, where heroism was pretty thin on the ground, I gave that a lot of thought. And I came to believe that heroism is neither being perfect, nor doing something spectacular. In fact, it’s just the opposite: it’s regular, flawed human beings choosing to put others before themselves, even at great cost, even if no one will ever know, even as they realize the walls might be closing in around them.

It means sitting down the night before D-Day and writing a letter praising the troops and taking all the blame for the next day’s failure upon yourself in case things went wrong, as General Dwight D. Eisenhower did.

It means writing in your diary that you “still believe that people are really good at heart,” even while you are hiding in an attic from the men who are soon going to kill you, as Anne Frank did.

It means signing your name to the bottom of the Declaration of Independence in bold script, even though you know you are signing your own death warrant should the British capture you, as John Hancock did.

It means defending your people’s right to practice a religion you don’t share, even though you know you are becoming a dangerously visible target, as Sitting Bull did.

Sometimes it just means sitting down, even when you are told to stand up, as Rosa Parks did.

None of those people woke up one morning and said to themselves that they were about to do something heroic. It’s just that when they had to, they did what was right.

On April 3, 1968, the night before the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white supremacist, he gave a speech in support of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Since 1966, King had tried to broaden the civil rights movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. He joined the sanitation workers in Memphis, who were on strike after years of bad pay and such dangerous conditions that two men had been crushed to death in garbage compactors.

After his friend Ralph Abernathy introduced him to the crowd, King had something to say about heroes: “As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about.”

Dr. King told the audience that if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.

He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.

Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.

Wishing us all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026.

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Stepping back and looking closely at this post I realize that the quality of writing is definitely improved. That’s the good news. The bad news is … (sigh) … it’s because I did so little of it.

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In The Trenches

jono55

Minneapolis is, right now, the front line of the entire country’s resistance to our fascist government and its agents. Those freezing January streets filled with people and the sounds of whistles and flash-bangs … the thousands of smartphone recordings that have been made and the thousands to come that reveal ICE’s now-naked war on America. There can be no doubt about it after the events of this past week. If you don’t see it, you never will … not until it is your door that ICE is knocking down.

Minneapolis is my old home town, where I spent the first thirty years of my life. I know those streets, recognize those addresses, have walked in areas now lit by police floodlights. Renee Good was shot and killed six blocks from my childhood home. I will never not be a Minnesotan, at least in part. This morning I can’t shake the ridiculous idea that I should be there. That I belong on that line. What is ridiculous is that I would probably be a liability to the those involved in the struggle. Someone that needed tending rather than someone who was good at carrying torches or blowing whistles.

Maybe not. Maybe I could be of some help, but no matter. The line will come to Colorado one day, who knows … perhaps even politically red Montrose will see its share of conflict because the Cluck machine is neither blue nor red. It is out only for itself, serving its masters both visible and hidden. I don’t have to travel across the country to mount the barricades … that opportunity will come to me.

My grandmother would have said: “Bloom where you’re planted.” Good advice, that. I will do my blooming right here.

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Our streets come alive
Injustice quickening cold
Fury in our souls

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How about something sweet and temperate? One of the best voices of this or any other time. Eva Cassidy singing Autumn Leaves and making it hers.

Autumn Leaves, by Eva Cassidy

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Our local recreation center has been so successful in recruiting members that it is becoming more and more frustrating to try to use its equipment. So far Robin and I have been unable to find some sweet spot in the day when the crowd is thinner and the machines we use in our respective programs are free.

Being able to move smoothly between devices is an important thing for my own training regimen, since at the slightest delay I am prone to simply leaving the building and returning home. Home being any place that doesn’t require physical effort and bulging neck veins.

The perfect venue for me, therefore, would be a large hall completely furnished with the latest and most scientifically studied equipment, with small loveseats sprinkled here and there to rest between exercises … and no one else allowed to be present when I was working out. Bank presidents, governors, and one percenters of all stripes would be shown the door as soon as I appeared.

I know, I know, there are some obvious hurdles to be overcome, but why not dream?

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Another tune from Eva Cassidy, submitted by daughter Kari. Sublime. Cassidy died in 1996 of melanoma, at the age of 33 years. Such has been the respect for and appreciation of her gifts that there have been nine posthumous albums released. Nine.

One of those albums was with the London Symphony Orchestra. A cut from the album was this version of Time After Time.

The story of Eva Cassidy and the London Symphony Orchestra is a posthumous collaboration, bringing her acclaimed voice to a wider audience through the 2023 album I Can Only Be Me, where the LSO performed new orchestral arrangements for her classic recordings, fulfilling a dream she never lived to see due to her early death from cancer in 1996, with technology allowing her isolated vocals to blend with the full orchestra.

Google AI search

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Every once in while I see a film that reminds me why we need filmmakers and darkened theaters to tell some stories. Tales so well told that you know you are a different person when you leave the theater than when you came in. You can feel it. Yesterday Robin and I took in such a performance, when we went to see Hamnet.

It was a tale of love and grief and their inseparability. Wrenching. Soulful. Beautiful.

Wore us right out. To the point where we needed ice cream right away.

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There are many emotions that today’s troubles bring up for me, and I recognize grief among them. There is such a deep sense of loss when I read the headlines, see the videos, hear the spoken cruelties. No matter that this convulsion will be over one day, with the skies cleared and some sanity restored to public life.

I have lost a certain naïveté. Once I realized the sheer numbers of my countrymen who can allow and even support horrors to be visited upon their fellow citizens as long as it doesn’t touch them personally. Who believe that the killings and torturings and imprisonments and the orphans and the lost children are likely deserved punishments. No matter that my ‘innocence’ has been clearly shown to have been always a fantasy, no matter that I now work every day with people who share my convictions, a loss is still a loss.

Music, as always, can be a balm for the wounded spirit. Here’s a bit of that.

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Vigilante Man

jono55

When I go to the grocery store, I like to think that I am a knowledgeable shopper. I’ve received a smattering of nutritional teaching in medical school, can read most food labels without referring more than three or four times to an encyclopedia, and I can tell a parsnip from a carrot without fail.

But once in a while, serendipity takes a hand in things. Such was the case a few years ago when I was standing in front of the freezer case where the frozen pizzas were stored. Too many choices, thought I, and while some of the old brands that I recognized had memories of lackluster eating attached to them, I was willing to try them again, thinking “maybe they’ve improved in the past twenty years.”

When suddenly a hand was placed on my shoulder, and when I spun around to see where the assault was coming from I found myself facing a young man with wilderness hair, a full beard, cutoffs, and a t-shirt that really needed either laundry attention or to be discarded in the sort of bag one uses to dispose of nuclear waste. This unlikely oracle then spoke: “Screaming Sicilian, man, it’s the only way to go.” He then waited a moment without saying anything more, till finally I caught his drift and reached into the freezer to extract a Screaming Sicilian Supreme, and placed it in my cart. At that moment, he moved away and disappeared. I’ve not seen him since.

At first I was going to put the pizza back, but then I thought “Why not try it? What’s to lose?”

And it turned out to be the best frozen pizza ever. Within a couple of centimeters of being as good as a freshly baked one from the parlor down the street.

All thanks to that stranger’s exclamation: “Screaming Sicilian, man, it’s the only way to go.”

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Feel Your Love, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

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We’re finally getting some snow here in the valley. It started Thursday as those tiny flakes that might as well be raindrops because they melt on contact. It fell all day, mostly melting away as fast as it came down. At 5:30 a small group of people stood out in that snow/rain and held a vigil for Renee Nicole Good, who had been murdered by an ICE agent the day before.

