Tag: rally

Under The Banyan Tree

jono55

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, by Gordon Lightfoot

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

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

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

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

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

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Fire On The Mountain, by Jimmy Cliff and others

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Rainbows

jono55

Last night, one of those amazements that the skies put on for us seldom enough that each one dazzles. There were a few raindrops falling on an otherwise sunny evening when the double rainbow started to appear. Slowly growing more intense, the colors strengthening, the whole VIBGYOR sequence eventually easily discernible in both of them.

Both rainbows stretched from horizon to horizon. They lasted for perhaps ten minutes and then gracefully faded. There was no reason for us to feel awe-inspired, but we were, as always. After all, a rainbow is only a trick of the light, isn’t it? Completely explicable in the language of physics.

As the lifelong buffoon that I am, I chose the moment to break into me Lucky Charms leprechaun accent as I babbled on about pots of gold and the like. Can’t seem to help myself.

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When I’m Called, by Jake Xerxes Fussell

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We experienced a death this week in our little menagerie here at Basecamp. I found one of the garter snakes who live under our front steps lying dead at the edge of the lawn, not a dozen feet from the entrance to its burrow. No outward marks of violence, just a sad small half-coiled and lifeless creature.

For whatever reason I began ruminating on all the skeletons of snakes I’ve ever seen, in photos or museums. Remembering the too-graceful-to-be-real beauty of their assembly.

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There is still too much snow in the San Juans for me to go there, but I am itching to get out hiking on some of the trails. There is nothing quite like walking above treeline. It’s almost as if you are leaving the earth behind and there you go, only on foot. Of course, I could go right now, if I weren’t such a fussbutt.

We have a friend who is already walking those mountains using crampons to get him over the snowy and icy portions of the trail. A man who takes pleasure in slogging through the inevitable muddy portions.

I’m just too fastidious for all that. My idea of a great walk in the hills is a nice dry trail with no sliding off cliffs or falling into mudholes, and then returning to town still clean enough to sit in an ice cream parlor with something tasty in front of me without drawing attention because of my being completely crusted over.

I have my standards.

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Magnolia, by Lucinda Williams

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Don’t know whether to be outraged at Senator Alex Padilla’s manhandling this week at Kristi Noem’s press conference or grateful that she didn’t shoot him.

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Robin and I decided not to attend Cluck’s birthday party in Washington D.C. and to take part instead in an Indivisible-sponsored No Kings rally and march on Saturday here in Paradise. We had been part of the planning committee for the event, and it has been very satisfying to see it taking shape.

The ambient temperature was in the 90s and the humidity was low, which meant that water was evaporating from the body so rapidly you could almost hear it hissing.

The event was marked by music, readings of poetry, excellent behavior, sweltering temperatures, and smiles galore at knowing they were part of something special. Actually, even the yahoos driving by in their Clucktrucks behaved themselves with only a minimum of their dysphonious hooting.

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The unofficial count of attendees was 2,256, here in little ol’ Montrose CO. Robin and I helped with setup and takedown, and in between we marched the designated route and then took care of the table where the buttons we’d made were available for free-will donations. One gentleman dropped by, picked up one button, and left a one hundred dollar bill as his contribution. I tried to find him later and make him my new BFF but he got away.

Dang! I’ll bet we had a lot in common, too. Could have been the start of a beautiful friendship.

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1984 Revisited

jono55

I am watching with great interest the political goings-on regarding a post on Instagram that James Comey had made. In the post he placed a photo of some seashells that formed a number.

The symbol “86/47” is being regarded by the Trump administration as a referring to assassination, and they are accusing Comey of fomenting violence. I am especially interested because my homemade sign says exactly the same thing, and I have now carried it in two rallies.

I had seen 86/47 in a post somewhere, thought it a clever symbol, and copied it for my own use. I frequently copy other people’s work and claim it as my own, so I thought nothing more of it. (I’m not too worried because in the photo above I had given the sign to Robin to hold for me, and thus I have plausible deniability.)

But before I ever went out with that placard in my hand I had checked out the definition of the “86” part of it and found no references to assassination or killings or violence of any sort. It appeared to have been an anonymously originated term without any sinister implications whatsoever.

Eighty-six is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to refuse service to.” It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang meaning that an item was sold out. There is varying anecdotal evidence about why the term eighty-six was used, but the most common theory is that it is rhyming slang for nix.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

I doubt that the Department of Justice is going to come to Montrose to examine my sign and haul me off to the Grand Inquisitors of the Cluck administration. But in the present era of newspeak in Washington D.C., we really don’t know what to expect, do we? I shudder at the thought of being chained in a dank dungeon while Kristi Noem parades in full tactical gear sputtering things her dog and goat once overheard and then she had to shoot them.

I offer a gallery taken from a Google search for the term 86/47 that I just performed. There were no mentions of assassinations in any of these products being sold. Could it be that it’s just another of Cluck’s diversions, another smoke screen to cover his rampant incompetence? Could it possibly be?

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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.1, by Pink Floyd

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If George Orwell were still alive, and if he got a penny for every time his novel 1984 was referred to in metaphors or political discourse, his fortune would exceed that of Elon Musk, I think. Too bad for George that the novel was published in 1949 and he said his last goodbyes in 1950.

But I will send $0.01 off to the Orwell Foundation instanter because I am going to use it again. The novel casts such a helpful light on our present government (I use the term “government” lightly) that I can’t help myself.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg  as Orwell’s ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a staunch believer in democratic socialism and member of the anti-Stalinist Left, modelled Britain under authoritarian socialism in the novel on the Soviet Union  in the era of Stalinism and on the very similar practices of both censorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany.  More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.

