Tag: music

Occupy Main Street

jono55

I have a new part-time occupation. I am the official button maker for our chapter of Indivisible, which is a politically progressive and activist organization with thousands of chapters throughout the United States. It is not affiliated with any political party.

Some say that it is primarily anti-Cluck, but it is more complicated than that. If tomorrow Mr. Cluck were to lose his footing and be washed away by the tsunami of bad karma he has accumulated, we would still have a problem, because he is far from the only Ugly American.

So here is what Indivisible is for:

  • Democracy Reform: Advocating for policies that enhance democratic processes, such as voting rights protections and reducing the influence of money in politics.
  • Social Justice: Supporting initiatives that address systemic inequalities, including racial justice, immigrant rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
  • Healthcare and Economic Equity: Promoting access to affordable healthcare and policies that aim to reduce economic disparities.
  • Climate Action: Pushing for environmental policies that address climate change and promote sustainability.

Now it happens that Cluck is today’s poster boy for opposition to these worthy goals, but one day he will be gone and many of those other less visible bad boys will still be there.

(BTW, Indivisible takes its name from our Pledge of Allegiance: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”)

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I thought that making pinback buttons would be a lark, a mere bagatelle. Turns out that there are several predictable mistakes that button-making newbies commit. I have made all of those and added a brand-new one of my own to the list.

But those pins that didn’t end up in the trash can are beginning to resemble something that a person might actually wear. Who knew? We’re getting these ready for the June 14th national “No Kings” celebration.

Robin and I bought the button press as our contribution to the presently cash-strapped local group. The hope is that there are at least a handful of progressives out there who have not lost everything yet in the tariff wars and who can make a small donation to a good cause, thereupon receiving a button as an expression of gratitude.

Bootstraps, you know.

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Slouching Toward the Millennium, by Kris Kristofferson

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From The New Yorker

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I am confident that the Cluckian attempt at a dictatorship will eventually fail. He’s just so bad at it. What I can’t predict is how much blood, both metaphoric and real, will be shed en route to that good and necessary goal.

A man who will snatch up innocent people and transport them to hellish prisons in another country is certainly capable of violence if threats to his power become something he can no longer ignore.

Someone asked me the other day if she should worry about some of her posts on Facebook that were negative re: Cluck. She was serious. Her question took me by surprise. Here … in America … to worry about posting on social media being a dangerous thing to do? To me it showed how far we’ve come along a very bad road. When good people are starting to practice self- censorship lest they find themselves on a midnight flight to El Salvador. Unfreakingbelievable!

I told the lady that I thought we were such small potatoes that we would not be picked up on Cluckian radar, unless they were looking for some random schmo to use as an example of how powerful and all- seeing they were. That may not have been reassuring to her.

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Friend Neil has introduced me to something amazing. the world of Raspberry Pi. It is a world of computers that you can hold in your hand. What caught my attention was a setup that would use microphones to record birdsongs, and then identify the birds for you. Easily transported to woodlands, prairies, wetlands – wherever birds are, the device records the calls and then feeds them to Birdnet at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology which makes the identification. If you record all night, It can generate a list of every bird that had sounded off while you slept.

This video has more information than you might need, and certainly more than I completely understood. But what came through was the relative ease of doing something truly remarkable.

S.w.e.e.t!

Should you find yourself sniffed at by true-blue birders deriding the use of technology to find and identify birds, just point out those binoculars they have hanging around their neck. Ask them what tree they plucked those from?

BTW, you can get Birdnet as a free app for your phone, and anytime you are listening to a birdsong you don’t recognize just bring up the app and it will start making a recording and eventually tell you what it is.

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From The New Yorker

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This next offering is in the nature of a Public Service Announcement. There was a piece written a couple of weeks ago by Timothy Snyder, a historian who is an expert on tyranny and terrorism. The piece is a longish one, but it’s worth taking the time to read it. Its title: The Next Terrorist Attack.

The people who have pointed out the menace that the Cluck administration represents are already out there writing, marching, giving speeches, telephoning, doing whatever is in their power to do to limit the damage that Cluck and his band are causing. They want and need all of our out-of-tune voices, our inexperience, our sore and tramping feet.

Read the column and then seriously consider joining one of the organizations that are working to preserve our democracy. It is a powerful thing to be part of, this saving one’s country.

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Bullet the Blue Sky, by U2 (live)

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When Authority Always Wins …

jono55

There’s a person who posts on Substack as “Rosie the Resister.” On Thursday she came up with the beauty at right.

My comment on Rosie’s post is that America wasn’t ready for Cluck. Too many didn’t believe that fascism could happen here. Next time someone like him comes along, hopefully, we will smell them coming in time.

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The first election that I ever voted in was in 1960, when the question was “Is America ready for a Catholic president?” There were pamphlets placed on public buses in my hometown of Minneapolis suggesting that if JFK were elected we’d all become subjects of the Pope, and after that it would be all fish on Fridays and burnings at the stake and everything.

Well, Kennedy was elected and, mirabile dictu, that particular nightmare never happened. Turns out that our society makes progress by fits and starts rather than smooth transitions. On Monday being Catholic was an obstacle, but on Wednesday it’s a fading line in the sand. It’s what we do.

My first choice back in the 2020 election season was Amy Klobuchar (woman), and my second was Pete Buttigieg (gay). Both lost. Really, as if sex was the most important thing to consider when it comes to choosing leaders. How quaint. The all-male game is doomed to die an ungainly death and all one has to do is check the numbers. Within a generation women will make up an overwhelming majority of educated persons. Add to that the fact that they have always been better at networking and it’s Katie bar the door for bearers of the Y chromosome.

My own opinion is that this will change the sum of political life very little. For instance, by taking a close look at some of the women already in Congress we can see that stupidity, inanity, and cowardice are not exclusively male virtues. We can also see that steadiness, compassion, and common sense can be brought into the mix no matter what our genders might be.

After the present season of Cluck, I will be ready for almost anything and anybody as an improvement. Perhaps, since humans have brought this chaotic circus into existence, we should be considering other primates as candidates for public office.

I would have no trouble voting for the fellow at right, for instance. He has what is now in short supply on the national stage – an intelligent gaze.

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From The New Yorker

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There seems to be something about being the wealthiest people in our country that makes them insatiable. There is never enough of anything for them. Whatever machinations that Cluck is doing today to shovel more and more of our nations’ treasure into their bank accounts, all but a few of them seem to want more. An even more monstrous share.

They live in a completely different world than the rest of us, which would seem to make them unqualified to make the rules that we live by, but that’s not what happens. Right now our social safety net (which has never been up to the job at best) is being in danger of being completely shredded. Hundreds of billions of dollars are scheduled to be removed from health insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid, for instance, if the Republican budget bill is passed. Money is to be taken from children’s food programs to be funneled into the pockets of billionaires.

Unfortunately many of us will perversely persist in becoming ill even if our health insurance is taken away or cut back severely, and too many will eventually become unable to work or support our families or take care of ourselves. Well, I guess we should have planned better, is the refrain echoing down Republican halls. Even though history has repeatedly shown this only means that small problems will become larger ones as people are forced to prioritize, and more immediate needs like food and shelter must be met.

Even as I type this stuff, eventually I have to take a break because too much thinking about our present circumstances is just that dreadful an enterprise. I have no idea why I don’t have a feeling of hopelessness, even though I admit that I can’t see a clear way out of the godawful mess Click and his troupe of bozos have created. Maybe we’re like John Mellencamp’s protagonist … too dumb to know when we’re beaten and should just give it up … instead we turn up our collars against the wind, put our heads down, and soldier on.

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Yesterday we took a very nice bicycle ride, thank you very much, into the countryside. It was a total bird show. We heard but did not see a Gambel’s Quail. Meadowlarks provided glorious background music for our trip. A huge, and I mean HUGE, Great Blue Heron had been hunting in a small creek when it took off right in front of us.

And then along came a large Red-tailed Hawk, at first flying just a few yards over our heads, giving us a great look at the patterns of its feathers, and then it began to ride the thermals, rising in lazy circles without so much as a wing flap until it was no longer visible.

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Where The Hawkwind Kills, by Daniel Lanois

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Yesterday was the 33rd wedding anniversary for Robin and I. To repeat an old story, after our respective former spouses left us for what they thought were greener pastures, she and I began to “date” and one thing led to another and a wedding became imminent. The counselor that Robin was seeing told her that making such a move might be unwise, that it was too soon after her divorce. He told her that this new relationship was a “transitional” one for her.

We have obviously been very slow about the whole thing, because it’s now 33 years on and we’re still transitioning. I’m not sure we’ve enough years left to make it to whatever the next level is supposed to be.

Oh well. One does what one can.

We celebrated quietly with supper at a new Italian restaurant in town. The food was delicious. I had the carbonara and Robin the mushroom tortellini, and our waitress couldn’t have been more pleasant.

Really, she couldn’t have. Would I lie?

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From The New Yorker

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When asked a question several years ago, the present Dalai Lama responded with the famous line: “My religion is kindness.“

This week the Senate is considering one of the unkindest budget bills in a long, long while. It strips money from health care, food programs, and childhood enrichment programs to pass the funds along to the very wealthy in the form of tax cuts. It is so blatantly unwise and unfair that it is a nightmare caricature of what a thoughtful government might do.

There is still time to telephone our senators and ask them to do the right thing. For some of them, our call might be just the nudge they need.

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1984 Revisited

jono55

I am watching with great interest the political goings-on regarding a post on Instagram that James Comey had made. In the post he placed a photo of some seashells that formed a number.

The symbol “86/47” is being regarded by the Trump administration as a referring to assassination, and they are accusing Comey of fomenting violence. I am especially interested because my homemade sign says exactly the same thing, and I have now carried it in two rallies.

I had seen 86/47 in a post somewhere, thought it a clever symbol, and copied it for my own use. I frequently copy other people’s work and claim it as my own, so I thought nothing more of it. (I’m not too worried because in the photo above I had given the sign to Robin to hold for me, and thus I have plausible deniability.)

But before I ever went out with that placard in my hand I had checked out the definition of the “86” part of it and found no references to assassination or killings or violence of any sort. It appeared to have been an anonymously originated term without any sinister implications whatsoever.

Eighty-six is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to refuse service to.” It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang meaning that an item was sold out. There is varying anecdotal evidence about why the term eighty-six was used, but the most common theory is that it is rhyming slang for nix.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

I doubt that the Department of Justice is going to come to Montrose to examine my sign and haul me off to the Grand Inquisitors of the Cluck administration. But in the present era of newspeak in Washington D.C., we really don’t know what to expect, do we? I shudder at the thought of being chained in a dank dungeon while Kristi Noem parades in full tactical gear sputtering things her dog and goat once overheard and then she had to shoot them.

I offer a gallery taken from a Google search for the term 86/47 that I just performed. There were no mentions of assassinations in any of these products being sold. Could it be that it’s just another of Cluck’s diversions, another smoke screen to cover his rampant incompetence? Could it possibly be?

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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.1, by Pink Floyd

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If George Orwell were still alive, and if he got a penny for every time his novel 1984 was referred to in metaphors or political discourse, his fortune would exceed that of Elon Musk, I think. Too bad for George that the novel was published in 1949 and he said his last goodbyes in 1950.

But I will send $0.01 off to the Orwell Foundation instanter because I am going to use it again. The novel casts such a helpful light on our present government (I use the term “government” lightly) that I can’t help myself.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg  as Orwell’s ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a staunch believer in democratic socialism and member of the anti-Stalinist Left, modelled Britain under authoritarian socialism in the novel on the Soviet Union  in the era of Stalinism and on the very similar practices of both censorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany.  More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.

Wikipedia: 1984.

Rather than subject you to more of my tedious ranting at this time, I have gathered a gallery of cartoons prompted by the novel with which to assail you.

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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.2, by Pink Floyd

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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.3, by Pink Floyd

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I found while putting this piece together that George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. (Why do the British seem to be forever taking pen names, anyway? For myself, I would have been quite happy with Eric Arthur Blair.)

While digging around I found this gem, an interview of Orwell on his deathbed, dating back to 1950. It was chilling to listen to, as he predicted a future that we live in today.

Can I have a double OMG, brothers and sisters?

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In a sometimes glum season, it helps to occasionally bring out something anthemic and get lost in it. At least for me it does. For today I went back to the Glastonbury Festival in 2014 for Arcade Fire’s performance of “Wake Up.” Nothing intimate or quietly thoughtful here, but loads of showmanship, percussion, color, very costly costuming … a bright bit of rock and roll theater.

The message of the song’s lyrics? To forgive our own past mistakes and be more open to life before we get older and eventually drift away. (Some of us have to hurry, because drifting away is a wee bit closer.)