Most of the candles being “lit” were LEDs and were thus invulnerable to the snow, but Robin and I had traditional candles that we’d purchased ten minutes earlier on our way to the vigil. Their tiny flames were threatened by each wet flake but never went out.

Some of Good’s own poetry was read, and many heartfelt things were said about the death of one of our comrades at the hands of a government thug. She had been doing nothing but non-violently protesting the unjustified and unconstitutional ICE occupation of Minneapolis. In our hearts those of us assembled know that there will be more vigils to come, with more empty chairs at family tables, before the horror passes. We know that the possibility exists that there will be a vigil one night where they say nice things about one of us. Such is life in a Cluckian country.

The ceremony was cut a bit short because of the unpleasant weather. Nearly all of us who were there were senior citizens who really should have been at home by our fires, not out on a Montrose street corner in danger of ‘catching our death.’ But it seems to be one of those odd paradoxes where the generation whose vision is daily failing is the one that can best see what must be faced. I like to think that we are blazing a trail that younger citizens can follow when it comes time to change regimes.

(BTW, I was proud of the Minneapolis mayor, who had used some colorful language at an earlier interview and when he was later asked if he wasn’t going a bit too far with his use of profanity, he answered that if we compare shooting a woman in the face for no reason with the dropping of an f-bomb … which gave the greater public affront?)

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Helpless, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

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Our cats don’t seem troubled by today’s politics at all. None of their habits have changed. None of their demands can be ignored lest they decide to rip open a sofa or forget where the litterbox is located. They trade purrs and snuggles for food and shelter and are content. As are we.

This snow that has fallen makes them think deeper before they venture out through the cat door to answer nature’s calls. They stare through the opening for a moment or two, and the expression on their faces is omigod … again? Were we not done with this?

One of the least lovely features of sharing spaces with cats and being responsible for their nutrition is a certain fickleness. A food that has been accepted for months or years is suddenly treated like it was nuclear waste and they walk away from it. A year from now that same dish of ‘toxic’ shreds might be just what it takes to make them ecstatic at mealtimes.

Now, the truth zone. I look at what I just wrote and realize that it applies to me as well. When Robin and I first got together she had two teenaged daughters still living at home. These three women had decided that the only meat that was safe to eat for any person who didn’t want to turn into a walking bag of suet was chicken. As a result, chicken was served at almost every meal but breakfast. After a few months of this, I had reached a point where even the mention of that medium-sized squawking bird was enough to provoke nausea and a near-seizure involving trembling of the extremities and paralysis of speech.

Once this trio was separated by time into three households and thus the influence of chicken monomania was broken, I slowly began to appreciate it as a part of a healthy diet. I can now hold a chicken sandwich without wondering where to throw it, and even occasionally order one in a restaurant without being forced or shamed into doing it.

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While I am on the subject of body weight, I am going to have to drop a couple of pounds. To my chagrin I have discovered that I have exactly the same BMI as the Pillsbury Doughboy.

What happened to me can be described by the following equation: mildly plump + Halloween candy + Thanksgiving poundage + Christmas poundage + less activity = all my clothes have shrunk.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more …

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Political cartoonists have never had such riches to work with. It is impossible for them to keep up with the daily misdeeds and outrages committed by Cluck and his gang.

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Ry Cooder has always been one of the good guys in music. This video is from 1973 and was originally shown on the BBC. Rings just as true this morning as it did then, and also as it did in 1940 when it was first recorded.

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On Saturday Robin and I drove to Grand Junction to take part in yet another rally, this time honoring Renee Good and more than thirty others who have died at the hands of ICE. An affecting bit of cold weather theater was where each of their names was held up by a member of the local Indivisible group. There was a moment where each name was read aloud to the assembled crowd, which numbered pretty close to 1000 (by our estimation).

The anger that these senseless and lawless acts of our federal government provoke was obvious in the expressions of crowd members. We were told to take that anger and let it be part of the energy we bring to our engagement, in whatever role we are playing.

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On the Road

jono55

It was noon on Sunday and Robin and I were lined up along Highway 550 as it runs down into Ouray from the north, protest signs in our hands. At times the breeze demanded a firm two-handed grip on the sign’s post. All told, there were 34 of us out there to show our opinion of Cluck’s mucking about in Venezuela.

But the amazing thing about the whole afternoon was that it was 58 degrees and sunny. In January. We had made plans to suffer for our cause in a whirling snowstorm, or at least a freezing drizzle, but nooooo, we were denied the opportunity to feel heroic. Instead, we basked.

As cars pass by, there are several types of driver responses that we have observed. Among them are:

  • The driver stares straight ahead and refuses to make eye contact with low creatures like ourselves
  • The driver extends a middle finger as a sign they see what we are doing and need to express disagreement
  • The driver revs his engine as loudly as they can to register contempt in an adolescent way
  • The driver gives us a vigorous thumbs-up
  • The driver honks joyfully
  • The driver waves happily

Overall the responses are more often positive than negative. We’ve noticed that we are statistically more likely to get a warm response from occupants of a Subaru than a pickup truck. (We noticed especially yesterday that the drivers of Land Rovers, and there were many, ignored us 100% of the time. Draw whatever conclusions you wish from this. I have my own unflattering opinions)

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We are watching the television series “Victoria,” which started out its life on PBS and is now on Netflix. It tells the story of Queen Victoria of England, beginning when she ascended to the throne at age of eighteen years. It’s a romanced version of her life, but still a great deal of fun. A very high-class soap opera, if you will.

I have only one caveat. Although Victoria is positively smitten with her husband Albert, I find his character as played is a wavy-haired pompous ass. It is irritating enough to make me want to toss pillows at the television screen when he goes on one of his broom-up-the-butt Teutonic rants.

Victoria, on the other hand, is played by Jenna Coleman, small but spirited. I never want to toss pillows when she is on screen.

There is a lovely soundtrack for the series , which I also have found captivating. (Mediaeval Baebes indeed!)

Victoria, the Suite, by Martin Phipps and the Mediaeval Baebes

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There are times when I am embarrassed for the media, especially that part tilting ever so slightly to the left. I count those among my friends, so it is especially hurtful to me whenever one of them begins to Rumpelstiltskinize on the outrage of the moment. This is where we have an event, say, like the kidnapping of the leader of another country after having invaded such country. These chatterers begin to try to turn straw into gold, postulating and pontificating in every direction about international this and international that but all they manage to do is to create an atmosphere filled with dusty golden fibers that dance in the wind they have created.

I would give an “A” and shout out a lusty “Amen, brother!” to any online ‘columnist’ who could turn their microphone on and say “You know, I don’t know squat about that, and neither does anyone else here in the room, so instead of droning on we will play some great recorded music rather than waste your time. I’ll be back when I have something to say.”

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You Pass Me By, by Lonnie Donnegan

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I ran across this post on Substack the other day, written by Sober Dude. Its title was: A Dozen Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Sobriety. The writing was warm, filled with good humor, and told some truths I hadn’t thought about in years. Especially #1.

#1. You’re about to have a shocking amount of spare time. Drinking is a full-time job. Planning it. Hiding it. Recovering from it. Apologizing for it. Thinking about it. When you stop, entire hours appear out of nowhere. Whole evenings. Weekends. Empty space. At first, this feels like boredom. Or restlessness. Or existential dread. It’s not. It’s opportunity without a syllabus. Fill your schedule early. Walks. Meetings. Gym. Writing. Coffee with humans. Structure isn’t prison—it’s scaffolding. You can decorate later.

