Tag: music

Venom

jono55

When I was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, my family did a fair amount of camping. The territory was beautiful, the streams clear, and the evenings reliably cool. There were a lot of black bears around, enough that we would see one about half the time when we camped out. Be careful, give them their space, and never get between a mother bear and her cubs were common bits of advice.

Then on one camping trip, when we were two families backpacking to a cabin in the Porcupine Mountains, we encountered a puzzlement. Miles into the forest and walking on a good path we came across two small black bear cubs in a tree. Our kids were young and very excited, dancing about the tree in hope that these cute little critters might come down where they could get a good and proper petting.

The adults in the party were not as charmed by the situation. The puzzle was this. When you are looking UP at the cubs and have no idea where their mother is … which way do you go now?

We resolved the dilemma by deciding that where we were standing was the worst place of all to be, and without any more information to guide us than that, we pushed on ahead toward the cabin. We never saw the mother bear.

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Crunchy Granola Suite

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I’m not quite sure what variant of ADHD I have, but I’m pretty sure I am somewhere in the spectrum. Finding out exactly which niche isn’t important at my stage of life, and so I am not pursuing it. But it does get in my way at times. Not because it has held me back in my education or profession, but … let me give a for instance or two.

Flickering images draw my attention immediately and drown out other stimuli. What’s the problem? It means that having lunch and a conversation in a sports bar is nearly impossible. Having a dozen television screens all screaming silently “LOOK AT ME” simultaneously is completely distracting. I mean completely. Robin and I avoid such places whenever possible, but even our favorite pizza emporium (The Brown Dog) in Telluride has several screens going and I wouldn’t consider it a “sports bar” at all. What I must do (to indulge myself in the pizza that I am certain is the one served in Heaven) is to turn my chair to where I can’t see any of the screens. It works but also means a lot of staring at unadorned wall coverings. A compromise.

These days the political circus is much like the sports bar. There are myriad voices shouting at the same time “Here … here … watch … listen … I’m talking to you, dammit.” Not just the “bad” voices, but the “good guys” as well. When I click on a link indicating that I will attend a virtual discussion on, let’s say, the problems posed by ICE, I immediately get an email advertising a half dozen other worthy discussions in the future that I can also sign up for right this very minute. Each of them offers six more opportunities … there is no end to it.

Some early mornings, like this one, I get drawn down one rabbit hole after another by this cacophanous din. My filters can’t keep up with the stimuli, and I have to just shut things off. The computer, the television set, my iPhone … all of them. I step outside and shiver in the night air … looking up at more stars than this Minnesota boy ever saw growing up in a big city. Nature allows me to compose myself and get a bearing. Just before hypothermia sets in I go back indoors and attempt to keep the clamor at low volume by turning one thing back on at a time.

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Cherry, Cherry

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Our yearly war with the yellowjackets, those creatures that come straight from Hell without stopping, has become little more than a series of light skirmishes for the past two years. A change in strategy has made the difference. There is a company that makes plastic devices which you hang about the yard.

You next open the small sealed packet and take out a pod that contains a potent enough attractant that it warns you to handle it carefully and wash your hands after you are done to avoid becoming very interesting to the pests. You put the pod into the device and walk away. Hundreds of the wasps come in and can’t find their way back out.

But the change we’ve made has been in the timing. Very early in the season the queens show up looking for places to set up housekeeping. They build their nests all over the house, the backyard fence – anywhere they get a little protection from the elements. If you get the traps out and catch the queens before they get a chance to fully establish themselves and raise their families, your summer is much more serene.

Oh, you don’t have yellowjackets where you live and aren’t sure what I’m talking about? Well, o thou inquisitive one, here is what they look like. They each come with a potent offense, can sting you several times, and are exceedingly cranky. You don’t need to do anything to get stabbed except to be outdoors.

Like I said … from Hell.

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In late 1972 Neil Diamond brought out a live album called Hot August Night. At the time I was an impressionable lad of 33 years with a family, living and working in Buffalo, New York. I was really just beginning my exploration of alcohol back then, never thought of it as a problem, even though if my life was a movie and I was watching it now I would say “Of course … there it is.”

After everyone else was in bed and asleep I would take my beverage of choice to the small attic room on the third floor of our home and put this album on, cranking the volume to the point where the groundwork for the ringing in my ears I now enjoy every day was laid. I did love that album then, and even now it can stir me.

I’ve included three cuts from Hot August Night here today. I suggest playing it loud enough that you can’t think of anything else. At that point it became, at least for me, an almost transcendental experience.

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Holly Holy

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Adrenaline Junkie

jono55

I woke last night out of one of those reality-based dreams where for a moment or two after waking I was still half in it. It went like this.

A friend and colleague of mine who was working with me in pediatrics called me on the phone to tell me how my patients were doing. At the time I was out of town bicycling somewhere with Robin and staying in a small cabin.

As he was talking I became overcome with guilt and worry. When he told me that baby Murray was doing okay I thought who the heck is baby Murray and why haven’t I been going in to see him? How long have I been AWOL? Whatever am I going to tell his parents now when I do make rounds tomorrow? That I’ve been ill? Away on a vacation?

I got up and walked into the kitchen with a head full of miseries but as I was filling a glass with water I realized – Hey! I haven’t been practicing for twenty years. There is no baby Murray that I have been neglecting. It was a dream! I am off the hook!

I might also add that the colleague who had called me died eleven years ago.

But some of the emotional charge of the dream is still with me as I type this. Whatever chemicals are released in such a fight or flight fantasy-drama take time to dissipate. But they are being tempered by the huge sense of relief that came over me when I fully realized that I had done nothing wrong and there was nothing that I needed to atone for.

I’m not one to parse dreams looking for why this or why that or any kind of meaning. The fact that my brain is not wholly in my control becomes obvious every time I sit down to meditate. As I am trying to clear my mind that gelatinous ball of mischief keeps on spinning yarns and making stuff up. I assume that it loves when I go to sleep because it can then create scenarios without being interrupted.

Anyway, how are things with you? I am just peachy here.

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Do I miss practicing pediatrics? Yes. No. Actually I’m still doing it, just secretly. If there is a person standing in front of me who is talking about some puzzling symptom their children are dealing with my mind takes the facts and runs with them, working to come up with a set of diagnoses. Happens automatically. Like a ChatGPT that is never off duty.

But, and this is a big one. I have no medical license any longer (too expensive to keep as a memento) and my clinical skills are -shall we be kind – rusty. Only if one of the diagnoses that I have come up with is a serious one that deserves being explored right now do I speak at all. And then I recommend that they see their physician ASAP. Otherwise I nod and listen without really listening.

I loved the challenges of emergency situations. This was when my variant of adrenaline junkie came into play. When you don’t know yet what is going on but you know that the clock is running and you get the chance to take everything you have learned up until that moment and bring it into play to try to solve a very high-stakes problem … that is a real high, my friends.

But there are those times when the clock runs out too soon and there is a crash to deal with. A version of depression mixed with self-recrimination sets in. I never learned to handle the losses well, but lordy did I love the wins.

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Fearless, by Pink Floyd

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By any account you are to read, except those emanating from Club Cluck, No Kings 2 was a dramatic and positive event. Prompted by the unholy mess that the New Fascist Party is making of our country, we found ways to rejoice in the feeling of solidarity that comes from finding thousands upon thousands of people who, like us, are shocked at our leaders’ bad behavior, ashamed of what is being done in our name, and resolute in taking the steps needed to replace this regime with thoughtful, firm, and honest leaders.

We are figuratively marching toward Washington DC right now. And we can already hear the mewling of the cowards there as they stare into crystal ball after crystal ball trying to find one with a good future in it for themselves.

Perhaps one day we will need to march there in person to show them where the door is and to turn them into the street where they can spend the remainder of their lives snapping at each other in dishonor and disgrace.

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I was introduced to Sister Rosetta Tharpe way too late in my life. Here’s a link to a recent article on Substack with a whole bunch of videos of this amazing musician.

She told the truth about her craft in a way only the greats dare to: “These kids and rock and roll—this is just sped up rhythm and blues. I’ve been doing that forever.” And she was right. Before Presley shook his hips, before Berry duck-walked, before Little Richard shrieked his way into immortality, Sister Rosetta had already been there, guitar in hand, voice like a hurricane, planting seeds in soil that would grow the rock and roll forest.

Bill King, Substack

BTW, if you need more, there is way more. All you have to do is go to YouTube and type in her name. Riches will flow into your life.

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There is record of only one protestor being arrested during the national No Kings event, and that was a woman in Fairhope, Alabama. She was carrying a sign that read NO DICK TATOR! However, it wasn’t the sign that got her arrested, but her costume. If there is to be a No Kings Hall of Fame one day, surely this courageous and resourceful lass will be one of the very first to be inducted.

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Wish You Were Here, by Pink Floyd

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Under The Banyan Tree

jono55

Well, dang. After passing over us for years, COVID finally reached its clammy fingers into BaseCamp, our home. Robin came down with fever and a cough on a Monday night, and the diagnosis was confirmed a couple of days later. By Thursday I had symptoms as well, but much milder than poor Robin. Only three weeks ago we both received COVID boosters, so we hope to skip the worst part.

What burns most is that after the planning, making of signs and buttons, working with our committee on routes and safety issues … knowing that this may well be a historically important rally … we can’t go. Even if we felt physically able, there is the small matter of contagion. We are temporary pariahs and that’s all there is to it. What we may do is get into our car and do a bunch of drive-bys, adding some positive honking to the mix as the march passes by. We’ll see.

No matter. The 18th promises to be fascinating as millions of people (who so obviously hate America) get together to talk about our freedoms, the Constitution, redressing wrongs, taking care of our most vulnerable … and giving the good ol’ gang of thugs on Pennsylvania Avenue something to think about.

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Apparently Cluck has taken issue with being on the cover of Time Magazine. It’s the photograph. He thinks it is a poor one, and doesn’t catch a single one of his good angles. I don’t know … he’s got that Mussolini-chin raised, his eyes are on I dunno where, but it’s that neck and its doubled dewlap that seems to be the issue. Some observers have made scatologic fun of its appearance, but you won’t find any of that low sort of humor on this blog. Nossir.

Poor fellow. One of the most powerful men on the planet is turning into this creature in front of our eyes. Can’t the White House dermatologist do something? Isn’t there a lotion … ?

