Tag: Travel

Pawn to King 13

jono55

The trip to Durango was beautiful and free of winter hazards. Above 9000 feet there was a thin coating of snow everywhere but the highway, and when you combined this with the leafless aspen trunks it was like driving in a brown/black and white photograph.

On this latest journey we deliberately gave ourselves two extra hours, which allowed stopping in places we’d only driven by in the past. Nothing spectacular, just nooks that had raised our curiosity.

(Robin and I are definitely at the Ferdinand the Bull stage of life, where sniffing deeply in one field of flowers is preferred to motoring past a dozen.)

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When I made reference to Ferdinand the Bull above I had no idea of his whole history. I looked him up and found that both Hitler and Franco of Spain had banned the book as anti-fascist propaganda.

Sooooo … GO FERDINAND! HOO-RAH!

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Born to Lose, by Ray Charles

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Any thoughtful person who has been watching the quasi-military and perhaps illegal National Guard maneuvers of the Cluck regime knew that a tragedy like the one this week would eventually come in one form or another.

Either a civilian would be shot by a nervous guardsman or soldiers would become targets and be harmed by some unhinged individual. It was inevitable. Using the young men and women of the National Guard as pawns has been Cluck’s transparent tactic all along. One more reason, as if we needed another, to remove him from office ASAP.

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When I was an aimless undergraduate I heard about the book All Quiet on the Western Front, and that it was a classic. At the time I was looking for anything that would help me put down roots in this new and unclear world that growing up and separation from my family of origin had turned out to be. I thought perhaps reading “classics” would be one place to begin.

I read the book and was blown away by its beauty. So much so that I chose to immediately read another of Remarque’s books, Three Comrades. This time I was BLOWN AWAY!

Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying – a little shove toward the end.

Erich Maria Remarque, Three Comrades

For weeks I couldn’t get these characters out of my mind. Something about their struggles seemed achingly applicable to my own. They seemed more real to me than the people I saw shuffling about on campus every day.

Then when I am sad and understand nothing anymore, I say to myself that it’s better to die while you still want to live, than to live and want to die.

Erich Maria Remarque, Three Comrades

Well, you can see by the quotes what morose neighborhoods I was inhabiting during those years. Obviously I made it through, although I think that I have been as much the antihero as the hero of my own story.

Time to re-read Three Comrades, I think.

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What’d I Say, by Ray Charles

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It was Thanksgiving evening around eight o’clock, and the call came from an emergency room at a small hospital in a small town fifteen miles north of where the pediatrician was comfortably lounging at home. Two pre-school children had been brought in, and there was no doctor available in that community. Could he come and see them?

Grumbling and in a very ill temper, the pediatrician got into his car and made the twenty minute drive on the narrow and snow-lined road.

He entered the examination room where he asked a few questions curtly, then looked the children over. One had a cold and the other an ear infection. He wrote out a prescription and then proceeded to give a stern lecture to the middle-aged woman who was with the kids.

“These children had their complaints all day long, and now you bring them in late, on a holiday … this is thoughtless planning.”

“We’re so sorry, doctor. I’m their aunt, and we’ve been taking care of them just since this afternoon, when their parents were killed in a car accident. We were just worried about the kids. Thank you so much for coming in to see them, we really appreciate it.”

The pediatrician mumbled something low and unintelligible, then slunk away, having gone in a heartbeat from an indignant and self-righteous ass to some low and nameless form of life, the sort you scrape off your shoes as soon as you become aware of its presence.

So often one learns their lessons after they have opened their mouths. How much better it would be to do the thinking before.

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Damn You, Richard Gere

jono55

The movie Ordinary People came out in 1980. It was the first film that Robert Redford directed, and won four Academy Awards. For me, the most memorable takeaway was a piece from the soundtrack, a work entitled Canon in D Major, by Johann Pachelbel. For a few months anyway, it might have been the most often-played classical selection in the country.

Even today I play it regularly, and there are several interpretations of the short composition in my music library. “Music library” has become one of those phrases that definitely dates a person, hasn’t it? I wonder how many songs a Gen Z actually owns, rather than rents? Never mind, here is a recording of “the Canon” that I own and can share with you. It’s from the soundtrack of Ordinary People.

Canon in D Major, arr. by John Williams

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This past week Robin mentioned in passing that she would like to see the film An Officer and A Gentleman again. It was one of those times that I instantly made it a quest for myself, to set up a romantic evening with my bride, perhaps to slightly burnish my image in her eyes. I had no trouble finding it, however, since it was available on six subscription services. Not much of a quest, really.

But when I presented it as the evening’s television watching I took full credit, much more than I deserved … that’s me all over. Puffing up my accomplishments and glossing over my failures has worked for me for the longest time, why would I change now?

The film was released in 1982, and starred very young versions of Richard Gere, Debra Winger, David Keith, and Lou Gossett Jr. Not a bad film at all, even if a bit formulaic, but formulas often do work well. It was the final scene that made it a classic date movie, maybe in the top ten.

Got your lady handy? Play the video below. A typical American female will become very pliant upon viewing it. One caveat, however. While she might be embracing you at the moment, she is almost certainly imagining you are Richard Gere.