Sober Dude

A couple of decades ago when I hung up my drinking duds for good … there I was, blinking in the full light of day and wondering … now what? All of those hours I had previously spent walking around in general anesthesia were staring me in the face and it was going to be forever before I could go to bed. And, BTW, I thought, what does one drink when one doesn’t have access to _____________ ? (You may fill in any of the following: whisky, gin, vodka, beer, stout, ale, wine, sherry, cordials, Listerine, vanilla extract, et al)

While some of these choices may seem trivial or obvious or even ridiculous to the unaddicted, they are quite real, and I can tell you that from remembered experience.

So if you know someone that you care about who has recently put down their glass and seems a bit at loose ends, you could send this link to them. It’s kind of a love letter, really.

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For What It’s Worth

jono55

Although celebrating New Year’s Eve quietly without Señor Ethanol anywhere in view rarely gives us those colorful stories to tell, we are content.

What we did do is drive to Delta CO and take a left turn out into the rural, looking for the resident population of sandhill cranes that live there all year. And we found them, in groups ranging from a dozen to fifty individuals, all feeding in picked-over cornfields. If we added them all together I would say that we saw more than five hundred birds in all. At times they were only a few yards from the car as we pulled over for closer looks.

Marvelous birds. Stately movements, smooth plumage, with that striking prehistoric voice of theirs. When new birds were coming in to land with their wings set, the scene was one of slow-motion grace, carrying serenity to the observer.

After this satisfying period of bird-watching we dropped into a restaurant in Delta and ordered some Navajo tacos that were … just okay … but which still qualified as solid comfort food. By now it was full dark for the drive back to Montrose, where we watched a couple of television programs until the call of a warm bed could not be ignored.

See, I told you, not colorful at all. But here I am, typing away on New Year’s Day. No hangover, full memory of the preceding evening’s events, and no new amends to make. Life is good.

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I dunno, maybe not everybody gets off on the stories behind the songs like I do, and truth be told, there aren’t a whole lot of tunes whose history even I will pursue. But beginning back in the late 60s I began singing along with For What It’s Worth. It was at a time when every day’s news was filled with tales of protest and fires and marches and shootings and responsive brutality. I listened to the lyrics and took it for an addition to the literature of that time.

Now, it turns out that it was a protest song, but not about the Viet Nam war or the national unrest dealing with civil rights, but something else. Here’s a bit of explanation from Wikipedia:

Stephen Stills was inspired to write the song because of the Sunset Strip curfew riots  in Los Angeles in November 1966, a series of early counterculture-era clashes that took place between police and young people on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California, the same year Buffalo Springfield had become the house band at the Whisky A Go Go . Local residents and businesses had become annoyed by how crowds of young people going to clubs and music venues along the Strip had caused late-night traffic congestion. In response, they lobbied Los Angeles County to pass local ordinances stopping loitering, and enforced a strict curfew on the Strip after 10 p.m. The young music fans, however, felt the new laws infringed upon their civil rights. 

Wikipedia: For What It’s Worth

Sooo, civil rights, perhaps, but on a narrower scale. No matter. For me, in my ignorance, its message was easily applied to those larger theaters of unrest.

In my mind I am now applying the lyrics to today’s political situation. And the fit is nearly perfect. A really good song like this doesn’t go out of style but can be recycled in new ways, new places and times. Why is that? Well, child, because we human beings keep making the same mistakes over and over would be my answer.

Here is Buffalo Springfield singing the original version, from 1966.

As you listen, think about the invasions of our cities by Cluck’s armies, about ICE’s depradations being visited upon innocents across this country. Think about a national health department made up of quacks which is promoting unscientific health practices using stuff they just plain made up, stuff that is killing people at home and across the world. Think about … we could go on and on. There’s something happening here for sure, and there is very definitely a man with a gun over there.

Here is a lovely cover version by the Del McCoury Band, from eight years ago.

BTW: just in case you didn’t know the origin f that original group’s name, here is the Buffalo Springfield steam tractor.

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I’ve been doing this thing, this blog, for nearly twenty years. I’ve gone through three software changes during that time, things that I accepted only when there was no choice. That’s my uneasy truce with change … resist as long as I can, then going along with it when the feces is just about to hit the fan.

I archive an entry for a couple of years, and then delete it. This was my deal with myself, to create something that was the verbal equivalent of a Buddhist prayer flag. To hang out there in the wind and rain and freezing weather as thread by thread was teased out to drift away, leaving less and less behind. Eventually to vanish.

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Of course, I can do this because what I write is so perishable. If there is meaning in it on a given day, that meaning is for the day alone. A man like Tolstoy writes for the ages, I write for the forenoons. And in twenty years some of what I believed so strongly at the time is in the dustbin today. My body is certainly going the way of the prayer flag, why not my thoughts as well?

At any rate, this blog is mounted on WordPress, which has been kind enough to ask me to change only once. I refused, of course, because there was an out. A back door I could use. I could maintain the legacy theme if I called it “customizing.” Perhaps one day WordPress will message me one morning and tell me that I am no longer worth their trouble and would I please choose one of the other fine themes that they offer? When that moment comes I will move on to the new with what grace I can muster. And some grumbling, spread with a veneer of profanity.

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So now the Soprano family has taken over the territory of the Corleone family. Criminals fighting among each other, while ordinary citizens stand blinking in the searchlights and the bomb flares. Just another day in Cluck’s perverted version of America.

A couple of tunes come to mind on after yesterday’s ugly news.

Lives In The Balance, by Jackson Browne
Bullet the Blue Sky, by U2

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50% Less Cluck

jono55

We are finally getting a taste of winter here in Paradise. Temperatures are down in the teens at night, although snow is still playing hard to get here in the Uncompahgre Valley. Last weekend we were supposed to rendezvous with daughter Allison in a small town named Rangely, northwest of us about three hours. But we dropped those plans when a snowstorm of about four inches came into the forecasts. Rangely is in a lonely part of the state, and services are thin up there for stranded motorists. Taking into consideration that my whole thrust in travel for the remainder of my life is to not become a stranded motorist in a lonely area in the winter, we cancelled and stayed right here in good ol’ Montrose.

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It’s New Year’s Eve and we have no plans. It turns out that senior citizens often have no plans for New Year’s Eve, so we are not alone in this. The raucous and often tipsy parties of the past have evidently lost their luster, whether one is in recovery or not. Staying up until midnight to watch a mechanical ball fall in New York City seems a scant way to spend one’s time. We are aware of the change of the years, of course, it’s just that wNewhen the ceremonies are over, there you are. Take away the calendar and December 31 is just like January 1. Not one problem or opportunity had changed one jot or tittle.

There are many New Year’s Eve parties that I would like to forget but the vagaries of memory keep them on file. Those are the ones where I learned what alcohol can do to the brain, stomach, and one’s behavior. I will not go into details, in the unlikely case that children might be reading this.

But one that I do remember in a mildly fond manner is the millennial change, 1999-2000, when we stayed up to see if the world came, not to an end, but to a colossal cluster-freak as all of the computers on the planet lost their minds. Mercifully that did not happen, but there was a good lesson in the fact that those geniuses who set up all those programs that we depended on didn’t have a clue as to what was going to happen at midnight 1999 because they hadn’t coded proper time changes into them. The geniuses turned out not to be gods, after all. Strangely reassuring.

The last New Year’s Eve Party we personally threw was more than fifteen years ago. We had several couples over and it was very nice but we found that by the time that the magic hour had rolled around everyone had left for the comforts of home and their own warm beds. By midnight every single one of the seasoned wastrels at the party was fast asleep, including the hosts.