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Last night we watched a fine old film, one that both of us had seen years ago, but enough time had passed that only the faintest recollections remained. It was Elizabeth, from 1998 and starring Cate Blanchett and a host of fine actors including Daniel Craig and Kelly McDonald in small roles before they became really famous. Both Robin and I are seemingly endlessly interested in that part of English history beginning with Henry VIII and through to the end of Elizabeth’s reign.

I mean, geez, all that chicanery, plotting, religious warring, those heads being lopped off and all, what’s not to love? And what wouldn’t I have given to play the teensy part of an armored guard and having the chance to say: “Well, it’s off to the Tower for you, milady. Best pack a light bag.”

Nope, that’s back when politics was really fun, and the losers didn’t hang around to gripe over and over about things when each dustup was over. That’s because the losers were hung, beheaded, or chopped into several pieces and distributed around England to be displayed as object lessons. We could learn a lot from the past about what to do when a regime fell. ‘Twould make it more interesting if the consequences were a bit more substantial.

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Poco and I were spending some quality time with each other the other day, comparing aches and pains and the virtues of becoming old as dirt. It is his opinion that any energy spent on anything other than lying in a sunny spot during the warm part of the day is wasted. Being over the hill means that you are just that … over the hill. Accept it and get over it is his message. You can make a fuss, splutter and steam to your heart’s content, but it is a rare old gent or lady who is really listened to. Or if they are listened to it’s like: “Isn’t that cute? It can talk just like you or me.”

No, the days when the people of the tribe walked over to the banyan tree to consult with an elder are largely over. It’s too easy to say to oneself “What could someone who isn’t fluent on Instagram or TikTok possibly say that would be meaningful to me?” And I get it, I really do.

The pity is that so many of our problems are old ones dating back centuries and some of them do have remedies that have been worked out over generations. And thus that neglected information needs to be relearned and relearned anew, often painfully.

Oh well, I said to Poco, c’est la vie. Could you move over just a hair, I need a bit more sun on my left side.

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In November of 1975, I had only recently moved my family to Hancock, a small town on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan. The Keweenaw is a finger of land that sticks out into Lake Superior, on of the biggest bodies of fresh water in the world.

On the night of November 10, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the big ore boats on the Great Lakes, disappeared in a Lake Superior storm. It was all the news in Hancock at the time, as was anything that happened on the Lake, but it wasn’t until Gordon Lightfoot recorded his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald that the story was burned into our memories. The song played seemingly continuously on the radio back then, and every November afterward that we lived there. Lightfoot donated proceeds from his music to a fund for the widows and children of the lost sailors.

The NY Times ran a piece this week that brought up this old chestful of memories for me. I was working as a pediatrician in Hancock in 1975, and I had nothing to do with Great Lakes shipping, but if you lived anywhere that touched Lake Superior you were affected because of the enormity of the lake and of it’s caprices. Taking a boat ride out on the lake? Better have a good boat with working radar because fogs didn’t always roll in on you like they were supposed to do, sometimes they materialized in a minute all around you and finding your way back home became a measure of your skill as a navigator.

Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Gordon Lightfoot

The song is a haunting one, and some of that feeling of dread and loss comes up when it is played, even fifty years on. There is a line toward the end of the song that stands out for me.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

It could also apply to any of those situations in life where one minute you are living in your everyday world and the next you are trying to survive what has blindsided you. Time slows down as horror slips in and now nothing is the same and never will be again.

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The national No Kings protest of October 18 was larger by millions than the first one, back in June. I don’t have local numbers at the time of this writing, but the crowd was solid. Robin and I weren’t well enough to mingle and march, and certainly didn’t want to spread our misfortunes to the celebrants, but we couldn’t stand missing the event completely so we got into our car and drive down to where the rally was taking place.

We had attached a large NO KINGS sign to the door of the car on the passenger side and we drove slowly along the line of marchers on the sidewalk with the windows open and the radio blaring Fire On The Mountain over and over again. The crowd responded vigorously and clapped for us as our Subaru “float” drove past and we in turn clapped for them. After circling the marchers’ route several times we dropped out and returned home to the infirmary to continue with more boring routines involving lots of well-earned coughing and self-pity.

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Fire On The Mountain, by Jimmy Cliff and others

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Burning the Marigolds

jono55

Those of us living in Paradise are a long, long way from the turmoil in Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles, but we do have television sets and newspapers and while all of us are alarmed at the indiscriminate violence being unleashed by the Cluck administration, some are frightened enough to be rethinking their involvement in resistance movements. The realities of being involved in protest against lawless regimes are becoming more real. The more successful these movements become, the more they will be targeted. It is not to be expected that thugs with power will relinquish or restrain that power with good grace.

Having already been schooled in Nonviolent Protest 101 (civil rights movement) and Nonviolent Protest 102 (anti-Viet Nam-war protests), I have been aware since the beginning that there were risks, so while I can’t claim to be unconcerned, I am not at all surprised. The next large national demonstration (No Kings 2) is only six days away, on October 18, and the members of our small-town chapter of Indivisible will be out there doing our thing. Indivisible, of course, is not the only group involved in this movement, it is one part of a large and growing network of organizations who share a repulsion at what the Cluck gang is doing, and who come together to work at limiting the damage they can do.

We have been very much encouraged by the neutrality and professionalism of our local police department. The presence of their black and white cruisers seems to cool the ardor of the occupants of the flagged-up pickup trucks who roar past shouting obscenities and extending middle fingers.

Thus far there have been no episodes of direct confrontation, no scuffling or punches traded. Our plan is always to keep that number at zero if possible. Those of us who are involved in the planning of the demonstrations are getting quite a lot of training in the de-escalation of threats and in what we can do to stay safe.

On a lighter side, one of the aims of our local leadership is to gently discourage the carrying of signs prominently displaying the “F” word. Of course there is no censorship, but guidance is definitely provided.

But if you come to Paradise on the 18th and want to carry a banner that says Eff The Effing Fascists you will be warmly welcomed. Your presence is more important than the precise language you choose to express yourself.

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Chicago, by Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young

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This week Robin and I re-watched the movie Ghandi. What an excellent and inspiring story, revealing what change a single determined man or woman might achieve if their motives and objectives were clear. The film won seven Oscars in 1983, and deserved every one of them.

It’s available for viewing on Prime for the princely sum of 354 rupees.

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One of the sure signs of impending cold weather is the death of the marigolds. At 33 degrees Fahrenheit they are fine, at 32 they all die. Back during the several-year-period between my divorce and meeting Robin, my friend (who will remain unnamed to protect his exemplary reputation) and I would celebrate the changing of the seasons by gathering all those dead flowers after that first hard frost, open several bottles of Pilsner Urquell, and sit around a ceremonial campfire in my backyard. I think we were trying to work out what it all means … you know … meaning of life and that sort of stuff.

It wasn’t Burning Man by any means, but the Burning of the Marigolds was a short-lived tradition that did not survive the two of us going off and starting new marriages and new lives.

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For What It’s Worth, by Buffalo Springfield

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The calling out of the National Guard is not a new thing at all. What is new is that this time it isn’t needed at all, but is instead part of a traveling roadshow being staged by the present regime. There are hazards in calling up the Guard, and especially when they are armed. These are not combat-ready, steel-nerved and battle-hardened troops. They are younger servicemen and women, weekend warriors and summer soldiers from down the street.

One fine day in May of 1970 a group of such National Guardsmen faced a large group of protesters at a rally at Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio. Some of these protesters threw stones at the Guardsmen. Things went very wrong and suddenly there were four dead students, victims of rifle fire of frightened young men in uniform. Nine other students were also wounded in the volley.

Within a very short time, this next song was on the charts.

Ohio, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

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Yesterday being a dreary day, with clouds and damp and all, we betook ourselves to the town of Delta, a 20 mile drive from home. Our aim was to find a new spot to eat lunch, and voila! – there it was, the Taqueria Master. The food was good enough to merit a return visit on another day. I had my first chorizo taco and it was tasty.

One of the menu items was a taco where the meat source was labeled “cabeza.” That gave me pause, and I asked myself: “On this day, the 10th of October in the year of our lord 2025 do you really want to find out what goes into a cabeza taco?” And my answer to myself was “No.”

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This cartoon came across my computer/desk this week, and for me it is one of those haunting images that I cannot shake. I don’t know exactly what its author meant to tell us, and a search for that person’s identity ended when I ran into only Arabic language resources. But what I see is a father returning to a ruined city in Gaza where the ghosts of his children play.

The children’s names below appear on a list of victims of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, maintained by health authorities in the territory. As of the end of July it ran to 60,199 names, of whom 18,457 were under 18s. Far from comprehensive, the list does not include the thousands still buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings, as well as the war’s many indirect victims.

The Guardian

If one child is killed during a military offensive it is a tragedy, the euphemism “collateral damage” is often applied to such deaths. But on this scale … it is a crime that goes beyond anything that can be so categorized. Hamas bears responsibility for the ugliness and horrific violence of October 7 two years ago. But the Israeli government, its leadership, and its army committed this crime against humanity. You do not kill this many children unless you make no distinction between combatants and civilians. I believe that the briefest glance at the article in The Guardian from which the above quote was taken will sicken most readers, as it did me.

The murderers on both sides should be exposed and brought to judgment. We must speak for the silenced children.

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Who You Calling Evil?

jono55

When I was a lad, a few dinosaurs still roamed the earth and most people lived in caves or slept out in the open. Television, computers, artificial intelligence, and air hadn’t been invented yet. It was that long ago.

We were ignorant but happy, living out our average lifespans of twenty years and then being gobbled by some scaly predator when our running speed had begun to slow.

So the difficulties of old age … almost nobody had ’em. Certainly not in enough numbers to care about. Actually, getting past a ripe old age at twenty drew suspicion that one might be possessed of some evil spirit, so my family of origin was forced to move frequently to avoid unpleasantness at the hands of our neighbors.

But, hey, who doesn’t have problems? Right? At some point we scuttled across the Bering Strait and invented real estate, whereupon we immediately began cutting up the new land into parcels to sell to the next new arrivals.

Today I look back on those growing-up years fondly, and yesterday when members of our present government were voicing the view that all progressives were possessed of evil spirits, I felt right at home. It was like old times.

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Mr. Tambourine Man, by Odetta

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Tale #1: One day when I was working at doctoring in South Dakota, my nurse handed me the charts of the next two patients who had come in for well-child examinations. They were from somewhere in the part of Nebraska that still hadn’t been named. Interesting was the fact that they had received no immunizations.

When I learned that the names of the two little girls were Quasar and Zanzibar, I paused with my hand on the doorknob of the room. At that point I knew that the chance I would change anyone’s mind and the vaccinations would begin that day was small … minuscule … and that proved to be the case. The kids were delightful, their mother polite and pleasant but adamant in not wanting to discuss issues of preventive medicine. I never saw them again.