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I learned this week that there has been considerable research over the years on finding substances that smell so bad that they are actually incapacitating. Substances that cling to the victim, resisting being washed off. The use would predominantly be in crowd control, rather than at the battlefront. I found this idea amusing, although I can easily imagine that it could be a powerful deterrent. One man doing much of the research around World War Two eventually came to smell so bad he had to sleep in a public park.

Let’s suppose that I am twenty years old and participating in a vigorous civil protest against some authority. Let’s also suppose that I have a very promising date next Saturday night with someone I have been pursuing with great ardor for months. Now, if I knew that there was a good chance that I would be sprayed with something that would make me smell like a “rotting corpse lifted from a stagnant sewer” for the next month, I might skip the event altogether.

For some reason this all reminded me of the Monty Python sketch about the killer joke. Warning, do not watch this if you understand the German language. We’re not sure about the safety of the video even now.

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Our American Comic Opera production is not as yet entitled or completed, but the script is being added to daily. Most recently we have yet another Ukrainian “peace plan.” The origin of the plan was apparently in Russia and was leaked to someone on the American side who brought it to Cluck’s aides. Although he hadn’t actually read the program itself, Cluck became a great fan and has told the Ukrainians that they better wise up or the plan will be implemented. Word is that it gives Putin everything he wanted and more, which bothers Cluck not a bit.

The only problem with all of this is that there are some groups of people who think that the plan stinks to high heaven. Here is a partial listing:

  • More than three-fourths of the American public
  • Most members of Cluck’s own party
  • Every Democrat in existence, even unborn ones
  • All of Europe
  • The Falkland Islands
  • et al

If you disagree with the peace plan, there are Cluck-ers who have signaled that there might be a special gallows erected where the Rose Garden used to be at the White House, just for you (although I admit that this is more conjecture than fact).

Casting for the opera’s production will begin whenever there are more than two succeeding days which pass without an atrocity being committed by the Cluck regime. Hopes are therefore dim that we will ever hear a single note.

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What Are Their Names, by David Crosby

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We will be spending Thanksgiving with the Hurley family In Durango this year, and are grateful for the invitation. Whenever we do this, Robin and I are asked to bring the same two items. The first is a cranberry-marshmallow dessert salad that was Robin’s mother’s contribution for years. The second is a stuffing recipe made with pork sausage and safe as prominent ingredients.

We partially construct both of them here and then finish them on Thursday as the turkey roasts. It’s pretty easy to keep them cold for the two and a half hour journey. So far there have been no problems with snow on Highway 550, the road that still puts lumps in my throat, so we’ll probably go that way. The alternative route is an hour longer, and although less hazardous even that way requires prudence and planning when making the trip in winter. Both roads must cross mountain passes. Both have been problematic in the past.

I never have any difficulty coming up with a gratitude list on Turkey Day, because my cup truly overfloweth. First and foremost each year I spend time wondering how it was that Robin ever decided that marrying me was a good idea. For her, that is. For me it was unbelievably good fortune because, no exaggeration here, she had saved my life.

I know that there have been moments when she has wondered about her selection as I am not a great prize but more a thing cobbled together of many parts, like a shorter and less murderous creation of Victor Frankenstein. But here we are, on our thirty-third Thanksgiving together. And so down the road we go, salad and stuffing in hand. If we ever are stranded by car trouble on these trips there will always be something to eat in the cooler in the back of the car.

May your holiday go well and your clothing be elastic enough in the waist to accommodate a bit of excess.

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Nature Is Not A Place To Visit

jono55

Why go camping? Why put this seasoned carcass on a thin pad on the ground in a tent in a remote spot where one’s serenity could be interrupted at any moment by a thunderstorm, a tree falling, or the crack of a dry branch in the night as a large creature travels near the tent. Why go days without a proper bath? Perhaps the following paragraphs will provide some ragged sort of explanation.

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A long time ago I was reading … something … I can’t even recall whether it was non-fiction or a novel, but I came across this phrase which has stuck with me and become part of my DNA.

What the white man calls wilderness, we call home.

Reading it back in that dimly remembered day was one of those scales falling from the eyes moments. For I recognized for the first time that my attraction to the outdoors, the woods and the deserts and remote places, was homesickness. I was living my life in a town, in a house which was centrally heated and air conditioned. I drove a car along marked streets to grocery stores where I traded money for the food I needed, without ever producing a morsel of my own. I followed the rules of social living, became a high school graduate, a college boy, a physician, a husband and father. But I knew that I was living in a foreign country called America, when my true home was somewhere else entirely.

I am sitting by a campfire, lively breeze blowing through  giant pine trees, granite cliffs on one side, distant snow-capped mountains on the other; a stream flowing downhill over pebbles and boulders can be heard in the distance; at night the pitch black sky lights up with seemingly endless stars, somewhere far off an owl hooting….  I make a cup of coffee over the fire and converse with this wilderness…. 

Mostly we don’t think of that starry sky as also a wilderness, but it is that.  It is “wild” in the root meaning of that word, not humanly controlled or manipulated, not running by human wisdom, but by its own inner wisdom which the ancient Chinese called the Tao.  I look at the Milky Way, that fuzzy white spread of millions of stars like our sun, our galaxy, and millions of other galaxies out there whose light takes millions, even billions of years to get here….it is all so incomprehensibly and unimaginably vast, and yet in a very real way it is all our home.  Every atom of every fiber of our being was made in those stars billions of years ago…and so with everything we touch, we breathe, we eat….  In the deepest sense there is nothing “out there” that is alien to us.