And yet, here I am feeling all well-wishy and hoping that you all have a warm and lovely new year celebration, and a 2026 with 50% less Cluck in it.

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So Much Trouble In The World, Lucinda Williams with Mavis Staples

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Our national Department of Justice is moving right along developing its own variety of Newspeak. As of today, the definition of domestic terrorist includes just about anyone who is doing something that President Cluck doesn’t like. To the Attorney General, this definition seems tidy and is flexible enough to suit her. She knows that eventually they will run out of immigrants to abuse and be on the lookout for new victims, so creating a sizable pool of them in advance is a necessary strategy.

It pretty much goes without saying that our friends in the Indivisible organization will be on the naughty list. Almost everything this disreputable and seedy bunch does is deemed undesirable by the Cluck regime, especially their annoying insistence that the government ought to follow the Constitution in its actions. Cluck finds this document way too confining for a creative gentleman like himself, so he has tossed it into the bin and has the Department of Minions at work on a new one which will be out in Spring. Rumor has it that in the NEW CONSTITUTION the President is to be called GOD OF ALL THINGS, and worship services are to be held continuously.

Stay tuned.

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There are a thousand voices out there trying to tell the Democratic Party that business as usual isn’t working at all, and that their keepin’ on keepin’ on brings to mind the old definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

What those thousand voices haven’t come up with yet is a clear statement of purpose for the party they hope to enliven. I couldn’t help notice that the infamous Project 2025 that the Republican white-power-faux-Christian nationalists came up with gave them a real headstart once Cluck was in office. All they had to do was hand a page to each henchperson along with a sledge hammer and tell them to go to work.

Every four years at the national conventions it has been traditional for parties to draft a platform, but nothing like Project 2025 had come along before. So … what if the Democrats came up with a Let’s Be Gettin’ Down To It 2028? A clear statement from a party that hasn’t completely lost its mind and actually has clearly stated goals which include working to benefit the people who get things done. Something you don’t need a doctorate in political science to understand.

The Democrats can’t afford to wait until 2028 actually arrives, but should be hammering out their proposal right now. Or else why should we respond to those incessant calls for donations that they send out?

Donate to what? The same old same old? No thanks, guys. I’d rather fold that money into paper airplanes* and see how far they would fly in the San Juans on a breezy day.

*N.B.: The bill in the graphic is a C-note. This graphic was taken from the web, and is somewhat more generous than a typical donation of the writer would be.

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(My favorite cartoon du jour)

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Magnolia, IMHO, is magnificent. My favorite of Lucinda’s.

Magnolia, by Lucinda Williams

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The Fragrant Bowl

jono55

My cooking skills, which I have now spent many decades perfecting, are … sorta okay. If the subsistence level of chef-craft is a score of 2, and this means that you can reliably serve food that will not sicken your guests, I am perhaps at a 4, maybe a 5 on a good day (on a scale of 10). By the amount of time I spend talking about food preparation you would expect a much higher score, else why am I daring to speak about it at all? My problem is that I truly enjoy messing about in the kitchen, even if the output is not always legendary.

It’s very much like it is with my poetry, or my prose-writing. I can clearly SEE the enormous gap between myself and a Leo Tolstoy or a Robert Frost in those areas, and yet I enjoy doing what I can do very much. So I’m thinking that makes me a chef de peuple, rather than a chef royal. With a smile on my face and a Michelin 0.000005 star to boot.

Remember way back in time when I told you that my favorite meal, the one I would ask for on the eve of my hanging, was one of bread, soup, and cheese? It still is. But not just any old loaf, lump, or bowl, nossir.

I would be looking for a crusty loaf of bread, a crumbly wedge of cheddar or gouda cheese (the kind with a flavor that makes your eyes roll back in your head), and a soup that has already filled the kitchen air with amazing aromas all afternoon and now quivers in the bowl in front of you, with here and there a shred of carrot or potato peeping above the broth?

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I love making soups, especially those that force me to drag out the seasonings that I use so seldom that dust has collected on the caps of their bottles. I can dice and slice and chop all afternoon, watching small piles of onions and potatoes and celery and carrots rise in front of me. If I am careful, there is now a 99% certainty that I can do this prepping without lopping off and adding parts of my own body to the mixtures. (If you come to my home for dinner, just ask me to show you my hands. A complete lack of Band-Aids should reassure you on this subject. You might also count the fingers just to be certain).

My favorite soup recipe? There is no such thing. That honor is divided between so many as to be meaningless. My favorite so far this cooler season? That’s an easier question to answer. Last week I made Hungarian Mushroom Soup . Robin and I spooned up our portions and then shamelessly licked our bowls and spoons clean. It’s that good. I came across the recipe many years back and the soup has never failed to inspire.

I provide here the stovetop directions and the Instant Pot version of them.

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Low Low Low, by James

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I don’t ordinarily just post others’ photographs, but this one caught me and held on. It was taken in Yellowstone National Park by photographer Tom Murphy. The title given was “bison at 35 below.”

What extraordinary animals these are! I have seen them by the thousands driving through the Black Hills of South Dakota over the years, and have stopped hundreds of times to admire them.

(I have no photos of my own like this one, and I never will. Because at 35 below zero I would be quivering indoors and wearing anything warm I could get my hands on.)

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One For My Baby, by Josh White

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Mark Twain was a man of so many parts that I didn’t know about at the time I first read about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Later in life I ran across a bit of his writing so startling that I had trouble reconciling it with the humorist I thought I knew. But Twain was vigorously opposed to war, and wrote The War Prayer, which I now recommend to those of you who know of him only as a teller of amusing tales.

Like I said, it was startling.

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MUSHROOM NEWS

A reminder from the state of California that unless you are well trained in identifying fungal species you should not eat them. Some twenty-odd persons were stricken when they ingested death cap mushrooms, with fatalities.

Amanita phalloides is the most poisonous of all known mushrooms. It is estimated that as little as half a mushroom contains enough toxin to kill an adult human.  It is also the deadliest mushroom worldwide, responsible for 90% of mushroom-related fatalities every year.

Wikipedia: Amanita phalloides

When I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where its forests were a sort of wild mushroom paradise, I learned how to safely recognize a half dozen species that were safe to eat and were delectable as well. There were many more species that were delicious as well but were difficult to pick out from the unsafe ones, and I was advised not to take a chance on them.

My teacher taught me this categorization, which I have kept in mind all these years even though I no longer go wild-gathering for fungi.

  • Safe to eat but inedible
  • Safe to eat and tasty
  • Sickeners – those which made one briefly ill, often with beaucoup vomiting, but not lethal
  • Killers like the death caps, which typically did not make one feel ill for several hours, and by that time one began to have symptoms one’s fate was pretty much sealed

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A group of hikers in New York state decided to combine walking in the Catskill Mountains with ingesting “magic mushrooms” containing psilocybin. They were, need it even be said, young men in their twenties, one of the least cautious subspecies of humans in existence.

Eventually they had to be rescued because they had lost their way. Instead of following the clearly outlined trail, they made the group decision to travel in a straight line back to their car, which included crossing a bridge that one of the members of the party could see but could never get them to (and which did not exist).

This episode falls into the category of Type 2 fun. (It might be Type 3 for some people, depending on how embarrassing it would be to admit what an idiot you’d been.)

  • Type 1: enjoyable both at the moment and in the retelling
  • Type 2: difficult or uncomfortable while you are doing it, but can produce great stories to relate afterward
  • Type 3: no fun when occurring, and you don’t want to talk about it later

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Frankie and Johnny, by Lonnie Donnegan

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The button picture today is of the monarch butterfly, which has become a symbol to many immigrant communities. The butterfly migrates freely between Mexico and the U.S.