Tale #2: There was a chiropractor who was fairly well-to-do, a complete charlatan, and rarely kept a wife for more than three or four years. When wife number four came along, it took almost no time at all for there to be two infants coming to our clinic. I was chosen as the family pediatrician and thus ran into the husband’s policy of NO IMMUNIZATIONS.

The children’s mother was from a New England state, and always had a sort of sorely stressed air about her. For she’d realized that her spouse was a fool who tired of his wives rather quickly, and that her old friends and family were thousands of miles away. After several years of marriage she made up her mind to take leave of the old prat, and this time it was she that filed for divorce.

During the drawn-out legal proceedings, she did something interesting. Bringing the kids in for routine exams, she had both of them immunized and brought right up-to-date, without telling their father. It was not quite the right motive and more than a little spiteful, but I obliged her in her important work of disobedience.

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This Is Definitely A Rogue’s Gallery

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Before daylight this morning as I was composing more of the trash that I affectionately call my writing, I noticed the motion-sensitive spotlights in front of my neighbor’s house light up. An instant later a vulpine silhouette crossed the beam running from stage right to stage left. The fox was out, on a chilly night.

The Fox, by Bill Staines

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Here’s part of a longer piece and all I can say is that I am glad she isn’t angry with me. At least I hope she’s not.

Of course, this isn’t really about what we need to do — we’re already doing it. It’s about what the mainstream media, and anyone still cowering in silence, needs to do. Because silence isn’t neutral — it’s surrender. It hands the microphone to a bully and pretends that’s balance. And I need to be clear — this isn’t just about him. It’s about the crowd that roars for him too. The ones who leap to their feet when he says he hates half the country. The ones who fist-pump when he spits bile and take it as permission to be their worst selves. They need to know we see them too. They need to know this isn’t patriotism — it’s corrosion. It isn’t strength — it’s rot. Every cheer is a confession of their own emptiness. Every laugh is proof of how small they’ve let themselves become. And we aren’t pretending it’s normal. We’re calling it what it is: indecency on parade, depravity dressed up as politics. And the minute we stop saying that out loud, the minute we start shrugging and moving on, is the minute they win.

JOJOfROMJERZ AND THE SIREN

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Our chapter of Indivisible got together Monday evening for a potluck supper. What savage revolutionaries we are! It was a small group, but we only see one another at events that are scheduled, and rarely get to talk about anything but the serious business of showing how democracy works to an unpleasant group of people who aren’t one bit interested – our national government..

All in all it was an enjoyable time. We even got to play a new card game whose name I have already forgotten and that’s okay because I sucked at it. The next meetings will all be in preparation for the second No Kings nationwide protest. It will happen on October 18. The last one back in June set records and showed how deep the distrust of the Cluck regime went. Since then they have done so many more bad things we anticipate a larger turnout.

A couple of days ago I was talking with one of my children on the phone, answering the perennial question: How are you doing? In answering I was to realize how much of my time is spent working on things political. I found myself wondering: Hey, you’re an impossibly old dude, what would you be doing now if you didn’t have a large bunch of fascists to deal with? And the answer is … probably nothing as interesting or compelling. So I guess I have Cluck and the gang to thank for providing a seemingly endless source of provocations to think about. Otherwise I might be just noodling in my rocking chair and wondering if it’s time for afternoon tea yet.

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I will close this post with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi. I almost hesitate to put it here, because if I really think deeply about it, perhaps there would be nothing in this space to read.

Speak only if it improves upon the silence.

Gandhi

Namaste, brothers and sisters.

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Pastures of Plenty, by Odetta

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Los Olores del Otoño. 

jono55

All of the hallmarks of autumn are here but one. We have the cooler days, the rains that typically come in September, a level of humidity that is kinder to our skins, and leaves have been changing color at higher altitudes for several weeks now. what is missing is the aroma that only millions of leaves on the ground, some wet and some dry, can provide. It is as distinctive as a fingerprint.

The ash trees in our backyard are still full green, but they aren’t really good harbingers because these trees are the last each year to give up the ghost and to go dormant.

Nope, it just ain’t Fall until you can smell those dead leaves breakin’ down in the damp.

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Honky Tonk Pt. 1, by Bill Doggett

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The air is full of wails and shudders as a thousand frightened “influencers” become available for interviews these days. All because of an assassination in Utah. They are wondering whether their career choices, which a few days ago seemed just fine, might have been the wrong way to go.

They are wondering about personal security … whether they have enough … whether they have the right kind … whether any security can really do the job. And they are correct in at least one thing, perfect safety is beyond them.

Become available to the adoring public and there are all those rifles out there in all those gun cabinets, and there are all those disturbed people looking around for some way to make their mark.

I would be, of course, be a poor target for one of those shooters of celebrities. I have no celebrity and am not worth the trouble. When the smoke had cleared, the murmurs would sound something like: “He shot who? Who the hell is that?”

On the other hand, in the past several years here in Colorado alone, I could have been a victim in a nightclub, movie theater, or grocery store. Those murderers didn’t care who they killed, the victims’ anonymity was no protection.

Nope, reducing firearm availability is what will eventually make a dent in the awful numbers of shooting deaths in the US, but that will take quite a while. It might take a repeal of the Second Amendment (can you imagine the uproar during such a campaign, as thousands of neurologically damaged malcontents writhed in rage when their sacred tools became just so much hardware that could be confiscated?)

Barring taking those sorts of steps, anything else is just whistling in the dark. Start a program to pick out those unwell proto-perpetrators using mental health screenings? Have you ever tried to get an appointment for yourself with a psychiatrist and found you must wait until Christmas after next when something might open up?

I asked Google what my odds of being shot today might be, and received this answer: “Instead of focusing on a statistically insignificant daily number, it’s more helpful to consider the lifetime odds of dying from gun violence. For an average American, the lifetime odds of death from a gun assault are approximately 1 in 238. However, this aggregate figure is not representative of everyone’s specific risk. For most people who live low-risk lifestyles, the chance is far lower. 

So cowering at home might be the best protection available. Never saying anything the least bit provocative might be another strategy (volitional mutism an even better one). And this entire blog post … I never wrote it.

BTW: for reference, our lifetime chances of being killed in a car accident in the US are 1 in 95.

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If I sit quietly on the front patio beneath the hummingbird feeders the birds often come within a meter of my head. They hover there, moving effortlessly from side to side, back and forth, always in a position of watchfulness. When their curiosity is satisfied they return to the feeders.

This afternoon is one of unsettled weather, clouds of all sorts moving through the sky. You can see on the radar image that quite a shower went by us, it missed but was close enough that we could hear the thunder.

I have a playlist on my Mac that is called “Latin,” and that’s what’s playing on the little blue box this afternoon. A lot of Cuco Sanchez, some Buena Vista Social Club, and even a dash of Nana Mouskouri. And … wait … how did that Enrique Iglesias get in there?

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I have discovered doing the plank as a new way to make my abdominal muscles hurt, without going through all that sitting up and everything. Just haul my prone self off the floor for 30 seconds and it happens almost magically. YouTube has a genre of videos dedicated to making senior citizens feel bad about the inevitable days of fallen arches and most everything else. They want you to be a miserable as you were in your thirties trying to get a set of six-pack abs so that you could impress … who was it again that you wanted to impress?

One video after another proposes that if you do these ten things (five things … four things … one thing) you will be happier, healthier, and never fall down again. Plus you will finally get that six-pack you’ve been wanting for fifty years now.

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Honky Tonk Pt. 2, by Bill Doggett

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MEMENTO MORI

When we learned of Robert Redford’s passing, of course we had to watch one of his films last night. We chose “Out of Africa.” It was the perfect choice for the night.

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Hummmmmmmm …

jono55

At least one of our hummingbird families has moved on to new opportunities. But there are still four birds visiting the feeders regularly. I will miss them when they all leave, as I do each year. I have never tired of watching the way they hover and dart, their endless squabbling with one another, and the swooping zoom-bys as they fly in for a visit. Tiny, tiny creatures. Beautiful.

An addition has been made to our outdoor neighborhood zoo. Yesterday morning, in broad daylight, a red fox trotted across our driveway and up the street. Really a handsome animal who didn’t seem too concerned about its exposure. As opposed to the case of coyotes, owls, large hawks, and eagles, our local pets aren’t much threatened by the foxes.

Red foxes only average about 15 pounds under all that fur and this is only a hair bigger than a household cat or one of those whateverdoodle dogs. I may not be lucky enough to see the fox again, but I like the feeling of knowing it’s out there.

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We’ve finally had a little rain here in the valley, something September promises and usually delivers. By the end of the month snow should appear on the tops of the San Juan mountains to the south of us. Last Saturday I had the pleasure of talking with a new neighbor, a woman who had lived for forty years in Gunnison CO, which is just an hour east of Montrose. She moved here because of grandchildren, who are a common attractant, particularly for senior women.

When Robin and I were scouting locations prior to moving here, Gunnison was one of the towns we looked at. Our impressions were initially positive, although it is a smaller village than this one, until someone told us that it is the coldest spot in Colorado in mid-winter.

Hearing that, we cancelled any plans for a Gunnison move. Coldest spot … no, thank you, not after freezing our patooties off in the Midwest all of our lives. The moderate climate here in Paradise looked much better to us eleven years ago and we haven’t been disappointed.

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Lightning flashing, wind gusting, thunder rolling – all of these came down on us Wednesday night after dark. Some little rain, but mostly that sound and light show.

On one of my trips into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of northern Minnesota, my companion and I had camped on a small island. We hadn’t traveled very far from the put-in, which was only a few miles and a single portage away, but no matter. Covering large distances was never our goal. We were not voyageurs, after all.

But a storm rolled in after dark that was to continue all night and into the next day, lasting nearly twelve hours. Sooo much lightning … sooo much rain … sooo much wind. All night the elements battered our small tent. The lightning was spectacular and nearly continuous. Sleep was impossible with all the noise, and we played every mind game we could think of lying there in the dark. When our bladders had expanded to our breastbones we were forced to leave the shelter and stand in the torrential rain while we felt like electrical targets all the while.

When the storm was over, all of our gear was wet and we were wetter. We decided to return to the world and get a cabin for the next night to allow our stuff to dry out (did I not mention that we were not voyageurs?). At that point we learned that eleven inches of rain had fallen during the downpour. Which had proven several inches too many for our poor tent, which simply hadn’t been up to the task of keeping the water on the outside.