The Tao of the Wilderness

The lure of leaving safety, comfort, recognizable landmarks and finding one’s own way is such a strong one. Whenever I would step off the shore into a canoe leaving on a Boundary Waters trip I had that delicious and necessary feeling of disconnection from all of the things that civilization is. Even now, at a time of life when I creak in places I didn’t even know that I had, I am eager for the next trip, the next step away from the shore.

I took many small voyages into those Boundary Waters with an old friend Rich, and for the most part we agreed on things. But there came a day when we argued (both unsuccessfully) with each other over something that we had almost no control over. Some company wanted to build a communication tower on the edge of that wilderness, tall enough that the signal could reach a cell phone anywhere out in the BW. Rich wanted it to happen, to be able to stay in touch with his family at all times. I could understand his position, at least it was the truth for him.

But as for me, I idly thought: “If they build that goddam thing perhaps I will come back and blow it up.”I was pretty sure that Edward Abbey would have my back on that one, even as they dressed me in new orange pajamas and showed me to my exclusive room at the Stillwater State Prison.

So I go camping, backpacking, walking out. These are tiny gestures, really, and if I were to be “out there” totally on my own I suspect that I would not last long at all. Within a month or two the porcupines would be gnawing the leather belt on my pants to extract the salt they crave. But as poet/naturalist Gary Snyder put it:

Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.

Gary Snyder

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Ends of the Earth, by Lord Huron

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From The New Yorker

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The fire in the Black Canyon National Park is not done with us yet, but has slowed and is being contained. No loss of life. No homes burned. The Visitor Center preserved. But the residents of the area are not yet being allowed to return to their homes.

Photographs started to become available once the media was given an official tour, while the general public is still denied access to the area. Something like 14% of the park area has burned. Here are some pix taken from our local newspaper.

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What a rotten caricature of a human being we have at the helm. Each day we are given a reminder of the values of honesty, uprightness, and mercy as we follow the slime trail of a man who possesses none of those virtues. He has the power to hurt so many people and is using it full-time to do just that, while the country is run as if it were a garage sale rather than a sovereign state.

Ahhhhhhhh … the waiting for the end of this particular time of tribulation is a difficult thing. Hard times … hard times … come again no more.

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Hard Times Come Again No More, by Gangstagrass

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Two Miles Up

jono55

This will be a rather short post due to the fact that Robin and I have been away from home and not in contact with the world and its problems. For two days we camped a few miles south of Aspen CO with daughter Ally and friend Kyle. The internet goes away about three miles before the entrance to the campground, which is mostly a blessing and less a curse.

The place we stayed is called Difficult Campground and is named for the Difficult Creek which flows through it. There is only one hike leading away from it and it is the Difficult Creek Trail. We have no idea why everything is Difficult, we found it quite lovely and not particularly difficult at all.

There are a little over forty sites at the campground which are relatively close together but the trees and underbrush are so dense that you feel quite private even so. I encountered campers from many places in the U.S. and from France and Poland. With mega-rich Aspen so close the clientele is somewhat better mounted than we lowlife cowboys from small-town Colorado. There were some awfully comfortable-looking recreational vehicles sharing the area with us. Big and roomy and expensive.

We encountered a problem that is new to me. These days camping in the U.S. is largely done by reservation, and this campground had been solidly booked for months. But only about two-thirds of the campers actually showed up for to occupy the spot they had reserved. Affluent campers now often reserve spaces at several campgrounds early on in the season at the same dates, to cover the time they had available for recreation. Then at the last minute they could go to whichever spot they preferred. Of course that meant that they were paying $30.00 a night for each campsite they didn’t use, but if you are at a certain place economically this is pretty small potatoes compared to the convenience it affords.

But this means that you are freezing out another camper who would love to have used that site now which was now empty and unavailable. It is a selfish behavior, but I hate to admit it … there are selfish Americans. There, I’ve got it out there. I feel better now.

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The Eagle and the Hawk, by John Denver

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From Aspen to Independence Pass is a distance of 19.7 miles. We spent our second day exploring as much of this area as we could. For me the highlight was the walking about the area surrounding the Pass itself. You are well above treeline and at an altitude of more 12,000 feet. The spot we chose to eat our picnic lunch was at 12,160 feet according to the app on my phone. Turns out that food tastes exactly the same even though the act of chewing can leave you breathless (gross exaggeration here).

This road is classic Colorado mountain driving. Two lanes of steep and tight and twisting curves with no guardrails. There are two short segments where there is no center line because the road is so narrow that you pass an oncoming car v.e.r.y s.l.o.w.l.y with only a foot or two to spare between you. Being an acrophobic, I do not like such passages. Here’s an interesting graphic from a bicycling journal.

And yes, you share this narrow piece of asphalt with bicyclists. Bicyclists with a death wish is what I have come to believe. When you encounter a person on a bike on a curvy stretch you cannot pass due to limited visibility, so you travel at their speed. It is a journey that I simply could not make. The guy on the bike at times is only a couple of feet from the cliff edge and that is about ten feet too little for this timid soul.

