Tag: television

On the Road

jono55

It was noon on Sunday and Robin and I were lined up along Highway 550 as it runs down into Ouray from the north, protest signs in our hands. At times the breeze demanded a firm two-handed grip on the sign’s post. All told, there were 34 of us out there to show our opinion of Cluck’s mucking about in Venezuela.

But the amazing thing about the whole afternoon was that it was 58 degrees and sunny. In January. We had made plans to suffer for our cause in a whirling snowstorm, or at least a freezing drizzle, but nooooo, we were denied the opportunity to feel heroic. Instead, we basked.

As cars pass by, there are several types of driver responses that we have observed. Among them are:

  • The driver stares straight ahead and refuses to make eye contact with low creatures like ourselves
  • The driver extends a middle finger as a sign they see what we are doing and need to express disagreement
  • The driver revs his engine as loudly as they can to register contempt in an adolescent way
  • The driver gives us a vigorous thumbs-up
  • The driver honks joyfully
  • The driver waves happily

Overall the responses are more often positive than negative. We’ve noticed that we are statistically more likely to get a warm response from occupants of a Subaru than a pickup truck. (We noticed especially yesterday that the drivers of Land Rovers, and there were many, ignored us 100% of the time. Draw whatever conclusions you wish from this. I have my own unflattering opinions)

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We are watching the television series “Victoria,” which started out its life on PBS and is now on Netflix. It tells the story of Queen Victoria of England, beginning when she ascended to the throne at age of eighteen years. It’s a romanced version of her life, but still a great deal of fun. A very high-class soap opera, if you will.

I have only one caveat. Although Victoria is positively smitten with her husband Albert, I find his character as played is a wavy-haired pompous ass. It is irritating enough to make me want to toss pillows at the television screen when he goes on one of his broom-up-the-butt Teutonic rants.

Victoria, on the other hand, is played by Jenna Coleman, small but spirited. I never want to toss pillows when she is on screen.

There is a lovely soundtrack for the series , which I also have found captivating. (Mediaeval Baebes indeed!)

Victoria, the Suite, by Martin Phipps and the Mediaeval Baebes

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There are times when I am embarrassed for the media, especially that part tilting ever so slightly to the left. I count those among my friends, so it is especially hurtful to me whenever one of them begins to Rumpelstiltskinize on the outrage of the moment. This is where we have an event, say, like the kidnapping of the leader of another country after having invaded such country. These chatterers begin to try to turn straw into gold, postulating and pontificating in every direction about international this and international that but all they manage to do is to create an atmosphere filled with dusty golden fibers that dance in the wind they have created.

I would give an “A” and shout out a lusty “Amen, brother!” to any online ‘columnist’ who could turn their microphone on and say “You know, I don’t know squat about that, and neither does anyone else here in the room, so instead of droning on we will play some great recorded music rather than waste your time. I’ll be back when I have something to say.”

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You Pass Me By, by Lonnie Donnegan

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I ran across this post on Substack the other day, written by Sober Dude. Its title was: A Dozen Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Sobriety. The writing was warm, filled with good humor, and told some truths I hadn’t thought about in years. Especially #1.

#1. You’re about to have a shocking amount of spare time. Drinking is a full-time job. Planning it. Hiding it. Recovering from it. Apologizing for it. Thinking about it. When you stop, entire hours appear out of nowhere. Whole evenings. Weekends. Empty space. At first, this feels like boredom. Or restlessness. Or existential dread. It’s not. It’s opportunity without a syllabus. Fill your schedule early. Walks. Meetings. Gym. Writing. Coffee with humans. Structure isn’t prison—it’s scaffolding. You can decorate later.

