Tag: politics

Tougher Than The Rest

jono55

Let’s think of the present political season as opera, shall we? It makes some sense that way. The participants are given to warbling daily arias that mostly involve loud vocalizations with small content. Every word of one person’s utterances is attacked by the opposite side who respond with their own attacks on everything from grammar to logic to underlying sinister meanings.

While we don’t have the “fat lady”singing as in the old jest, we do have the overweight and orange-tinted man, who is never given anything to sing that has an extended set of lyrics, because of his short attention-span. His companion is a man of darkness and twisted sense of humor who thinks nothing of resurrecting an old video that once nearly cost a young woman her life, as a joke.

On the other side we have our heroine, who is saying just as little as she can, having found that a picture (or a video) is truly worth a thousand words. Her sidekick is a wise and amiable dispenser of homespun truths who has already coined two words or phrases that have resonated with the electorate – “weird,” and “mind your own damn business.” Not bad for a Minnesotan, but then, no one knows what to expect from these denizens of a land where winter lasts eleven months and residents wear peat moss.

We’re still in the first act of this musical drama, and who knows what is to come? One of the problems with finding music for the Dark Side is that no first-rate musician wants to lend their tunes to them, leaving only Kid Rock to help with the score.

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On a walk yesterday we saw two Cedar Waxwings high in a bare tree. Just the two. It’s a very pretty little bird, always looking very well groomed. They were chatting away up there, too far away for us to hear what they were saying.

(Admission: This pic is not mine, but was pilfered from the internet.)

Their natty appearance is striking in comparison with the crow, for instance, which often looks as if it just got out of bed and hasn’t checked out its look in a mirror yet.

Actually, the bird in the photo closely resembles me this morning, when I found my mirror image especially unkempt. My hair was so vaguely directed that the only way I could orient myself as to front vs back was to look for my eyes.

(This pic isn’t mine, either)

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When my kids were in their teens the original and only true version of MTV was on screen in our home as soon as the sun came up. I couldn’t avoid being somewhat up to date on pop musical trends because the station was always there playing in the background to educate me. Life was good, but then MTV lost its mind and never came back.

Music videos are still out there, of course, but you have to go looking for them instead of having them curated for you and served up with a golden spoon. (Sigh). Once in a while one comes along than is really moving, like this anti-war and reflective tune by the group Green Day, 21 Guns.

The title refers to the salute given by an honor guard, as at a funeral. When the group’s album American Idiot went to Broadway as a musical it didn’t do so well, and was shelved after a run of just about a year. This is that Broadway cast, doing the best song of the bunch. On a video where these beautiful people will always sound just as good and will never age.

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My ear worm this morning is not a song, but a poem. It is Invictus, written by William Ernest Henley. It was one of those short writings that I was encouraged (forced, cajoled, pressed, threatened) to learn by rote and later to regurgitate in front of the class. Which I did. Rote memory and regurgitation were specialties of mine back then.

At the time I thought the poem overblown. “Who talks like that, anyway?” But I have been tenderized by life and find that I am more susceptible to things of the spirit because I have had ample opportunity to observe their importance. Or, more to the point, what their absence can mean to the soul of a person or of a nation.

Rather than blow any further smoke, I present Invictus to you. There is no need for you to memorize it. No test looms next Friday. It’s just a handful of words that I have carried in my head for a very long time.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears.
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

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Today I think that it is a pretty awesome piece of overblown. If I am not the captain of my soul, I think that I am at least a deckhand. Let me add this song by Bruce Springsteen, who I think is basically echoing some of the sentiments of Mr. Henley. I could be wrong about that but I’ll let The Boss tell the story.

Tougher Than The Rest, by Bruce Springsteen

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Amy Tan has written a book which is a journal that she kept of the birds she saw in her backyard. At the time she was a novice birder, and she decided to learn the art of sketching those birds as she journaled.

Since I have the drawing skills of a moribund slug, I am envious. It all takes me back to second grade, where the best artist (far and a-way)among my classmates was Geraldine Hong. I never handed a paper in if it was going to immediately follow one of Geraldine’s. Dreadful were the comparisons back then, and my talents haven’t improved in 77 years. When I finish a drawing even I can’t tell what it is.

The book is a delightful read, the illustrations showing the improvement in her artistic skills over the several months that the journal covers.

