Yesterday was Veteran’s Day. I am a veteran, so I can legitimately stand up with other vets at public occasions when asked to do so. And although I did serve, wear the uniform, and go wherever the USAF wanted me to go, I always feel a bit of an impostor. Why, you ask?
Because:
I ended up in Nebraska, not Viet Nam.
I was never injured in action.
I was never under fire.
I spent the two years sleeping in my own bed, with my family comfortably nearby.
For me the worst part of national service was the inconvenience of a two-year interruption in my career plans. Pretty puny when put up against the sacrifices made by thousands of my brothers and sisters.
But technically speaking I am a veteran, and if you want to give up your seat at the opera or strew rose petals in my path, go right ahead. I would not be so rude as to correct you.
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Well Come Back Home, by the Byrds
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I have feelings galore about the weekend display of cowardice of many Democrats in the Senate, but Jon Stewart says it way better than I ever could.
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This has been a banner season for those who like political cartoons. At least for progressives. I like them because they cut right through any attempts at subterfuge and skewer those most in need of that attention.
The first one in the series is actually not a cartoon, but the back of a pumping truck seen while waiting for the light to change in Grand Junction this past Monday. It is the line at the top of the truck: “Filled with political promises” that started me laughing out loud.
No snow as yet at the ski resorts nearby, Telluride and Powderhorn. The owners aren’t hopeful for Thanksgiving, but that’s not too unusual. Robin and I skied Alpine for the first 20 years or so we were together, but tired of the lines and the ever-increasing lift ticket prices. This year they are around $245 for a single day. We still enjoy Nordic skiing, but last year there were only a few days here in the valley that were good for that.
We are pretty demanding of perfect snow conditions, preferring days when the skis glide slower and control is as good as one can get. The idea of plowing into anything solid while wearing thin bits of wood and plastic on our feet is less and less attractive each year. When I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where several hundred inches of snow fell each year, Nordic skiing was wonderful. By December there were several feet of snow on the ground and new snow fell nearly every day. Going through a forest was almost surreal. All of the underbrush was buried and you moved silently through the trees, which were the only things protruding from the snow.
There was one drawback to this serene beauty, however, and that was that it attracted snowmobiles. Not content with the hundreds of miles of trails dedicated to their use, they brought the smell of exhaust and the deafening roar of their engines everywhere. Each time a line of them passed me I quietly wished I was armed with a rifle of a caliber large enough to pierce the motor of those beasts and send terror into the hearts of the riders. Yes, yes, I admit to violent reveries back then. And the language that echoed in my brain is embarrassing to recall.
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Snow (from the film Brokeback Mountain), by Gustavo Santaollalla
I just read the sort of news item that sends my head spinning. Not that it takes that much to produce a spin, even standing up quickly can do it, but here’s the item I was talking about:
“Scientists estimate that we’ve identified only one-tenth of all species on Earth,” said Dr. Shannon Bennett, chief of science at the California Academy of Sciences, in a statement.
Ten per cent! Holy Statistics, Batman, that’s incredible! What in earth have all of those biologists and zoologists been doing with their time all of these years? Sipping endless lattes on too-long coffee breaks? Making out in the janitor’s closet?
But to get back to the story, one of the new identify-ees is a vegetarian piranha which has been named Myloplus sauron after the villain Sauron from Lord of the Rings. To the scientists responsible for bringing it to our attention, the vertical stripe looks like that evil eye in the sky.
Its vegetarian habits are comforting to hear about, and even if it wasn’t, its mouth looks too small to take that much of a bite, really.
For comparison, here is a photo of a meat-eating piranha.
Even I can tell them apart.
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Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing On A Sweet Potato Vine, by Jake Xerxes Fussell
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A couple of days ago a friend was lamenting the fact that those Disney nature documentaries of decades ago are not more readily available on television. He’s right. They aren’t. Some of them were quite lovely.