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It Is Written

jono55

One morning this week I was looking to find something cheerful in the newspapers at around 6 o’clock A.M.. The first thing I learned is that the rice that I love to eat is loaded with cadmium and arsenic at “dangerous“ levels. So, to be an informed rice-eater, I researched and made a short list of what cadmium could do to me:

  • Pulmonary edema
  • Chemical pneumonia
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Diarrhea
  • Kidney disease
  • Osteoporosis
  • COPD
  • Lung cancer
  • Dysfunction of my liver, pancreas, and testes
  • Death

I was going to check on arsenic’s toxicity as well, but by the time I finished with cadmium I was already bummed. Hmmmmm … let’s see … a choice between shrimp fried rice and a trip straight to metabolic hell …

This information comes on the heels of my learning a couple of days ago that eating bagged lettuce is also more dangerous now because the Cluck administration has so reduced the number of food inspectors who protect us as our veggies make the long trip from farm to table that the hazards are increased. So I guess it’s back to good ol’ Soylent Green for me …. wait, what’s that … a little louder, please …

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Grift, graft, corruption, schmorruption … who is surprised by any of Cluck’s vigorous attempts to stuff money into his pockets in these days of dishonor and disrepute? He is a crook, a draft-dodger, a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and one of the champion liars of any generation. He is a caricature of a man. An empty suit.

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From The New Yorker

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Omigosh, our secrets are out! Here is Springsteen opening at a concert in Manchester, England. Damn. Now everyone will know what a bunch of twits are running our show here at home.

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Springsteen is catching four kinds of hell from MAGAland for his speech at the concert. (Because he called American out in a foreign land, he is even called a traitor, as if every word of every celebrity isn’t available instantly worldwide wherever it is uttered.) Over decades, maybe centuries, each time any singer brings up an issue that is in the forefront at the time this sort of reaction happens. And the criticisms are always the same: “He should just sing and leave the politics outside!” They try to ignore one important point, which is that music and politics have a long history together.

Pete Seeger made an entire career out of reminding us of the place that songs had in our own history, especially in labor and antiwar movements. Bob Dylan picked up that torch and carried it for years. Crosby Stills Nash and Young sung beautiful harmonies over sharp words dealing with the Vietnam War and social unrest. Sooo many others.

Music is powerful, and we all know it. It can change minds, sooth or inflame, elevate or depress moods. I don’t pretend to know why, but the far right has much more difficulty coming up with something a guy can hum than the other side does. Seems they are a hort on creativity, as it were. Perhaps that’s one reason they resent it when a Bruce or a Bob or a CSNY belts out yet another moving anthem. They know they have lost another round.

Chimes of Freedom, by The Byrds

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Every year it is the same. In the spring we sort out the camping gear, toss out the broken items, and replace those as well as the ones we just lost somewhere. We arrange the stuff perfectly logically and neatly until it is a joy to behold. By mid-summer chaos has sneaked in and taken over everywhere. As we set up our tent it becomes obvious that neither of us knows where the rubber hammer the we use to pound tent stakes into hard ground has got itself.

We find that if we are to eat anything which requires a tool we must make do, because all we have are spoons. The rest went into the house after the last camping trip and never made it back into the storage boxes. There are now six bottles of insect repellent and no sunscreen at all in the bag of necessaries. A cut finger provokes a search for a Band-Aid and we can only come up with two of them. Where is the First Aid Kit? Abducted by aliens is what we deduce. The first night of any trip when we can’t find the small flashlights that we need to find a bathroom during those early morning hours … it’s not the predators we worry about as much as rocks, cacti, thistles, and tripping over those accursed tree roots.

In short, we go from perfection to woefully unprepared without even noticing, and we do it every blessed year. As of this writing, I have all our stuff laid out in front of me on the garage floor and am preparing to put it back just the way that the universe knows that it should be done … all the while aware that ultimately I will find myself this autumn with only two Band-Aids and no sunscreen once again.

As Sharif Ali says to Major Lawrence in the movie Lawrence of Arabia:

It Is Written.

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Chimes of Freedom, by the Lynne Arriale Trio

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On Perspiring

jono55

We’re coming on the time when temperatures will get high enough that people begin to think about turning on their air conditioners. I’m not one of those that waits until the last minute to do so. At the first bead of sweat on my forehead in the middle of the day, I’m reaching for the switch on the cooling system.

I’ve had friends in the past who made it a point each year await absolutely as long as they could to turn on the air conditioning in their home. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but they also made a point of telling every single person they were doing it, including myself, as if this was some sort of public virtue.

I call this delay in accepting the blessing of air conditioning as comfortus interruptus, and classify it under mental aberrations. Why someone would have air conditioning that could make them comfortable and keep them from sweating and becoming rancid and not use it I doubt that I will ever completely understand. All I know is that I will never be an entry in the sad race to be the last person to turn on their AC in Montrose County. In fact, I may well be the first.

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There are times, however, when sweat is admirable. Desirable. Delightful in the recalling. And it all has to do with s.e.x. My personal favorite movie that intricately weaves enough perspiration to fill a pool with the slip-slap clash of testosterone and estrogen is Body Heat. It’s a noirish kind of thing with sweat-stained shirts and ceiling fans galore. Here’s a scene that is an illustration of why prudence and chastity require air conditioning.

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Surely by now the Republicans who have fastened themselves like ticks to Emperor Cluck are wetting themselves regularly as they see their political futures becoming cloudier and cloudier. His latest offense against taste and ethics is that he wants to accept an airplane from Qatar. A really BIG airplane.

I keep forgetting … how do you spell putrescence, anyway? This is way beyond ordinary corruption.

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There was an article in Monday’s Times of New York that brought a smile. For those who have not heard of Rhiannon Giddens, she is a woman who has spent her adult life bringing music to us all. And she does it with class and humor and scholarship and style. The news that she has recently started a festival is the point of the article. The gathering is called the Biscuits and Banjos Festival, and it took place in Boone, North Carolina. A high point was the reunion of members of the group Carolina Chocolate Drops.

You know when you see those pictures from space of the earth at night and there are these points of light? Giddens is one of those points. She contributes, contributes, contributes. That’s a very nice thing to see in an era when so many are subtracting, subtracting, subtracting.

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Cartoon du Jour

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Today’s entry in the chucklehead sweepstakes is an article at CNN online entitled: “Why men are shaving off their eyelashes.”


From stopping dust and dirt getting into the eyes to prompting our blink reflex, eyelashes do more than just look pretty. Which makes it hard to explain the social media trend of men trimming down — or even entirely shaving off — their eyelashes in a bid to look “more masculine.”

CNN Online, May 13

Staggering. To look more masculine we need to cut away a major protector for the only two eyes we’ve got? I know that as a group we males aren’t too bright, but … does being “masculine” require that much stupid?

Now, I know that to take any advice on personal adornment from a man who still thinks cargo pants don’t look all that bad may not be the wisest course. But please, if you know someone who is considering eyelash-shaving, try to talk them into doing something else just as ridiculous but less harmful. Like wearing elephant pants. I did that in 1972 and lived to tell about it.

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On our camping excursion last weekend we saw two creatures that were new to us. The book says that neither of them is a rarity, but no member of our party had seen them before.

The Long-nosed Leopard Lizard.

(Say the name out loud. Sort of rolls off the tongue.)

The Great Basin Gopher Snake. Harmless. Beautiful coloration.

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Two of a Kind, by John Kay

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Power to the People

jono55

Robin and I set a personal record by attending two political rallies only one day apart. On Thursday we drove to Grand Junction to march in their May 1 observation. On Friday we attended a smaller demonstration here on Montrose. Both of these focused on the harm to working families brought about by the present government.

We’re excited about the continuation of the protests around the country. They continue to grow in number and in size, and it should come as no surprise that this is happening. Every day the haphazardness of our federal government supplies fuel for the fire in the breast and the anger in the heart.

I’ve had good people ask questions as to why get involved in demonstrations? Each time it reminds me of the (perhaps apocryphal) conversation between Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau had been arrested and jailed for not paying a poll tax which he regarded as unjust. His refusal was an act of civil disobedience. When Emerson came to visit his friend in the hoosegow he asked “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau’s classic answer was “Ralph, what are you doing out there?”

While my natural bent is to sit in the shade in a comfortable chair with an iced coffee near at hand, today’s realities have forced me to do something quite different. I am very clear as to why I am taking to the streets with many other good people. Firstly, I have seen such demonstrations work … twice … in my lifetime. The long hard protest for civil rights was one of those times, and the other was the fight against the war in Viet Nam.

Secondly, I know that everything Cluck and his adherents are doing has been done by every totalitarian government trying to take power. There are no mysteries here. It is the same playbook over and over again.

Our present Congress is has proved itself too weak an instrument to resist these machinations. Our Supreme Court is too compromised to be counted on. If there is anything that can stop the present march to non-democracy, it is the people themselves. People who see the inequities, the injustices, and the corruption for what they are. And who then step forward in numbers great enough to show those we hired to do this work how it should be done.

One person doesn’t count at all, really. But millions of people will get the attention of our elected representatives and they will finally find the courage to do the right thing. Perhaps grudgingly, but they will do it. It has happened before and it will happen again.

So I am one of the millions now and the millions more to be. No more and no less. A speck. One cell of a body that is gaining strength every day.

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From The New Yorker

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Recently Rachel Maddow had this to say:

So if suiting up and showing up helps our country in any small way to get out of the unholy mess that the Cluck gang is deliberately creating, I will do so with alarming frequency and ridiculous fervor.

Perhaps I should carry a sheaf of signed waivers to hand out to rally organizers absolving them of any responsibility should my particular cosmic and eternal number come up during a demonstration.

(I know that croaking on a march with my sign in my hand would be bad form and a definite downer, and promise to do what I can to avoid making such a scene.)

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Power to the People, by John Lennon

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Supper Thursday in Grand Junction was at one of our favorite restaurants, Namaste. It’s a small place in a strip mall on the southern edge of town. Our waiter was the most upbeat and chatty guy, almost as if he was an emcee and we were an audience of two. Snippets of his monologue would be:

When I was a little boy in Nepal, we had kings and queens. When the queen got an automobile for the first time, bearers carried the car with her in it.

I came to this country when I was eight years old, and I thought I was just moving to another state in Nepal. Then I got off the transport and there were all these people with light hair and blue eyes. I had never noticed the difference in the eyes before.

All in all, delightful. Good food and a memory tour of Nepal.

For most of my life whenever I played the game “If you were marooned on a desert isle and could eat only one cuisine for the rest of your life what would it be?” I chose Italian. But at some point a few years back, that choice became Indian, and still is. I love the respect that they have for vegetables.

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Aad Guray, by Deva Premal

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From The New Yorker

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There are a lot of colorful characters to be met at AA meetings. We are definitely a motley bunch. Early on in sobriety I met a man named Jim at a meeting who was about 7 degrees off to port most of the time, but while this exasperated some of the other attendees I found him interesting, and we became friends. He introduced me to Krishna Das and kirtan music.

Krishna Das started out in music as a rock musician, and he was part of a group that eventually became Blue Oyster Cult, but this was before it had taken on that name.

However, he met Ram Dass along the way and his life’s trajectory was definitely altered. After than it was off to India to study, and learning the use of music as a form of meditation. It doesn’t take a hard listen, though, to hear rock and roll underpinning his stuff here and there.

Check out this one, taken from a concert in New York City, see what I mean. He’s one of the good guys.

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Yesterday as I was cruising the streets of Paradise NPR was playing and a woman whose name I never learned was describing the epiphany that being able to make one’s own mixtapes truly was. To be able to make a tape recording containing only the tunes I wanted to hear in the order I wanted to hear them was so liberating it was not to be believed.

Just spending time with this advance in technology I believe cumulatively used up enough minutes to make up about four of the years I have spent on the planet. And then along came the double tape deck machine that allowed me to make duplicates of a cassette to distribute to friends and random people I met along the way … my oh my oh my. I never thought of it as a hobby based on theft, but it was of course, as soon as I made the first copy not for my own use. Up until then the music belonged to me and I could, by God, do with it whatever I wanted was my thought line.

Late at night I would get lost in the process of creation, finally looking up at a clock and realizing that I’d better quit and go to bed or I would be going directly from the tape deck to work. And I was a thirty year-old married guy with four kids and a day job … the mind shudders at trying to imagine what would have happened to me without these anchors to reality.

Anyway, who would have thought that listening to NPR could be dangerous to one’s peace of mind? Maybe I shouldn’t be driving when I do it?

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Apropos of the above rant, here is a glimpse of how it was … from the movie High Fidelity. The original one. (Warning: lots of naughty words here)

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The Birds

jono55

The hummingbirds are back at the feeders! I’ve been putting fresh sugar/water out there for the past three weeks or so, watching every day, and Sunday afternoon the first black-chinned traveler showed up.

You can clearly see a purple bib in this pic (not mine) below the black chin.

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The black-chinned hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri) has a pretty distinct migration pattern:

Spring Migration (northward): They leave their wintering grounds in western Mexico (especially along the Pacific coast and parts of central Mexico) around February to March. They move north through the southwestern U.S. and reach their breeding grounds by late March to early May.

