There is one positive thing about being surrounded by wildfires in that there are some of the prettiest sunrises and sunsets as the color red comes to the fore in both of them. We’ve had about two weeks now of poor air quality due to smoke. Even the teensy version of asthma that I have has been provoked by it.
Robin and I cancelled on walking with Indivisible in the local parade on the 4th of July. We decided that if we were going to be taking a chance on sunstroke or smoke inhalation or both, ’twas time to bow out. Fair weather rebels, we.
The smoke is heavy enough that you can begin to see a faint haze between you and any object more than twenty feet away. Our friends on oxygen are staying home, eating what’s left in the pantry before they venture to the grocery store. We volunteer to run those errands but they are stubborn folk and insist on doing it themselves.
Just to reassure, Robin and I are in no danger. None of the fires are close enough or in the right location to threaten Montrose.
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The image of the masked “patriots” on the bus tells a story, doesn’t it? A young black woman surrounded by a gaggle of MOLC (Men Of Little Courage) on public transportation.
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The men, of course, are on their way to a white nationalist demonstration, where they will do their best to get that woman to her proper place in the back of the bus once again. These cowardly dipsticks have nowhere to swim but upstream, although it seems that they haven’t the wit to realize it.
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The Way It Is, by Bruce Hornsby and the Range
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The header image today is of the famous painting by Norman Rockwell entitled the The Problem We All Live With. It portrays a six year-old girl named Ruby Bridges being escorted to school by federal marshals in 1960. She was, all by her small self, integrating a New Orleans school.
My imagination falls short each time I hear this story. The courage of that family, to send their child through the hate-filled mob each day. Who has courage like that?
The mob that came together to threaten and hurl imprecations at a six year-old girl. What is wrong with people who could do that to a child?
Here’s a video with some of Ruby’s story.
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Bridge Over Troubled Water, by Simon and Garfunkel
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Today’s button image is worn by a group of citizens who attend and monitor the Montrose City Council meetings. At present the council is 60% MAGA … ’nuff said?
I have a cold. A common cold. Once I realized that my dripping nose and sneezing wasn’t going to heal itself overnight like a mild bout of allergies would, I switched immediately into full whine.
When it comes to personal illnesses my psychological reaction meter only has two numbers on it, one and ten. Robin knows this, and was desperately trying to set up a weekend away with friends when I caught her at it and called in my markers. If I was going to have a fatal upper respiratory infection, by God, she was going to sit with me as I perished. I asked her to recall her wedding vows, especially the “in sickness and in health”part. She feigned forgetfulness.
Maybe this isn’t the BIG ONE, but just another minor URI which will run its course in a few days. Maybe. But why, I ask myself, should I take that chance when I can unfurl the big Pity Me flag that I keep in my clothes closet and get all that lovely attention?
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Quite a performance by Pam Bondi at the recent congressional hearing. In several hours she failed to answer a single question, but instead behaved much like a cat caught in a gopher trap. Snarling and spitting and hurling invectives at all within earshot … I made a promise to myself to stay out of courtrooms altogether until she is safely in Hell.
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This is just the best. Old George Will, who I used to think was just a stuffy old conservative writer (and that was sixty years ago) has come up with this video statement that I agree with completely. One of the best summaries of where we are and what is needed to finish the job. The job? Ridding our country of the fascists and then going coffin by coffin and driving a stake through the heart of racism everywhere we can find it. It is still, 250 years later on, the American cancer, and we will be the healthier for its extirpation, however painful that surgery might be.
But don’t take my word for it, pull up a chair and listen to George himself.
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Update on the “cold” I mentioned above … when the illness reached full flower it became croup, with the barking cough, hoarse voice, mild stridor and all. Robin asked if I should go to the doctor and I had to remind her that I used to be a doctor, and if there is any illness that pediatricians know something about it is croup. So I treated myself, ignoring the old adage that “a doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.” Because the treatment is to accept the will of the universe and wait until it goes away. And so it shall.
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I was going through some poems I had written decades ago. Basically I only write them when some strong emotion has hold of me, so there are great gaps in the folder marked “Poems,” marking years when life was easy, comfortable. But I ran across this one that thought I’d share with you. Perhaps a bit of background would be in order.
My son Jon had just graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1993 and was coming to Yankton SD for a visit before going off to Greece to teach English. En route he lost control of the motorcycle he was riding and drove into a ditch about twenty miles from where I was sitting up late, waiting for him to arrive. In that accident he was paralyzed from just above the waist.
There followed a very difficult year for him as he tried to accommodate to his new limitations, and in addition had to deal with so many of the medical complications of his paralysis. He became depressed and sought psychiatric help, but on the eve of his 24th birthday ended his own life.
The night before his funeral, I sat down and wrote this, which I read the next day at the service.
When an old man dies The river enters the sea The sun sets The leaves drop from the treein Autumn It is an ending Comforting us even as we weep together with a sense of rightness and of flow
When a young man dies The bird falls from the nest The thunder and the lightning roam the earth Shadows pass across the sun It is an interruption And we are jarred by the reminder Of how fragile is a future that we take for granted And that this day Is the only one we really have
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How long does it take to ‘get over’ something like this? I can only speak from my own experience. Never. You learn some way to live with it, and then you go on. I will be forever indebted to Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder for this song, which was a perfect match for the emotions I was working with back then, and is a perfect match today for my memories.
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Vale, Robert Duvall. So many roles to think about during that long career, from Boo Radley onward. But my favorite will always be than of Augustus McCrae, in Lonesome Dove. I had loved the book, and was dreading the butchery I expected when I learned than a miniseries was on its way. But Duvall inhabited that role, and helped make television history in the process.
Little Home In The Valley 