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Lightning Crashes, by LIVE

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J.J. Cale emigrated from Earth in 2013 and is not expected to return any time soon. This is a guy who never hit a bad note, never recorded a song sloppily. Each tune had a beginning and an end, with tight musicianship in between.

On the album Okie he covered this old gospel song from 1925.

Precious Memories, by J.J. Cale

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There was another political assassination in our beleaguered country this past week, and we are still in the phase where small-hearted people are trying to use the man’s death to score points for their personal agendas. This will go on for another week or two, and then we will move on to the next outrage.

We have a rather a toxic mess of pottage stewing in the US right now, with what passes for leadership pouring gasoline on any fire they can find. Forget about being rational, forget about introspection. Finger-pointing and counter-finger-pointing are the orders of the day.

I am sick of it. The whole episode, from the shooting to the present nauseating debacle of mutual blaming, reveals humans at their worst. Only one thing is certain. When a country has nearly two guns per adult circulating among its civilians, we will continue to see these deaths. I am an old dude who had his first chance to vote in a national election and was lucky enough to be able to choose John F. Kennedy. Three years later an unstable citizen with a rifle took Kennedy’s life. That left a scar on my young psyche that has never had the chance to completely heal, because there has never been a shortage of fresh killings to deal with.

Looking for sanity in a society that so often seems insane is my first order of business. The path couldn’t be clearer. Non-violence is the only road worth following, the only way that offers the opportunity for meaningful change. We are not a highest-order species, but we are all that we’ve got to work with right now. Robin and I are contributing our time and treasure to political groups that are clear in their dedication to non-violence as a first principle. Anything else is madness.

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First snow, San Juan mountains, September 13, 2025. Now where did I put that long underwear, anyway?

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En****tification

jono55

Even a classical music troglodyte like myself can’t help being affected. Over time there are pieces that insinuate themselves into the most sluggish chunks of gray brainmatter, including mine. For me, one such work is Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Way way back when I was a kid with little money to spend on such things, I decided that I should try to learn at least a little about classical music, including why people listened to it at all, since it seemed boring to me and was impossible to dance to.

Being a pauper meant looking in the record store for classical music on the budget Nonesuch label. For a couple of bucks you could buy a vinyl album, usually recorded by an orchestra or ensemble you never heard of. My first such purchase was The Four Seasons. I don’t recall the name of the orchestra, but I played the album quite a bit over several years before it was lost during one of my spasmodic downsizings.

Recently, though, I ran across this newer album starring a violinist named Justine Jansen. I immediately liked it. It seems so … I dunno … sprightly and quick on its feet compared in with some of the more lumbering versions I have heard in the past. Perhaps because it is being played by a small ensemble rather than a larger orchestra (but that is for people to answer who know something about music, which does not include me).

Here is her version of the first part of Concerto #3 of The Four Seasons: Autumn.

1. Allegro

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BTW, there are more than 1000 recordings of The Four Seasons out there. And that count was done in 2011, so who knows by now?

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In response to the reeking river of garbage information oozing from from the Department of Health and Human Services, many medical groups and societies are putting out accurate and scientifically sound health information to help the public make good decisions, especially with regard to vaccines.

My own American Academy of Pediatrics has a site where they refute many of Secretary Kennedy’s know-nothing claims and another where they publish evidence-based recommendations for all childhood vaccines.

Some people think that doctors are in the immunization “business” to make huge profits. Let me clarify this tired canard for you. When I practiced pediatrics in South Dakota, the state provided all of the mandated vaccines to our offices for free, and we were not allowed to charge for them. We did, however, have to purchase, on our own, special refrigerators in which to store the vaccines, and had to keep meticulous records on the refrigerator’s performance and on each dose of vaccine we dispensed.

We were allowed to make a small charge for the nurses’ time spent in preparing individual doses and actually giving the injections. But reimbursements for that time were routinely less than our actual cost.

So instead of being a generous profit-maker, prociding vaccinations was actually an expense for the participating physician. This state/physician partnership worked because both recognized how important vaccines were to the health of the state’s children, and that small sacrifices were well worth it to remove any financial barriers.

But an economic windfall? Fageddaboudit!

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One of the absolute delights of reading is when you come across a word that moves humanity forward. That happened to me today when I read an article by Jennifer Louden on Substack entitled How To Age Without Enshittifying.

Whut? Where did that one come from?

And thus I was off to rummage in my online resources where I found:

Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which two-sided online products and services  decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers (such as advertisers), and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.

Wikipedia

Originally defined within the digital world (and that was only two years ago, when the word was first coined) it has broadened to include other areas of life. Like the pound of bacon that cost $5.99 becomes the 12 ounce package of bacon that costs $5.99.

Therefore when Ms. Louden provides me with some pearls of advice, I pay attention. Who wants to become part of the problem in yet one more way? Not me, bucko. My momma didn’t raise no enshittified children.

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In a piece on Substack I found this interesting graphic, which was created to try to make some sort of sense out of the manure lagoon swirling around Cluck. It’s one of those times when a picture is worth, if not a thousand words, quite a few.

If the diagram intrigues you, you might want to read the whole piece, which is entitled: Making Sense of MAGA. As I mentioned in last Sunday’s post, “Get your programs here, you can’t tell the players without a program.”

I have to admit that just looking at this repulsive entwinement makes my right hand want to reach for a can of disinfectant and give it a good spritz. Forcing my Macintosh to display it might even be a violation of the laptop’s rights.

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Another fine neologism I picked up this week was coined by Andy Borowitz, when he dubbed the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Metamucilini.

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And finally, out of the blue, comes a piece of news that shoves all of the government’s criminality and assaults on our collective lives aside for a few blessed moments.

New Mexico has this week guaranteed child care for every child, regardless of family income. Read the how and the why and the whole story by clicking the link.

Imagine this if you will. A politician who is using her office to make the lives of New Mexicans better. Whose main goal is not to grift, steal, or murder.

Es increible! Es magnifico! Gracias a la gobernadora Michelle Lujan Grisham de Nuevo Mexico por hacer muy algo correcto!

(And thanks to Google translate for doing all the work of creating that last sentence)

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It was the best of times …

jono55

Andy Borowitz is still out there seeing and telling it like it is (or at least as he sees it) Here is his latest.

Complicating Donald J. Trump’s plan to send troops to Chicago, on Tuesday thousands of National Guard members called in sick with bone spurs.
The White House was plunged into chaos after receiving over seven thousand notes from guardsmen’s podiatrists, sources said.
At the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed that he would get to the bottom of the bone spurs epidemic by enlisting the nation’s finest medical minds, including Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil.
“A sudden outbreak of this size is very suspicious,” Kennedy told reporters. “The most likely culprits are COVID-19 vaccinations.”

That is beautiful. Just beautiful. If he were here in Paradise I would hug him, even though I generally avoid those things like the plague. To me hugs are a socially acceptable form of assault.

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Finally – a break from the 90 degree-plus heat! I don’t know how to behave. Here it is mid-day and I am outdoors without a medical attendant and I am not pulling a wagonload of water bottles behind me.

Today I am reminded how summer once was, a season to be joyful and dancing and singing’s praises rather than cringing from it in fear and a double-slather of sunscreen.

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Sugar Magnolia, by the Grateful Dead, live at Fillmore East

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From The New Yorker

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Not one of you has asked me: “Hey, Jon, how is the psychedelic mushroom farm coming along?” So I will tell you, even though you obviously have no interest. First of all, I am growing small quantities of psilocybin-containing mushrooms, or shrooms. It’s not quite a farm, more like the smallest container garden you can imagine. Secondly, we have no plans to ingest these things in the amounts necessary to produce a psychedelic effect, but are microdosing to try something new in our approach to chronic pain struggles where standard methods have failed.

There is a lot of evidence, although it is largely anecdotal and sorely needs to be studied systematically, that many people are helped through this microdosing. Along the way if we inadvertently find ourselves in some celestial glade dealing with blue animals that eat from our hands and sing to us in Spanish, we will know that we are not in the land of microdosing any more and must retreat and reduce the amount we are taking.

That’s how it works, when it works. Anyone can buy the materials needed for mushroom culture online, but in only two states (Oregon and Colorado) can you legally grow shrooms for your personal use. But even here, try to sell the mushrooms to anyone else and you can be in trouble written large. Here’s a decent summary of the situation in our state.

So the basic rules here in Paradise are:

  • personal use has been decriminalized
  • selling them violates state law and fines or imprisonment could occur
  • you can share them with friends and family members
  • the physical space allotted to growing shrooms can be no bigger than 12×12 feet

My first crop was on the dismal side as far as quantity is concerned, but hey, so were my last couple of years with tomatoes in the back yard. If I were to describe my gardening skills I am not quite a black thumb, but I am more properly located in the “numb thumb” area.

Black thumb: This term implies a natural or notable inability to make plants grow successfully. 

Brown thumb: Similar to black thumb, “brown thumb” also signifies a lack of gardening skill and a tendency for plants to fail in one’s care.

Numb thumb: This is a more informal and sometimes preferred term for someone whose lack of success is due to a lack of effort or understanding, rather than a complete lack of skill. 

This is a photo taken from the web of a lovely crop of Golden Teacher shrooms, the species that I am presently fiddling with. At no time thus far has my production looked anything like this.

I am not too tempted to chomp down on a large mushroom to experience new worlds since I barely fit into this one. Remember, I was a practicing physician in the sixties, and was involved in the care of many who were having what was euphemistically called a “bad trip.” Three vignettes may reveal why I am reluctant to try them myself.

A young man is in the emergency room having been vomiting for hours and is moderately dehydrated. The nurse tells me that he has ingested some sort of mushroom. I ask if she has any idea what kind when a groaning voice from the man on the ER bed calls out “Amanita muscaria.” It’s not the only time a patient diagnosed their disease for me, but it was the only time that one did it in Latin.

In the middle of a deep winter night in the Upper Peninsula local police find a young man standing naked in a snow-filled churchyard and singing anti-war songs loudly enough to bother the neighbors.

He was admitted to hospital for hypothermia and being seriously out of tune. We never determined the exact species he’d eaten because not even he knew what he had been messing with.