Now, if you are Amy Tan, an accomplished writer and you travel in elevated creative circles, you do get help along the way from scientists, artists, and the author of the Sibley Field Guide to Birds, David Allan Sibley. Not too shabby.

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From The New Yorker. A subversive cartoon.

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Coming In From The Scold

jono55

Well … after long and ponderous pondering I have decided. IMHO Michelle Obama gave one of the best political speeches that I have heard in a long while, at the Democratic Convention. And I am not a Michelle Obama fan.

She has always reminded me of the scold who barely walks through the door of your house before she begins to criticize and nag. Your hair … too long or short. Your clothes … not clean. Sit up straight. Chew your food. Those spots on the glassware … tsk, tsk, tsk. You could hardly wait for her to go home.

On Tuesday night, though, she hit a home run. The speech was almost totally inspirational (although toward the end she couldn’t help herself but gave yet one more scold-lecture again). The lady does not suffer from self-doubt.

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Want to read a story about qualities that you will not find anywhere in the curriculum vitae of either man at the top of the Red team? The NYTimes served this up on Wednesday. It is important to keep in mind that in all of the years Cluck has been rooting and snorting around in American political life, no one has ever accused him of an unselfish act.

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Fire On The Mountain, by Jimmy Cliff, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Kreutzman

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An eon ago I decided to annoy my father during a political season. That was in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower ran for the office of POTUS. Dad was a lifelong Democrat, a union member in both mind and body, and he believed strongly that there was nothing but antagonism for the working man to be found in the policies of the Republican Party. Kind of like today.

So to vex him I purchased and wore a button like this one, which somehow disappeared before Election Day. I suspected, but could never prove, that my mother confiscated it from the laundry when she decided that a joke was a joke and enough was enough.

There are days at this distance in time when I wonder why my parents ever fed and clothed such an ungrateful child.

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My present favorite tee shirt slogan, spotted at the gym a couple of days ago. I have to carry a mirror to re-orient myself several times a day because my brain keeps thinking I am twenty-one and might get me into some serious mischief if left on its own. The conversation goes something like this:

Q: Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who’s the fairest one of all?

A: You’re kidding, right?

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Twenty-One, by The Eagles

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Well, they’ve gone and done it now. The Democratic Party has done something that is neither boring nor feckless. Now we get to see if they can carry it all the way through. To have the spine to “encourage” a very old white man to take early retirement and put in his place as their standard bearer … I am almost afraid to say the word … a woman. And a highly capable and credentialed woman to boot. I love it.

A very brief example of how to do what is necessary is this clip from Harris’ address:

Masterful, but wait, there’s more. Her running mate is a football-coaching, duck-hunting, Runza-chewing bald white teacher from the middle of nowhere (Minnesota) who didn’t go to any of the following colleges:

  • Harvard
  • Yale
  • Columbia
  • Princeton
  • Brown
  • Cornell
  • Dartmouth

Then where did he attend college and how did he get there? Well, he got there on the GI bill, and he used it to attend Chadron State College in western Nebraska. If you ask the very nice folks on the East or West Coasts they have no idea where it is.

Where the hell is that?

What … Chadron State College?

No … Nebraska.

When I served in the Air Force, one of my co-draftees was a surgeon from New Jersey. He related that when he found that he was not going to be sent to Viet Nam, he was greatly relieved, but when he learned that he was going to Bellevue NE he had to get out an atlas to see where indeed that Nebraska was.

Robin and I watched Night 4 of the Democratic Convention pretty much start to finish. VP Harris hit a home run of an acceptance speech, without a single false note, at least for us. We heard our own hopes for the country articulated in inspiring words. My first opportunity to vote was in 1960, for John F. Kennedy, which was an inspirational moment for me. And now I have lived long enough to get to vote for Kamala Harris … which is exciting on yet another level. My country is growing up.

It is hard to imagine that the dissolute pair that the Republican Party has put out there as their “best and brightest” could stand a chance against intelligence, compassion, humor, honor, respect and decency. But the brand of snake oil that Cluck has been selling has a powerful attraction to some people, and the outcome of this election is not a foregone conclusion.