Wikipedia: 1984.

Rather than subject you to more of my tedious ranting at this time, I have gathered a gallery of cartoons prompted by the novel with which to assail you.

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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.2, by Pink Floyd

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Another Brick In The Wall, Pt.3, by Pink Floyd

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I found while putting this piece together that George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. (Why do the British seem to be forever taking pen names, anyway? For myself, I would have been quite happy with Eric Arthur Blair.)

While digging around I found this gem, an interview of Orwell on his deathbed, dating back to 1950. It was chilling to listen to, as he predicted a future that we live in today.

Can I have a double OMG, brothers and sisters?

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In a sometimes glum season, it helps to occasionally bring out something anthemic and get lost in it. At least for me it does. For today I went back to the Glastonbury Festival in 2014 for Arcade Fire’s performance of “Wake Up.” Nothing intimate or quietly thoughtful here, but loads of showmanship, percussion, color, very costly costuming … a bright bit of rock and roll theater.

The message of the song’s lyrics? To forgive our own past mistakes and be more open to life before we get older and eventually drift away. (Some of us have to hurry, because drifting away is a wee bit closer.)

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When Resistance Becomes Duty

jono55

On Friday Robin and I drove to Ridgway to join in a rally being held there against some of Cluck’s policies. I was going to say “”more reprehensible” policies but stopped myself – they are nearly all reprehensible.

It was a breezy day and sometimes two hands were required to keep the signs under control. Ridgway is a smaller village so there was not a huge crowd, but it was an enthusiastic one. A local grocer brought out two cases of bottled water as his contribution to the event.

Just that day I had learned about yet another man who had been whisked away by ICE and this time for a while there was no record to be found anywhere of what had happened to him. He had become the latest of our Desaparecidos. After several days had passed our government confessed that he was in prison in El Salvador. He has not been accused of any crime.

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Across the Borderline, by Ry Cooder with Harry Dean Stanton

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On Saturday I attended a meeting of the local Indivisible group that was held at a church in Montrose. This chapter of Indivisible had been dormant since the end of the first Cluck administration, but new governance has resuscitated it.

Robin and I had lunch with the leader a couple of weeks ago to get more information and to volunteer our services in whatever capacity is needed.

Brought together by a practical guide to resist the Trump agenda, Indivisible is a movement of thousands of group leaders and more than a million members taking regular, iterative, and increasingly complex actions to resist the GOPs agenda, elect local champions, and fight for progressive policies.

From the Indivisible.org website

The group is just getting up and running, and Robin and I are excited at being part of something positive in this era of routine and rampant negativity.

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Robin is ecstatic, and when Momma is happy, it’s ditto for moi. While we were watching one program on PBS there appeared a “commercial” for another. It seems that the Earth was short at least one more season of “Call the Midwife,” so the gods mercifully have come up with the fix. Season 14 is now available for your viewing pleasure. There are only 8 episodes, and no assurances that a Season 15 is to come, so to treasure them and watch them s-l-o-w-l-y would be my advice, savoring each wholesome morsel.

I say “wholesome” not because the program is something bland and fluffy straight out of la la land, which it is not. But because it is based on realities, rather than something wholly imaginary. The problems that the characters deal with are sometimes harsh ones, are not always solvable, and are presented in a way that leaves the viewer smarter than they were when they started.

Someone is giving good medical advice to the writers of the series, and as a result I have almost no negative criticisms of the science presented, which is a rarity for me. Usually I am leaping from my chair, fists raised, and exclaiming: “That never happens like that, you jumble of blooming idiots!”

(At present we are watching the PBS series Marie Antionette. It is only two seasons long, and we pretty much know there won’t be a third group of episodes. That’s the problem with the baked-in spoiler that comes with a historical program like this one.)

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Uncle John’s Band, by the Grateful Dead

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The song Uncle John’s Band is my favorite cut from the first Grateful Dead album I ever purchased, which was Workingman’s Dead. Bought it in 1970, right after the album’s release. Loved it then, love it now.

Here’s a link to the lyrics.

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Yesterday in a supermarket parking lot, I saw this sticker in a car window. It did not please me. Especially not at a time when we are experiencing a major measles outbreak here in the U.S. The largest in decades and it shows no signs of slowing.

I know that this is an example of the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. And I know that this means that people who say the most awful and stupid things have exactly the same rights as I do when I utter my unassailable truths and scientific verities in the most beautiful and mellifluous tones.

But the sticker is stupid and untrue and dangerous and children will die. Completely unnecessarily.

What I want now is a 28th Amendment to the US Constitution that would allow me to take a propane torch to stickers like that and give them a good frying. Now I grant that this would also be stupid and dangerous, because if the owner saw me do it and took offense (how could they not?) the ensuing melee would end unpleasantly for me, I am pretty sure.

But there is a difference between children suffering and dying and an ancient dude getting what he deserved for vandalism. While this sticker may be protected speech, it is the sort of ignorant discourse that kills. Today it is measles … I wonder what will be the next preventable disease that we all get to learn about because like a vampire it has risen in its un-deadness to once again stalk our streets?

Forget that propane torch … what I really want is a stout cudgel. I feel the need to administer some vigorous corrections, and there is a particular group of students who have shown themselves unreachable by ordinary instructional methods.

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How It Ends, by Goose

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It is a good time to speak out. This is not a drill.

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First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemoller

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