Breeding Range (summer): They breed mainly in the western United States — places like Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, California, and into southern British Columbia.

Fall Migration (southward): By late August through September, they start moving south again toward Mexico for the winter.

Wintering Grounds: Mostly western and central Mexico, but some may overwinter in southern Texas along the Gulf Coast.

AI generated text in response to the query: Describe the migration pattern of the black-throated hummingbird.

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Transcendental Blues, by Steve Earle

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It was well known that director Alfred Hitchcock had a thing about casting blonde women as heroines in his films. The quintet at left is (clockwise) June Howard-Tripp, Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, and Eva Marie Saint. There were others.

As far as Hitchcock was concerned, blonde was all there was to say about female beauty.

This obsession led him to cast Hedren in The Birds. Now I’ve seen this movie a couple of times, and although I have absolutely no credentials as a critic, It appears to me that Ms. Hedren could not act her way out of a paper bag, whatever other sterling qualities she might have had.

The Birds, for younger readers, was a film where the ornithologic fauna of a small seaside town turned on the humans, pecking them in all sorts of horrible ways (the eyes … why did they go for the eyes?). While being pursued by murderous titmice wouldn’t be too scary, when the bird in question is the size of a big seagull or raven, the grim possibilities were more obvious.

Here Hedren is shown expressing abject terror, which is almost the same look as she had in the photo above where she was smoking a cigarette in a diner. Although there is an errant lock of hair in the attack photo she reveals not a wrinkle or a squint in either one.

But back in 1963 when the movie came out, one could easily overlook her limitations and allow oneself to actually ponder what it would be like if terror came fluttering from the skies to seek you out. Yes, even hummingbirds. Those little beaks are ever so pointy.

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Who You Are, by Pearl Jam

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We have a family of garter snakes that lives under the concrete platform outside our front door. Even though I know that they’re there, occasionally I am still startled when a nearly three-foot long member of the family comes undulating by me a few inches below my feet. Neighbors have told me that I could just fill the small hole that is the entrance to their burrow and it would be goodbye snakes.

Problem is that there is no way for me to know if any members of that family are at home should I decide to mix up a little concrete and pour it in. And trapping any of them in there would be completely unacceptable.

If there is a creature in this universe that offers less harm to me than the garter snake I don’t know what it would be.

It’s quite the other way around, actually. The small patch of grass that is our front lawn is one place that the snakes hunt for food. Unfortunately I learned this by accidentally killing one with the lawn mower, as it was invisible in the grass in front of me. Now when I mow the area I move as slowly as the machine will go, watching carefully for blades of grass that start waving suspiciously.

At one point in my kid-ship our family lived on an acre of land a couple of miles out of town. Next to our home was a grass-covered vacant lot. Our dog at the time was named Sandy. He was a very goodhearted dog of uncertain parentage that my father had taken in. Sandy loved to wander in that tall grass next door, and every once in a while would come up with a garter snake in his mouth that he would carefully bring unharmed to our lawn, where he released it. Catch and release, like a trout fisherman.

One day as I was up to no good at all reading Mad magazines, I heard my mother scream from somewhere outside the house. The horror registered in that outcry brought the entire family to the scene, where we found Mom with a full laundry basket in her hands, standing under the clotheslines, and surrounded by at least fifteen snakes that we could count. Sandy had been busy.

Bravely I waded in to her rescue, clearing away all reptiles from her path back to safety. I don’t remember her ever thanking me for that good deed, perhaps she took umbrage because I was laughing so hard.

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People have been trying to write rock’s obituary ever since its birth. Already in 1957 the group Danny and the Juniors felt that they had to offer up the defensive tune Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay. Gaslighting critics clamp themselves like barnacles on to the shiny next thing and off they go, leaving the supposed corpse of the genre behind. And yet here we are, new bands continuously arising. Some we become aware of, others just as worthy, perhaps, never get out of the bar scene. But rock obviously means something to its audience. It is music that resonates.

Within that genre there are jam bands. Goose is the latest to come to my attention, and when I played that first cut on Apple Music there was an instant connection made. I looked through their albums and Perfecto! They have an album called “Live At The Capitol Theater,” which contains 53 songs. Who would have the nerve to do such a thing but a jam band? And a concert film on YouTube that is three hours long? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQSavJ-sULs . What can I say?

Give It Time, by Goose

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A day brightener … sorta …

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The Wolves Survive

jono55

It’s around midnight and we’re headed for a possible freeze tonight. There’s a small rain falling … turning to snow … not enough to do much good in a parched countryside but more than enough to dampen a cat’s spirits, and they are complaining.

Of our two cats, Poco is the one who grouses loudly. Willow is much more the stoic. Her attitude is to silently shrug her shoulders and take on a look that says quite clearly “Whatever.”

As for me, I take a sip of my tea and thank the gods that be for central heating and a good roof.

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Hard Times, by Gangstagrass with Kaia Kater

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I dunno, there are days when I think that president Cluck is giving billionaires a bad name, don’t you? Most of the oligarchs that I know personally* are not showoffs at all, but much prefer to do their work behind doors or Chinese screens or on yachts well beyond the reach of landlubbing paparazzi and their telephoto lenses. But Cluck can’t stand it if the attention wanders even for an instant from his ever-enlarging corpus.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I can sympathize with many of the sayings that have accumulated over the centuries about the ultra wealthy. Let’s examine just a few of them:

  • The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs. Karl Marx
  • When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die. Jean-Paul Sartre
  • It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus Christ
  • Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Honore Balzac

There is one saying that goes all the way back to a guy named Plutarch, and that is: “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” That’s one we are dealing with right now. The amount of the world’s wealth that is today in the hands of a very few men and women reliably excites emotions like jealousy and envy among the not-so-fortunate, as it creates a class of people who feel they have little to lose by resorting to theft or violence.

Innately we know that such a situation cannot long endure, but eventually is likely to end in some form of high unpleasantness.

*Actually, I don’t know a single oligarch personally. My family of origin is 100% oligarch-free.

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It’s not too hard to see how this Los Lobos song from 1984 can be applied to the confusion and disorder of today. The lyrics have become less a metaphor and more a documentary.

Through the chill of winter
Running across a frozen lake
Hunters are out on his trail
All odds are against him
With a family to provide for
The one thing he must keep alive
Will the wolf survive?


Driftin’ by the roadside
Lines etched on an aging face
Wants to make some honest pay
Losing to the range war
He’s got two strong legs to guide him
Two strong arms keep him alive
Will the wolf survive?


Standing in the pouring rain
All alone in a world that’s changed
Running scared, now forced to hide
In a land where he once stood with pride
But he’ll find his way by the morning light


Sounds across the nation
Coming from young hearts and minds
Battered drums and old guitars
Singing songs of passion
It’s the truth that they all look for
Something they must keep alive
Will the wolf survive?
Will the wolf survive?

Will The Wolf Survive, by Los Lobos

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While we’re on the subject of wolves, one of my photographer heroes died on April 4 of this year. Jim Brandenburg was his name and most Minnesotans have seen his work, even if they didn’t always know his name. He had two galleries, one located in Luverne MN, where he grew up. The other was in Ely MN, one of my favorite places in the world.

One of his recurring subjects was the wolf, and perhaps his best known photograph was this one, “Brother Wolf.”

Brandenburg’s work was published many times in National Geographic magazine, giving him a following well beyond the borders of my old home state. Every one of the photographs in every one of those books he published is so good it makes me want to just throw away my camera. Truly extraordinary.

Here’s the briefest of galleries of his work. Want to make someone who loves the natural world happy? … give them one of his books, or perhaps a print. Or, even better, a print and a book.

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David Brooks is my favorite kind of conservative. One with a functioning cerebrum. His op-ed piece in Friday’s Times is spot on, and quite different from his usual take-it-easy approach. The title of the piece gave me a chuckle.

WHAT’S HAPPENING IS NOT NORMAL. AMERICA NEEDS AN UPRISING THAT IS NOT NORMAL.

What he is saying is what a growing number of grassroots organizations have been telling us for a while now, and having only relatively recently waked from my own personal stupor I am glad to see Brooks join the movement.

So far, we have treated the various assaults of President Trump and the acolytes in his administration as a series of different attacks. In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they’re attacking our universities. On yet another front they’re undermining NATO and on another they’re upending global trade. But that’s the wrong way to think about it. These are not separate battles. This is a single effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order that might restrain Trump’s acquisition of power. And it will take a concerted response to beat it back.

David Brooks: What’s Happening Is Not Normal, New York TImes of April 18, 2025.

So David is thinking about hitting the streets, and that will be good for his soul and the causes he believes in. He will attract others more cautious than he is. If enough Brookses and like-minded folks get out there together under the same banner the right will prevail. History has shown the way.

I remember the day when, after years of scattered protests and much impassioned rhetoric that I watched the news and saw a very large parade of mothers marching against the war in Viet Nam. It was at that moment that I knew the war was finally over, and President Nixon was going to have to wind it down the best he could. Such a broad and passionate political force could not be withstood, and he was smart enough to know it.

Cluck’s lust for power has already created an effluvium that now touches the life of every single person in this country, mostly for ill. When enough people wake up and realize what is happening to them, there won’t be a parking place to be found anywhere near the rallies that will erupt around the US. At that point, this “war,” too, will be over.

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(Migra or La migra is an informal Spanish language term for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), United States Border Patrol, and related institutions. It has negative connotations)

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Battle Songs

jono55

There’s an amusing article in Monday’s Times of New York on the British style of political humor being presently applied to Elon Musk. Of course they have their own bones to pick with the man, with his recent meddling in European politics, always on the far-right side of the bin.

If you are going to stick pins in a gasbag, it is much more enjoyable when they have a thin skin, and can reliably be provoked to outrage. Here Musk qualifies, in spades.

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Won’t Get Fooled Again, by The Who

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When Robin and I bicycle out into the rural we often see a few of the beautiful Gambel’s Quail. If we’re lucky, we’ll see a small handful of chicks as well.

But this photographer in Arizona stumbled upon something special.

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Winter is dragging its heels as we creep toward the inevitability of Spring. Daytime temperatures are going back up into pleasant territory, but nighttime freezes are still the mode of the day. So far all of the blossoming trees are doing quite well, thank you very much. Coming here from the prairies, it has been interesting to see what landscape plantings do well and are thus popular in the mountain climate. At least here at around 6000 feet of altitude.

We are presently moving toward the end of the local forsythia season, where those bright golden flowers stick out from the predominating gray and brown background colors of our yards.

This plant seems quite happy here in Paradise, although I’ve noticed that the size of the shrubs up here is more modest than those planted closer to sea level. When I lived for a time in Buffalo NY we had three large forsythias in the backyard that looked like the one in the purloined picture at right. Each one was briefly an explosion of color.

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With God On Our Side, by the Neville Brothers

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We’ve got a problem here in Colorado. We have two Democratic senators who are decent, likable, hardworking, and honest. This is a problem, you ask? Well … they are trying to work toward bipartisan solutions to problems when the opposing party has lost its mind, backbone, and apparently any fleeting memory of what they are really supposed to be doing in Congress. Seems a waste of energy.

I find myself wishing that our two representatives had a bit more of the rogue in them these days and were willing to take some risks, perhaps even getting their hands a bit bruised and dirty. I remember Michelle Obama bragging back in the dimly remembered days of you’re about how important it was to take the high road. That admiration of clean fingernails may be one of the reasons we are in the pickle we are in. Because the other side has never had any such compunctions, that puts us often in the difficult position of bringing a dessert spoon to a gunfight.

For instance, somewhere deep in my heart I have the feeling that if her husband had been just a tad less fastidious that Merrick Garland may have made it to the Supreme Court. And what a difference that would have made in our lives! But Barack stayed clean and shiny and cool and hosted another White House musical evening and now women’s reproductive freedoms and a lot of other good things political are in the crapper.

( I know that I am probably being unfair to Barack O, and how would I know any of this, being a nobody out here in the boonies, but … maybe there’s some truth to what I am saying?)

Anyway, I plan to send our senators each a pair of work gloves and recommend that they put them on and dig in. Politics may not have to be a bloodsport, but it is definitely similar to making sausage. Not always pretty or enlightening to watch, but sometimes there can be tasty stuff that comes out of it.

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I’m posting my idea of “protest” music on this blog for a while. We need to find our voices and tunes suitable for marching, in this new uncivil war. As a country we’ve gone from Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever to Cluck’s version, which is Stars and Stripes -Meh! Need to move on from there.

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We Shall Overcome, by Dorothy Cotton, Freedom Singers, and Pete Seeger

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Somewhere in an El Salvadorean nightmare of a prison is a man who we now know doesn’t belong there. His name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Our government, which sent him there, is refusing to cooperate with attempts to get him released. One court officer says “Get him out and return him immediately.” Chief Justice John Roberts says “Wait, put a pause on that.”

What am I missing here? Why is there any question of bringing him back as fast as we can?

I have that living in Wonderland feeling so often these days.

