September – Little Home In The Valley

After tomorrow, we can look ahead to an entire week where the temperature never climbs out of the eighties, according to my weather app. Lordy, what a treat that will be, carrying us into September in a joyful frame of mind and all that. This past Spring Robin and I looked ahead and decided not to do any gardening at all. The sorts of things we like to plant simply don’t do as well in the searing sort of summers we’ve experienced recently. It becomes almost a case of plant abuse to subject an innocent tomato plant to life in a reflector oven. The stunted fruit we’ve grown on wizened vines was sad to look at. A more skilled gardener than we are might have made something of it all, but this year we punted.

Moreover, we had new problems that arose and would claim the time and energies those tomato plants would have demanded . So our produce this year came 100% from City Market. Not a bad Plan B, as it turned out.

******

Every single diet I ever fell off of was because of potatoes and gravy of some sort.

Dolly Parton

******

Summertime, by Nina Simone

******

******

The new study on chronic traumatic encephalopathy in football has made sooo many people uneasy. Parents and coaches can no longer say to themselves that the data just aren’t in, so go ahead and suit up, kid.

I have little sympathy for people who will let their children bash their brains about, claiming ignorance. I do have sympathy for the children, who deserve better from their guardians.

Here’s a bit of heresy. Football isn’t important. It’s a brute sport only marginally better than boxing in that regard, boxing being where the whole point of the activity is deliberately trying to damage the opponent’s central nervous system. We’ve built football into something like a national religion, a status it does not deserve. There are other ways to challenge ourselves in competitions that don’t involve this risk.

BTW, if you put your kid out there pretending that a new helmet will solve the problem, fageddaboudit. Parents and coaches should have the honesty to admit what they are doing, which is being active participants in the potential diminution of their children’s lives.

******

Summertime, by Janis Joplin

******

God and I have a great relationship, but we both see other people.

Dolly Parton

******

We are almost there. “There” being the best month of the year. Number nine. When the sometimes frantic-ness of summertime slows enough to allow us to catch our breath, when the nights return to being refreshing rather than nearly as draining as the overheated days. When we wake up and look to the trees each morning to see how nature is doing … is that a bit of gold there in the aspens along the highway to Ouray? When we begin to say au revoir to some of the birds we’ve enjoyed watching, as they pack their bags to leave us and follow the food.

I make a big deal every year about September. There’s that perfect song, the perfect weather, that little shiver when I think about having to move my woolen clothing nearer to the front of the closet racks. Love it all.

This has been a year of testing for Robin and myself, personally. Our ‘charmed lives’ took some hits in the health department. I will tell you true, that living with someone who always has “got your back” is a great lift to the spirit on the days when it comes up droopy.

******

This autumn will be a test for our country. The November vote may signal a change toward rationality and decency in our national political life … or it may not. The more that those of us who wish for an end to what has been a nightmare make ourselves known, to stand up and be counted, the better. I don’t know exactly how the near future will play out, but I do believe that ultimately the bad guys will be brought down. One of the proverbs that I took to heart a long time ago came from … who else? … those darned Greeks once again. It goes like this:

A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.

Planting a tree you will never sit under requires a deep, optimistic belief that the world will continue, that the people who come after you are worth caring for, and that your small effort today matters. Whatever our small efforts, whatever sacrifices that we make now may be like planting those trees.

Want to plant one? Vote blue every chance you get. Every single time.

******

Summertime, Ray Charles and Cleo Laine

******

Robin and I drove to Durango on Tuesday morning, and we noticed that above 9000 feet many of the aspens are turning yellow. Now, I have a dim recollection that this means something about the coming weeks and months, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it is.

Maybe ChatGPT will know. They are my oracle when it comes to stuff like this.

ChatGPT: what do you want now?

Moi: I was wondering if you knew what it means when the tree leaves turn colors in August..

ChatGPT: You have got to be kidding.

Moi: No, I’m just an ancient person and have forgotten many things.

ChatGPT: Sigghhhhhh … it’s one of the signs that autumn is coming.

Moi: But isn’t this sort of early for that?

ChatGPT: Not when you have a drought. The leaves turn early and their colors aren’t usually as bright.

Moi: How interesting. Did you in that one nanosecond that has passed since I posed the question scour the libraries of the world for your answer?

ChatGPT: No.

Moi: Then …

ChatGPT: It was in this morning’s paper.

******

Robin is in Durango, spending time with Claire when her parents are away. The home is several miles out of town in an area that not infrequently sees bear activity. So much so that every home must keep their trash in a bear-proof container.

The problem is not just one of having one’s trash spread about, but of safety for the bear. If one of them becomes accustomed to finding food in garbage cans and starts hanging around human dwellings regularly, any aggressiveness on its part means a call to a wildlife officer, and often a bullet for the bear.

Wednesday, as Robin was retrieving the family’s container from the roadside collection site, a black bear approached to within less than ten yards. Robin neither moved toward nor away from the critter, and after a moment or two it continued on down the road, uninterested in anything that did not promise easy access to food. No threats offered, no offense taken, no phone calls made.

Except for the excited call to me here in Montrose to relate the story of the encounter.

******

Bear, by The Shouting Matches

******

From The New Yorker

When I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we would see bears often while camping, about half the time, in fact. Their only interest was in food, so we kept ours all in the VW bus we traveled in. On one of these trips we were still in the process of setting up camp when one of our kids noticed a bear going through the campground, site by site, and opening each trash can to check out the contents.

When the animal approached our trashcan, the six of us got into the van to watch the bear do its inspection. Finding nothing, it moved on along its route. (I should add that this was nearly fifty years ago, when campers were not nearly so knowledgeable as to proper behavior with trash and around bears.)

During those years in the UP, there was only one episode of physical harm from a bear that I knew of. A teen-aged boy was camping without a tent all by himself in a wooded area. When he turned in for the night, he unwisely took his food into the sleeping bag along with himself so that the raccoons wouldn’t get at it. Along came a bear which found itself staring at what was (to the bear) essentially a large human burrito, and he began chomping away. The boy managed to get out of the bag and run off, eventually making his way to a local hospital, where he received some minor patching up.

The sleeping bag, unfortunately, was a total loss.

******

******

Black Bear, by Railroad Earth

******

From the New Yorker

******

We are only one week away from September, that month each year when I give over to my most sappy, maudlin, mawkish, corny, and moony side. It might not happen if there weren’t that song* to play and listen to. Something about its wistfulness brings out these drippy weeps, and I don’t seem to have the will to not play it. Every autumn. Like clockwork.

If I am dreading it, I really can’t imagine what must be going through your minds. Perhaps if we all buck up we’ll get through to the other side and October, where lies safety. Hold that thought.

******

As of this morning, I have reached one of those milestones. I am twenty years sober. This is not a boast, and I don’t publish as self-puffery, but to speak to anyone out there who is wondering about whether their use of alcohol is helping or hurting them … there are other possibilities.

One day at a discussion in a rehab center, a client stood up and said that he was one year sober and many in the room clapped. The moderator interrupted and asked “Why are you clapping? All he said was that for the past year he has behaved like a normal person and has stopped harming himself and those around him.”

And that moderator was right, I think. We announce our sobriety anniversaries to reach out to those whose hands are still shaking, not to show that we are some sort of paragons. To point out to those still carrying the weight of alcohol addiction that they can put down the rock and walk away. It’s no more than doing the next right thing.

And did I do that next right thing by myself? Surely you jest.

******

*September Song

Tag: September

Counting Days

Bearly Worth Mentioning