So I cannot decide what I will wear once my Harris/Walz sign is out in the yard and my blue bumper sticker is fastened firmly onto the Subaru. I already have the camo hat, but not a single messaging tee shirt. Hmmmm, so many choices …

  • Independent for Harris/Walz
  • Veteran for Harris/Walz
  • Buddhist for Harris/Walz
  • Old White Guy for Harris/Walz
  • Highly Unsuccessful Fisherman for Harris/Walz
  • Man With Only One Marble Left for Harris/Walz

The possibilities, it seems, are endless.

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Neil Young said “Yes” to allowing the Democrats to use his song at the convention. The same song that he sued Donald Cluck to stop using a few years ago. I wonder if anyone on either side listened to the lyrics. The title sounds positive, but all in all it’s a bit of a downer.

Rockin’ In The Free World, by Neil Young

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Olio

jono55

What an interesting political season we are suddenly entering. Harris and Walz make a good match, IMHO. It also happens that I know someone who knows someone who knows Walz well. Here’s part of a message that I received from daughter Sarah:

“Hey fellow Dems, our next VP Tim Walz is an amazing man and we know this because he was a history teacher at my kids’ school Mankato West while they were there and he coached the football team to a state championship. Minnesota is pretty thrilled about the guy getting nominated. He also was the faculty advisor to the gay student organization that Cheyenne and friends got started. “

So right now the positive energy is on the Blue Team’s side while the Red Team slinks along spinning its nightmare web of fabrications. Their side of the fence is a lot like a cattle feedlot after a heavy rain. Looks bad, smells awful, and no sensible person would want to walk in it.

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From The New Yorker

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My nomination for the Genius Award in political merchandising is the hat. With one stroke the other side is put on notice – you don’t own all the gun owners, hunters, and outdoorsmen in the world.

I think it is a simple but very powerful symbol. There is no East Coast elitism in a camo cap. Not one fiber.

(It also says you can be a gun owner and not be psychotic.)

I do pay attention to symbols as I watch the flag-festooned pickup trucks that make every day a misanthropic parade as they trot their banners and slogans up and down the main drag. Refusing to give them ownership of the American flag, I fly one daily in front of our home. Christian Nationalists? … my backyard Buddhist prayer flags flutter in the slightest breeze.

I am outnumbered, of course, but that makes it even more fun, because I fancy that it is irritating to the people I want to irritate most. A few months ago a middle-aged couple was walking by the house and they thanked me for putting up a banner. “Up on our end of the street … well … we don’t feel comfortable doing it.”

I smiled and let them pass unmolested.

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I was only a small child during World War II, having been first placed upon this earth in late 1939, but there is a mental state that I can’t quite understand. I have a fondness for the music of that time, each tune edged with a feeling of nostalgia. A pre-schooler nostalgic for Glenn Miller and Vera Lynn eighty years later … how did that happen?

But this morning here I am, playing songs I couldn’t possibly have cared about but do.

We’ll Meet Again, by Vera Lynn

And old English movies with the RAF going out time after time to try to do the impossible … and getting it done. Or the courage of the British citizenry in dealing with the blitz and the rationing and the uncertainty of whether all of this would ultimately do any good. Or the millions of goodbyes all over the world as soldiers, sailors, airmen leave behind all that they know and love for the horror that is war.

I learned about courage from those movies, and even at this long distance now from that period of history, it is still my idea of what that word means.

In the Mood, by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra

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I arose this morning with a quest in mind – let me find the most ironic thing I can before breakfast. Almost immediately the universe provided J.D. Vance and his attacks on the 24 year Army service record of Tim Walz. Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura put it into perspective in this interview. I especially liked the part about Vance’s running mate, ex-President Bonespurs.

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From The New Yorker

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But enough of this meandering. It is Sunday morning and it may be that the convection oven that has been this summer is finally dialing back on its heat. Robin and I could actually go outdoors yesterday afternoon without wilting, stroking out, or having to scuttle desperately from one air-conditioned space to another.

Tomorrow we will have the pleasure of riding with grandson Aiden on the 1882 steam-powered train that runs from Durango to Silverton. He happened to mention one day that he would like to do this trip with us and that was all it took to get it on the schedule. We’re looking forward to it. Someone said a while back that Colorado was geologically blessed, and everything we know about this train ride suggests that we will get an eyeful.