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A few miles before the summit is the ghost town of Independence. It once was a gold mining town, established in 1879 and abandoned in 1899. All but one member of the population left at that later date during the worst winter in Colorado’s history, when snow cut them off completely from supplies. At one point many residents took planks from the buildings to fashion skis and in that way traveled back down the mountains to Aspen and safety.

One of the plaques at the townsite discussed a local Elks Lodge having brought new elk in to repopulate the valley, and that herd’s descendants now now still roam the area. Why, you ask, did they do this? Well, because in that isolated and harsh environment the miners and their families had eaten nearly all of the deer, elk, and marmots before they abandoned the town. Yes, even the marmots did not escape those ravenous appetites.

Here’s a few pics I borrowed from the internet. I took none of my own because my phone had run out of gas.

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Rocky Mountain High, by John Denver

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This morning I returned to modern life by reading articles about President Cluck’s continuing war on democracy and decency and wondering to myself … where’s a good heart attack when you really need one?

I know, I know. An unworthy thought. I will give myself a time out.

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Comic Relief: sign found in the bathroom at the top of Independence Pass.

Fire On The Mountain

jono55

Something remarkable happened to the family living next door. The woman went into the hospital on Sunday evening and on Monday morning a surgeon reached into her abdomen and pulled out a brand new American. Mother and child are doing well.

By the time that child reaches the age where he cares about such things, these troubled present days of ugly political behavior will be only paragraphs in history books. Paragraphs that delineate what can go wrong when those who cherish democracy are complacent. When those same folks make the mistake of assuming that you have triumphed over wickedness once and for all because you have beaten it back one time.

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For some reason Nathan Hale came to mind this morning. He may have been America’s first spy. I rarely think of him, which is a pity, because there is much to learn from his example.

He was caught on his first mission, however, and hanged shortly thereafter. Nathan was only twenty-one years old at the time of his death.

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“On the morning of his execution,” continued the officer, “my station was near the fatal spot, and I requested the Provost Marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee, while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered: he was calm, and bore himself with gentle dignity, in the consciousness of rectitude and high intentions. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him: he wrote two letters, one to his mother and one to a brother officer. He was shortly after summoned to the gallows. But a few persons were around him, yet his characteristic dying words were remembered. He said, ‘I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.'”

Captain John Montresor

There is not unanimity of opinions about whether he said exactly those words, but after this long stretch of time I doubt whether anyone cares but some historians. The lessons to be taken of courage, sacrifice, and dedication to country would not be altered by the transposition of a few vowels and consonants.

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Fading Fires (Of The Great Chiefs), by AIRO

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Robin and I have just finished watching the series “Endeavour” on PBS, and thoroughly enjoyed it, in spite of the fact that it was at times more than a bit talky and occasionally preposterous. Now while the word “preposterous ” might seem harsh, I like to have a bit of it in anything I watch, since dry reality is so tawdry and boring these days.

The series covers several years in the life of a young policeman whose private life is that of an opera-loving loner. It is as much about relationships as it is about criminal activity. He has a mentor, a reputation for being prickly as well as a brilliant crime-solver, and yet somehow fails to hear Robin and I call out repeatedly “That’s the girl for you, fool!”

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The temperature reading stood at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and I believed it. Our younger cat, Willow, chose this stressful day to change her habits and remain outdoors all the livelong day, instead of sleeping on a cool chair in our bedroom. Of course our anxiety levels rose as the number of hours added up, until nearly six PM, when she made her appearance.

We pictured her gasping in a ditch, drowned in the irrigation canal that runs behind our home, or gobbled up by any number of large creatures, including coyotes, mountain lions, and the Yeti.

But all our concerns were for nought, she is in fine shape, and for all we know, may enjoy getting away from us for longer periods of time, whether the weather be clement or not. There may be repeats, but without the panic.

BTW, the humidity was in single digits this afternoon. This means that unless you drink your water quickly you are behind a couple of ounces by the time you finish the glass. Walking a few hundred feet searching for a cat meant not being able to formulate words clearly after only a few minutes, the inside of the mouth being roughly the same texture as an old pair of dried-up leather work gloves.

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

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Early Thursday morning there were a handful of lightning flashes and thunder blasts here in Paradise. No rain, just the fireworks. But up at the Black Canyon National Park there was much more going on. Some of those lightning strikes started fires, one on the north side of the canyon and one on the south. Our valley became filled with a smoky haze, enough that the horizons were obscured.

Access to the park entry road is barricaded off, to keep idiot looky-loos like myself from wandering about the area, bothering the firefighters and becoming problems when those brave people have to stop more important work to hose us down.

Wildfires are always a possibility here in Paradise, a dry country in a good year. But this is the closest one in the eleven years we’ve lived out here. The Black Canyon is one of our favorite places … to walk … to drive through … or just to grab a rock, sit on it, and think about stuff. It will certainly be changed the next time we see it.

(Addendum: As of Saturday afternoon the fire had burned 3000 acres and was zero per cent contained. The park only contains 30,000 acres.)

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This is the view of the Black Canyon Fire from the end of our street. It’s about nine miles away.