Sober Dude

A couple of decades ago when I hung up my drinking duds for good … there I was, blinking in the full light of day and wondering … now what? All of those hours I had previously spent walking around in general anesthesia were staring me in the face and it was going to be forever before I could go to bed. And, BTW, I thought, what does one drink when one doesn’t have access to _____________ ? (You may fill in any of the following: whisky, gin, vodka, beer, stout, ale, wine, sherry, cordials, Listerine, vanilla extract, et al)

While some of these choices may seem trivial or obvious or even ridiculous to the unaddicted, they are quite real, and I can tell you that from remembered experience.

So if you know someone that you care about who has recently put down their glass and seems a bit at loose ends, you could send this link to them. It’s kind of a love letter, really.

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Life Gets Teejus, Don’t It?

jono55

Good morning to you all, let me welcome you to the nascent police state that our nation’s highest “public servants” are trying their best to establish. I say “trying” because so far they are running a script resembling that of the movie “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.”

Not that they aren’t doing awful, horrible things. They may be inept and clumsy, but they are a bunch of killers and psychopaths and traitors and pedophiles and Lord knows what else who are holding some pretty sturdy reins of power. Until they are all taken down and put someplace where they can’t hurt people any more, we will keep reading of or experiencing events that are foreign to the America I grew up in and any country that I would want to live in.

I will return to an idea that I have voiced at least once before. Remember after World War Two was over and quite a few Nazis were executed? Of course you do. But a handful were imprisoned, and one of them, a Rudolf Hess, served out his life sentence, finally dying in prison in 1987.

After the war, Hess was tried at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, convicted, and given a life sentence. He served his sentence at Spandau Prison in Berlin, where from 1966 he was the sole inmate. After his death in 1987, Hess was buried in Wunsiedel, Bavaria, and his grave later became a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis. In 2011 it was decided that his body should be moved. Hess’s remains were subsequently cremated, and his ashes were scattered in an unidentified lake.

Britannica.com

My idea, since there would be many convicted of treason when Cluck goes down, is to give them a small island of their very own, and never allow them to leave. I don’t know, maybe something like Devil’s Island is available, we could ask the French. But either way, an island where there is no communication with the outside world, no internet, no theaters, and the only books in the library were autobiographies of Democrats.

One by one, as they passed away in isolation their ashes could be scattered in unidentified lakes and fish hatcheries. I can’t imagine any punishment more awful or tedious for this nasty group than the lifelong company of one another.

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Bird On A Wire, by Jennifer Warnes

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Our hummingbirds have left. It’s now been five days without a sighting. That means autumn is officially here. By now these birds who have been our official cheerer-uppers are halfway to Mexico, where they have winter homes. It’s a good plan. Robin and I will have to cheer each other, which is handicapped by the fact that neither of us can hover.

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Yesterday Amy and Neil took Robin and I for a ride up to a ghost town named Animas Forks. It is located a few miles above the town of Silverton, at altitude 11,000 feet, and the last few miles of the old road there require serious four wheel driving. It’s not hazardous or technical, but basically is a path of hard, sharp, and irregular rock that could do harm to ordinary tires.

(Disclaimer: yesterday was not a particularly good day for photos, so these pix are not mine, but are taken from the internet.)

The buildings there are in pretty good shape, and we were allowed to enter them and explore, with posted caution signs everywhere to watch our step since the floorboards are … shall we say … old.

I found a revelation up there. Outhouses that were inhouses. At least two of the dwellings had hallways that led to those venerable toilets, which also had a door directly to the outside. Since a ton of snow fell up there each year and the miners were in the town year-round, it would have been a blessing not to have to trek through several feet of snow to answer each call of nature. But I had never seen such an arrangement before, and mine is a life containing quite a bit of acquaintance with privies.

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We’ve been watching a series on PBS called “Indian Summers.” Apparently during the Raj some of the British governing class went to the mountains to escape the lowland heat. There they spun their webs, had their affairs, schemed, plotted, and did all sorts of the things that entitled people do. In this series, the characters are interesting, the sub-plots numerous, and an awful lot of history is crammed into a few episodes. I’m not sure what the Indian word for soap opera would be, but this was a tasty one and was expensively filmed to boot.