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Watched a special movie on Monday evening. On Netflix. It’s called The Outrun, and stars Saoirse Ronan. Usually I am not keen on watching films where alcoholism is a major theme, as my own personal story has provided me with enough of that sort of drama. But I started it and stuck with it because any chance to watch a Ronan performance is not to be missed. So glad I did because this is not just another 12-step movie.

It’s also not a simple linear watch, but well worth the small effort you will need to make if you take it on. And the last few seconds (literally) are a happy surprise and perfection as an ending.

BTW, much of the story takes place on Scottish islands. It is rock and sea and storms, and a cinematographer who appreciates them.

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The Sound of Both Hands Clapping

jono55

May all sentient beings praise Senator Cory Booker. He is a good man who has now broken the record of a very bad man (Sen. Strom Thurmond) and delivered a more than 25 hour-long speech in the Senate. All of it directed against the destructive and corrupt Cluck regime.

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This is not right or left, it is right or wrong. This is not a partisan moment. It is a moral moment. Where do you stand?

Cory Booker

Not every man or woman can do something as strenuous and public as what Booker has done, but every man or woman of conscience can now see where we are and what is happening and be disgusted on the one hand and encouraged on the other, because if sacrifice is called for we don’t have to hunt for the reason – it is there right in front of us.

Easy for me to say? I am only a coot in the corner with little to lose? Not true. Each one of us has only the day in front of them to do what is right. Only that moment. In that way we are all alike, as not one of us can see tomorrow.

If anyone in America can be arrested by masked men, thrown onto an airplane, and transported to a foreign country, all without due process, we are all of us vulnerable and should not be fooled into believing otherwise. These are the tactics of despots, of tsars and fuehrers. No one’s life or liberty is safe in such a country. A man called Martin Niemoller put it so very well, back in 1946, as he described Nazi Germany.

“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

As you read this they are already coming for Hispanics, for Asians, for Muslims. We’ve had our wake-up call, folks.

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From The New Yorker

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Comic relief. Josh Johnson.

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Saturday afternoon Robin and I participated in a political rally/march here in Paradise that was directed against the Cluck administration and its policies.

It was part of a demonstration by worried, frustrated, appalled, and just plain fed up people across the country, and which was coordinated by Indivisible.org. Robin and I were amazed at the turnout, 1200 people in a small town. It seems that there are few things that make people angrier than an attempted coup being prosecuted by an incompetent delusional.

The signs on the street today ranged from really imaginative and attractive to my own blunt message scribbled with a fat black marker on a hunk of white poster board: IMPEACH.

A guy can dream, right? Here’s a few pix.

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From The New Yorker

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We don’t eat many casseroles here at Basecamp. That’s okay with me because they were constantly on the menu in my family of origin. But a ripple of nostalgia moved me this week and I decided to make a salmon loaf, which turned out not to be half bad.

What one does is take a single 16 oz can of salmon and throw a bushel of bread crumbs at it. It’s probably the back story for that famous episode in the Bible.

Matthew 14:17-19 KJV

And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes. He said, Bring them hither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

My own guess is that they made salmon loaves. You could definitely feed a multitude this way. And there would be plenty of leftovers because of that irreducible group that always says in such instances: “It tastes fishy,” and won’t eat it.

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For What It’s Worth, by Lucinda Williams

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A friend sent along this gem of a link. We liked it very much. It is entitled “Twenty Lessons.”

https://snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-lessons-read-by-john-lithgow?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

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Playlists

jono55

Back in 1987, I turned my ex-wife, and said: “You know, this October I am turning 58, and I haven’t had a mid-life crisis yet. Do you have any suggestions for me?” It turned to that she did, and it was a doozy. Before that very same birthday rolled around I was a single man.

As I have done since I was in my mid-teens, I turned to music when the clatter in my head grew too loud and a bit of respite was needed. I found that I could replace that mental static with a song. For the next couple of years, there was a short list of perhaps a dozen tunes that were in very frequent rotation. Looking back, I can’t see much of a pattern in them, and they would go in and out of the daily playlist depending on my sense of the world at that given moment. But they were always there, arrows in my quiver for use when life would place dragons on the stoop.

I’ll post a few of them here today.

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In 1956, driving home from work at the grocery store, I head a song on the radio that stuck in my head. You know how it is, you go through your day with noise of all sorts passing by you and your brain, luckily, ignores most of it. Then, for whatever reason, one of those sounds sticks, like a dart on a board. The tune was Frankie and Johnny, and the artist a man named Lonnie Donnegan. I bought the album and every song was a winner for me, even at that age. Playing that LP on the cheap equipment that I owned at the time I eventually wore it out, so I bought another copy. Later on that album was lost, and when digital music came ’round, it hadn’t made the cut. Still hasn’t. But I found later on that all of the tunes that had been on that original album were now available on other Donnegan collections. He and I have become great pals that never met.

Album title: An Englishman Sings American Folk Songs

You Pass Me By, by Lonnie Donnegan

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I ran across Richard Thompson in 1982, when I read a review of the album Shoot Out The Lights in Rolling Stone. Since then his music has been with me as a constant presence. Going through his catalog quite a while back I came across Beat the Retreat, which I absolutely loved. Such mournful guitar work … my, oh my. Later on in life when times were melancholy it was a song to turn to. Not for solace, perhaps, but to help put words to feelings that were as yet inchoate.*

*I’ve never used “inchoate” before. Nifty word.

Beat the Retreat, by Richard Thompson

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Phoenix is the sort of tune that might have been sung Karaoke-style way after midnight by a middle-aged man in his cups who was swimming in self-pity and loss.

If any of you know of such a Person of Pathos, recommend it to them. It contains something more than slender hope, it holds out the possibility of triumph.

Phoenix, by Dan Fogelberg

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Friends, Elon Musk and I (we are bffs) would like to recommend the messaging app Signal to you.

Signal is free to use and available on both Android and iOS operating systems. Alongside the extra security protocols, it includes all of the basic messaging tools you’re going to need, including read receipts, emoji support, group chats, and voice and video calls.

Company website

Not only is it better at keeping your secrets than its predecessors, there is always the chance that you will get to sit in on a national security session where they talk about war, bombs, and other cool stuff!

And it doesn’t cost you a cent. With emojis, yet.

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The Ugly American

jono55

(The Ugly American was a best selling novel of the late fifties. It detailed blundering and arrogance in the US diplomatic service ini Southeast Asia, and its message is completely relevant today)

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David Brooks is just plain smart and a sensible conservative. In Friday’s New York Times he published an op/ed piece entitled: “It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.”

This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist.

David Brooks

The article rings both sad and gut-wrenchingly true. My advice would be not to read it unless you have a strong cup of coffee at hand and your affairs in order. As for me, I have no intention of letting the sonofabitches just walk away with my America and I plan on being as big a pain in their ass as possible.

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From The New Yorker

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Every once in a while I place several versions of the same song on these pages just because I find them interesting. God’s Gonna Cut You Down is one of those. Basically it promises that even though “the long-tongued liar, midnight rider, rambler, gambler, and backbiter” may seem successful today, eventually they are due for a celestial kneecapping.

Since I personally know several people who I feel roundly deserve such attention from God, I find that the song has a comforting message. My hope is that I live long enough to see it happen, on a blue-sky day where I have a front row seat and a big box of popcorn.

It goes without saying that I hope the Deity doesn’t get around to my particular sorts of sins and my own exposed kneecaps, but focusses on those of others.

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Odetta

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Okay, I’m going to ask quite a bit of you in this next section. While wandering in the internet dreamscape (nightmarescape?), I came across a longer video. Against my will I watched it, because my natural inclination is to never watch a video more than 17 seconds long. I find that my personal attention span cannot be stretched further than this without mental pain, and I avoid that like the plague.

But the video purported to discuss some of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work, and he is a hero of mine. Hero because he stood against Naziism when it meant his life, for he was hanged in a Nazi concentration camp. So I endured the discomfort, and mirabile dictu, was rewarded greatly.

The video is about a theory of stupidity, and at the end of it I said smugly to myself: Well, that explains a lot about _________ ! Now I get it!

And then, I thought (again to myself because who wants to get caught thinking about anything deep and thus becoming a terrible bore) – wait – could what I have just learned apply to me as well? Could I … cough … grumble … gasp … possibly … be stupid as well?

Unfortunately all I had to do was to review any week of my life to get the answer to my own question. The most gracious interpretation that I could come up with was it seemed that my own lengthy stupid periods were interrupted, however briefly, by rational thinking. But still …

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(Bonhoeffer said some good stuff. Here’s one that fits well with the present-day)

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.
Not to speak is to speak.
Not to act is to act.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Johnny Cash

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The past week the weather has been extraordinary. The temperature yesterday peaked at 63 degrees. I stared at my three snow shovels leaning against the inside garage wall, and wondered if I should store them out in the small shed to get them from underfoot. And then I thought: Fool! Dunderhead! You would ignore Life’s Axiom #42?

“Whatsoever thou puttest away in a hard to get at place, verily thou wilt need it immediately thereafter.”

So they are still leaning against the wall, occasionally sliding down to where one could trip on them. Perhaps in July sometime …

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God’s Gonna Cut You Down, by Larkin Poe

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From The New Yorker

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Around 0100 some wet snow falling caught Poco out when he was attending to Nature’s call in the back yard. He returned through the pet door as indignant as an 18 year old cat can be. Which when one has the vocal gifts that Poco can lay claim to, is quite the racket.

I happened to be awake, and sprang into action before the noise he was making woke my bride up. Never a good thing, that. Robin takes such an event personally, and since I am the only other human around to blame … you can see why rapid action is the only course to take. I shushed Poco, rounded up something for him to eat, and brought him into my office, where he calmed down.

Poco is a very vocal animal. He has several mewling and meows that we have come to recognize:

  • Food, I want food!
  • I am not feeling well, and within fifteen seconds I am going to throw right up on this rug
  • I am going to the litter box now (Lord knows why he needs to announce this)
  • There is an interloper (strange cat) on the deck outside the kitchen door, threatening entry
  • You are about to sit on part of my anatomy, usually a foot or my tail. Take care

Sometimes he will converse. He catches your eye and meows something whose content is a mystery. You answer “Sorry, old fellow, I don’t know what you want.” He answers. You say something again. He answers. And on and on, with him always having the last meow.

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The Kindness of Strangers

jono55

“Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

One of the famous lines from the famous play by the famous playwright Tennessee Williams. This one was spoken in the play by the character Blanche DuBois. But it could have been me uttering those words at many occasions in my life, and I suspect that there are a lot of people who could say the same thing.

Robin and I had been hiking up on the Grand Mesa on a beautiful autumn day. As we returned to our car, we decided to go down on the north side of the mesa to check out yet more of the fall colors.

Robin was driving, and as she made a turn onto the Grand Junction bypass something happened to me. I could not think clearly and could not speak at all, only garbled sounds would come. Her response was to pull into a convenience store parking lot and run into the store for help. At that point a battalion of strangers marched into the story, did their job, and as a result I am still here today to annoy multitudes with my words.

Here is an incomplete list of people I owe for that day alone.

  • The c-store clerk who recognized my neurological emergency and phoned his EMT amigos
  • The EMTs who tossed me into the ambulance and broke several laws getting me to the hospital
  • The ER docs and nurses who moved me to the head of the line for attention
  • The radiology techs who snapped the quickest CT on the Western Slope
  • The nurse who managed the IV that rid me of the most annoying clot I’ve ever had or hope to have

The only non-stranger in this scenario was Robin, who never hesitated as she whipped our Subaru into that C-store parking lot and got that clerk’s attention. (Bless that girl.)

Problem was, for her, that she did such important and necessary work but all she got to take home for her efforts was the same doofus she’d started the day with a few hours earlier.

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Don’t Let It Bring You Down, by Neil Young

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From The New Yorker

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These days, I would guess that there are many Americans who start each morning as I do, by crying inside. At the lunacy, the corruption, the criminality, the disgusting spectacles unfolding. I certainly don’t blame any Canadian, Mexican, or European for saying “WTF” because that is exactly how I feel when reading my newspapers. It is very definitely WTF time in America.

In one month Cluck has done his best to take the office of the President all the way from leader of the free world to that of a turd in a punch bowl. Unbelievable, really, how quickly this has occurred. What his motives are … I have no idea, nor do I care. What he is doing is sabotaging generations of hard work done by much better and smarter men and women than he.

*

turd in the punch bowl

n. A person who spoils a pleasant situation.

This metaphor is powered by a particularly vivid contrast: the inviting sensory appeal of a festive beverage juxtaposed with the revolting suggestion of feculent contagion . Therefore, labeling someone a turd in the punch bowl is most appropriate when the individual’s deleterious influence goes beyond mere faux pas or nuisance behaviors, and rises to the level of deliberate offense for its own sake. Consider that the literal act of depositing or excreting fecal matter into a communal food-service container would be sabotage.