The artist has incorporated images of a family moving cautiously within the wings.

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Shinola

jono55

There are days when it is hard to begin to tell tales from my simple sort of life, when each day’s assaults on decency, morality, and just about everything I regard as the glue that holds things together is so incessant, it really has the character of a nightmare. One of those where you know you are still sleeping and hope someone wakes you up pretty soon … .

If it weren’t for my working with our Indivisible group here in Paradise getting out of bed in the morning would be a lot more difficult. But I have regular contact with people who are decent, unselfish, honest, and trustworthy. Their goals are largely the same as mine. To rid our country of this blight and re-establish our democracy. Not to go back to some old golden days, but to set in place a structure that allows and encourages us to move forward in the job of working toward a country which matches its promises.

These folks are willing to take their un-ease and translate it into works.

That’s what I find in our meetings and events. Ordinary people who can tell “shit from Shinola*“ and are not afraid to take some heat in speaking out. Although we live in what has come to be called a “red” city and county, we know that not everything “red” is awful. Not everyone who is a conservative is a bad guy. Among them are those who want exactly what we want but have different views as to the best way to get there. They are not filled with hate and vituperation. They are not grifters. They are not MAGA fools. They are potential allies.

Eventually I hope that these variant streams will join together, recognizing that we have a common enemy in the Cluck regime, and that any progress toward ideals we hold in common means that there is some serious clearing away to do before we can get back to constructive squabbling.

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WARNING! METAPHOR ALERT!

in South Dakota, where I used to live, there is a place where the silt-laden Milk River flows into the Missouri River. Where they meet you can easily see that the two streams are still largely separate because of the difference in the color of the water. But go a few miles downstream and it is now just one unified stream, a bigger and perhaps better Missouri.

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Memphis in the Meantime, by John Hiatt

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At an AA meeting this week, I observed out loud upon the similarities between a typical meeting and a typical Christian church service. A meeting goes like this:

  • We start with the Serenity Prayer
  • Next there are readings from our most important texts, including the Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, and How It Works
  • We then take up a collection among the members present
  • Now comes a period of 40 minutes of sharing, with testimonies, observations on the meaning of AA in our lives, strategies for staying sober … anything at all that has a connection with alcoholism and/or sobriety.
  • Lastly, we close with a prayer once again.

There is a rule in meetings about something called crosstalk. It is not allowed. Crosstalk means that when one member shares, another then comments on what they have said. To avoid such incidents, which could sometimes be criticisms or attacks, we simply disallow them. Many of our members are shy people, and would avoid sharing if it meant they would be subject to cross-examination. Like most rules, there are occasional gentle breakages, but for the most part groups adhere firmly to this important working principle. It creates a safe space.

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Tip Of My Tongue, by John Hiatt

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The Serenity Prayer, written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is among the wisest I know. Short and sweet it is, but loaded.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Sometimes when I am saying the prayer I smile at the last line because that is where the kicker is, isn’t it? Knowing the difference between what must be accepted and what can and perhaps should be opposed. Oh, my, my. That Reinhold was a caution.

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Thank You Girl, by John Hiatt

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When daughter Kari introduced me to John Hiatt back in the 80s, I’m not sure that the genre “Americana” had been invented yet, but now I have learned that Hiatt’s music is firmly planted in it. What you get when you listen to a Hiatt album is a raspy voice, lyrics that tell a clear story, and some really good guitar.

Today’s tunes are from the album Bring The Family. It’s the album that made me a Hiatt fan.

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More about Shinola.

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M.U.G.

jono55

On Sunday we had our first taste of snow here in Paradise. Only couple of inches fell, which is a good thing. This way we get the lovely landscape change without the hassles associated with larger amounts.

First warm day it will all melt away, and that’s okay too.

And look at this … how gorgeous! The combination of the snow/rain combination coupled with no wind at all has left windrows of snow along each branch.

The cliché that older people have nothing to say to each other than to talk about the weather has some truth in it. And a recurring theme is that there was much more snow when they were kids than there is now. For some locations this is true, although the reductions are modest, at best.

Conversations like this: “When I was a kid I remember the snow being so deep that we built igloos just by digging into the side of a drift. The snowdrifts along the road to our house were taller than I was.”

Well, I found the most amazing website dealing with snowfall*, going back to 1900, and I think that it explains a lot of things. For instance in Minneapolis, my old home town, the average yearly snowfall for the period 1981-2019 was 53.4 inches. The least amount fell in 1931, when only 14.2 inches fell. The greatest amount fell in 1983, and it was 98.6 inches.

If I were a kid in the 80s in Minneapolis what I would remember was that astounding year when 98 inches fell, forgetting about all the so-so years before and after. That’s how memory works. We recall the outliers and make them the norm until some know-it-all comes up with a chart than tells the truth.

Now comes the bragging, done by a licensed braggart. Here is a number to cause ooooohs and ahhhhhs to be uttered.

The record for total seasonal snowfall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is 390.4 inches, set during the winter of 1978-79. This record was set in the Keweenaw Peninsula, which is known for heavy snowfall due to its location. 

AI query

In the winter of 1978-79 I was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, to be exact. And I shoveled every last one of those inches.

We lived in a one-story house which required that someone climb onto the roof periodically to remove the snow lest the weight literally break through into the house. By February, when I stood on the roof and shoveled the snow into the back yard, I was throwing snow UP! The pile was already taller than the house. And when I … I could go on but that’s enough about this topic.

*The chart is for US cities only. We’re a parochial bunch here in the States. We get crazy only about our own weather.

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Wintertime, by the Steve Miller Band

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I went to the Apple app store today to do a little shopping (for free stuff because I am incurably cheap) and failed. What I wanted for my Mac was available only for my phone or an iPad. But it started me reminiscing about the early days of personal computing. At least of my early days, which began with the first Macintosh, in 1984.

Once I had purchased the machine, along with the very few pieces of software that it could run, I buried myself in finding out just what it could do. I had prepared myself to be amazed and I was.

Fast forward to wanting to have more … more … more information so I joined the tiny MUG (Mac User Group) in our small town. There were only five of us, and one member was the states attorney for our district.Why do I single him out? Because he had already acquired a considerable library of pirated software which he was willing to demonstrate and share with any in the group who were as open to intellectual theft as he was. The irony of a member of the justice system being an accomplished intellectual thief was noted but not discussed.

This all happened at a time when the total library of software that a Mac could run could easily be owned by any individual who had a few extra bucks around to spend. But it grew so rapidly that within a year our user group disbanded. Our interests now diverged because each of us had a flurry of apps to choose from, and they were being developed at a pace that was impossible to keep up with.

But the fun that we had when all was new and exciting … I can remember the feeling even now.

BTW, this all occurred in the village of Yankton South Dakota. It wasn’t the only time that an officer of the law was involved in illegal activity had come to my attention. During the period when I was looking for a place to relocate to from Michigan, I was watching television in my motel room on a visit to Yankton, and one news item was of a group of men who had been arrested for operating an illegal poker game from a motel somewhere in the state. One of those men arrested was the South Dakota state attorney general.

Hmmmm, I thought, that’s colorful. Then I heard about a pair of bank robbers who were apprehended a few doors down from that very bank where they were already spending the loot. In a bar. On beers. But the best SD crime story of all at that time was the discovery of a large jet cargo plane in a field along the interstate. It had landed and been abandoned. Why, you might ask would a huge cargo plane in a beanfield be of special interest? Because what this particular aircraft was filled with was marijuana.