It’s a different animal — leaning more toward sex-charged melodrama than genteel parlor comedy — but if you have a taste for good-looking British people misbehaving in beautiful surroundings, it may do just fine.

New York Times

We’ve enjoyed it, but the two seasons are now over and it’s on to other things. One of them will be to re-watch Ghandhi, a classic film about India which is on quite a different level, and a favorite of both of ours.

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Not Dark Yet, by Steinar Raknes

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If you look at the quietly comfortable mess that is my “office,” you get only one hint at the national turmoil outside. There are political pinback buttons everywhere, in different stages of production. I’m well into my second thousand of them by now, and have had a lot of fun with the project.

There have been frustrating days when the simple machines that I use choose non-cooperation as their rallying cry, and not every button begun has ended up on someone’s lapel, but there are those flung into the trash instead.

You do know by now that I do not regard machines as inanimate, but having their own … souls … I guess might be the word. We only see this when they choose to go rogue, denying us whatever pleasure we were supposed to have in using them. I do everything that I have been doing for weeks and suddenly I can’t get a proper button out of them to save my neck.

Cries of aaarrrrgggh and noooooohhhhgodnooooohhh ring through the house as I leaf through the Yellow Pages looking for the phone number of a nearby exorcist. At such times I can clearly hear the demons snickering just around the corner in another room.

But hey – it’s onward and upward and don’t spare the horses and Rome wasn’t built in a day and what’s that smell, anyway? There’s a country to save and supper to be made and I haven’t been to the gym in four days. Best to get at it.

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No Bad News

jono55

It is so tempting for a weak-willed man like myself to say something about the World of Cluck every day, because the insults and outrages come at us just that fast. That is how that particular crapslinger-in-chief works, jabbing and then oozing away, leaving a slime trail and the listener off balance.

What I will say is that the healthiest thing for any one of us to do is step back, let Cluck flail away in a vacuum, and work hard to hollow out the ground under his feet.

We are now witness to the damage possible when two mentally unstable billionaires get together and run a country, so this would be one good place to start. I doubt that there has been any time in history when wealthy men didn’t have more power than the peasantry, but it is greatly magnified right now, and we can clearly see that it is not in America’s interest to let it continue unchecked.

Speaking as a lifelong peasant, getting rid of Citizens United would be my first step. Allowing another farce like this past election, where one man bought himself a president, should not be allowed to happen again.

Right now Congress is too weak to do the job, so my question would be – what do you and I do to change the composition of those two bodies in the upcoming mid-term elections? Where best to put our energies?

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No Bad News, by Patty Griffin

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When a limited cook like myself looks for something new to try, these days the internet is just too tempting as a resource. But what has become obvious to me is that the old and disciplined recipe books of the past provided something that an internet search on “How to make the best omelet in the universe” does not. Reliability and editing are the differences.

Generally any book-published recipe has been tested and retested over time, and the text has been proof-read. All sorts of mischief can come into play when these are lacking. For instance:

  • You may find that following the recipe faithfully and executing each step perfectly produces a nice plateful of heartburn
  • You may find that there are ingredients listed that never show up in the Directions section, and then … where to put them?
  • You may find that tablespoonful measurements are inadvertently substituted for teaspoonfuls – chaos being the result
  • You may find that although all of the nutrition is there in the final product, it is simply too ugly to eat

And yet, there is at least a 30% chance that later today I will look for yet another version of Mac n’ Cheese out there in the ether. I will type it into Google and trust to the result to feed my wife and I. It’s a mystery to me why I keep doing this. My grandmother would have said that I was soft in the head.

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Come On In My Kitchen, by Crooked Still

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Richard Chamberlain died this past week, after reaching the ripe old age of 90. Actually, when you get to that point you are past ripe, and well into the fruit leather category. I wasn’t a big fan of his, although I thought he did a good job in the original “Shogun”series back in the early 80s.