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The Sound of Two Hands Slapping

jono55

Robin was in Durango on Wednesday night, while I hung around Paradise to attend an Indivisible meeting on the Disappeared Ones. The meeting went well and at present I am out on the backyard deck where the overwarm day is cooling off right on schedule. The ongoing violation of constitutional protections is one of the more repellent programs Cluck has put into play. It’s straight KGB stuff, Gestapo stuff. The clay that authoritarians use to mold their citizens into subjects.

I took some time to read more tonight about the courage of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, who kept coming back and asking the question of the brutish government “Where are our children?” They came back even when they were being beaten, tortured, imprisoned, and in some cases becoming los desaparecidos themselves.

Cluck is now breaking the law and disappearing people every day, using the masked thugs of ICE as his henchmen in our own version of the brutish Argentine government of 1977. There is no safety under such a president for any of us. To think otherwise is foolhardy.

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Mothers of the Disappeared, by U2

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Since Robin was away, that evening I went out to supper alone. At the next table was a family consisting of mom, dad, grandma, and three young children. The adults, as far as I could tell, spent way more time corralling their imps than they did enjoying their food.

It wasn’t that the kids were unusually naughty, it was that their energies couldn’t be contained on a chair. My takeaway from watching this drama was twofold. First, that kids in a restaurant can be amusing to watch if they are not yours. Second, I am grateful that I don’t have any small kids of my own any longer, and thus am able to eat serenely while others lose their cool and their appetites.

I still shudder thinking back to the time when my own kids were in their feral stage and the carpeting under our restaurant table looked like a picnic that had exploded. I’m quite sure that the waiters of that time looked on our arrivals with resignation and our departures with relief.

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This is the time of year when visiting the Grand Mesa must be done cautiously. Right after the snows have melted up there, the gods turn loose one of the great plagues of mankind. Instead of saying “Release the Kraken,” however, they smile and whisper “Release the mosquitoes.”

The top of the Grand Mesa, billed as the largest flat-topped mountain in the US (or world), is very different from the valley floor. The types of trees and the abundance of lakes make it much like northern Minnesota. And the month of June in that fine state is another place to find all manner of tiny bloodsucking demons whose names start with the words Culex, Anopheles, or Aedes (there are actually 112 genera of mosquitoes).

Twelve years ago when Robin and I were looking for a place in Colorado to settle and were visiting Montrose we used one afternoon to explore the Mesa just a bit. Taking a short hike proved challenging in that we could not stop to breathe once the beasties zeroed in on the carbon dioxide in our outbreaths. Slapping frantically we ran to the safety of our car, slammed the doors shut, and vowed never to go back in early Summer again.

My father used to awe us children when he would allow a mosquito to light on his arm and completely fill itself with blood, turning its abdomen quite red. We could not imagine ourselves doing such a thing, but watching his recurring performances was both horrifying and fascinating.

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One of Us, by Joan Osborne

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Here’s something anyone of my tender years can use to strike awe into kids. They already know that we were born before digital cameras, before computers, even before television moved from the lab into our homes. So reciting those items won’t stun them one bit. But here’s the phrase that will be absolutely incomprehensible to them and will bring them to their knees, slack-jawed and unbelieving:

“I was born before ball-point pens.“

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Travelog

jono55

The past several days we’ve been traveling and there has been little time for blogging. We’ve moved along by car, which is my favorite way to go, and so passed through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and southern Minnesota. All along the route and at each bathroom stop on the freeway system, the humidity increased, until I estimate that it is above 100% here in Minneapolis. Or at least that’s what it seems to desert dwellers like ourselves. If you listen carefully you can hear your hair matting on your forehead and the creases falling from your trousers to the floor.

The purpose for the trip was to attend our granddaughter’s wedding. I had been asked to give the bride away, and everyone hoped that I could perform that brief duty without tripping, drooling, exhibiting excessive flatulence, or in any other way embarrassing the family. I think that I did okay, although the reviews are still coming in.

The bride was beautiful, the groom seemed blissfully happy, and the assembly was refreshingly young. When you are a senior citizen you have a lot of social options you can choose from, but most of them are comprised of getting together with groups of other seniors. Moving to a room where the average age is under 30 is a treat. You are reminded of how sleek and supple the bodies of people are when they are in their twenties, and that once upon a time you owned one of those bodies. ‘Twas a pleasant recollection.

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Summertime, by Janis Joplin

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From The New Yorker

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I have let the world turn largely without me during these travel days, but it is a joy each morning to find that we are not yet at war, not in a depression, and have not yet set ourselves completely apart from the rest of humanity.

President Cluck, it seems, has become quite adept at lowering his rank in the opinion polls each time a new one is taken. My take is that the scales are finally dropping from the eyes of those who are willing to see what advanced thinkers like myself have noticed all along. That he is an unprincipled gasbag with no more right to be POTUS than your average intestinal roundworm.

(That may only be my opinion, of course, but you have to remember that once upon a time I was a physician and that makes my opinions so much more valuable than those of your run of the mill poltroon.)

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From The New Yorker

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The journey home has been uneventful so far, except for a 40mph headwind, rampant humidity, and a temperature that held right at 100 degrees all afternoon and early evening. The headwind was so forceful that our Subaru posted the worst mileage day of its life – 24.4 mpg. It was a long day of two-handed driving and subsequent cricks in the neck. At one point I was loading ice into our cooler when I dropped the bag and it flew away too fast for me to ever catch it, although I did run after it for a few yards. So, today I am a litterer. Ugh.