It takes all day to do the round trip, three hours up and three back with a nearly three-hour layover in Silverton. We’ll see. If there is anything worth looking at I may bring back a photo or two to share.

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Gosh, Who Knew?

jono55

What a morning this has been. The sun won’t be up yet for three hours and I’ve already learned:

  • that there are many species of legless amphibians that secrete something like milk for their babies. They don’t have breasts so they just sort of spew it out and the pups lick it up. I guess that way they don’t have to get up for those $@#%^*€£ night feedings
  • that there is a bird in Colombia that is male on one side of its body, and female on the other. Not an entire species of bird, just one. I get a headache just thinking about it. Don’t even get me started. My own left and right sides don’t always agree, even now.
  • that Elon Musk is a perfect example of something I’ve brought up a couple of times over the years. A person can be gifted in one area and because they are celebrated get to thinking they are expert in all areas of life. That is okay until they open their mouths, as Mr. Musk has, and reveals himself to be a scientific genius who is also a social and political nutcase.
  • that OTC birth control pills are now shipping and will soon be available in drugstores everywhere. Business is expected to be brisk. At the same time the Legion of Decency’s chain of Abstinence R’ Us stores is facing bankruptcy.* since only six people visited their establishments during the month of February, nationwide.

So who knows how much more knowledgeable I will be by the end of the day, and whether I will remember anything this evening of what I learned before breakfast.

*I totally made that part up. The Legion of Decency ceased operations in 1965, after 31 years of trying to be censors, and finally
disbanding when they realized that young Catholics were choosing to attend in droves the films that had received “morally unacceptable” ratings..

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Coming Up Close, by Til Tuesday

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From The New Yorker

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Robin and I are watching Resident Alien, on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a series that has come down from the SyFy channel and is completely silly and not worth your while except … it is funny. Really funny. Laugh out loud stuff. The main character Alan Tudyk is a comic find, and there is a smart-aleck kid in it (Max) whose role I actually like. (Usually I am put off by such kids)

By the end of an episode you realize how many little bits of dialogue or action that the writers put in there that were hilarious but so small they were almost throwaways.

That’s all I’m going to say about it. Someone else might dislike its satire intensely, it is slightly naughty at times, and the alien has been sent to destroy all human life in earth, so there is that sober aspect. But it is likely that at supper tonight either Robin or myself will start chuckling at something we remembered from last night’s episode.

And … it takes place in Patience, Colorado.**

**This is not true. While it allegedly takes place in Patience CO, don’t bother to try to find it on a map because there is no such town. It was really shot in British Columbia.

Come Sail Away, by Styx

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Had to make a trip to Grand Junction Tuesday, and noted that daffodils and forsythia were blooming, the buds on the willow trees are ready to open, and GJ is usually about a week ahead of us. We’ve stringing several 60 degree days together this week, which will push everything along.

All I can say is that it’s a pretty hazardous thing to do, this putting out vulnerable leaves and flowers so early. If I were advising these plants I’d suggest holding back for awhile. Hotheads. I find it really odd that since I make no effort to hide my qualifications, that the Universe so seldom asks for my advice.

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From The New Yorker

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Even if they aren’t wearing their MAGA hats on a particular day, there are some clues to identifying the Cluckians among us. This is helpful to know, just in case one was thinking of starting a discussion with one of them. A total waste of breath, that is.

  • Cluckians do not own Priuses
  • If a pickup truck is flying one American flag, it is likely being driven by a Cluckian, if there are two flags it is a certainty. My further observations are that as the number of flags per vehicle goes up, the IQ of the driver goes down
  • Older Cluckian males invariably sport the facial expression of the terminally constipated
  • Younger Cluckians tend to wear t-shirts with particularly offensive slogans on them, often suggesting the sort of behaviors that their leader has popularized

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On The Trail

jono55

I’m starting to put a plan together to bike the Mickelson Trail this Fall. Robin and I did it fourteen years ago, on standard bicycles, but this year if we do it we’d go electric, just for fun.

It’s a wonderful journey of 108 miles in the Black Hills of South Dakota, on what used to be a railroad line running from Deadwood to Edgemont. A vigorous 20 year-old with an iron crotch can do it in a day, but we prefer the stop-and-smell-the-roses sort of trip, so we spend three days on the path.