The punch bowl and the feces connote certain additional nuances. The former is a symbol of public community, as such dispensers are frequently encountered at parties where they become a focal point for interaction. Freud famously identified feces with aggression and the possessive instinct. Thus a turd in the punch bowl suggests rage toward, and / or the urge to conquer, a community or society as a whole. … In particular then, to be a turd in the punch bowl is to be a willful and attention-seeking obstructor to the success of a social community.

Urban Dictionary.com

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From The New Yorker

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At some point in my life I realized that pain was the best teacher of all for me, for it always got and held my full attention like nothing else. I also realized that there was nearly always something positive that came from my misfortunes, if I looked for it hard enough. The misfortune may have been leagues worse than the benefit, but that nugget was still there. Something mitigating.

As an instance, now that I find myself governed by Ali Clucka and the Forty Thieves, my interest in reading the Constitution and the Bill of Rights has risen sharply. That’s a very good thing. In this particular regard I have been complacent for far too long.

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We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln

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The Loner, by Neil Young

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Warnings

jono55

A couple of weeks ago I introduced myself and you to a new artist, Stephen Wilson Jr.. Since that time, I have been listening to nothing but his music. His first and only album contain 34 songs, which is an unusual and formidable number, and has given me much material to listen to and to ponder.

What I have found is that he is a troubadour and whether he knows it or not, he is he is singing my younger Minnesota redneck life as well as his own. He sings it in the key of grunge and he sings it loud, with his own interesting guitar style.

You never heard of a Minnesota redneck? Check out the definition of the term right here.

  1. an uneducated white farm laborer, especially from the South.
  2. a bigot or reactionary, especially from the rural working class.

Dictionary.com

Nothing there about Southern exclusivity, is there? All you need to do is spend long hours in the field with the sun beating on the back of your neck and you qualify. It helps if you are dumb as a rock as well, but that’s not a requirement.

As for me personally, I have in turn been uneducated, white, bigoted, and still struggle with being reactionary at times. Also, the number of dumb things of which I have been guilty in my extended lifetime would make all but the most most adamantine rocks blush with shame.

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From The New Yorker

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On Stephen Wilson Jr’s album there are several songs that stand out for me.

Father’s Son describes the complexities in his relationship with his father over time. Complexities which many of us have dealt with in our roles as sons, fathers, even (as I am learning) grandfathers.

The Year to Be Young – 1994 : my own such year was 1956, but the rest of the lyrics could have come from my diary, if I had kept one.

Calico Creek: the words that caught my attention talked about a deep creek that was dangerous in the spring, but by late Summer …

Where the rope swings are rotten
Had our toes touching bottom
It’ll be dry by July, but if you walk down the sides
You can find some Rapalas

That last line … we kids from low-income families knew well to walk along the newly exposed banks looking for Rapalas and other fishing lures caught on snags and rocks during times of higher water.

Enough! You get the idea. To find so many songs that revealed those common experiences … for me this guy’s music falls under the category of a big fat blessing.

Father’s Son
Year To Be Young 1994
Calico Creek

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From The New Yorker

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PSA

This next piece is in the nature of a Public Service Announcement. Robin and I have discovered a substance of such addictive power that we aren’t even sure that we should put this information out there, on the outside chance that lives could be ruined.

A few weeks back we discovered a new recipe and decided to try it out. It sounded simple, promising, and could easily be manufactured at home using ingredients typically found around any kitchen.

The recipe was for a version of a rice pudding. A homely dessert if there ever was one, and ordinarily considered safe to eat. But our first batch was so tasty that within an hour we looked at one another across a table, spoons in hand, and realized we had eaten the entire bowlful. Little grains of rice were scattered on our shirt fronts, our eyes were glazed and out of focus, our pupils dilated.

To be sure that what had happened was not a fluke, we made another batch a week later, and this week yet one more. Each time with the same result. During the last episode Robin had to duct-tape me to a dining room chair and throw out most of the concoction. Flocks of birds descended upon it which then were unable to fly away without wobbling.

Here is the recipe. I publish so that you can avoid accidentally putting it together. It is the dessert equivalent of crack, and I can say with certainty that once you start on on it you will be unable to stop until you are rendered immobile and possibly nonverbal for hours.

Sharp objects and heavy machinery should not be available to those who ignore these warnings and commit to cooking up something they are not prepared to deal with. Like meth and rice pudding.

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Memento Mori

Roberta Flack, a great lady of American song, passed on this week. She had many, many hits, including one of the most beautiful love songs I’ve ever heard, entitled First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. It was featured on the album First Take, released in 1969.

Even if that had been the only tune she’d ever recorded, it would have been enough for me to remember her name.

First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

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Careless Love

jono55

I’ve been “in crush” many times, but almost none of the women involved ever knew it. I was repeatedly the classic hopeless admirer from afar, pining away in a hut, clad in sackcloth. Names like Margie, Judy, Ferol, and Ingrid still have a place in memory even though there is nothing real to go with them, only what I imagined way back when.

One of my inamorata was Joan Baez. When she walked out on the stage of Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota in 1964, long hair, long dress, barefoot, guitar in hand … well, she had me at first pluck. The madonna of folk music had added yet another disciple to her already long list.

I confess that my infatuation crumbled away when she wed David Harris, and the albums that I still listen to are all from the earlier period of her career. I felt abandoned when she married, I always hoped she’d wait for me.

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Old Blue, by Joan Baez

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Plaisir d’Amour, by Joan Baez

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I mentioned the name “Ingrid”above, and feel the need to flesh that out a bit. In 1943 the movie For Whom The Bell Tolls came out, starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. I was only three years old at the time, so I didn’t get to check it out until much later, when it was shown at a cinema art house near the University of Minnesota. The movie was a fair one, with much Hemingway-esque dialogue and a bridge being blown up and all, but it was Ms. Bergman who captured my adolescent heart.

So much so that I bought and treasured the soundtrack for the film, primarily because the cover art on the album was the close-up at left.

Now at the time I saw the movie I was nineteen, and Ingrid was in her mid-forties. This would have made this February-December romance a bit of a challenge to pull off, and even I had to admit it. Especially since the woman I was infatuated with was Bergman as she had been in 1943. But when you are living in complete unreality … well … all things are possible.

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Farewell, Angelina, by Joan Baez

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DISGRACE

Nicholas Kristof has nailed it in an op/ed piece in the NY Times. The damage that Cluck is doing right now as I type this and later as you read it, is monstrous. When we throw our allies under the bus and get into bed to spoon with Putin the Poisoner, what can people think of us Americans?

I really feel for the Europeans. They have always known they couldn’t trust Putin, a vicious bully, torturer, and murderer. But now our shambling dotard of a president has revealed that they can’t trust us, either. Revealed it both to Europe and also to any American who still remembers the meaning of words like loyalty, honor, and decency.

And who remembers why countries banded together in NATO in the first place. It wasn’t because of the Nazis, they were already beaten. It was because of the threats coming from the former Soviet Union under Stalin and his autocratic successors. Which includes … guess who? … Vladimir Putin.

Where are the Republican patriots? Have they forgotten how to tell friends from enemies? How can they let this debauched troll presently at the head of our government have his way? How can they continue to be Cluck’s enablers in such a sickening betrayal?

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda genius, had one honest moment when he admitted back in yet another terrible time:

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

Goebbels was talking about the ordinary German citizen. Cluck is counting on ordinary American citizens to believe his lies, and I believe that he will be proven wrong in his assumptions. But at what cost?

A shameful moment in time. Our president has disgraced us.

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The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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Slouching Toward Bethlehem, by Joni Mitchell

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Do It Thyself?

jono55

There are people in this world who deliberately create chaos in order to draw attention to themselves. They walk into a room where people are gathered and instinctively know what to say to create empuzzlement. Then they leave those people to sort out the mess they have created as they move on to other rooms. I’m not sure exactly what the psychodynamics are, but some of you may recognize the type. Ordinarily such occasions are only annoying, and with practice you can let them slip away without affecting the course of the rest of your day. Small change, as it were.

But it’s another matter when the offender has acquired power and the willingness to use chaos to increase that power. We have such a person now occupying the center chair in the Oval Office. He has little idea of how to govern, but he is fully capable of creating messes and breaking things. Like the proverbial bull in a china shop. Or the two year-old smearing its own feces on the wallpaper outside of its crib.

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Everyday YouTube serves up videos to me promising that if I only would click on the link I can watch someone “own” or “crush” or “take down” another person. Since YouTube knows where I live and everything that I have ever clicked on from the beginning of internet time, they usually promise me a moment where a liberally-minded person reduces a conservative to mush. (I have no doubt that people on the right side of the political spectrum receive a diet of liberals ending up becoming oily puddles on the linoleum.)

In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

George Orwell

It’s all pretty shameless pandering. Whenever I have unwisely clicked on one of those links I regret it. In an interview recently Lady GaGa was asked a question about what someone had said about her on social media. She got off a pretty good retort: “First of all, social media is the toilet of the internet.” Couldn’t agree more.

I am presently not on Meta, Instagram, X, or any of the gossipy platforms. I do remain attached to YouTube, however, for this reason. Not being a good problem-solver when it comes to the thousand things an aging house can do to my serenity, I have come to treasure the “how-to-do-it” videos that this service provides. Even if all they tell me is “for god’s sake don’t touch anything!”

I worked for more than 35 years as a physician, which required a rather complex and specific skillset, and I fancy that I did a proper job of it. Home repairs, on the other hand … the words dolt, idiot, and lamebrain do not do my performances justice.

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A little foreword to the upcoming song, Is That All There Is?

The song was inspired by the 1896 story “Disillusionment” by Thomas Mann. … The lines “Is that all there is to a fire?/Is that all there is/is that all there is?” and three of the events in the song (the fire, failed love, imagined death) are based on the narrator’s words in Mann’s story; the central idea of both the short story and the song are the same.

Wikipedia

Is That All There Is?, by Peggy Lee

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Who knew that Chinese retribution for our kicking TikTok out would be so swift and awesome? Instead of getting mad, they got even … actually, way more than even. They have come up with DeepSeek, an AI model that apparently operates at only a fraction of the cost of how we have been doing things till now.

The population of Wall Street, which is a neighborhood where a subspecies known as Chicken Littles live, went into high tizzy when they learned of it. Nvidia, who makes the big dog AI chip, lost nearly 600 billion dollars in stock value earlier this week.

I’m not sure how best to deal with such a number, but this might help. Six hundred billion dollars is enough to make a stack of dollar bills 40,740 miles high. Does that make it clearer or cloudier?

You can get a copy of the DeepSeek mobile app for free on the app store, and put it in that space where you used to keep TikTok. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe, and won’t collect anything you don’t want the Chinese to have. Any doubts, why, just look at that cute and innocent whale on the logo. How could the people who created that have any subversive intentions?

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China, by Tori Amos

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Some of the AI stuff being endlessly written about over the past several years has been flavored in a way to cause high anxiety in certain non-digital life forms (humans). The overall impression is that something is coming that will take your job, destroy your life as you know it, and place you naked and afraid on an island you never heard of filled with things that want to kill you.

It so reminds me of the good old days when HAL was only a sci-fi nightmare and not something coming to living rooms, everywhere.

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Now, you might ask the experts involved in AI research some questions like these if you can get them to stand still long enough.

  • If AI is eventually going to be inimical to human existence, why are we playing with it?
  • If AI will eventually require more energy to operate than all of the power presently being generated, why are we playing with it?
  • If AI might screw up my television streaming schedule and leave me with only endless reruns of Hee Haw to watch, why are we playing with it?

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Let me put how I see this all coming together as simply as I can.

This is the world I want to live in.

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This is the world I find myself living in

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All Apologies, by Sinead O’Connor

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Happy Talk

jono55

Today I offer an instructional session on how to get into your happy place. It works 100% of the time for me. Remember the Jerusalema craze of four years ago, when there were scads of groups of various sizes performing the song as a sort of global dance challenge? Well, boys and girls, all of those videos are still out there ready to work their magic. I rounded up three of my favorites, but maybe you prefer 400 flight attendants or a group of nuns or a flash mob all doing roughly the same dance … those videos all still out there.

The dance trend began when Fenómenos do Semba, a group in Angola, south-west Africa, recorded themselves dancing to the song while eating and without dropping their plates.

Irish Post

So here are the instigators.

My plan is to keep this panel of videos handy during the next four years, as a refreshment for the spirit. I did try to do the dance moves once on my own but by the second chorus I needed orthopedic care. Apparently my time for performing these sorts of maneuvers came and went without my knowledge or assent.

Here are the adorables.

The lyrics are those of a gospel song, a yearning for a place of peace. Who doesn’t have such a yearning, whether one is adherent to a religious point of view or not?