How could I miss the opportunity to live in a state with such a fine Wild West litany of crime stories coming at you every day? I packed up my family and my books and moved to South Dakota forthwith.

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I will admit that the extensive library of cat and dog videos has provided laughs for yours truly, but this one is a little more interesting. It suggests very different processing by cats and dogs. Is this true? Anybody know?

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Swingtown, by the Steve Miller Band

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It’s the second of December and we’re still not at war with Venezuela. I have no idea what the Cluck administration is waiting for, because I have my bags packed and am waiting for the national call-up of retired and seniorized medical personnel to begin.

President Donald Cluck wearing his war camouflage and showing his willingness to lead the charge up the Venezuelan beaches. However, apparently his bone spurs have acted up again, so he will be there in spirit when our armed forces go ashore, rather than in person.

It has been years now that I have had trouble sleeping because of Venezuela. Not that the people of the country had ever done me harm of any kind … I just didn’t like having that country out there existing without proper American meddling. It vexed me. Thank heaven that President Cluck has a clear vision of the threat that Venezuela poses, and was only waiting until he could round up a bunch of ships and planes and stuff and also had a Secretary of War and Dim Offensives who could be counted on to do his bidding.

Secretary of War and Dim Offensives Pete Hegseth at work on battle plans for the upcoming war with Venezuela.

But no matter. I am sitting by the door with my Google Spanish-English Translator in my hand. I have my electronically-sound-boosted stethoscope around my neck. I have a month’s worth of my blood pressure pills, my anti-stroke pills, my cholesterol-reducing pills, and my Metamucil safely stowed in my duffel bag. I checked and was disappointed to learn that there isn’t a Golden Age version of the Air Force uniform for those of us who are being recalled, one with all Velcro closures. But hey, it wouldn’t be a war without hardships, would it?

Now where is that darn transport, anyway?

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A brief note about those little round images over there on the right side of the page. Those are examples of my button-crafting, done in support of our Indivisible group here in Montrose County. My fervent hope is that each one of them will go on to annoy the very hell out of the opposition.

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And a brief note about today’s music. I like many of the tunes that the Steve Miller Band recorded. They put out smart pop-rock as far as I am concerned. But I had a good friend who used to tell me that this affection of mine for the band meant:

  • that my brain had already turned into pablum (this was twenty-five years ago)
  • that it showed that I had no taste at all in music
  • that having a handful of SM songs in my library put my immortal soul at risk

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The Stake, by the Steve Miller Band

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Damn You, Richard Gere

jono55

The movie Ordinary People came out in 1980. It was the first film that Robert Redford directed, and won four Academy Awards. For me, the most memorable takeaway was a piece from the soundtrack, a work entitled Canon in D Major, by Johann Pachelbel. For a few months anyway, it might have been the most often-played classical selection in the country.

Even today I play it regularly, and there are several interpretations of the short composition in my music library. “Music library” has become one of those phrases that definitely dates a person, hasn’t it? I wonder how many songs a Gen Z actually owns, rather than rents? Never mind, here is a recording of “the Canon” that I own and can share with you. It’s from the soundtrack of Ordinary People.

Canon in D Major, arr. by John Williams

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This past week Robin mentioned in passing that she would like to see the film An Officer and A Gentleman again. It was one of those times that I instantly made it a quest for myself, to set up a romantic evening with my bride, perhaps to slightly burnish my image in her eyes. I had no trouble finding it, however, since it was available on six subscription services. Not much of a quest, really.

But when I presented it as the evening’s television watching I took full credit, much more than I deserved … that’s me all over. Puffing up my accomplishments and glossing over my failures has worked for me for the longest time, why would I change now?

The film was released in 1982, and starred very young versions of Richard Gere, Debra Winger, David Keith, and Lou Gossett Jr. Not a bad film at all, even if a bit formulaic, but formulas often do work well. It was the final scene that made it a classic date movie, maybe in the top ten.

Got your lady handy? Play the video below. A typical American female will become very pliant upon viewing it. One caveat, however. While she might be embracing you at the moment, she is almost certainly imagining you are Richard Gere.

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I learned this week that there has been considerable research over the years on finding substances that smell so bad that they are actually incapacitating. Substances that cling to the victim, resisting being washed off. The use would predominantly be in crowd control, rather than at the battlefront. I found this idea amusing, although I can easily imagine that it could be a powerful deterrent. One man doing much of the research around World War Two eventually came to smell so bad he had to sleep in a public park.

Let’s suppose that I am twenty years old and participating in a vigorous civil protest against some authority. Let’s also suppose that I have a very promising date next Saturday night with someone I have been pursuing with great ardor for months. Now, if I knew that there was a good chance that I would be sprayed with something that would make me smell like a “rotting corpse lifted from a stagnant sewer” for the next month, I might skip the event altogether.

For some reason this all reminded me of the Monty Python sketch about the killer joke. Warning, do not watch this if you understand the German language. We’re not sure about the safety of the video even now.

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Our American Comic Opera production is not as yet entitled or completed, but the script is being added to daily. Most recently we have yet another Ukrainian “peace plan.” The origin of the plan was apparently in Russia and was leaked to someone on the American side who brought it to Cluck’s aides. Although he hadn’t actually read the program itself, Cluck became a great fan and has told the Ukrainians that they better wise up or the plan will be implemented. Word is that it gives Putin everything he wanted and more, which bothers Cluck not a bit.

The only problem with all of this is that there are some groups of people who think that the plan stinks to high heaven. Here is a partial listing:

  • More than three-fourths of the American public
  • Most members of Cluck’s own party
  • Every Democrat in existence, even unborn ones
  • All of Europe
  • The Falkland Islands
  • et al

If you disagree with the peace plan, there are Cluck-ers who have signaled that there might be a special gallows erected where the Rose Garden used to be at the White House, just for you (although I admit that this is more conjecture than fact).

Casting for the opera’s production will begin whenever there are more than two succeeding days which pass without an atrocity being committed by the Cluck regime. Hopes are therefore dim that we will ever hear a single note.

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What Are Their Names, by David Crosby

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We will be spending Thanksgiving with the Hurley family In Durango this year, and are grateful for the invitation. Whenever we do this, Robin and I are asked to bring the same two items. The first is a cranberry-marshmallow dessert salad that was Robin’s mother’s contribution for years. The second is a stuffing recipe made with pork sausage and safe as prominent ingredients.

We partially construct both of them here and then finish them on Thursday as the turkey roasts. It’s pretty easy to keep them cold for the two and a half hour journey. So far there have been no problems with snow on Highway 550, the road that still puts lumps in my throat, so we’ll probably go that way. The alternative route is an hour longer, and although less hazardous even that way requires prudence and planning when making the trip in winter. Both roads must cross mountain passes. Both have been problematic in the past.

I never have any difficulty coming up with a gratitude list on Turkey Day, because my cup truly overfloweth. First and foremost each year I spend time wondering how it was that Robin ever decided that marrying me was a good idea. For her, that is. For me it was unbelievably good fortune because, no exaggeration here, she had saved my life.

I know that there have been moments when she has wondered about her selection as I am not a great prize but more a thing cobbled together of many parts, like a shorter and less murderous creation of Victor Frankenstein. But here we are, on our thirty-third Thanksgiving together. And so down the road we go, salad and stuffing in hand. If we ever are stranded by car trouble on these trips there will always be something to eat in the cooler in the back of the car.

May your holiday go well and your clothing be elastic enough in the waist to accommodate a bit of excess.