Here’a video of that trip that I put together back in 2009, . One day we were sweating in shirtsleeves, next day we were pedaling in a snowstorm and dealing with hypothermia. Classic Type II fun.

At our time of life, there are many ways this plan could go south, but if fortune smiles …

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Ashokan Farewell, by Washington Guitar Quintet

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For any of you who are unaware of how to classify your activities, here’s the one I use. I forget where I first came across it, but it’s called the Fun Scale. You can google it.

  • Type I: enjoyable while you are doing it, and fun to talk about later
  • Type II: stressful when being done, but great fun to tell the stories later on
  • Type III: no fun while you’re doing it, and you’d just as soon not discuss it again … ever

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When I was in second grade, we exchanged Valentines in Miss Lawrence’s class. There were 24 kids in the class, so everybody received 23 of them, unless you sent yourself one and therefore got 24.

They were not elaborate, but simple punched-out things that weren’t even in envelopes.

Looking back that was my introduction to the rituals of Valentine’s Day. I can’t recall the finer details, but I know I didn’t like everybody in second grade, and we were years away from the “Billy likes Susie” stage. So exactly what we were doing in Miss Lawrence’s class I really don’t know. 

A few years down the road was where the Day really kicked in, when as a young man I was expected to buy flowers and/or candy and give them to the females in my vicinity.

The story gets more bizarre when we learn that St. Valentine had nothing to do with growing flowers, making candy, or encouraging lovers. He was a priest who managed to annoy the Roman officials to the point that they rubbed him out in a pretty violent manner.

Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270

History. com

So the connection between a headless cleric and a box of bonbons is not immediately apparent, at least to me. I have read some explanations but they have seemed made-up sorts of things.

It’s easier to go along with the Valentine’s Day observances than resist them. And I admit that I do enjoy helping to finish off those boxes of candy, so there is always that.

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All Mixed Up, by Red House Painters

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Speaking of headless clerics, the wild world of Christian Nationalism is receiving quite a bit of media attention these days. I mentioned a few posts back that I’d read the book “Jesus and John Wayne,” which deals with the subject, and there are many, many others out there. Rob Reiner has produced a documentary on the topic entitled God and Country, which will be released on mid-February.

Before I go further let me assure you that I’m not pointing fingers at the mainstream Christian churches. The people I am discussing here have nothing to do with Christianity. Using the name Christian is a sleight-of-hand trick employed by a variety of right-wing nationalist groups to cover up some very un-Christian ideas and behavior.

Christian nationalists want to define America as a Christian nation and they want the government to promote a specific cultural template as the official culture of the country. Some have advocated for an amendment to the Constitution to recognize America’s Christian heritage, others to reinstitute prayer in public schools. Some work to enshrine a Christian nationalist interpretation of American history in school curricula, including that America has a special relationship with God or has been “chosen” by him to carry out a special mission on earth. Others advocate for immigration restrictions specifically to prevent a change to American religious and ethnic demographics or a change to American culture. Some want to empower the government to take stronger action to circumscribe immoral behavior.

Christianity Today

Hitler did it, Mussolini did it, Oral Roberts did it, Franklin Graham does it, the Ku Klux Klan does it, many modern-day televangelists are doing it.

This is a political movement, not a religious one, and we can be grateful that it is being brought into the light where it can be seen for what it is.

Want to read more? Here are a couple of links to get you started:

What is Christian Nationalism/Christianity Today

How Christian is Christian Nationalism/The New Yorker

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Just yesterday I found out that there is another name for earworms, one which I actually much prefer. It is SSS or stuck sound syndrome.

Psychologically, earworms are a ‘cognitive itch’: the brain automatically itches back, resulting in a vicious loop. The more one tries to suppress the songs, the more their impetus increases, a mental process known as ironic process theory. Those most at risk for SSS are: females, youth, and patients with OCD.

British Journal of General Practice

Even though I do not have the first two risk factors, being neither female nor young, I definitely have had this malady on scads of occasions. Perhaps there may be just a bit of OCD wafting about between those neurons of mine.

I do have one question about this condition. In my own case, the song involved is rarely one that I enjoy hearing repeatedly. Usually it is quite the opposite. A small thing, but the sort of discomfort that could, if prolonged, lead to the wearing of straitjackets and the like.