It’s not that excellent documentaries are not being made today, and available from several sources, but they are different in tone. There’s a bit more of the horrible in the newer ones. For example, a cheetah not only is shown to be very sleek and very fast but we see it catching its prey and then (we are shown in great detail) what happens afterwards. Much biting and tearing that Disney used to leave out. A more realistic portrayal, to be sure, but lacking the quieter aura of some of the earlier Disney efforts.
[Frank Disclaimer Time: I loved those older films, and grew up watching Walt Disney Presents on Sunday evenings, slurping up everything I saw as gospel.]
On the other hand. Those films were produced at a time when we were more accepting of what was being shown us as True Life Adventures. Some newer revelations have popped up indicating that there might have been an admixture in what was presented, with real stuff being mixed in with … well … fake news.
Looking for an old clip from that series, I ran across this one. Sort of wish I hadn’t found it.
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Robin and I are watching the series One Hundred Years of Solitude on Netflix. It is a film version of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel of the same name. I am enjoying it, although there was a magical quality to the novel that hasn’t quite transferred to the screen, at least for me. I love what they did in creating the village of Macondo. It’s all of what I had imagined, and more.
I’ve read the novel thrice, as new things are revealed each time. If you read articles about “How to write a story,” you will frequently find the advice given that you should construct your opening sentence so as to grab the readers and pull them in. If that’s as important as they say it is, I submit that the first sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude qualifies as a pretty good example:
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Now there’s a doozy of an opening line. You introduce an important character and a second later you announce his imminent demise. If an author does that, they had better come up with something pretty good as followup. I won’t spoil it for you except to say that Marquez does just that.
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I’ll Fly Away, by Ian Siegal
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We did our first cross-country skiing of the season this past Saturday. Our equipment is aging and wasn’t of the most durable quality in the first place, so we drove the relatively short distance to Black Canyon National Park and tried everything out. Good for another year was the assessment.
I’ve mentioned this before, but there is only a single road that runs along the South Rim of the park, about six miles long. Get to the end and you return the same way you came in. One road, no looping, no branching. The park service maintains the road only as far as the Visitor Center, and then the remainder becomes a four mile long ski trail with outstanding scenery.
I’ve mentioned this before, but there is only a single road that runs along the South Rim of the park, about six miles long. Get to the end and you return the same way you came in. One road, no looping, no branching.
In winter the park service maintains the road only as far as the Visitor Center, and then the remainder becomes a four mile long ski trail with outstanding scenery. The snow wasn’t in great condition Saturday morning, much crustier than we like. Each year these skinny skis seem more treacherous, as if being guided by diabolical forces that are pushing us toward needing orthopedic care. Our vulnerability is especially felt on this road where there are occasional narrow places that have a half-mile deep gorge very near at hand and no guard rails. Don’t want to go on fast snow anywhere near those narrow places … I may ski poorly but I don’t fly well at all.
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16-20, by Jake Xerxes Fussell
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During the recent political campaign I would watch James Carville on YouTube fairly regularly. He was knowledgeable, cranky, and reliably profane. He’s a smart guy, but he called this latest election wrong.
After pondering things for a couple of months, he delivered an editorial to the New York Times, which I thought was pretty good. There exists the possibility that this time he might be correct as well as colorful. The title of the piece was: James Carville: I Was Wrong About the 2024 Election. Here’s Why.
One line of thought especially caught my attention. He says that we need to take our focus off of Cluck and go after the votes of those working folks that we know the Republican Party is going to throw under the bus just as surely as God made those little green apples. Yes, Cluck is a degenerate and yes, he’s a fascist, but he’s a lame duck degenerate fascist. Is that the aroma of opportunity I smell?
This year the Democratic Party leadership must convene and publish a creative, popular and bold economic agenda and proactively take back our economic turf. Go big, go populist, stick to economic progress and force them to oppose what they cannot be for. In unison.
James Carville, NYTimes, January 6
“Force them to oppose what they cannot be for.” I like that. If you ever meet up with a Democrat, point it out to them. They need our help.
Little Home In The Valley 