Were there any pluses, you ask? Well, yes, quite a few. Other drivers sharing the road with us on this trip have been remarkably polite and well-mannered. A young man at a gas station came out to the car to offer me a huge bag of ice at the same price as two lesser bags. Another very young man who we asked for restaurant recommendations suggested we try the Crystal Cafe. “I’ve been eating there since I was a kid, and it was always good,” he said. Of course to Robin and I he was still a kid, but the food was very good.

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Summertime Blues, by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

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It Is Written

jono55

One morning this week I was looking to find something cheerful in the newspapers at around 6 o’clock A.M.. The first thing I learned is that the rice that I love to eat is loaded with cadmium and arsenic at “dangerous“ levels. So, to be an informed rice-eater, I researched and made a short list of what cadmium could do to me:

  • Pulmonary edema
  • Chemical pneumonia
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Diarrhea
  • Kidney disease
  • Osteoporosis
  • COPD
  • Lung cancer
  • Dysfunction of my liver, pancreas, and testes
  • Death

I was going to check on arsenic’s toxicity as well, but by the time I finished with cadmium I was already bummed. Hmmmmm … let’s see … a choice between shrimp fried rice and a trip straight to metabolic hell …

This information comes on the heels of my learning a couple of days ago that eating bagged lettuce is also more dangerous now because the Cluck administration has so reduced the number of food inspectors who protect us as our veggies make the long trip from farm to table that the hazards are increased. So I guess it’s back to good ol’ Soylent Green for me …. wait, what’s that … a little louder, please …

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Grift, graft, corruption, schmorruption … who is surprised by any of Cluck’s vigorous attempts to stuff money into his pockets in these days of dishonor and disrepute? He is a crook, a draft-dodger, a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, and one of the champion liars of any generation. He is a caricature of a man. An empty suit.

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From The New Yorker

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Omigosh, our secrets are out! Here is Springsteen opening at a concert in Manchester, England. Damn. Now everyone will know what a bunch of twits are running our show here at home.

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Springsteen is catching four kinds of hell from MAGAland for his speech at the concert. (Because he called American out in a foreign land, he is even called a traitor, as if every word of every celebrity isn’t available instantly worldwide wherever it is uttered.) Over decades, maybe centuries, each time any singer brings up an issue that is in the forefront at the time this sort of reaction happens. And the criticisms are always the same: “He should just sing and leave the politics outside!” They try to ignore one important point, which is that music and politics have a long history together.

Pete Seeger made an entire career out of reminding us of the place that songs had in our own history, especially in labor and antiwar movements. Bob Dylan picked up that torch and carried it for years. Crosby Stills Nash and Young sung beautiful harmonies over sharp words dealing with the Vietnam War and social unrest. Sooo many others.

Music is powerful, and we all know it. It can change minds, sooth or inflame, elevate or depress moods. I don’t pretend to know why, but the far right has much more difficulty coming up with something a guy can hum than the other side does. Seems they are a hort on creativity, as it were. Perhaps that’s one reason they resent it when a Bruce or a Bob or a CSNY belts out yet another moving anthem. They know they have lost another round.

Chimes of Freedom, by The Byrds

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Every year it is the same. In the spring we sort out the camping gear, toss out the broken items, and replace those as well as the ones we just lost somewhere. We arrange the stuff perfectly logically and neatly until it is a joy to behold. By mid-summer chaos has sneaked in and taken over everywhere. As we set up our tent it becomes obvious that neither of us knows where the rubber hammer the we use to pound tent stakes into hard ground has got itself.

We find that if we are to eat anything which requires a tool we must make do, because all we have are spoons. The rest went into the house after the last camping trip and never made it back into the storage boxes. There are now six bottles of insect repellent and no sunscreen at all in the bag of necessaries. A cut finger provokes a search for a Band-Aid and we can only come up with two of them. Where is the First Aid Kit? Abducted by aliens is what we deduce. The first night of any trip when we can’t find the small flashlights that we need to find a bathroom during those early morning hours … it’s not the predators we worry about as much as rocks, cacti, thistles, and tripping over those accursed tree roots.

In short, we go from perfection to woefully unprepared without even noticing, and we do it every blessed year. As of this writing, I have all our stuff laid out in front of me on the garage floor and am preparing to put it back just the way that the universe knows that it should be done … all the while aware that ultimately I will find myself this autumn with only two Band-Aids and no sunscreen once again.

As Sharif Ali says to Major Lawrence in the movie Lawrence of Arabia:

It Is Written.

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Chimes of Freedom, by the Lynne Arriale Trio

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Snorth Dakota

jono55

Once upon a time I was a member of a small multispecialty medical group in a small town in South Dakota. One of our perennial problems was recruitment of new physicians, even though the town was pleasant enough, and was in a scenic part of the state. The problem was, we were in South Dakota.

And to the majority of Americans, if the earth had been truly flat, our state would have been off the edge of the world in the place where the maps state: Here Be Dragons. Abandon hope.

So much so that most people made little effort to learn to distinguish between the two states with Dakota in their name, North and South.

