Tag: spring

… foreign and domestic …

jono55

At what point do all of the awful misjudgments, illegalities, consorting with enemies, abandonment of principles, and corruption begin to add up to what constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors?

How much damage does Cluck have to do to our country before he is thrown unceremoniously out of the office, and all of the locks changed on the doors behind him?

How bad do things have to get before Democrats are willing to do more than puff and splutter? These fractious times call more for our elected representatives to stand up like this heroic man in Tiananmen Square did.

Members of Congress need to begin acting more like Winston Churchill and less like Neville Chamberlain. To see clearly what is happening. To take their oaths to the Constitution as the deadly serious promise that they made.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

If Cluck and his minions are not enemies of our Constitution I confess I don’t know what would be. In only three months they have done more damage to our government, to our reputation among the countries of the world, and to our national economy than I would have believed possible in so short a time.

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Uncle John’s Band, by the Grateful Dead

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Sunday was like the unofficial first day of spring here in Paradise. The municipal golf course near our home was jammed, and so many motorized carts were in use that I actually saw someone pulling their clubs along in the ancient way, in a two-wheeled cart. Knowing the aversion to physical exertion that is the hallmark of the typical golfer, I wonder that the industry hasn’t gone the full mile and attached some sort of arm to the electric cart that will swat the ball for you into a perfect AI-guided arc. That way one would never have to leave the conveyance.

We dropped down to Riverside Park and found hundreds of people enjoying the day wandering on the paths or playing with their children on safely rounded-off equipment. Walking on the main path was like being in the middle of the Westminster Dog Show, with scores of canines being led around by harassed-looking owners. One particular woman seemed at the mercy of the Siberian Husky she had on leash and which was leading her wherever it wanted to go.

One young man was attempting to lead three strong animals. Watching this foursome reminded me of those gruesome scenes in old movies where a captive is dispatched by tying arms and legs to four horses … .

One grove of trees along the river was the place of origin of a chorus of red-winged blackbird calls and chatterings, the first such avian music this year. Lovely to hear.

It was a warm enough day that the aroma of last year’s dry leaves was everywhere in the park. Water levels in the Uncompahgre River were at the lowest we’ve seen them in a long time. Still pretty but not enough to float a raft or kayak.

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From The New Yorker

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The idea of self-denial during Lent seems to be fading in the general population, although I have no data to support my conclusion. It used to be that in almost any conversation during this part of the church year the phrase “What are you giving up for Lent?” came up. Haven’t heard it in years.

Personally, when I gave up alcohol almost twenty years ago I figured that this punched my Lenten card for the rest of my life. I had already stopped smoking a pipe, which had been a serious blow to my mental health (although my cough went away).

Enough was enough, said I. If I’m going to be sober and smoke-free, giving up one more thing for Lent would only turn me into a bitter man and an unfit person to be with.

As long as you brought up pipe-smoking … you didn’t … well, anyway, as long as we’re on the subject, that is one bad habit that I think back on fondly. I loved the rituals, rounding up the tools and equipment, ordering exotic tobaccos from British and Dutch companies, making my own blends … there I go, drooling on the keyboard. Buying a new pipe had taken on an almost religious significance. The patterns in the briar, the shape and size of the bowl, the materials used in the stem … ahhhh … those were the days.

The fact that I was basically a noxious cloud of secondary smoke on two feet never entered my mind. I smoked in automobiles, in restaurants, on airplanes, while making rounds in hospital. Really unbelievable, nest-ce pas? Now that I am so much closer to perfection as a human being I can look back on those days and say Tsk, tsk, what a bonehead!

(BTW, on the subject of smoking on commercial aircraft, it was only last October that the FAA did away with a rule that required an off-switch on the No Smoking sign on planes.)

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From The New Yorker

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I’ve learned something new this year, and it’s only March. If a group invites a politician to a “town hall,” and the invitee senses an uncomfortable evening and tells them to go ______ themselves, the group then sometimes holds the meeting without them and calls it an empty chair town hall.

Sweet.

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Here’s what it looked like when we attended such a town hall Monday evening via computer. The program originated in Colorado Springs.

You can see the cardboard man in front of the room. He represented Jeff Crank, the absent invitee. There were 250 people in the room and another 650 online. Good turnout on just a week’s notice.

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I’m Movin’ On, by John Kay

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Genghis Noem

jono55

Things to feel positive about when each day seems chockablock with disheartening news.