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Anna’s Theme, by Joshua Bell (from The Red Violin)

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Lastly, the crew in the Murray’s cheese shop in City Market put up this sign on the case.

Took a second before I realized what was going on. Very clever, thought I . A play on the words to Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This, by the Eurhythmics.

I asked if customers were getting the reference, and he said that they were … even kids whose parents weren’t born when the song came out, in 1983.

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Murmur

jono55

Okay, here’s a lesson, something to ponder. The lowly European Starling is not the most gorgeous bird, walks like it’s got a stone in its shoe, and has no song worth mentioning. A few of them were brought over in the nineteenth century and now their range is nearly all of North America. Hundreds of them can take over a tree in your front yard and literally rain feces on everything and everyone below. 

Why on earth does it exist at all, some might ask? What is the point of starlings?

Well, for one reason, they can do this. Something that might be thought unbelievable if it hadn’t been recorded as often as it has. A murmuration of starlings, they call it. Visual music.

Birds, by Neil Young

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From The New Yorker

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If I really want to upset all of my personal biological systems at once, all I have to do is check to see what the Republican-led states are doing these days.

Recently one of those benighted places decided not to prosecute a woman who had a miscarriage. Imagine that! How progressive of them.

There seems to be something about being a member of that political party that drives one to run around sniffing bedsheets and shining flashlights into cars just to see if anyone might be having the wrong kind of s-e-x in there.

The Party of Family Values is also trying to remove books from libraries that mention s-e-x as well, but have recently run into problems with dictionaries and encyclopedias which persist in reminding us all that s-e-x does exist. And not only does it exist, but it can be enjoyable, does not have to result in pregnancy, and is nobody’s business but the people involved.

There has been a persistent rumor that the GOP is planning to issue social security numbers to individual spermatozoons as part of their program of removing anything resembling science, common sense and reason from family planning and reproductive medicine. So far it is only the sheer numbers involved that have held them back.

The American Dream Is Killing Me, by Green Day

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From The New Yorker

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The Ballad of the Empty Creel

How many times does a man go down to the river, put on those awkward waders and adjust those suspenders, squeeze into hobnailed wading boots and rig up a fly rod, tread clumsily up that same perilous stream, suss out the perfect places for trout to hide, flick the fly to land perfectly into the one quiet patch of water in the middle of a tumult … and then return home without so much as a passing nibble?

How many times before despair sets in?

How many times before he questions his skill and sanity?

The answer, my friends, is as many times as it takes.

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An amazement. I have often bemoaned the sorry state of the cartoons in the present-day New Yorker magazine. They have been largely unfunny, self-indulgent, arch, and bleah. It is of some importance to me because I pilfer from them regularly and must therefore turn to the New Yorker archives for the totally excellent and imaginative cartoons from issues of years ago.

Even thieves have standards.

Imagine my surprise to find not one, but three in this week’s edition that I actually liked. Three. It gives one hope. One of the panels was particularly interesting to me. Fifty years ago I proposed (but did not follow through on) two innovations that I thought would be boons to parents. One was the Velcro wallpaper shown below. The other was shoes for hyperactive children that weighed five pounds each. In this way they could not only avoid being placed on drugs, but they would develop hip flexors like you wouldn’t believe.

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From The New Yorker

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For the first time since her knee surgery Robin and I went XC skiing on Friday afternoon. Snow conditions were excellent and the temperature hung right around 40 degrees. Where we skied was a place with groomed trails a few miles outside the hamlet of Ridgway called Top of the Pines. It is 175 acres up on a ridge with spectacular views of the San Juan Mountains. We had a great time, and there was a total of only 0.5 falls per person for the outing. 

Below are pix borrowed from Top of the Pines’ website because I did not have the foresight to bring my camera and take photographs of my own.(This follows a lifelong pattern of having excellent hindsight but a significant deficiency in its opposite.)

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Catapult, by R.E.M.

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This is for people to whom cats are interesting, even thought they may not live with one. The rest of you are done for the day.

There is a short story in this week’s New Yorker magazine entitled Chance the Cat that I found moving.

The author’s insights were especially intriguing, since they were all about the humans in the story, and whenever the story pointed at the smaller animal he could only describe what he saw. Because who knows a cat?

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