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… there are places I’ll remember …

jono55

The following clip made me into an instant Elissa Slotkin fan. It also reminds me that there are plenty of men and women out there who can point the way for those working in the resistance to the Cluck regime. Who are they? Well, comedians like Jimmie Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, for instance. And the editorial cartoonists that I’ve been posting more of recently, and now the six serving members of Congress who made a video reminding members of the armed forces that not only can they refuse to obey illegal orders, but they are obligated to do so. Anyway, here’s the clip.

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Garrison Keillor came to Montrose this past Wednesday evening to present his one-man show to a respectful sellout crowd. He has been a beloved entertainer for nearly fifty years. There were many moments I could relate but I’ll pick just two.

All in all, Robin and I found the evening to be a moving experience. An elderly man of eighty-three years pacing the stage for nearly ninety minutes while basically giving a humorous and often touching autobiographical recitation. What made it so special was that as he did so he was also retracing parts of our own lives, since we have been fans of his for from the beginning.

Early on in the show he was talking about admiring the more popular hymns sung in his church and when he began to sing a line from one of them the entire audience sang quietly along with him as if we were being given cues and there was an invisible conductor. There was a soft murmur in the hall … a moment.

After speaking for nearly an hour and a half without an interruption he again lapsed into song and began to walk up the aisle toward the entrance to the auditorium. Just before he disappeared through the entry doors he shouted back to us “Goodnight, Everybody.” And he was gone.

The song was In My Life, by the Beatles.

In My Life

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There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better;
Some have gone and some remain.

All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall.
Some are dead and some are living,
In my life I’ve loved them all.

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you.
And these mem’ries lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.

Tho’ I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I’ll often stop and think about them,
In my life I love you more.

Tho’ I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I’ll often stop and think about them,
In my life I love you more.

In my life I love you more.

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Okay, this is where I get serious. Don’t panic, it will be for only a moment. I’m a small-town boy in a small town in a part of the United States that is far enough from the seats of power that even ICE has trouble finding it when they want to persecute someone. I have no special talent for political divinations, no secret knowledge.

But I believe that Cluck is done.

He was never more than a bag of gas, like an ugly balloon sold at a holiday store. Inside there is nothing of substance. And the knives are in. It’s only necessary that we allow enough time to pass that the contained effluvium can make its way to the outside and he will collapse. At least politically. MAGA won’t disappear, but they are a mad minority, a delusional contingent that is forever stampeding in one direction or another, and without their figurehead they will retreat to where they came from, simmering in their own hatreds and looking for Cluck’s replacement.

But that leaves a whole lot of people who have found themselves standing up to their waists in a manure lagoon and wondering how they ever got there and how do they get out of it?

They know right from wrong, they know what putrefaction smells like, and they have been looking for an exit, a way back to fresher air and clearer thinking.

Don’t ask them what political faction they are in, that’s a waste of your time and theirs. Ask them instead if they want to get back to work they respect and understand. If they want solid schools for the children of their communities to attend. If they would like a return to living their lives as private ones, without government interference. If they would be willing to sacrifice when they could see the reason they were being asked to do so was real and worthwhile.

There is a Lakota saying which I first heard from the leader of a musical group of indigenous Americans called Brulé. The saying is Mitakuye Oyasin, and it translates into We are all related. It is what Mr. Schiller was thinking when he wrote the poem Ode to Joy which contains the line Alle Menschen werden Brüder … the translation is: Every man becomes a brother. It is a part of most of our religious traditions.

Point out what we need to do, show us the why we are doing it, and then stand back. We’ll figure it out from there. (Would someone please pick up that collapsed balloon and toss it in the trash? Thanks, I know I could count on you.)

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We Are All Related by Brulé

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With our national holiday devoted to eating nearly upon us the cartoon at right below says it all, really. It’s a parody of the Normal Rockwell painting that is entitled Freedom From Want. This Thanksgiving we have plenty of want around the good ol’ US of A, and a whole lot of it has been deliberately engineered by Cluck and his Claque.

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We offer thanks for the sun and the rain and the earth and someone else’s hard work.

Buddhist table grace

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talkin’ about your Madison shoes …

jono55

It’s now a couple of days since parts of America went to the polls and I am still basking in the warm glow that came from the burning of tyranny in effigy that took place on election day. It’s only a step, but as that guy Armstrong said in 1969: ” one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Of course there is still such a long way to go, and the outcome is still uncertain, but, hey, let’s just lie here for another few moments, sipping on our iced coffees and wondering whether Haagen-Dasz ice cream will ever come packaged with an Ozempic chewable nestled inside.

Here in Paradise there were mixed messages. The people whose first impulse at every election is to cover their fences with banners declaring “No New Taxes” even if there aren’t any tax-related issues on the ballot were successful in locally defeating a couple of state tax increases while across Colorado they passed handily. Our school board elections went entirely for conservatives and the hope is that at least they are among the Republicans who can read. It’s a high bar, but one can dream.

We had a recall election for a county commissioner who has been in office for only a year, but ha managed to reveal himself as incompetent, a bully, and a complete fool in that short time. He was recalled, and his replacement is an Independent who actually has credentials, experience, and can properly say the words aluminum and anonymous, which puts her above 99% of Americans in intellectual achievement.

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With our great leader now using children as pawns and denying food to millions of them just for spite, around our community people are bumping up their contributions to the local food banks.

Robin and I and some of our friends from Indivisible set up a table outside our City Market grocery on Friday loading as many canned goods into the back of the Subaru as the good people of Paradise will contribute.

We collected more than $1000 in canned goods and other non-perishable foods in just three chilly hours. It filled the back of our Subaru and spilled over into two more vehicles. When we delivered our stuff to Shepherd’s Hand, a local food bank, we were greeted by the workers with relief, for their shelves were becoming bare. At least two of them had tears in their eyes, and I scored three major hugs by large, strong, and grateful women.

It is beyond disgusting that our government is using the well-being of children to try to achieve their sorry ends. There appears to be no level of depravity too low for them. Really, it makes me wish I believed in Hell, that I might contemplate their futures with unholy glee.

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Let’s suppose that you are being interviewed by a visitor from another galaxy altogether. Let’s suppose that among the questions they put to you is this: “We keep hearing about something called rock and roll … what is that?” My suggestion would be to remain completely silent and play the following video for them. For me this is rock’s essence, being done by what must almost surely be one of the best American bar bands of all time. George Thorogood and the Destroyers.

Here they are playing I don’t know where at sometime in the past and when they were at their peak. I will now be completely silent.

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We had guests staying with us this weekend. Robin’s daughters Amy and Allyson were able to get away for a couple of days to come help Robin celebrate her birthday week.* A good time passed too quickly. Saturday we drove to the Black Canyon National Park to tour the burned areas and take the hike at the end of the road, which is named the Warner Point Trail. It winds through one of the remaining unburned sections and ends with a precipice on two sides.

Brisk autumn weather, good company, enough food to munch on and a warm place to do it in. Gracias a Dios.

*Robin and I are not sticklers for needing everything to happen on the actual anniversary of the date we were born, so we have renamed it birthweek. It is a much more flexible way to look at it as far as scheduling events, and you can have cake on enough successive days to be a serious health hazard. I am typing this while in the doctor’s office where I am being given purgatives to treat a bad case of the butter frosting blues..

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The Indifference of Heaven, by Warren Zevon

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We are slowly coming to the end of one of the most perfect Fall seasons I’ve experienced. Loooong slow turning of the leaf colors, along with cool days without the winds or freezing rains that tear the leaves from the trees prematurely. A slow-motion autumn.

I’ll close this post with a haiku by Matsuo Basho, an old friend of mine, notwithstanding that he passed away in 1694. We’ve had our moments together.

on a leafless bough
the perching and pausing of a crow
the end of autumn

[The photo was taken on a walk at the Black Canyon National Park in the year 2015.]