  1. We are learning so much about our own country’s constitution through the efforts of those who are attempting to subvert it. Knowledge is power so that’s a good thing, right?
  2. While eggs at City Market now average above a daunting $9.00 a dozen, it means that chickens all over the country are now earning enough that they no longer need to work two jobs and can spend more time with their families.
  3. February is hump month vis-a-vis the weather. Get past it and we are coasting downhill into Spring, which is a swell time. Very swell.
  4. If you are reading this you probably don’t have the bird flu.

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Kristi Noem has been confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security. While that is not great news for the U.S. as a whole (she has an unfortunate tendency to shoot creatures who displease her), within seconds of that confirmation we received a phone call from a lifelong South Dakotan who was so ecstatic to be rid of her as governor that her joy could not be contained.

Before she gained renown for blasting away at her pets and livestock she was already famous for mostly ignoring COVID in South Dakota and for getting herself barred from all Native American reservations in her own state.

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[Some people have an antipathy toward poetry. Perhaps it might help to think of a poem as sometimes serving as a hone, sharpening their senses and appreciation for what was already there in front of them. Here is one by a pediatrician/poet, written in 1921. ]

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Winter Trees

by William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details 
of the attiring and 
the disattiring are completed! 
A liquid moon 
moves gently among 
the long branches. 
Thus having prepared their buds 
against a sure winter 
the wise trees 
stand sleeping in the cold.

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From The New Yorker

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On the subject of pediatricians (you didn’t know we were discussing them?), long ago I had a mentor named Henry Staub M.D. who I met only after my formal pediatric training was completed. Henry was a children’s physician, an ardent community activist, and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. As a young man with Jewish parentage he, he had left Nazi Germany just in time to avoid being drafted into the army and thus discovered.

There is much of what I became in my own professional life that I took on from Henry by osmosis, but there were two sayings of his that I still think of frequently.

“The best doctor is the one that hurts the most.” On the surface this might seem paradoxical, but what he had observed was that there was a strong tendency to be “kind” to sick children, and for that “kindness” to delay discovery of sometimes serious illness.

For example, suppose that a child presented with symptoms that might be early signs of something really damaging. If the patient had been an adult, there would have been no question about doing the required but often uncomfortable testing, but in this case the physician decides to wait and watch for a while, to be certain that investigation is required since the patient is so young. However, in not wanting to cause pain to the small one the doctor instead sometimes hurts it far more by delaying diagnosis and proper treatment.

The second was a brief description of his own hypothetical professional journey, and was always told with a smile at the end. “I went into pediatrics because I didn’t like adults. After a few years, I didn’t like children, either.”

But Henry did love children, and was their constant advocate. Not for just those in his practice, but the larger community as well. A wise guy.

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“I heard a very good joke yesterday, someone said: ‘Musk is not a Nazi, Nazis made really good cars.’”

Stephen Fry

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Hypnotic. Beautiful. Don’t worry that you can’t understand the lyrics. No one can.

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I believe myself to be living in a revolutionary time, where many of my long-held standards and beliefs about my country are being dissected and discarded, their fragility revealed, the spider’s web of a platform on which they rested found to be riddled with gaps … easy pickings for the unscrupulous.

One one hand there is the thuggery and brutishness of MAGA, a collection of the benighted if there ever was one. On another hand there is the aging creakiness of the Democratic Party leadership, which seems unable find the laces on its Louboutins in order to tie them properly and so to get on with the people’s business. Yet another hand says a pox on both those houses. There are other “hands” as well. We may only have two official political parties but there exist oh so many constituencies.

One of those constituencies is the most influential of all, and that is that of the extremely wealthy. This one is actually more powerful than any of the parties.

In the old days (anything more than one election cycle ago) those people ran the country and the world but much preferred being invisible. These days the one percenters have not been not just taking blatantly more than their fair share of everything, they have used their fortunes to stack every deck they can get their hands on to perpetuate and increase their privilege.

Our history shows how easy it has been to pit us one against the other so that we would ignore their machinations. For instance, in our Civil War there were 620,000 deaths. While slavery may have been the spark that started the whole bloody mess, only a very tiny fraction of the men who died in either army had ever owned a slave. So why would a threadbare farmer from Minnesota travel a thousand miles to shoot at threadbare farmers in Virginia? What was their quarrel?

Who told them that taking up arms was the proper thing to do?

Guess.

So if there is a revolution coming, count me in. I may not mount the barricades as nimbly as a couple of days ago, but if nothing else I am more dangerous because I have good eyesight and less to lose.

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No Banker Left Behind, by Ry Cooder

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