Tag: music

Warnings

jono55

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

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

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

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

Dictionary.com

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

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

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From The New Yorker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Father’s Son
Year To Be Young 1994
Calico Creek

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From The New Yorker

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PSA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Memento Mori

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

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

First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

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Careless Love

jono55

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

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

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

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Old Blue, by Joan Baez

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Plaisir d’Amour, by Joan Baez

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

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

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

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Farewell, Angelina, by Joan Baez

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DISGRACE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

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

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

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Slouching Toward Bethlehem, by Joni Mitchell

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Do It Thyself?

jono55

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

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

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

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

George Orwell

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia

Is That All There Is?, by Peggy Lee

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

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

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

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

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China, by Tori Amos

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

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

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

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

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

This is the world I want to live in.

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This is the world I find myself living in

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All Apologies, by Sinead O’Connor

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Happy Talk

jono55

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

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

Irish Post

So here are the instigators.

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

Here are the adorables.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peaceful Easy Feeling, by The Eagles

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

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

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

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From The New Yorker

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

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

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

Scientific American

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

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

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

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

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Arrieros Somos, by Cuco Sanchez

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Urbane Cowboy

jono55

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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From The New Yorker

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Waggoner’s Lad, by Bud and Travis

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

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

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

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

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

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From The New Yorker

[Lord, I do love this cartoon.]

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

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

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

Here’s one more track.

When I’m Called

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

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

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

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

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

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No Expectations, by the Black Crowes

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Grace, Actually

jono55

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

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

Amazing Grace, by Judy Collins

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

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From The New Yorker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Amazing Grace, by Walela

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From The New Yorker

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For me, she nailed it.

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

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

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

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

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Turn, Turn, Turn, by the Byrds

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Where To Start

jono55

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Hold On, by Tom Waits

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From The New Yorker

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

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

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

Tom Waits

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

Tom Waits

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

Tom Waits

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

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

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

So I quit.

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

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From The New Yorker

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Looking For The Heart of Saturday Night, by Tom Waits

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Happy Thoughts

jono55

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

I am reminded of the oft-uttered phrases:

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

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

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

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

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

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The Parting Glass, by boygenius

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From The New Yorker

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

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

Lewis Carroll

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

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

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

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

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

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Happy Christmas (War Is Over), by John Lennon

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From The New Yorker

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

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

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

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

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Oíche Chiúin, by Enya

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Byte Me, Universe

jono55

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Loser, by Beck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terrapin Station, by the Grateful Dead

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

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

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Super 8

jono55

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

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

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

Miles, by Jason Isbell

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

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

Super 8, by Jason Isbell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Middle of the Morning, by Jason Isbell

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

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

And of course, some of the hairs were human.

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

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

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I Ate The Whole Thing

jono55

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

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

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Brown-Eyed Girl, by Van Morrison

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

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

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

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Cyprus Avenue, by Van Morrison

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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These Are The Days, by Van Morrison

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

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

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

Wikipedia

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

He made musical history with the album Astral Weeks.

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

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

Wikipedia

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Adios to Yet Another Amigo

jono55

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

Me and Bobby McGee

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

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down

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

For the Good Times
Loving Her Was Easier

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

The Pilgrim, Chapter 33

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

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

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

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

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

Wikipedia: Me and Bobby McGee

Me and Bobby McGee, by Janis Joplin

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

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Everyone’s A Target

jono55

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Stand By Me, by Tracy Chapman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I’ll Be Seeing You, by Vera Lynn

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

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

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

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Lawyers, Guns, and Money, by Warren Zevon

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