One more young man who had sampled some shrooms was brought in in restraints by the Minneapolis police. His offense was to shout obscenities loudly and repeatedly on a downtown street and when the gendarmes tried to reason with him he became enraged and attacked them. They were having none of that, and thus the restraints. I was working a shift as an ER doctor and called the man’s physician of record. I reported that the patient was tied to a bed, incoherent, unable to have a conversation worth anything and asked the worthy doctor what we should do with him, expecting an order for a temporary protective psychiatric admission. I was surprised when his MD advised me to send him home and direct the patient to call the office in the morning and get an appointment to be seen. I sputtered in disbelief for a moment and said: “But doctor, the man is not in his right mind and will likely not remember anything we tell him.” The answer received was: “Put a note in his pocket.”

I hung up the telephone and called another attending physician who promptly admitted the unfortunate gentleman to psychiatry for a short stay.

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From The New Yorker

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The Wheel, by the Grateful Dead (Live at the Fox Theater)

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If we were only to read the papers to form our view of present-day American life, there would be an epidemic of razor blades and warm baths, I’m afraid. Because all of the news is dominated by one very poor excuse for a man. We are living inside of that perfect storm where all of the elements came together that were necessary to bring our democratic experiment to a halt. A pause, not an ending.

One of those elements is the media who have revealed their own weaknesses by utterly failing to give “equal time”to the stories of resistance, and to the excitement building in that largely uncovered sphere.

There are millions upon millions of brave hearts out there, and some of them write so very well. If you need something to brace a tired spirit there is no shortage of people to provide just that. One of them is a guy named Jack Hopkins, who put this piece together, and who frames the story in a way that fits better with what I encounter on the ground here in Paradise. I offer you a repost of his substack entry: Outlasting the MAGA Darkness. Right On, Brother Jack, right on. (I am sooo fixated in the Sixties … you’d think i’d be embarrassed).

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair“

Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities

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Bearly Worth Mentioning

jono55

Robin and I drove to Durango on Tuesday morning, and we noticed that above 9000 feet many of the aspens are turning yellow. Now, I have a dim recollection that this means something about the coming weeks and months, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it is.

Maybe ChatGPT will know. They are my oracle when it comes to stuff like this.

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ChatGPT: what do you want now?

Moi: I was wondering if you knew what it means when the tree leaves turn colors in August..

ChatGPT: You have got to be kidding.

Moi: No, I’m just an ancient person and have forgotten many things.

ChatGPT: Sigghhhhhh … it’s one of the signs that autumn is coming.

Moi: But isn’t this sort of early for that?

ChatGPT: Not when you have a drought. The leaves turn early and their colors aren’t usually as bright.

Moi: How interesting. Did you in that one nanosecond that has passed since I posed the question scour the libraries of the world for your answer?

ChatGPT: No.

Moi: Then …

ChatGPT: It was in this morning’s paper.

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Robin is in Durango, spending time with Claire when her parents are away. The home is several miles out of town in an area that not infrequently sees bear activity. So much so that every home must keep their trash in a bear-proof container.

The problem is not just one of having one’s trash spread about, but of safety for the bear. If one of them becomes accustomed to finding food in garbage cans and starts hanging around human dwellings regularly, any aggressiveness on its part means a call to a wildlife officer, and often a bullet for the bear.

Wednesday, as Robin was retrieving the family’s container from the roadside collection site, a black bear approached to within less than ten yards. Robin neither moved toward nor away from the critter, and after a moment or two it continued on down the road, uninterested in anything that did not promise easy access to food. No threats offered, no offense taken, no phone calls made.

Except for the excited call to me here in Montrose to relate the story of the encounter.

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Bear, by The Shouting Matches

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From The New Yorker

When I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we would see bears often while camping, about half the time, in fact. Their only interest was in food, so we kept ours all in the VW bus we traveled in. On one of these trips we were still in the process of setting up camp when one of our kids noticed a bear going through the campground, site by site, and opening each trash can to check out the contents.

When the animal approached our trashcan, the six of us got into the van to watch the bear do its inspection. Finding nothing, it moved on along its route. (I should add that this was nearly fifty years ago, when campers were not nearly so knowledgeable as to proper behavior with trash and around bears.)

During those years in the UP, there was only one episode of physical harm from a bear that I knew of. A teen-aged boy was camping without a tent all by himself in a wooded area. When he turned in for the night, he unwisely took his food into the sleeping bag along with himself so that the raccoons wouldn’t get at it. Along came a bear which found itself staring at what was (to the bear) essentially a large human burrito, and he began chomping away. The boy managed to get out of the bag and run off, eventually making his way to a local hospital, where he received some minor patching up.

The sleeping bag, unfortunately, was a total loss.

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Black Bear, by Railroad Earth

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From the New Yorker

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We are only one week away from September, that month each year when I give over to my most sappy, maudlin, mawkish, corny, and moony side. It might not happen if there weren’t that song* to play and listen to. Something about its wistfulness brings out these drippy weeps, and I don’t seem to have the will to not play it. Every autumn. Like clockwork.

If I am dreading it, I really can’t imagine what must be going through your minds. Perhaps if we all buck up we’ll get through to the other side and October, where lies safety. Hold that thought.

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As of this morning, I have reached one of those milestones. I am twenty years sober. This is not a boast, and I don’t publish as self-puffery, but to speak to anyone out there who is wondering about whether their use of alcohol is helping or hurting them … there are other possibilities.

One day at a discussion in a rehab center, a client stood up and said that he was one year sober and many in the room clapped. The moderator interrupted and asked “Why are you clapping? All he said was that for the past year he has behaved like a normal person and has stopped harming himself and those around him.”

And that moderator was right, I think. We announce our sobriety anniversaries to reach out to those whose hands are still shaking, not to show that we are some sort of paragons. To point out to those still carrying the weight of alcohol addiction that they can put down the rock and walk away. It’s no more than doing the next right thing.

And did I do that next right thing by myself? Surely you jest.

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*September Song

I Have No Thought Of Time …

jono55

Sandy Denny was an English folksinger and songwriter with a gorgeous voice who sang with several groups including Fairport Convention and Fotheringay, and who put out a handful of solo albums as well. One of the most enduring pieces she wrote was Who Knows Where The Time Goes, a marvelously thoughtful and melancholic song about the passage of time.

I first listened to it as a much younger man and was instantly caught up in the lyrics, which seemed to speak directly to me and I thought How could Denny have written such a personal song when I had never met her and there was no way … but I imagine that’s everyone’s reaction to this lovely musical meditation. At every age I’ve been through since then it has spoken to me with an even clearer meaning, until at my present time of life when I listen it seems just the perfect fit, carrying the message of one of life’s most constant truths.

And yet she was only twenty when she wrote it. Amazing. Breaks your heart, really. It was the last song she ever sang at a public performance. Denny died after a fall down a flight of stairs, at the age of only 31. But even if this piece of music had been her only legacy … aahhh, love … it is timeless.

“Who Knows” has been covered by so many people. Each one that i’ve listened to beautifuin its own right, but none eclipsing the original by Sandy Denny herself.

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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, by Sandy Denny

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There are three people whose clear-minded writing about our present national political manure pile that I read regularly. They are Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, and Timothy Snyder. There are many others producing worthy material, but the day is only so long and, alas, my attention span has its limits.

I marvel at each piece they post, and especially in the case of Richardson and Reich, they post nearly every day. E.v.e.r.y d.a.y they produce an essay that would get an “A” in Civics class. All three are available on Substack and can be followed on its app. I find that they cut through the clamor and smoke very well, pointing out over and over the lessons of the Andersen fairy tale: The Emperor’s New Clothes.

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Upon reflection, I have found that an almost perfect metaphor for the present-day version of the Republican Party would be the Freudian concept of the Id. I was going to ask Sigmund if he agreed, but was disappointed to find that the man was completely dead.

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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, by Nina Simone

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Yesterday I made a fine meal of New England Clam Chowder, which Robin and I wolfed down with much lip-licking and slurping. It was only later when washing the dishes that I noticed a stinging on the tip of my right middle finger, and found that it was missing a bit of tissue measuring about 2×2 millimeters. Apparently during the slicing and dicing of the vegetables that went into the mix I nicked the finger but didn’t notice at the time. There exists the distinct possibility that the missing piece of me went into the chowder.

It’s a tiny thing, I know, but I have chosen not to share this information with my wife. She has a tender stomach, poor dear, and this might affect her attitude toward me and my meal preparations in general.

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From The New Yorker

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I visited the Black Canyon Park on Monday forenoon. It is only partially open, and there is no walking about in the burned areas at all, anywhere, said the burly Park Ranger to me as I came strolling back down a charred hummock. He also said that my hiking where I had no business being would encourage all the other people who were presently in that same parking lot to start doing it. And he definitely implied that this could be the end of civilization as we know it.

I assumed the humbled, craven posture that is my best weapon against angry authority figures and skittered away.

But even such a tense situation couldn’t hide the fact that only 40 days since the onset of the fire, there were one-foot tall Gambrel Oak seedlings already coming up from the rootstocks of the burned trees.

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters. Nature holds the cards. She started the whole mess with those lightning strikes, and now shows that she is repentant and can put it right again.

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Who Knows Where The Time Goes, by Judy Collins

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Across the evening sky
All the birds are leaving
But how can they know
It’s time for them to go?
Before the winter fire
I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad deserted shore
Your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know
It’s time for them to go
But I will still be here
I have no thought of leaving

I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone
While my love is near me
I know it will be so
‘Til it’s time to go
So come the storms of winter
And then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

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Hand-sitting

jono55

Memo to “Normal” Republicans: if you are silent, sitting on your hands and waiting for the storm to blow over, you are complicit in and partially to blame for whatever Cluck is thus able to send our way.

Memo to Democrats: if you are silent, sitting on your hands and waiting for the storm to blow over, you are complicit in and partially to blame for whatever Cluck is thus able to send our way.

Memo to Independents: if you are silent, sitting on your hands and waiting for the storm to blow over, you are complicit in and partially to blame for whatever Cluck is thus able to send our way.

Memo to those who consider themselves above the political fray: if you are silent, sitting on your hands and waiting for the storm to blow over, you are complicit in and partially to blame for whatever Cluck is thus able to send our way.

This is no time for silence. Silence is complicity. Silence is collaboration. Silence is capitulation.

There, got it off my chest. Now I can blather on to other matters.

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Living Well Is The Best Revenge, by R.E.M.

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The header photograph today is of author Alexander Solzhenitsyn and it was taken on the day of his liberation from the Soviet gulag in 1953, after eight years of imprisonment. He went on to write several books, and the one that is considered his masterwork is The Gulag Archipelago, where he describes the system of forced labor camps that existed in Stalinist Russia and continued until it was officially abolished in 1960.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to see parallels between that system and the camps that the Cluck administration is establishing around the United States to house immigrants who are being deported. The most glaring example being perhaps “Alligator Alcatraz,” in Florida.