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Jerusalema ikhaya lami (Jerusalem is my home)
Ngilondoloze, uhambe nami (Save me, and walk with me)
Zungangishiyi lana (Do not leave me here) (Repeat)

Ndawo yami, ayikho lana (My place, is not here)
Mbuso wami, awukho lana (My kingdom, is not here)
Ngilondoloze, uhambe nami (Preserve me, and go with me) (Repeat)

Ngilondoloze (Save me)
Ngilondoloze (Preserve me)
Ngilondoloze (Guard me)
Zungangishiyi lana (Do not leave me here) (Repeat)

Ndawo yami, ayikho lana (My place, is not here)
Mbuso wami, awukho lana (My kingdom, is not here)
Ngilondoloze, uhambe nami (Save me, and walk with me) (Repeat)

Jerusalema ikhaya lami (Jerusalem is my home)
Ngilondoloze, uhambe nami (Preserve me, and go with me)
Zungangishiyi lana (Do not leave me here) (Repeat)

Ngilondoloze (Save me)
Ngilondoloze (Preserve me)
Ngilondoloze (Guard me)
Zungangishiyi lana (Do not leave me here) (Repeat)

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And now here are the Cubans. Their talent is obvious, their joy infectious. Please, dear readers, these people are professionals. Do not try this at home. But if you do and suffer a mishap, you can call Dr. Hemispherium Bonesmith. He has an international practice composed entirely of senior citizens who tried to do that hip thing and seized up.

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With it being cold and all, and without enough snow to have fun with nordic skiing or snowshoeing, I am starting to plan the next year’s outings. I do this every winter and while most of the plans don’t come to fruition, it keeps me out of mischief. In this it closely parallels my attempts at gardening, but no matter, there is much pleasure in the planning.

There is a canyon not too far away from us, Dominguez Canyon to be exact, that Robin and I have hiked in several times. Lovely place of desert and lizards and a great many spiky plants. Usually we walk up-canyon a little over three miles, have a lunch, and come back down. But this year I would like to go a little farther in and stay overnight, so that’s one of the plans.

Peaceful Easy Feeling, by The Eagles

Another thought is to find a properly long bicycle trail and take those e-bikes of ours for an extended cruise in different territory. It is tempting to return to the Mickelson Trail in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which we pedaled on standard bikes 15 years ago, and which is a gorgeous bit of rails-to-trails pathway. But there is that longish drive involved to get there … more study needed.

The range of our brand of cycles is about 40 miles on relatively level ground. Using electric bicycles means that you either spend the night with in a room that has an electrical outlet to recharge the batteries or you carry a spare. So there is at least that much forethought required.

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Mr. Biden was ungracious enough this past week to make the claim that he thinks he could have beaten Mr. Cluck in the last election. He seems to have dis-remembered his deer-in-the-headlights performance at the first debate.

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From The New Yorker

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Made a vegetarian chili this week that was excellent, from a NYTimes recipe. Minced mushrooms were the substitute for meat, and we missed the animal protein not at all. Moving toward a plant-based diet seems to suit us, but we know that depending on fungi to fill in all of the places that meat used to be is being short-sighted.

So we thought … well, how about insect protein if the fungal thing isn’t doing the whole job for us? Until we read this article, that is.

Bees, for example, can count, grasp concepts of sameness and difference, learn complex tasks by observing others, and know their own individual body dimensions, a capacity associated with consciousness in humans. They also appear to experience both pleasure and pain. In other words, it now looks like at least some species of insects—and maybe all of them—are sentient.

Scientific American

Dang. There went our guilt-free dreams of roach flambé and grasshopper scramble, and we fell into a funk.

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Truth is, without having any chlorophyll of our own with which to meet our personal nutritional needs … but wait … maybe there is hope for a non-violent diet after all, if this photograph shows what I think it does.

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Followup on my hesitant review of “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” We have now watched all eight episodes. Two thumbs up. The magic was there, after all.

One of the stalwart roles is played by this magnificent tree, right in the middle of everything.

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Arrieros Somos, by Cuco Sanchez

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Urbane Cowboy

jono55

The lightest dusting of snow fell during the night. January is being its usual self, cold and gray and not playing well with others.

One of the bleakest sights is that of a winter sun, trying to shine through the frosted atmosphere. A round image with fuzzy borders, nearly white, with little of the sun’s usual gold or red tones, and little or no heat in it.

Just looking at it sets the marrow to tingling. Pass me that cocoa, would you please?

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I confess that I subscribe to the New Yorker to impress the easily impressed with my worldliness and sophistication. Of course, that doesn’t work with you guys who know that underneath my polished and urbane surface I am nothing more than a country cracker and s**tkicker of the first magnitude. But I love having access to the magazine’s cartoon archives, and plunder them mercilessly. When that bill comes due I will be looking to resettle in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

But this week there is an article that amazed even the most jaded part of my psyche. It dealt with the memory facility that some species of birds have in recalling where they buried seeds in storing them for the cold weather months. The title is: The Elephantine Memories of Food-Caching Birds.

The author starts out with his own problems with a lost beard trimmer and a misplaced pair of pants. He then moves on to the almost unbelievable feats of memory that these birds perform every winter to accomplish that most important piece of business … staying alive.

But his personal trials pale before those that Robin and I deal with every day. Most of our conversations now start with the words: Do you know where I put my ______? This query is then answered by the phrase: Don’t worry, it’ll turn up. While that used to occasionally be the case, it is no longer tue. When I can’t find something after a five minute search, I know that I will never see it again. It is gone. Vanished. Scotty has beamed it up and it resides in some other galaxy. Its molecules have left the building.

Several times each day Robin and I pass one another as we wander through the house with identical furrowed brows and frustrated facial expressions, she on her latest quest and I on mine. We don’t have time to commiserate what with all the opening of drawers and looking under sofas. When we empty the vacuum cleaner into the trash we now pick through the contents of the dust-bag and often find things that we didn’t even know we’d lost yet.

So it is yet another case where other animal species have skills and talents that homo sapiens can only dream of. I do admit that when I begin to regard woodpeckers as paragons, I just don’t know where it is all going.

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From The New Yorker

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Waggoner’s Lad, by Bud and Travis

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Even though I reside in The state of Colorado, which is filled with mountains and ranches, I am neither mountaineer nor cowboy. I am a transplanted flatlander from the Midwest and will never be able to shake the prairie dust from my shoes and soul. I’m not even trying.

Being a newcomer, though, has its benefits. I am continually gaping in awe at the beauty of the surrounding countryside. Whenever the moment allows I am poking my nose around mesas and over passes to see what is on the other side. My curiosity leadeth me.

What I have found is that often after I have lived in a new location for a few years I often know more about the immediate surrounding territory than some lifelong residents do. It’s almost as if when one grows up in Paradise, one takes for granted that Paradise will always be there to explore whenever they want to do so, so why not wait until next week or the week after that? Whereas the newcomer may realize that life is a collection of transient moments, and that they had better take advantage of opportunities as they come along.

That’s my take on it, any way. The most striking example I’ve run up against personally is when I moved to the village of Hancock, Michigan. That town only had a population of 4700 or so, and one could easily drive across it in two minutes.

Trying to find a part-time childsitter for our kids, I was interviewing an elderly woman who ultimately declined to take the job. When asked why, she simply stated that she’d never been that far north and was uncomfortable thinking about it. From where the good woman lived on the south side of Hancock it was only a distance of a mile or so to our home. I was dumbfounded, but accepted that one mile or a hundred, she wasn’t budging in our direction. Apparently there is such a thing as too much north.

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From The New Yorker

[Lord, I do love this cartoon.]

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In a previous post I sneaked in a folk artist who may have been new to you, at least he was to me, although he has recorded five albums and apparently has a strong following.

We have a local radio station, KVNF, which plays all sorts of excellent music, and several times a year introduces me to artists that I never heard of but instantly adopt. Such was the case when I learned about the existence of Jake Xerxes Fussell.

Unflashy, unpretentious, without a moonwalk to his name. He is the genuine article.

Here’s one more track.

When I’m Called

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A few decades ago I realized that in some aspects I was a mobile tabula rasa. Whenever I reside in a new area, even if it is for a relatively short time, I find myself speaking with local accents. If I make a new friend from a different part of the country, let’s say Alabama, the same thing happens. This happens without any intent on my part, as if I were little more than a tape recorder.

Lately, and to my dismay, I have begun imitating myself. Not my speaking voice, but the written one. I will be talking to a friend and realize that I am dictating paragraphs rather than using casual speech. I am verbally blogging instead of conversing. Any day now and I suppose that I will begin saying things like What a nice day it is comma do you have any plans for this afternoon question mark?

I begin to suspect that there is a diagnosis here, but I don’t know what it is. Parrot syndrome? Magpie disease? Dictaphrenia?

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Returning to the ongoing and seemingly never-ending story of vaccine disinformation, there is an op/ed in Saturday’s NYTimes entitled I’m the Governor of Hawaii. I’ve Seen What Vaccine Skepticism Can Do that I can recommend heartily. Well written, heartbreaking, anger-producing. Makes me want to find a pointed stick and begin some serious poking .

Pair this with one from last November entitled I’ll Never Forget What Kennedy Did During Samoa’s Measles Outbreak and I can just about guarantee that your blood pressure will rise ten points, so remember to take your meds and sit in a comfortable chair before reading them. If you can find someone to rub your neck … even better.

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No Expectations, by the Black Crowes

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Grace, Actually

jono55

Jimmy Carter passed away this week, at the age of 100 years. He had been our 39th president of these United States. Carter’s entire adult life was one of devotion to public service. When he was voted out of office, he picked up a hammer and went to work with Habitat for Humanity. He was also a humble man who taught Sunday School and who traveled the world as a private citizen, working always for peace, human rights, and the dignity of all men and women.

He and I shared a love of music in nearly all of its forms, without either of us being able to play an instrument. I learned just this morning that one of his favorite songs was Amazing Grace. So that’s two things that he and I shared.

Amazing Grace, by Judy Collins

The contrasts between this good man and the one recently re-elected could not be greater. Words like decency, self-sacrifice, faithfulness, moral rectitude, unselfishness, courage, honesty … all of these words have been used for many decades now in describing Mr. Carter and his works. None of them are ever used in describing our incoming president.

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From The New Yorker

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In the language of the land of divorced people, there are basically two groups, unceremoniously named dumpers and dumpees. Robin and I were dumpees. Neither of us had found the process of getting divorced to be pleasant in any way, and when we began dating were both still nursing bruises of varying degrees. We fell in love and in 1992 were married. We had decided that rather than have a subdued and quiet marriage ceremony, perhaps at a midnight chapel on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, we would instead celebrate how good can sometimes alchemically arise out of unhappy events.

Part of our planning was to sit down with the church organist, who was in charge of helping people select music for such ceremonies. We told her that one of the selections we wanted was Amazing Grace, a song we both admired. At first the organist knitted her brow “Well, we usually play that at funerals … but … hmmm … just a minute … if you think about the lyrics… hmmm … they could also apply to happier occasions, couldn’t they?” We nodded assent, and into the program it went.

What we couldn’t have predicted is what the large group of friends we had invited would do with it. Robin and I stood at the front of the church and facing the minister, while those friends began to sing the hymn behind us. We had chosen only the first three verses to be sung, and the first one was performed in a rather standard and church-y way, but the next two steadily increased in volume and passion to become expressions of joy that swelled and filled the church. We received lots of presents from those same people, but what I remember most clearly thirty-two years later is their gift of that song.

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
   That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
   Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
   And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear
   The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares,
   I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
   And grace will lead me home.

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Amazing Grace, by Walela

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From The New Yorker

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For me, she nailed it.

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Amazing Grace, by the Scottish National Pipe and Drum Corps and Military Band

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So this morning we begin the laborious process of learning to write a new date on our correspondence. I usually complete the task by mid-July, but then I was never a quick study. Six months later I’m right back in a muddle once again. Hardly worth the trouble, really. If any of you receive a letter from me, you’ll pretty much know that it was written in 2025 whether I put it on the page or not, so not to worry.

We’ve got our work cut out for us in the upcoming 12 months. Slightly less than half of the American citizenry decided that they would like to have a degenerate for president and so in three weeks he takes office. He is assembling a band of quacks, charlatans, and marauders to assist him in cleaning out the vaults, men and women whose curriculum vitae under normal circumstances would disqualify them from any job other than brigand. I have no crystal ball, but like my great-great-grand-daddy might have said, you don’t get apples from a shit-tree, son.

Hang on, friends, it’s going to be a ride. It might help to remember that to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose. At least that’s what good ol’ Ecclesiastes said, and I’ll go with him every time.

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Turn, Turn, Turn, by the Byrds

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Where To Start

jono55

Last night I started rereading the Tao te Ching for perhaps the third time. Each time I go through it I am given the gift of learning new things. Last night there was a quotation in the book’s foreword which contained information that I badly needed to read right now. Here’s the story.

Our next-door neighbor had a big Vote for Cluck sign on his garage door during the last campaign season and I put up a Harris/Walz sign in front of our house. We have not spoken since the big vote last November.