So when we finally had a physician come to look us over, we often looked beyond aspects of their personalities that might be thought of as irregular in order to add their expertise to our mix of doctors. But there were limits to which we would go. One example follows.

A middle-aged orthopedic surgeon came a-looking. We already had one physician with that specialty on staff, but being the Lone Ranger was growing tiresome to him, so we wanted desperately to find him a companion. Someone who spoke his language and could share the burden of being on call. This candidate looked good. He was well-trained, with good references, a personable man with only two areas that were worrisome.

The first was that he loved sky-diving as a hobby. From the clinic’s standpoint, if you have a precious resource you hated to think of them jumping out of airplanes where gravity and a recalcitrant parachute could put you right back where you’d been before they came.

He still might have made the cut if it wasn’t for the fact that he liked to sky-dive in the nude. With his girlfriend. And take photographs as he fluttered down.

Somehow this last bit of business was too much for our board of governors, and they told him goodbye. Our clinicians didn’t think of themselves as a prudish bunch, not really, at least not when measured against the average American. Oh, we had our occasional affairs and office intrigues, but as the rest of the world knows, our country has a problem with nakedness at any time outside of infancy. We are a clothed people, and that was that.

On the other hand, another doctor-candidate, a cardiologist, was hired even though one of his qualifications for us was that he had to live in a place where he could feel free enough to step out on his deck of a morning and take a leak (urinate) any time he chose without fear of being arrested.

That seemed easy enough to accommodate, and he was helped to find a home on the edge of town where confrontations would be highly unlikely. We were also sensitive that the deck not be on the west side of the home, where our prevailing westerly winds could be a problem.

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Mean Ol’ Wind Died Down, by the North Missippi All-Stars

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There were two things on Monday that prompted an unscheduled trip to Paonia, a village an hour’s drive from Paradise. The first was that a friend of Robin’s had discovered a restaurant there that she thought was special, and the second was that the weather was a cold (but welcome) drizzle. So off we went. We’d visited this town a couple of times before, but hadn’t really given it a close look, usually we were on our way to somewhere else and stopped for a coffee or something similar.

But this day we located the restaurant, which is called Nido, and at the waitress’ suggestion, ordered the bubblegum plum carnitas tacos on soft corn tortillas. Its ingredients were listed as “crispy pork, local bubblegum plum/jalapeno jam, mixed greens, miso molé mayo, b.p. hot sauce, plum pickle, and cilantro.”

There’s not much to say except that we’d never had a taco like them, and I mean this in the best possible way. They were lovely to look at, actually, and so tasty … excuse me while I salivate at the memory. ‘Twas real food artistry.

Paonia is a town that has a definite cultural vibe. It is artist-friendly, DEI enough to give a Republican acid reflux just thinking about it, with some unobtrusive modern elements nestled among leftovers of the coal mining town it once was. The depressing aroma of gentrification is still absent.

Across the street from Nido is TLC, a shop that dispenses locally made ice creams which were delicious, but take a close look at this part of the menu which was posted on the wall. The attention-grabbing sentence was “To ensure access to everyone, everything on our menu is offered on the gift model so you have the option to cover the cost, pay it forward, or pay what you can.”

Now, I asked myself, when was the last time I dined at a place that offered such options? NEVER! That’s when! What are these people, anyway, socialists? Sheesh! Where were they when I was an impoverished college student barely surviving on the dollar bag lunches dispensed from a campus food truck?

We are thinking about going back when the weather is just a bit warmer and not so bleary and perhaps spending a weekend studying the town more carefully than we have in the past. It is entirely possible that we might gorge ourselves on these delicacies in the photo at right … the bubblegum plum carnitas tacos.

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Corazon Apasionado, by Cuco Sanchez

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It is almost beyond belief that we are still talking about child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church as an unresolved issue. But the gaps in supervision haven’t been closed, the new perpetrators keep coming, and the old perpetrators die of old age without ever being held to account for their crimes. The Church has been a foot-dragger all along, and this includes Pope Francis, who started out better than his predecessors in this regard, but ultimately failed in his duty to protect the children of the Church. And he had nearly twelve years to do it.

This is a church that has completely lost its way and doesn’t seem to want to find it. Until and only if it does, no child should be left alone with any member of the Catholic clergy. Not for a moment.

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On The Trails

jono55

The movie “Sinners” took the #1 box office slot this past weekend, and Robin and I were happy to help them attain that economic honor, even though we had to drive to Grand Junction to do our part. I had read a large handful of reviews of the film, and all of them had been glowing. (When you are going to spend 2.5 hours driving back and forth from the theater to see a movie, it is prudent to do a little research.)

As we walked out after the show, we asked each other the same question (as we always do) and it was “What did you think of it?” Turned out we both thought it was very good. And then we asked ourselves … who can we recommend it to? Because it is definitely a rough cob of a movie, and depends heartily on what one thinks of all the telling and retelling of the vampire legends you have already consumed in your life. But here’s the thing. It is a story with vampires in it, but it is not a “vampire movie.” It is much more than that.