Cluck’s Visit to Alligator Alcatraz, July 2025

In effect, they can be considered our political prisoners. They are being transported and incarcerated in these places at the whim of the Cluck regime. No habeas corpus. No due process. No recourse to the protections of our justice system. It is ugly and it is illegal.

To add to the rottenness, these people are being rounded up by our very own newly-minted secret police squads, which we euphemistically call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

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I subscribe to the “Cooking” section of the New York Times, and I’m not quite sure why. I rarely use their recipes for a number of reasons, the most common is that so many of them call for ingredients that are simply not available in our corner of the world. Another is that some authors are almost unbearably precious and full of themselves. Where a more straightforward person might write “and then simmer for two hours,” their instruction might be paraphrased as “and then simper for two hours.”

But we’ve just been enjoying a NYT recipe, a superior vegetable chili that stars black beans and mushrooms and that is very tasty indeed. It is not difficult to make, does not involve using a single word of a foreign language, and is ready in only an hour. It is economical and nutritious to boot, unless you go too crazy in the variety of mushrooms that you use.

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I think that if my last name were Epstein I would change it ASAP. Perhaps to something lighter, like de Sade or Dahmer.

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The Internationale, by Ani di Franco and Utah Philips

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A gallery from Scotland. Makes the signs I’ve carried so far look a bit wimpy. There were others that were even more colorful, but there are words a gentleman like myself does not employ.

Not that they weren’t correct, mind you.

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A One-line Curriculum Vitae Created For He Who Will Not Be Named

Cheatliardelusionalrapistabuser
whorermongerbigotbankruptfelon
traitornarcissistdraftdodger
pedophileimmoraldisloyalhypocrite
fascistdementedbullyscoundrel
adulterersoullesspeckerwood.

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No breaks from the plus-90 heat here in Paradise. But my kids and friends living in Minnesota and South Dakota recently had to deal with heat and then some. There were tornadoes, thunderstorms, Biblical-style rains, and a by-god derecho. (These pix are not mine, but no matter. The view is the same)

Now, I make absolutely no claims to meteorological expertise beyond phrases like “When the rain is from the East then the fishing is the least.” But if I should ever look up and see something like in these photos, I’m pretty sure it would be quick-step to the root cellar for me. Even if I couldn’t explain what I saw, I would take it as a direct message from the Almighty that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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There are blogs that I follow that from time to time provide absolute gems for me to read and thing about. One of those came along this week. It included this poem, which I found quite beautiful and provocative (that is, it provoked me to actually think). The author is Mick Canning and he lives in the UK. He is a real writer, as opposed to a trafficker in poppycock and dither like myself.

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La Marseillaise, by Isla St. Clair

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Listen To The Music

jono55

There are times when I actually feel sorry for the MAGA bunch. Not often, because they are continually involved in such sorry and destructive behavior. But sorry in the sense that they seem so desperately unhappy. So little of the world they live in is acceptable to them. I would not want to live in their heads for a moment.

And I realize that to have become the wise and serene and accepting and all-round wonderful human being that I am is the purest accident, the endpoint of a long series of days (31,311 to be exact) when life sculpted and molded and pushed me until I couldn’t be anything else.

I grew up in an economically deprived home, but not an abusive one. I was exposed to peer groups that were only mildly delinquent and antisocial in their behavior, which meant that I experienced none of the harsh lessons that come with incarceration. I had parents who had clear ideas about right and wrong, fair and unfair, and who had enough minor flaws that I learned that it was possible to love someone even though they were imperfect.

I was given a mind that was useful in solving problems and remembering information, at a time and place in history where such qualities were rewarded.

As the wonderful man who was Thich Nhat Hanh used to tell in one of his stories, we are the victims of robbery and rape, and we are the robbers and the rapists. All of those possibilities were in us when we were born. Chance and happenstance … chance and happenstance … and here I am, a card-carrying non-MAGA of the first water.

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(Three of the tunes on the blog today are from the album Live At Wolf Trap, and are performed by the estimable Doobie Brothers.)

5 Corners, by The Doobie Brothers

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The world is full of metaphors involving water, isn’t it? Makes sense, since our origins are probably in the sea, but just think of all the lessons and stories that involve the ocean, rivers, and lakes of the earth. And I offer here a modest addition to that lore.

Robin and I are involved in a nationwide progressive organization called Indivisible. We have been involved in planning events, we have marched with kindred spirits, we have watched many training sessions on television. Training to become engaged citizens who have left their comfort zone and are learning the language of speaking up, of making our voices heard.

It took the many kicks and prods offered by the Cluck administration to get us out of our burrows, but it has happened and now, we ask ourselves as we stand blinking in the glaring sunlight, what?

We have a healthy sense of our individual unimportance, I think. No delusions of one day running for political office (and here is the 85 year-old junior senator from the great state of Colorado … ), and are not convinced that our understanding of where it is all going is a completely accurate one. But we see a great ugliness that calls us to resist it and to stand in its way whenever we can.

And yet we also realize that by ourselves we are like a couple of drops of water on a griddle. If we stand still we disappear and are of no help to anyone. But when we join with others we become a creek, a river, and finally, perhaps, a powerful wave.

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Rainy Day Crossroads Blues, by The Doobie Brothers

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Robin and I hit the streets once again on Thursday afternoon, along with Indivisible and the League of Women Voters. About a dozen of the women, including Robin, dressed in costumes from the television series “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The theme of the day was protection of women’s rights including the right to vote. Both of these are in jeopardy under Cluck with his corrupt handmaidens and henchmen.

‘Twas a hot afternoon, but not quite as beastly as the previous few days. Once again, the local yahoo contingent was nearly completely absent, so there were no episodes of harassment. The leaders of our group have suggested for the first time that we become familiar with the Signal app, in order that we have a way to protect sensitive communications from prying eyes.

A sign o’ the times, but one that is sensible and mindful of the safety of participants. Even though we live in Paradise, not all of the angels are to be trusted.

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Bread and Roses, by Bobbie McGee

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Very early this morning I stepped out onto the lawn in the backyard because the night was so quiet and there was still a gentle warmth leftover from the day. It was utterly still, not a leaf moving on the big ash tree.

When I first learned about mindfulness meditation, I remember the following instruction. At the end of an in-breath and before the out-breath begins, there is a moment of complete stillness of the body and mind. That was what it seemed like at 2:00 this morning. That the world of my backyard was at just that moment of breathing in … pause …

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Listen To The Music, by The Doobie Brothers

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UPDATE: The National Park Service folks tell us that 85% of the South Rim of the park has been burned. A community meeting next week is set to allow group “mourning” for those who love the park. No one except firefighters and a handful of media members knows what it looks like up there, but it is certainly drastically changed. As of Saturday, the fire is now considered “contained.”

Our last visit to the park before the fire was just four days before the blaze began. Robin and I were stopping at each viewpoint and walking out to take fresh looks at this dramatic slash in the earth. We ran out of water and energy before doing all of them, and promised ourselves to come back in a week or two and finish the job.

The campgrounds have been completely burned over, and will not reopen this year. Maintenance building have been destroyed, along with the equipment that was housed in them. We are grateful that the visitor center was unharmed. It will provide the counterpoint of what the new version of the park will become. I can imagine that the hiking trails will need a lot of work to make them usable.

Zero loss of human life, zero loss of homes in the area. That is the very good news.

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Pozole News

jono55

After this long on the planet It is very annoying to learn that there is basic information missing from my personal portfolio. But yesterday I was listening to a woman on NPR who was talking about our Black Canyon fire and who used the term “dry thunderstorm.” I had never heard that term before.

So I looked it up.

What it means is precisely what happened here last Thursday morning. Ferocious lightning without any significant rainfall. These sorts of storms occur primarily in very dry areas of the country, as found in the Western US. They are a very common cause of wildfires, exemplified by the fact that our recent “dry thunderstorm” produced four fires in this area, which are still burning.

Dry thunderstorm … polar vortex … downbursts … the meteorologists have their own arcane vocabulary which they use to maintain their power and lord it over the rest of us. Someone should fire them all. I’m calling DOGE.

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Main Title Theme (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid), by Bob Dylan

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Robin and I are presently exploring the joys of pozole, a Mexican stew made with hominy (dried corn). Yesterday I put together a pozole verde, made with hominy, tomatillos, jalapeños, chicken, and a few spices. It was delicious. The helpful publisher of the recipe provided instructions for making it in an either a crockpot or a pressure cooker.

I started out with a package of dry hominy, which is the consistency of a bag of rocks and requires some serious soaking and cooking to soften up. Once you get this part done, the rest of the recipe kicks in quickly.

Simple techniques, no special skills required, delicious output. What’s not to like?

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Went with friends Joe and Caroline to a chamber music concert at a local church. Three young musicians played for us, with violin, viola, and a double bass the size of a compact car. The music was excellent.

The bassist was a member of the Navajo nation and he played two of his own compositions. The first of of those was so beautiful and dramatic that I sought him out after the concert and asked if he had recorded it, hoping I might purchase a copy. But no, it was his most recent work and he was still trying it out.

A pity. Would have loved to have had it in my library.

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Not Dark Yet, by Bob Dylan

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I am so totally confused now about the Jeffrey Epstein affair that I don’t know where to start. And the White House isn’t helping by trotting out one scenario after another hoping to find one that will make us all magically forget our names and where we put the car keys and everything else.

The whole business is a good reminder of one of those adages you can hear at any AA meeting. “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember what you said before.” Exactly. And the hapless consortium at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can’t remember in mid-afternoon what they said before lunch.

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“Wow who would have thought that electing a rapist would have complicated the release of the Epstein Files?”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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Subterra Incognita

jono55

Dang, but I’m hooked on this song! Heard for the first time on our recent return trip from Minneapolis as background music in a chicken-sandwich restaurant in Fairplay, Colorado. I now play it all the time, putting it on continuous replay as I work on the computer or sit around vacant-minded on the backyard deck.

It’s one of those times when a song blows right past the thinking part of my brain without stopping for a moment and implants itself in whatever primitive corner in there that is always awake and hungry for things to chew on. I’ve read through the lyrics and … okay … there’s something pleasantly metaphoric there. But then there’s the chorus popping up with “You’ll never walk alone,” which I find distracting.

But, no matter … I love it.

It’s from early Pink Floyd, before they became “The Dark Side of the Moon,” and “The Wall” famous. It’s not the first time something like this has happened to me. There is a pantheon of tunes which preceded it that are lined up in those dark cerebral catacombs and all it takes is hearing a few notes or a phrase to wake one up and put it on the turntable (a metaphoric one, since I got rid of my real turntable decades ago).