Post-election I have constituted myself as a large pile of resentment toward those who voted for the other guy. All sorts of negative adjectives run through my mind each time I think about it. All the way up to idiocy and treason. Actually, I go beyond even that and rain down vigorous calumnies on their ancestors as well, going back several generations to question the manliness of great-grandfathers and the virtue of great-grandmothers.

This needs to stop. I am making myself miserable to no purpose. But the self-righteous part of my brain tells me that by God I am right and that I should never forget that, and also that I am a much more moral person than all the rest of those b****rds put together.

So I have quite a lot to deal with, as you can see. It makes little difference that I am causing most of my own problems. They are still problems. And now in the middle of all this the Tao has made its move. Here is the quotation:

What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand, this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.

One interpretation that (which is awfully tempting) is that I am the good guy and the superior being and if I could just get this man’s head scrooched around to where I could lecture him face-to-face all would be well.

Of course, there might be other interpretations. And then my thought is how does all this “teaching” really come about? Lecturing and the pounding of fists on desks (my default strategy)? No, somehow I suspect that the word humility is going to come in to play and when that happens resentment will have a harder time holding its ground.

Looks like I need to read further, I am obviously not yet one with everything.

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Hold On, by Tom Waits

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From The New Yorker

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I truly don’t know anyone else like Tom Waits. Writer, singer, actor, raconteur … you might say he has a way with words as the bare minimum, but I think that it goes further than that.

Mostly he tells stories, and the thing is that each one of them ends up feeling like part of my own story in some transmuted way. The particulars may not be different, but the universals are all there.

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When I was younger, I wanted to be older. Now I am older, I am not quite so sure.

Tom Waits

If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it’s good. I’m not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don’t cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don’t stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you’ll never see it again.

Tom Waits

Any place is good for eavesdropping, if you know how to eavesdrop.

Tom Waits

Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You, by Tom Waits

When I was younger I bought into the idea of the suffering artist, with a glass of scotch in one hand and a dangling cigarette in the other. Becoming an attractive dissolute was my goal, and an early and “romantic” death was my clear endpoint. Like a male Camille but without the tuberculosis. The only problem was although I could and did learn to drink I wasn’t an artist at all. I wasn’t a musician but a guy who played records on a stereo. I read books but didn’t write any. I had become a periodic drunk without ever becoming charming.

So if I kept going I would just die in a very ordinary fashion, and no one would write precious stuff about me and how pure my heart was and how sad it was that a man with such talent perished so soon. I was wasting the single life I’d been issued.

So I quit.

Lots of good people stepped forward to give me a hand, and right at the head of that worthy and necessary bunch was a lady name of Robin. At some point I started to pay it forward, becoming one of a multitude helping to keep the doors open for the next person unsteadily weaving up the path to a rented room in the back of a church.

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From The New Yorker

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Looking For The Heart of Saturday Night, by Tom Waits

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Happy Thoughts

jono55

I had a happy thought this morning. In just three weeks the hours of daylight will start increasing. More sunlight, less gloom … what’s not to like? Of course it’s a bit like getting a brighter bulb when you’re still living in the refrigerator, but hey – it’s a start.

I am reminded of the oft-uttered phrases:

  • It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
  • It isn’t that it’s cold, it’s a damp cold.

In both cases it is water vapor that is being blamed for all our troubles, rather than the obvious fact that the temperature levels may not be compatible with (comfortable) life.

Over the years I have made an exhaustive study of just what the optimal environmental temperature is for human beings. I will admit that my study sample is rather small, being limited to … me. But I believe my findings are still worthy of your consideration.

Summary of findings: the optimal room temperature is exactly 73 degrees Fahrenheit.

Anything above this and a human may suffer antiperspirant breakthrough. Anything below 73 and you’re wondering: where did I put that afghan, anyway?

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The Parting Glass, by boygenius

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From The New Yorker

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Flights of Sandhill cranes going by off and on all afternoon. Often so high you have to squint to see them, but that unique cronking sound is unmistakable. They are tidily and sensibly arranged in vee formations heading south.

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If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Lewis Carroll

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Day after day the bad odor of the yet-to-be-unleashed Cluck administration increases as it is almost entirely based on slavish loyalty and nepotism. I would describe the scent as fetid swamp mixed with hints of decay and limburger cheese.

And just when I was about to enter the state of high dudgeon over these awful Republican choices the leader of the Democratic party breaks his promise to us all and pardons his son.

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Mr. Biden and Mr. Cluck are showing us as clearly as they can that the problem with electing humans to office is to be continually disappointed. Where now is all of the posturing of either party about no person being above the law? If it weren’t for the fact that my computer sometimes behaves completely irresponsibly and illogically I would cry out: Bring on AI and the robots!

Ultimately it’s up to us, isn’t it? And we would so love to give that job to someone else while we plant our gardens and play a few more rounds of golf.* It isn’t distracted driving that’s the biggest problem out there, it’s distracted living.

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*Full disclosure here. I garden little and never played golf. I could have said go kayaking or hiking but then it would have applied to me, which I did not want it to do at all. I’m above all that. Really.

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Happy Christmas (War Is Over), by John Lennon

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From The New Yorker

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We’re getting on with the task of Christmas-izing the little space we call home. I would say we peaked in about the year 2000 or so with the amount of holiday decorations we placed about a much larger dwelling, and we have been divesting ever since. For example we’ve gone from something like thirty or forty Snow Village pieces to a modest five. From eight-foot decorated evergreen trees to 4 1/2 foot trees. We move the Buddha from his place on the berm and install statues of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus.

And presto! We’re done! To us the feeling is the same. Turns out that for us it’s not the size of the observance, but the observance itself that matters. Our plan is to be at home this year, and if there are others among our friends and neighbors who are doing the same we will see if we can’t get together for an evening or two.

So – three weeks till Christmas. I give myself carte blanche to bring out the holiday music each day until Robin exclaims: STOP WITH THE MUSIC ALREADY IT IS DRIVING ME MAD! At one time in our history together I had only purchased Christmas tunes to play, but now between Apple Music and Pandora I have access to enough new and old, profane and sacred, tacky and treasured Christmas music to choke the proverbial horse. Or, as in our case, to drive someone utterly mad.

I might even share some tunes here on this journal. BTW, I have never liked the term “blog.” Just saying the word makes me sound like I’m about to cough up something gross. Anyway, if the music starts to make you crazy, please indicate and I may or may not retreat.

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Oíche Chiúin, by Enya

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Byte Me, Universe

jono55

Before Apple’s Macintosh came out, I had no interest in puttering around with personal computers at all. They seemed perfect nerd fodder, with their dark screens and blinking green cursors. Who cared?

Then one day in 1984 I wandered into Team Electronics in Yankton SD and there was a new Macintosh sitting on a table with a sign that said “Try Me.” So I did. All I had to do was find out that there was such a thing as cut and paste to make me realize that for anyone who needed to write this was a magical tool.

So I bought one. And I installed it on a table on the lower level of our home where I could explore its possibilities without being in the way of normal household activity. I wrote letters, wrote poetry, fiddled with MacPaint to create primitive graphics … a kid in the proverbial candy store was I.

One evening, after I had been working on a talk I was going to give at a staff meeting, I was looking over the several pages I’d created for typos, when my son came down the stairs and flicked a light switch. At that moment I discovered two things. One, that the outlet my Macintosh was plugged into was controlled by that switch, and two, that when the Mac went dark all that precious writing went away. Forever. I had not yet learned to save as I wrote because I didn’t know you needed to. Who could imagine a machine that would take your hard work and allow it to vanish?

For a few frantic minutes I couldn’t believe that my stuff was gone. I read through the computer’s manual several times looking for some loophole, some place within its CPU where that speech still existed, and all I had to do was figure it out. At long last I gave up and gave in. Rather than go look for a shotgun to deal with the problem directly, I resolved to save and save and save my work from then on. Whenever I purchased new software I looked to see if auto-save was a feature or not. If it was, the sale was made.

There were other smaller and less dramatic losses to come before I truly learned my lesson, but that first one was the mind-bender, my “I can’t believe it” moment. Even today when I think back on that moment, I can see where my sense of how the universe should be ordered was disturbed. And in my perfect universe several hours of one’s work did not disappear at the flick of a switch.

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Loser, by Beck

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I used to have a friend who was paranoid-ish. He didn’t own a credit card of any kind, being suspicious that there were people out there who would steal his money. He owned a computer but used it basically as a large calculator/paperweight, since it was never connected to the internet. He worried that someone might get inside his head and he had no intention of letting that happen.

And that was in a much more innocent time, 40 years ago. He and I have lost touch, and I can’t help but wonder what he thinks today of social networking, online banking, and sexting. Must be hard for him to sleep at night, worrying about someone breaking into his home and surreptitiously connecting him to an ISP without his knowledge or permission. It would be a new sort of cyber-crime, in that they don’t take anything the night they enter your home, but over the years to come you are electronically whittled down to poverty and insignificance.

Because once you turn that sucker on and hit that first clickbait screen telling you to come see the 100 most vicious dog breeds owned by 100 of the worst actors of all time, you have a 50/50 chance of disappearing forever into bogus-land.

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I have what might charitably be called irregular sleep habits. Robin and I retire early, as befits persons of our seasoning, but I am usually up again before midnight. Then there will be a variable period of hours where I completely waste my time using the internet as my tool of choice, next it’s back to sleep once again, then awakening before 0400, when I finally decide I’ve had enough of this circus and just get up.

This morning during the internet phase I got it into my head that I wanted to listen to the song Terrapin Station, by the Grateful Dead. And I wanted to listen to the very best version of the song. So I posed that question to the cloud, and while there was not unanimity, the version played at a concert at the Swing Auditorium on February 26, 1977 kept coming up.

This morning during the internet phase I got it into my head that I wanted to listen to the song Terrapin Station, by the Grateful Dead. And I wanted to listen to the very best version of the song. So I posed that question to the Cloud, and while there was not unanimity, the version played at a concert at the Swing Auditorium on February 26, 1977 kept coming up.

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On Amazon the triple CD of the concert containing the “album only” cut was priced at $135.00, which was not a budget item that I had submitted for approval, so I searched further and found the song once again at the Internet Archive, where it could not be downloaded legally. And yet here it is now for your listening pleasure. Don’t judge me.

Terrapin Station, by the Grateful Dead

After I was done messing around with all of the above electronic stuff, I got up to stretch my legs and found that a beautiful light snow had fallen. Only a fraction of an inch, but enough to make the world pure white. Trackless.

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BTW. The world of the Grateful Dead is not one to enter without a guide. They have released more than 200 albums, mostly live concert recordings, and there is quite a bit of variability in sound quality and occasionally the enthusiasm of the musicians. Fortunately the Deadheads have not all died off as yet, and they are out there vigorously commenting on each band on each album.

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Super 8

jono55

I am having my faith shored up in country music this month. That’s not really accurate because I still think that most of that genre is a musical waste of time. I’m talking about the wide swath of undistinguished pabulum that goes something like this: “picked up my baby in her cutoff jeans and we went down the dirt road in my pickup truck to have a beer and make sweet love but oh Lordy does my head feel bad this mornin’ “.

But there’s always been other threads running through those carpet sweepings. Like traditional Appalachian music, spirituals, work songs, and relatively recently “outlaw” and “alternative” country. Singers like Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson have been examples. Where the lyrics are typically far from superficial.

This week I’ve spent time listening to a musician who has links to many of those threads of “country” and of rock and roll as well. His name is Jason Isbell and he could be the undeclared love child of Neil Young and Lucinda Williams.

Miles, by Jason Isbell

Isbell writes songs that tell good stories, he plays excellent guitar, and he sings well. Interviews he comes across as smart and humble, an attractive combination. Today’s tunes are from a live concert at the Ryman Theater in Nashville, where he and the 400 Unit, his backup band, are in good form. Makes me wish I had been there to hear it.

[BTW – there’s a line that I think we can all get behind in the song “Super 8.” It is “Don’t wanna die in a Super 8 motel.” Can I have an Amen?]

Super 8, by Jason Isbell

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We’re seeing more and more articles on eco-relocation. People packing up and moving to parts of the country where the long arm of climate change doesn’t reach. There is no such place, of course, but they seek at least a spot where hurricanes and rising sea levels aren’t daily concerns.

Paradise is one of those less-affected places, at least for today. Oh, these days we are hotter and drier, but at least our homes aren’t being blown skyward or washed out to sea, and for the less adventurous among us having your house stay in one place is important.

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Living in Colorado has been instructive. Before I became a resident it seemed all rocks and wilderness, and to some degree it still is. But it is harder even just ten years later to get that alone in nature feeling. One of the issues is the mechanization of the mountains.

Colorado’s history of mining left behind a spider web of old, rough roads connecting the small towns and leading to what once were productive mining areas. While ordinary vehicles can’t manage these bumpy and often deeply rutted tracks, Jeeps and other 4WD vehicles can. As soon as the snow melts these pathways are filled with such machines, often traveling in packs.