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Famous Last Words

jono55

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.

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Zombie, by The Cranberries

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Capitalist … Moi?

jono55

So I’m driving to the grocery store which is in the midst of a major reconstruction and rearrangement, so much that each trip there is like taking part blindfolded in a mad scavenger hunt where the host changes the location of everything every day. But that’s my pain and why should I make it yours?

On the drive over I heard a song on the radio that contained a line that caught my attention. Really, a great line, one that the song does not fully explain. But I have been there many, many times in my short life. Here’s the chorus:

I’m living a war with time
I could still reach out and touch you and I
Wish I didn’t know the things I know
I’m standing in an open door
None of it was overrated and I
Never gonna wanna let you go
But I want you to go
Don’t even ask me, just go

It’s the line “Wish I didn’t know the things I know” that opened the door of a room filled with recollections and remembrances for me … knowledge I could have happily done without … learning from experiences I didn’t plan to have.

In AA meetings I often hear the expression “I have no regrets.” I think to myself – are they bonkers? Is that really possible? Because it’s a bit of bravado that I certainly don’t share. I don’t dote on them, ruminate on them endlessly, or become entrapped by them, but regrets … I’ve had a few. But then again, as Frank Sinatra often sang, too few to mention.

Wish I didn’t know the things I know. Quite a line.

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The song I’m talking about, BTW, is entitled War With Time, by Brandi Carlile.

War With Time, by Brandi Carlile

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For me, at least, there is a short list of voices that I read nearly every day during these awkward times. Among them is the indestructible ancient Robert Reich, who wields a fiery pen and draws on a long lifetime hanging around politicians of all stripes. Right up there with him is Heather Cox Richardson, with her cool and level-headed assessments of the carnage as it happens. Next would be Timothy Snyder, whose book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century I read last Spring to fortify myself against the avalanche of horsepucky that Cluck and his enablers were bringing down upon our heads.

I came across the trenchant comment on the right, and even though it relates to No Kings by name, it could have been applied to the reading I do without changing the meaning one bit.

It helps to know that some very intelligent people are walking point for us, and that they can see that a positive resolution is possible, down what they predict is going to be a rough road. But success will come only if we are intrepid.

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What a striking image it is that accompanies the article on Mike Lee’s war on wilderness.

Woof.

I love it.

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A recollection dusted itself off and presented itself last Thursday, unbidden and unwelcome. Because it reveals that at heart I am just another damned capitalist.

When I was around six years old, my family acquired a new puppy named Mollie. She was, like all the dogs in our extended family were, of mixed parentage. We brought her to our home on Second Avenue, and she was the darling of the family for the week that she lived with us. Her visit was cut short by her escaping through the backyard gate and running into the street where a passing car … you know the rest.

I was heartbroken. I gathered her up and placed her small body in a shoebox, to be buried in the backyard later that morning. At some point I decided that a creature as cute and lively as she had been deserved a funeral, so I scheduled one which was attended by the other boys my age from the neighborhood. There was a eulogy (me), some memorial stuff on display (collar, food dish), and then the interment.

Where does the capitalism come in, you ask? Well … I charged a five cent admission.

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Once a year, because I don’t want to spoil you, I serve up this song of songs. It goes beyond being a favorite of mine, whatever the next rung up would be. I think it was CRISPR-ed into my DNA while I slept.

Magnolia, by Lucinda Williams, who is an American original.

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Leanin’

jono55

It’s 1946 and my family is decorating the Christmas tree while Perry Como is crooning songs from his new holiday album being played on an ancient 78 rpm record player which had been rescued from a rummage sale.

I am seven years old and this is the first Christmas that I know there is no Santa Claus. I don’t remember who told me, but no matter, I am still as excited as if that dreadful information had never reached my ears. I have chosen to accept both the literal truth (no Santa) and the imaginative truth (Santa) at the same time. Today, December 24, 1946, the imagination is holding perfect sway, and the power of Santa Claus is everywhere.

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Dreaming My Dreams With You, by Cowboy Junkies

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Came across this short film shot entirely with an iPhone.

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What we have all learned together these past years is that capitalism has a bunch of dirty secrets. One of them is that once you reach a certain level of wealth, you are almost immune to the problems that ordinary citizens face every day. And I’m not just talking about how much money they have. I’m talking about access to the levers of the machines that run the country, the stock market, the court system, etc. I’m talking about access to the politicians who are largely your own creatures, picked to do what you want to have done.

Turns out that the majority of people in politics seem unable to resist the smell of currency and the possibility of one day having piles of it around the house.

When Robin and I moved to Montrose, we considered ourselves Democrats, and once everything was unpacked we began to seek out others of our kind. Each year the local Democratic Party would put on a barbecue dinner for the membership, and we found it a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. But each year we would look at the attendees and knit our brows.

Those sitting at the tables were very nice people, but almost all of them were white and either senior citizens or on the brink of becoming one. Youth was absent. People of color were largely absent. All in all it looked like a political party on its way to self-extinction.

And the came the year when the casual barbecues of the past were left behind. Now it was to be a 50 dollar a plate dinner at a “better” venue. That was the point we stopped going to these yearly get-togethers. If anyone needed to see why the Democratic membership was such a narrow slice of the electorate you didn’t have to look any further than the ticket price. It was automatic exclusion of anyone for whom that was a significant amount of money.

So the two of us became Independents, and remain so.

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That’s All You Need, by Faces

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Sunday was my birthday and Robin and I decided to celebrate by taking a hike at the Colorado National Monument. The trail we took wasn’t a long one, and we’re still feeling the COVID effects just a bit, but it was a beautiful day and the scenery was grand. We hiked the Serpent’s Trail, named because within a relatively short distance there are sixteen switchbacks.

We may have overdone it, feeling some mild malaise when we had returned home, but ’twas well worth it. And at the end of the day there was cake. Of course there was cake. You may leave off the gifts, the cards, the well-wishing, the parties. But if there isn’t cake a birthday simply does not happen.

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One of the facts of living at altitude 5900 feet is that we can see winter for weeks before it gets to us here in the valley. Because we have those magnificent San Juan Mountains in view. First a tentative whitening on the mountaintops that goes away with the first sunny day, then a snow covering that remains … at around 11,000 feet … then 10,000 feet … 9,000 feet. Then a few flakes on a chilly morning whistling down the streets of Montrose. A very gradual introduction to the winter season.

With all this warning going on, there is really little excuse for being caught short. If you haven’t got the snow shovels out and placed them where you will need them, if you haven’t winterized your lawn sprinkling system, if you haven’t checked the tread on the tires of your car for seasonal suitability … well, I just don’t know.

And yet every year there is something that I don’t get done. Something that didn’t get put away well enough. I like to think that these minor mistakes are part of a built-in DNA package that keeps me from becoming too satisfied with myself. The question becomes: How could I ever think that I was perfect if I did that? It’s what a boob would do.

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When Bill Withers wrote “Lean On Me” in 1972, toying around on a small piano with only the phrase ‘lean on me’ to guide him, he never could have expected the song — about a rural man’s loneliness in the big city — would become an inspirational anthem to those rising up after tragedy, or a celebratory rallying cry of togetherness and resilience in times of trouble.

Rolling Stone Magazine

Re-listening to this tune 53 years after it was first released I am struck by how well it fits our time. It is a song made for those loneliest moments in life. Simple lyrics but man, what comfort (and solid advice) they have to offer.

Lean On Me (Carnegie Hall concert), by Bill Withers

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