Each of them is in its turn like those crushes that I had on one girl or another along my way to adulthood. Passionate and without borders for a time, then gently and lovingly retired.

Fearless, by Pink Floyd

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Each year as I approach the storage limit on WordPress I have to make a choice whether to ante up quite a bit more cash for a larger perch or to trim away enough to make room for what I want to write tomorrow. I always opt for prudence and parsimony. Because, let’s face it, although some of those older posts pleased me very much at the time, they are not deathless prose. Not War and Peace, not even Steal This Book.

You’ve heard the tale, I’m sure, about Emily Dickinson who kept her poetry pretty much to herself and asked that her sister destroy it all upon Emily’s death. When I first heard the story I thought it such an odd request, something on the order of a man who asks that his dog be euthanized on the man’s passing, because “he just wouldn’t be happy without me.” Or, in a more macabre reference, the not-rare story of the depressed parent who decides to end it all, but then takes their family with them, without their assent. Perhaps for the same reason as the dog owner’s, who knows?

But my heirs will not have that problem, because I go through and delete posts without mercy. Everything beyond two years ago disappears. There are enough words being saved for the world to deal with, it doesn’t need my musings added to the stack.

And Emily? I think she secretly wanted everything to be published, but wouldn’t admit it to herself.

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This gets my vote for best pinback button of the week! I saw it on Substack and stole the image for my personal use.

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This was also on Substack, on the same day. I tried to read it to Robin but kept breaking into nearly paralytic laughter each time. Finally had to give it up.

I have such low tastes in humor that it often embarrasses even me.

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A rain, finally! Thursday afternoon Robin and I had back to back doctor appointments, and it was 84 degrees and sunny when we entered the building. We exited an hour later into a steady rain and 60 degrees. But hooray for a bit of personal shivering sogginess!

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This is for Jonnie and those of us who knew him well.

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Mindless On Purpose

jono55

Once in a great while I have to leave the world of reality behind and slip into that space where ordinary life is not allowed to go. Where age and situation and doing the right thing are irrelevant. It’s a bit more difficult to do since I became a sober person, but I can if I puts my mind to it … enter music.

Back when I was shooting at my brain with single malt scotches and Pouilly-Fuissé I would put some Neil Young on the turntable, power up the Bose speakers to dangerous levels (capable of killing roaches within a thirty foot radius), and sink into a soft leather chair with my glass in hand. At those moments rock and roll and I became one, similar to the unity that Buddhists talk about.

Problem was, of course, that the next day those ecstasies had been replaced by that painful bit of instant karma called the hangover, which was ever more durable than the “fun” had been. And where did that bruise come from? And what day was it, anyway?

Today there are all sorts of nastinesses out there to sabotage one’s mood and serenity. To get away from them without chemicals requires different sorts of thinking. Meditation … yoga … deliberately letting go of the attachments to the news cycles (which are a form of poison in themselves). And sometimes it is as simple as listening to music. Today I am one with the universe and George Thorogood.

Who Do You Love, by George Thorogood

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This fashion note was prompted by a Times article on Sunday dealing with the present trendiness of very small swimsuits on men. It’s not so much worrying about that small area that the suit covers but the vast area that is now open to the public gaze that would trouble me.

The gentleman in the photo above with his smoothly muscled body and delicately tattooed dermis might as well be a different species entirely, in that he does not represent in any way what I would look like in such a garment.

In my case, time has worked its wonders behind the closed doors of cotton and polyester, and I fully intend that those doors remain firmly shut. Therefore, in response to as yet no questions at all from the reading public, I make this promise: In spite of my wish to be a model of sartorial perfection at all times, I will not be purchasing or wearing any swimming outfits that are smaller than a large Band-aid.

You can take that to the bank.

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If, after I have left this earth behind, anyone wished to play something to remind themselves of me (and why in God’s name would they do this?), this song would do handily. Bob Dylan wrote the gently mournful tune, and there are numerous excellent covers out there. I came upon this special one this morning and thought I should share it with you.

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There is a crack in everything … that’s how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen

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What? Two music videos? Is this an MTV flashback?

Nope. These two are really to remind us that although there are people loudly shouting shit every day into our faces … let’s name names, shall we … although our president is loudly shouting shit every day into our faces, because that is what he does best … there are people all around the country and the world who are every day working hard, raising families, contributing to their societies, creating beauty.

This morning I came across one of those moments where somebody had the cameras rolling and an interesting experiment became a joy to be shared. A slender blade with which to cut through the ordure and let the light through.

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Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water.”

Zen Proverb

I’m looking at the week ahead and there is much work to be done. Fortunately I don’t have to do it all, which is a good thing, due to my being better suited to dozing in a rocker than carrying a torch.

One by one people are waking to the possibility that our national nightmare need not continue. That we water carriers and wood choppers of the earth can join together to make a wave that will cleanse our country and make it stronger.

(end of sermon)

And now, dear hearts, if you would turn in your hymnals to …

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Psychedelia

jono55

One more tag-end to our recent trip. On the return leg we overnighted in FairPlay CO. I believe Fairplay, Colorado might be one of the least gentrified communities in the entire state. Perhaps the entire country. We sought advice from the motel desk clerk and went to Otto‘s for supper. Otto’s was located in one of my favorite sort of venues, a simple wooden-frame structure whose bathrooms were approached by going out the side door and around the back. The kitchen was very busy with young men working hard at preparing a large number of their signature dishes which are fried chicken sandwiches.

Robin and I each ordered one of those and sat down at a table to wait. The music coming at us from the small Bose speaker in the corner was straight out of a late sixties psychedelic playlist.

It was all wonderful stuff, but there was one particular song that came on which I had never heard before and admired greatly. I went to the desk where we had ordered our food to ask the gentleman if he knew what was playing on the overhead. He immediately came up with the answer, which was Fearless, by Pink Floyd, from their album Meddle.

I have included that gem in today’s post.

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Fearless, by Pink Floyd

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From The New Yorker

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Robert Reich reposted a message a couple of days ago that I wish I had written. It brings together what was an inchoate mess of thoughts ricocheting around in my own cranium and then organizes them. It calls for action by all of us who are sickened by current events, and does not at any point suggest that we sit back and watch in bemusement.

It especially calls for the leaders in the Democratic Party to be … well … leaders. To leave their comfort zones so far behind they can’t remember where the keys are and really dig in while digging is still possible.

As the graphic indicates, democracy is not a spectator sport. The house is on fire, friends. The next right thing to do is to grab a bucket and join a brigade!

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From The New Yorker

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It’s a bit after one a.m., and while I am computerscribbling in my office I hear a scuffling noise out in the kitchen area. The pet door is open to the outdoors, and rarely another feline will wander in to sample whatever we’re feeding our own cats. So I walk quietly to that room and discover not one, but three young raccoons, each the size of a small kitty.

They took poorly to being discovered and went out the door, across the yard, and over the board fence in a dignified hurry.

That’ll be about that for a while, I say as I button down the cat portal. I do like these intelligent critters, but only outdoors. They are quite good at probing human defense systems, and it is likely that our home is now on their list of good places to visit.

Oh well.

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Travelog

jono55

The past several days we’ve been traveling and there has been little time for blogging. We’ve moved along by car, which is my favorite way to go, and so passed through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and southern Minnesota. All along the route and at each bathroom stop on the freeway system, the humidity increased, until I estimate that it is above 100% here in Minneapolis. Or at least that’s what it seems to desert dwellers like ourselves. If you listen carefully you can hear your hair matting on your forehead and the creases falling from your trousers to the floor.

The purpose for the trip was to attend our granddaughter’s wedding. I had been asked to give the bride away, and everyone hoped that I could perform that brief duty without tripping, drooling, exhibiting excessive flatulence, or in any other way embarrassing the family. I think that I did okay, although the reviews are still coming in.

The bride was beautiful, the groom seemed blissfully happy, and the assembly was refreshingly young. When you are a senior citizen you have a lot of social options you can choose from, but most of them are comprised of getting together with groups of other seniors. Moving to a room where the average age is under 30 is a treat. You are reminded of how sleek and supple the bodies of people are when they are in their twenties, and that once upon a time you owned one of those bodies. ‘Twas a pleasant recollection.

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Summertime, by Janis Joplin

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From The New Yorker

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I have let the world turn largely without me during these travel days, but it is a joy each morning to find that we are not yet at war, not in a depression, and have not yet set ourselves completely apart from the rest of humanity.

President Cluck, it seems, has become quite adept at lowering his rank in the opinion polls each time a new one is taken. My take is that the scales are finally dropping from the eyes of those who are willing to see what advanced thinkers like myself have noticed all along. That he is an unprincipled gasbag with no more right to be POTUS than your average intestinal roundworm.

(That may only be my opinion, of course, but you have to remember that once upon a time I was a physician and that makes my opinions so much more valuable than those of your run of the mill poltroon.)

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From The New Yorker

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The journey home has been uneventful so far, except for a 40mph headwind, rampant humidity, and a temperature that held right at 100 degrees all afternoon and early evening. The headwind was so forceful that our Subaru posted the worst mileage day of its life – 24.4 mpg. It was a long day of two-handed driving and subsequent cricks in the neck. At one point I was loading ice into our cooler when I dropped the bag and it flew away too fast for me to ever catch it, although I did run after it for a few yards. So, today I am a litterer. Ugh.

Were there any pluses, you ask? Well, yes, quite a few. Other drivers sharing the road with us on this trip have been remarkably polite and well-mannered. A young man at a gas station came out to the car to offer me a huge bag of ice at the same price as two lesser bags. Another very young man who we asked for restaurant recommendations suggested we try the Crystal Cafe. “I’ve been eating there since I was a kid, and it was always good,” he said. Of course to Robin and I he was still a kid, but the food was very good.

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Summertime Blues, by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

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Abomination du Jour

jono55

It’s not been a bad week at all for somebody who is not an admirer of fascism. Just a few few days ago, we discovered there was an acronym published in the Wall Street Journal to describe how well Cluck’s tariff manipulations are doing in his dealings with other countries. The acronym is TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out. Apparently Cluck has taken exception to the label. Go figure.

And in another juicy moment this week, Elon Musk left his government position (allegedly having been fired by the Exalted Cluckster), and three days later comes up with a description of the “big beautiful bill” now in the United States Senate as a disgusting abomination.