Some of the pilots of these cars are skilled in navigating mountain roads, but many are not. After all, you don’t need to know what you’re doing to get yourself out there, all you need is a fistful of disposable income and a Jeep. There are now so many unskilled drivers in the alpine areas that a few weeks back a local sheriff was publicly bemoaning the number of “assclowns” on the trails causing problems for drivers who knew what they were doing.

None of these things are impediments to the guy on foot, who can walk past a roadblock caused by a driver who fears going forward and is unable to back up. Hikers don’t get to cover as much ground as the motorized explorer, but they do get to know the ground they cover better. To each their own. I happen to prefer wearing out a pair of boots to a set of tires.

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Middle of the Morning, by Jason Isbell

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I don’t know how many of you are as fascinated by the story of the man eating lions of Tsavo as I am, but there was a tidbit on CNN that I thought worth sharing. The taxidermized lions have been on display at the Field Museum in Chicago for 100 years but recently some small hair fragments noted in their teeth drew the attention of researchers and the guns of DNA study were brought to bear.

What they found was that almost anything on four legs was included in their diet plan, including some large mammals not found today in what is usually considered to be the lions’ range.

And of course, some of the hairs were human.

In the photo of the mounted specimens they don’t look nearly as threatening as they must have in 1898, when they killed 35 railway workers who were involved in building a bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. This story was made into a pretty entertaining movie entitled “The Ghost and the Darkness.” There is a fair amount of quibbling about the film not telling the story exactly as it happened, but when has that ever occurred before? It still makes for a good story, and one disturbing enough to frighten small children.

There are suggestions that the lions turned more to dining on softer and easier to catch humans because of dental diseases. Having had many toothaches as a child I can easily imagine how that could occur. Either way, these famous cats are once again in the news.

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I Ate The Whole Thing

jono55

Breakfast with friend Rod yesterday. Something we hadn’t done in some time. Two hours and entirely too many calories later, after we had solved most of the world’s problems and come up with cures for nearly all the discomforts of age, we returned to our respective homes. This had to be done to allow the food we’d engulfed to come to some sort of détente with our bodies. It was nip and tuck for a while, but I finally forced those hash browns into submission.

I had made the serious mistake of ordering a “slam,” which meant that I was served two of everything you could imagine, when one egg and a slice of toast is my usual meal. I did some calculations and if I can survive the next four days my cholesterol will have returned to normal and my chances of survival improved by 15%.

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Brown-Eyed Girl, by Van Morrison

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These days ex-pres Cluck is telling such big, foolish, and easily disprovable lies that I have come to only two possible explanations that make any sense to me:

  1. He has completely lost his marbles
  2. He has grown tired of people coming forward to shoot at him and wants to be defeated in the election so they will stop, but to admit this to his supporters would be to lose too much face. His problem is that those same supporters seem to enjoy being lied to so much that as far as they are concerned, the bigger the whopper the better.

Can’t decide which is the case. Help me out here.

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Cyprus Avenue, by Van Morrison

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It was Willow’s turn to go to the veterinarian yesterday, and he was waiting for her with immunizations in hand. Last night she showed signs of not feeling well, and this morning she still doesn’t want to stir from the comfortable place she’s staked out. I have that “Dad” feeling of knowing that getting the shots was a necessary and good thing, but really hating to see the temporary suffering of the little animal for which I am responsible. (It was actually slightly easier with my children when they were small, since I could administer simple pain/fever relievers and could talk to them.)

Hopefully she will begin to feel better later today, but almost certainly tomorrow will bring improvement. In the meantime, soft words and touches along with offering food and water will have to do.

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The ash trees in the back yard have turned their many shades ranging from gold to red, and they have upped their ante in how many leaves fall per day in the last two days. So far I have been “mulching” them with my lawn mower, but that tool will soon not be equal to the job. There are only so many inches of “mulch” that a lawn will tolerate.

I will do almost anything to avoid raking the leaves, since I have a congenital condition called achingus backus which begins to spasm at just the mention of using any tool that has tines (except for a fork at mealtimes, where I excel).

Enter the leaf blower. This is admittedly a clumsy way of bringing the leaves together into one big heap, but there is something satisfying about blasting away at the problem. Just a squeeze of the trigger and away you go, roaring about the yard until the battery runs down and you get to take a break while it recharges. I am quite fond of those breaks. I could skip them simply by having a spare battery to press into use, but where’s the fun in that?

If we lived in one of those areas of the country where fall rains keep the leaves wet and cause them to mat together, I would have to alter my approach. But in our semi-arid world the leaves remain dry and eminently blow-able for weeks. There is only one drawback to my approach, and that is the one year-old who lives next door. I never know when he is napping, and the noise created by the blower is incompatible with sound sleep.

So far I have been lucky in my timing, but make repeated errors here and I can expect that the mother of said infant might have something pointed to say about my practices. I know that way back in time when I had babies in the house I personally was not very tolerant of anything that stood between me and the serenity of a sleeping infant.

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These Are The Days, by Van Morrison

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Van Morrison has had such a career! From a modest beginning with the great song “Brown Eyed Girl” to 45 studio albums and 7 live albums.

Released in 1967 on Van Morrison’s debut solo album, Blowin’ Your Mind!, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ was swiftly associated with the “summer of love” which the singer despised.

… In 2009 he told Time magazine: “‘Brown Eyed Girl’ I didn’t perform for a long time because for me it was like a throwaway song. I’ve got about 300 other songs I think are better than that.”

Wikipedia

I never like to argue with my betters but if I could take only one Morrison song to the proverbial desert island it would be “Brown Eyed Eyed Girl.”

He made musical history with the album Astral Weeks.

Morrison’s first album for Warner Bros Records was Astral Weeks (which he had already performed in several clubs around Boston), a mystical song cycle, often considered to be his best work and one of the best albums of all time.  Morrison has said, “When Astral Weeks came out, I was starving, literally.” Released in 1968, the album originally received an indifferent response from the public, but it eventually achieved critical acclaim.

The album is described by AllMusic’s William Ruhlmann as hypnotic, meditative, and as possessing a unique musical power. It has been compared to French Impressionism and mystical Celtic poetry. A 2004 Rolling Stone magazine review begins with the words: “This is music of such enigmatic beauty that thirty-five years after its release, Astral Weeks still defies easy, admiring description. Alan Light later described Astral Weeks as “like nothing he had done previously—and really, nothing anyone had done previously. Morrison sings of lost love, death, and nostalgia for childhood in the Celtic soul that would become his signature.” It has been placed on many lists of best albums of all time. In the 1995 Mojo list of 100 Best Albums, it was listed as number two and was number nineteen on the Rolling Stone magazine’s The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003. In December 2009, it was voted the top Irish album of all time by a poll of leading Irish musicians conducted by Hot Press magazine.

Wikipedia

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Adios to Yet Another Amigo

jono55

Aaahhhhh, dang it. You know how there are people you’ve never actually met who have had a greater effect on you than people you see every day. For me, some of them wrote novels, some wrote poetry, some wrote music. Kris Kristofferson was one of the latter. When I read this past Monday morning that he’d died I felt a sharp hurt. There were tears shed at our home on Monday at the sense of loss that was felt.

Me and Bobby McGee

If Kris had only written the one tune, Me and Bobby McGee, it would have been enough to put him in my personal Hall of Fame, but he went on from there. He wrote the best hangover song I’ve ever heard in Sunday Morning Coming Down.

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down

He also wrote some of the best breakup songs in For the Good Times and Loving Her Was Easier Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again.

For the Good Times
Loving Her Was Easier

And he wrote some songs that were at least partly autobiographical, using his wry sense of humor to great advantage. He was a good man who lived his life well enough that others can take lessons from it. Love the phrase from The Pilgrim: “He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction, taking every wrong direction on that lonely way back home.”

The Pilgrim, Chapter 33

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Kristofferson was a Rhodes scholar, football and rugby player, boxer, helicopter pilot in the US Army, actor, singer, and songwriter. One of those folks whose life story absolutely forces one to accept that they are just more interesting than you are. (At least than I am.)

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I haven’t talked about his movie career at all, but he appeared in nearly 50 films, including two of my favorite movies, which are Heaven’s Gate and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Here’s a clip from Heaven’s Gate, featuring him waltzing with Isabelle Huppert. Sweet.

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Now it follows as the night the day that some of Kris’ music was recorded and made famous by others. A prime example was Me and Bobby McGee, recorded by a former lover from Port Arthur, Texas.

While Kristofferson’s original version was typically laid-back, Janis Joplin’s was kick-ass. I include it because I can’t help myself. It’s a favorite of both Robin and I.

Kristofferson recorded his own version of the song on his debut album Kristofferson in 1970. … Janis Joplin recorded the song for inclusion on her Pearl album only a few days before her death in October 1970. … Record World called it a “perfect matching of performer and material.” Joplin’s version topped the charts to become her only number one single.

Wikipedia: Me and Bobby McGee

Me and Bobby McGee, by Janis Joplin

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Just a thought. If Janis Joplin had lived, she would be 80 years old. Instead, she is forever twenty-seven.

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Everyone’s A Target

jono55

Let’s just begin by clearly stating my position. I hate waiting for call-backs. At this moment I have five of them pending.

  • When will the people come to put the lawn sprinkler system to bed for the year?
  • Where is my replacement tent fly?
  • When will the technician show up to fix my internet battery backup?
  • Where is the refund for a piece of clothing that was ordered and does not fit?
  • When will the stump grinder show up to remove the eyesore from in front of the house?

In each case I am in someone else’s hands, and they have the power to irritate, stonewall, or infuriate me. Or they can make me happy, grateful, and singing their praises to the heavens. But the point is … I am expected to be content with “we’ll get back to you” even when I think that they have completely forgotten me. In the case of the tent fly, my entreaties are almost certainly falling on ears that have long ago lost interest.

When I was a working stiff I (or my staff) dealt with 50-100 phone calls every day. Our aim was to be as clear and decisive on each occasion so that we didn’t turn one call into two or three. Also, when people were calling for advice about sick children, for some reason they wanted help now rather than in three business days.

To avoid delays in being called back, I have begun to try to make myself more memorable, thinking that if I am not quite as anonymous as the other 500 callers that day that perhaps my pleas will make it to the front of the line or top of the heap. So far I have found that flattery seems to work the best.

For instance if I begin a phone call with any of these phrases I usually get nowhere.

  • you idiot!
  • where the hell is my _____?
  • I’m calling my lawyer!
  • are you really that incompetent?
  • I know where you live

But if I say one of the following that seems to fit the situation my chances of getting what I need are improved.

  • you have a lovely telephone voice
  • are you calling from India? Is it awfully hot there today? I hope you are working in an air-conditioned room, you deserve it.
  • thank you so much for understanding
  • you have been very helpful
  • I have never had better service than you provided today
  • I think I love you

I only use this last one sparingly, since one never really knows who one is talking to, and they actually do know where I live.

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Stand By Me, by Tracy Chapman

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It is more than a bit ironic that the man who almost daily stokes or threatens violence of all sorts has now been the quarry of two different men with rifles. Despite his bluster, he must be just the slightest bit nervous. At least I would be if I were in his shoes.

I deplore this violence against him just as I deplore the threats and violent language he has used against others. Ever since the assassination of John F. Kennedy I react to news like today’s with nausea. It’s a physical reaction, like a blow to the gut.

Realistically I know that with all the guns out there and all the mental screws that are loose in our large population it is probably going to happen again and again, but try to tell that to my mid-section. All it knows is to tighten into a fist.

The idea of settling affairs with a gun is such a persistent and deep-seated one with Americans. Boundary disputes, marital problems, disagreements with a teacher, disobedient children, need a little extra cash? Why, just get that ol’ AR -15 down from the wall and blow your troubles away. Instant resolution. If you need inspiration all you need to do is watch the John Wick movies or the old Death Wish series of films.

Every single day there are multiple shootings in this country. And we only read about the worst ones, not the near occasions as in the golf course incident involving the ex-president. If this hadn’t happened to Trump we’d never have heard about it.

As a retired pediatrician I was shocked the first time that I heard that guns were the number one cause of death in school-aged kids. Number one. It’s really not to be believed. The second amendment cannot remain absolute, as it is presently interpreted. Either reconcile it with modern realities, or repeal it altogether.

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I’ll Be Seeing You, by Vera Lynn

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Robin and I are still watching the series The Good Wife, which stars Julianna Margulies, formerly of ER fame. The show is a very well-done soaper about lawyers which reveals them to be conniving, amoral, jealous, dishonest, backbiting, and narcissistic. Reality TV, some might say.

It’s hard to cheer for any one of the characters in the series because they all take their turn in the wicked and nasty role, and that includes Alicia, the heroine of the title. But no one gets away with things forever, and much of the fun comes with the comeuppances that arrive, often cleverly done.

We are hooked. Margulies is great. The rest of the cast is first-rate. A steamy and sinful stew of smarm. IMHO.

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Lawyers, Guns, and Money, by Warren Zevon

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