What I remember very clearly, though, was his effect on middle-aged American womanhood in 1983, when he was the male lead in the television series “The Thorn Birds.” He played a priest in that series, and each week millions of women tuned in, hoping with all their hearts that this would be the week that he broke his vow of chastity.

At work the nurses and female staff would recount the previous night’s episode in detail, and you could tell from their conversation that they were having a bit of trouble with the line that runs between reality and make-believe.

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Go Wherever You Wanna Go, by Patty Griffin

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Our cat Willow is on the road to recovery from … whatever she had. After seven long and heart-wrenching days she is finally up and about and beginning to eat once again. She is far from thriving still, and perhaps I am jinxing things by claiming victory … but it is her victory, we humans being mere cheerleaders.

A sick pet can be emotionally draining, because wherever love goes it goes full tilt and that is not a rational act but a step into a place that is neither wise nor completely sane. At each of the times in my life when my heart had been bruised I resolved to get out of the love business from then on. Too painful when it goes awry, I would say to myself.

A resolution that I never kept.

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Monday our beautiful weather took a turn from unusually nice to far from pleasant. The wind blew hard all that day, and that fast air passed over dry and open fields, carrying dust into our noses and eyes. Even though the temperature was around 60 degrees, wind chills were much lower.

Then on Tuesday we received the double blessing of even colder weather plus a snowstorm. Tonight the temp is headed for 20, and that can do some serious mischief among all those blossoming trees in Paradise.

So we’re socked in for the moment, but with a warm home, food, coffee, two cats, and absolutely nowhere we have to be. Life is good.

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One Word … Plastics

jono55

Robin and I just finished up the series Adolescence, on Netflix. There are only four episodes, for which I am oddly grateful, because at the end we were both wrung out, which is a testament to the skill and passion of those who brought the story to life. There was not a wasted moment in its telling.

I have witnessed enough real-life tragedies to have developed some defenses, in order that I don’t become a salty puddle on the floor with each one. But this one got to me, and at the end, the very last words uttered brought tears.

“I’m sorry, son … I should have done better.”

I suspect there are many parents out there who have said exactly these words at one time or another in their lives. I know that I have.

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From The New Yorker

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Fire On The Mountain, by Jimmy Cliff, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart & Bill Kreutzmann

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Since I last mentioned it, there have been more articles where investigators find microplastics in our body organs. It seems that wherever they look, they find.

Perhaps we shall soon be required to wear tattooed-on labels that read something like this;

  • Do not microwave
  • Do not put in oven
  • Not dishwasher safe
  • Use only mild detergents
  • Dispose of properly

Cremation may eventually be forbidden because of the toxins released when plastics are burned. We shall have to be recycled instead and be reincarnated as travel cups.

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The Graduate (1967)

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In the post just previous to this one I put up a music video that starred the Badlands of South Dakota in the back ground. The Lakota called this place mako sica, the early French trappers named the area les mauvaises terres à traverser, or difficult lands to cross. It’s one of my favorite places, and has much to offer in beauty and uplifts to the spirit.

I have camped there, hiked there, ridden motorcycles through there, suffered dehydration there, been repeatedly awed there.

Whenever offered an opportunity to visit this unforgiving land, I take it.

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Ripple, by The Grateful Dead

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Our younger cat, Willow, has given me a few more gray hairs this week (actually, that is impossible as there is nothing but gray strands up top). I am typing this while waiting in the veterinarian’s exam room.

This is the fifth day of an illness without a clear-cut origin or resolution in view. Blood work, urinalysis, abdominal X-rays, subcutaneous fluids given twice, two visits to vets … it all adds up to a metric ton of concern.

I was going to write that this business of worrying is one of the drawbacks of loving something or somebody, but … not really a drawback, I think. It’s where I get to put to good use those muscles of compassion and empathy that I haven’t used recently. Growing pains is what it is.

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From The New Yorker

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