Now I’m not sure that once you use the word abomination, you really need to add the descriptor disgusting, because I can’t imagine what other kind of abominations there might be. Are there non-disgusting ones? Perhaps abomination lite? Or petit abomination?

But, I quibble. The bill is an abomination and I am disgusted, so there you are. If we ever needed examples of how being unbelievably wealthy doesn’t solve all the problems a person could have, with Cluck and Musk we’ve got prime cases right in front of us. I am almost embarrassed for them. Almost.

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No Expectations, by the Black Crowes

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Last evening Robin and I watched a presentation on the use of the infamous app Signal. You know, the one that our Secretary of Defense uses to share American military strategies with our foes? Yeah, that one.

The presenter this evening took pains to let us know that the app is a good one, unless you invite the wrong person to join in on the chat. For instance, if you invite a reporter, you should anticipate that they will report.

Not to be too paranoid, she told us, but the more involved that we become in resistance to what our rogue government is doing, the more we show up on their radar screens, and the more interested they become in what we are saying. So if we want to limit idle discussion about our conversations in the future, we should really consider using such a piece of encryption software.

No app known will keep the most determined and skillful hackers in the world from listening to our conversations, she added, but for the other 99.99% of the time it works very well, and is free. I will present what we learned at the next meeting of our Indivisible group and see what everyone thinks. Indivisible is a determinedly non-violent organization, but still … sometimes you want to talk off the record, no?

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This morning an unusual headline in the “Arts”section of the New York Times caught my eye.

The notice prompted two questions immediately. Who is Sydney Sweeney? Who is Dr. Squatch?

Once I had wasted four minutes of my life doing the necessary research, I learned that Sweeney is an actor who is already famous for her bosom and hoping to become famous for her acting skills. Dr. Squatch is a seller of men’s personal care products made of what they call natural ingredients and “manly” scents.

The limited-edition bar of soap, made with sand, pine bark extract and a “touch” of Ms. Sweeney’s real bath water, according to the company, will go on sale June 6. Just so you don’t go out and purchase the wrong stuff, the bar is called “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss.”

The mind reels.

The above photograph accompanied the article, and although I usually refrain from commenting on another person’s appearance, I have to admit that she does have lovely collarbones.

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This is my nomination for the best song ever about sailing and failed relationships. Can’t hear it often enough, actually. The imagery in the lyrics completely cancels out whatever bad juju my head is involved with at that moment.

The story of the song’s origins were in a time when Stephen Stills was newly divorced and depressed. A friend invited him to get away from things for a while, to come with him on a sailing cruise in the south Pacific. Stills came back from the voyage with these lyrics in his hand. Beautiful.

Now, for contrast, I came back from my divorce without a thing to show for it but a large library of self-help books.

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Saturday Robin and I spent a couple of hours at the second annual Montrose Pride Festival. There was quite a crowd in Cerise Park on a beautiful afternoon. Live music, a drag show, a handful of food trucks. What’s not to love?

Some of the displays were delightful surprises. At least three local churches had booths, as well as the town’s only Pediatric Clinic. Indivisible had a booth and so did the Democrats. (I loved that the pediatricians were there, but then pediatrics has so often been on the right side of things).

Republicans … can I have a drum roll … were totally no-shows. In their view, I suppose, why would they attend an affair celebrating a community that they have decided doesn’t exist?

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Screenshot
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For Robin and I, last night’s performance on CNN of Good Night and Good Luck hit it out of the bleepin’ park. First time ever of a live broadcast of a Broadway play! Right on, George Clooney and CNN for doing it. A dose of the “right stuff” in a time of much wrong stuff.

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Warriors Of A Certain Age

jono55

Sunday afternoon Robin and I attended a Zoom training session on grassroots political strategies which was held at the Ute Indian museum out on the southern edge of town. There were probably 20 people in attendance. Besides myself there was only one other man present and he was only slightly younger than I am. Nearly everyone in the room was a senior citizen.

We wondered. Where are the men? Where are the young people?

This conference was broadcast nationwide, and had more than 1700 attendees from just about every state in the country. All of them were deeply interested in what we can do to more effectively oppose the destructive policies coming out of the Cluck administration.

The leader of the workshop was Representative Pramila Jayapal, a congresswoman from the state of Washington. She was an excellent moderator, was very well organized, and kept the session flowing so well that even though it was three hours long it never flagged.

Her enthusiasm was contagious.

What a civics lesson we are receiving! Perhaps it would have been better if the need to attend such lessons hadn’t arisen, and we could just have remained dumb and happy for the rest of our lives. However, it is another one of those situations in life where when bad things happen, the process of dealing with them often reveals something very good. Perhaps a strength you didn’t know you had, for instance.

Robin and I feel that we know much more about what it means to consider ourselves an American citizen. Along with the benefits, there are simply things that need to get done. If we are not doing the work ourselves, there is someone somewhere who is carrying our burden as well as their own.

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Slim Slow Slider, by Van Morrison

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From The New Yorker

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One of Jayapal’s slides contained this diagram, and the explanation that went with it is that when working with people who may not be allies, your true goal is to try to nudge them over one category to the left, not all the way to “active allies.” Even moving them from “passive opposition” to “neutral” is a very positive step. It’s all about shifting balances.

I thought this an interesting approach, and a more useful way of assessing the effectiveness of one’s efforts than “Make any converts today?”

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Finally – a rain arrived on Monday. Actually an all-day drizzle. But we’ll take it and be joyful! It’s been a dry couple of months. While Robin and I are close to ecstatic, the cats feel quite the opposite way. Everything in their expressions says: “What’s this? Wet paws? Wet fur? This is HELL and I’m not having it!”

It is a rare moment indeed that all four of us agree on what is or is not a good day. If we can look at the graphic above, the best Robin and I can hope for at such times is to move the pets from passive opposition to neutral. If they are in the active opposition mode … well … we’re at an impasse and can expect some major scratching of household objects. Like the sofa, or the end tables.

A very long time ago and with another cat (who is now deceased), we experienced what happens when an unhappy animal goes nuclear and declares: “What you see is a carpeted clothes closet. What I see is a litterbox. Deal with it.”

Compared with that, a little grumpiness is okay.

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From The New Yorker

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I tried to follow a recipe for fried chicken breast, the kind with the bones and skin still present, and ran into a problem. The cooking time recommended in the recipe had to be almost doubled because the breasts were so large. Now, in a lifetime I’ve dealt with chickens on various levels, chased them, ran from them, slaughtered more than a hundred, and eaten many times that. I know what an undrugged chicken breast looks like. But these body parts are so huge that I would seriously consider walking across the street to avoid meeting the chicken that was once built of such materials.

The original bird must have been as big as a mastiff, and when you combine this muscularity with a brain the size of a caper, you’ve got a potentially lethal situation. I would hate to have my tombstone read: “Led a decent life until mortally pecked on a public thoroughfare.”

Perhaps there are other things that I should be worrying about, but we all have to deal with what’s on our respective plates, don’t we?

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Cyprus Avenue, by Van Morrison

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Van Morrison was only twenty-two years old when he recorded Astral Weeks, one of the more talked about albums that came out of the sixties. The two pieces I chose today are from that album. Lester Bangs was a prominent music critic of the time, and ten years after the release of the album he was still moved enough to pen these words.

What Astral Weeks deals in are not facts but truths. Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend. It is a precious and terrible gift, born of a terrible truth, because what they see is both infinitely beautiful and terminally horrifying: the unlimited human ability to create or destroy, according to whim. It’s no Eastern mystic or psychedelic vision of the emerald beyond, nor is it some Baudelairean perception of the beauty of sleaze and grotesquerie. Maybe what it boiled down to is one moment’s knowledge of the miracle of life, with its inevitable concomitant, a vertiginous glimpse of the capacity to be hurt, and the capacity to inflict that hurt.

Heavy.

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Bruceland

jono55

Well, of course I bought it. If Bruce Springsteen can bring out an EP that just might piss off president Cluck, I am all in. It contains the now famous introductions that the world has heard, emanating from concerts in Manchester, England. Music to my ears, they are. The EP is called Land of Hope and Dreams, and retails for $4.95.

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Introduction to Land of Hope and Dreams

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My way of looking at it is that for a very modest sum I can send Cluck one more mosquito to stab at that thin skin. It’s a small and petty thing to do, but I never claimed to be anything else, now, did I?

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Introduction to My City of Ruins

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Bruce finishes the EP with a cover of what some folks think is Bob Dylan’s masterpiece, Chimes of Freedom. It’s one of those rare songs will never go out of style, principally because freedom can never be taken for granted, but must be earned and re-earned by one generation after another. (NB: if you live long enough you may get to re-earn it more than once)

Chimes of Freedom

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And in our present day here in America …

  • when you can’t see the way forward
  • when it all seems overwhelming
  • when the voices of hate threaten to drown out the music
  • when just getting out of bed in the morning seems a struggle

It’s all just like the man said – every step you take forward is a little victory.

Little Victories, by Bob Seger

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It is 82 degrees in Paradise, no wind, humidity 17% , Wes Montgomery playing Down Here On The Ground over the little blue Bose speaker. I’m out in front on the patio with a can of Spindrift. A couple of the neighborhood teenagers are hunched over the handlebars of their bikes, unsure of their next move. They are pretty good kids, so our lives and property are probably not in jeopardy.

Now in the background it’s Ali Farka Touré playing Soukora. Perfect.

Since I am at the time of life that I am, it behooves me to take little for granted. Not an interesting cloud, not a new flower out in the berm, not a single strawberry is ignored.

Soukora, by Ali Farka Touré

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It tickles me that a columnist for the citadel of conservative fiscalism, the Wall Street Journal, came up with an acronym that apparently does not please His Tangerine Sublimity. It is T.A.C.O.

Translated, it refers to the crazy ups and downs of Cluck’s tariffs. Trump Always Chickens Out is what it stands for. How exceedingly droll and perfectly disrespectful.

The T.A.C.O. Meme has exploded on the web. I gathered a handful for your enlightenment.

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Chicken Train, by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils

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Today Robin and I hiked on the Upland Trail at Black Canyon National Park. Halfway through the walk I saw a large red fox with a world-class bushy tail. He ran into some scrub oaks and disappeared in a second. First fox we’d seen in the Park.

We had driven up shortly after breakfast because the forecast for the day was to hit the low 90s. Since senior bodies tend to wilt in the heat we took our hike when and where it was cooler.

One unexpectedtreat was the discovery of many small clumps of Claret Cup cacti. They like rocky outcroppings and their brilliant red flowers are exquisite. (For reference: these blossoms are only about 1.5 inch across)

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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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