The film has a pulse, and it is a thumper. Nearly all of the characters are bigger than life (the humans) or bigger than death (the vampires). All of them are involved in the struggle for their existence, and if that involves blood and sweat and great music and juke-joint dancing with a capital “D,” well, that’s just how it is. The story hurtles along and demands that you keep up with it for the two hours that is its running time. It was so engrossing that I still had popcorn left as the credits rolled. And that is something to say, if you ever saw me eat popcorn at the movies (not a pretty sight at all, what with using the hands as shovels and all that).

Here are my own ratings, on a scale of 5 :

  • Story = 5
  • Performances = 5
  • Sex = 4
  • Colorful language =5
  • Gore = 5, maybe 6
  • Cinematography = 5
  • Costumes = 5
  • Evocation of an historical era … time and place = 5

See it at your own risk. I nevah said nothin’.

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From The New Yorker

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There is a young woman who lives across the street from us, who bought a small Honda scooter last year. She doesn’t ride it often but when she does she goes helmetless.

I suppose that I could greatly endear myself to her with a harangue about cracked skulls and flying brain tissue and that such vehicles were called “donor cycles” by the neurosurgeons when I was a resident. I could do that.

But she’s young and bulletproof and would only nod tolerantly at some geezer giving her unsolicited advice. My own experience strongly suggests that if you’re ready to hear such advice you don’t need it. You’ve already bought the helmet.

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Yesterday morning I woke with this ear worm: Love’s Been A Little Hard On Me, by Juice Newton. You know about ear worms, right? A fragment of a song that keeps repeating in your brain, unwanted, often unloved, for no apparent reason? Well, scientists have created an earworm eraser, designed to get the darn thing out the way and preserve not only your sanity but that of those around you who must listen to you singing the same short phrase ad nauseam.

I make no claims as to the effectiveness of the “Eraser,” but hey, it’s free and it only takes 40 seconds to find out.

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Love’s Been A Little Bit Hard On Me

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There is an absolutely lovely stretch of bicycle path that runs from Ridgway State Park into the town of Ridgway itself. It follows the Uncompahgre River and offers picturebook scenes galore with often stunning views of the San Juan mountains. There is only one thing wrong with it and that is its length. Only three miles long.

Robin and I biked the path on Sunday, ending up in a coffee shop in Ridgway, where the kindhearted barista was able to conjure up a pair of mochas as good as your mother used to make … honest.

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From The New Yorker

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Secretary of Defense Hegseth apparently used the communication app Signal inappropriately yet another time, when he brought his wife, brother, and personal lawyer into conversations where he shared classified information. Information they were not at all cleared to hear.

President Cluck officially has full confidence in this blabbermouth, but somewhere in that morass of incompetence he calls an administration there must be be somebody who knows this is bonkers. Until they can figure out how to keep Hegseth from revealing even more secrets, I offer this simple fix. It would be removed only at mealtimes.

Either that or don’t tell him anything.

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Hard Times Come Again No More, by Ian Siegal

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Robin and I were on an exercise walk up in the Sunset Hills across the Uncompahgre River when we came across this item. Someone had taken the pains to create this tiny place-marker, carry it up the hiking path until they found just the right bit of natural material, and then insert it as an amusement to passersby.

We found two of these handmade op/ed structures, in different locations. I judged them to be completely disrespectful and almost perfect in their metaphoricness.

But of course it was littering. Tsk tsk.

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Wicked

jono55

I liked Chris Isaak, even before his video “Wicked Game” came out on VH1 in 1989. He seemed like a good guy, played beautiful guitar and worked with good material. And then Wicked Game came along, and my appreciation of the dramatic possibilities of sand sticking to skin rose to new heights. The video also showed how good a pair of men’s white skivvies could look when worn by the right woman.

Moments like that are why I look back on the MTV era fondly. MTV didn’t invent the music video, but they knew what to do with them and made them the background music for our lives for a few years. And then they stopped showing them and nobody picked up the concept and ran with it after that.

Everything changes. Things arise and things fall. This is the way of the universe. However … I wasn’t done with MTV yet when they quit the scene. It left me with a musicus interruptus sort of feeling.

(Don’t bother looking up that last phrase. It only looks like Latin).

But these creative short films are still out there. You just have to look for them. Being passive and spoon-fed (my favorite approach) doesn’t work as it did in the past. We have to do a little work.

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Note: the dramatic header photograph is not my own, but weakling that I am it was so striking
that I simply couldn’t avoid borrowing it.

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Finally broke out the electric bike. Many, many others with more fortitude than myself have been seen cycling around town since early March, so I am rather late to the party. It’s those chilly breezes that hold me back. But the machine itself needed no encouragement, all I had to do was turn it on and off we went.

Each summer I put about 600 miles on the bike just going to the grocery store and running errands. It replaces the missing second car very nicely. Especially in a country where rain falleth on many fewer days than it did back in South Dakota. Robin and I have panniers to carry stuff on the lighter errands and a Burley Nomad trailer for bigger loads.

We’ve had our Burley trailer for sixteen years now, so I haven’t looked at that market for a long time. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many brands and styles there are to choose from these days. When we picked up ours back in 2009 there might have been three or four brands to choose from, but that limited selection is history.

There are trailers for hauling kids, cargo, dogs, and even stand-up paddleboards. Teensy camper trailers . One-wheelers, two-wheelers, homemade ones … it’s a brave new world out there.

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The presidents of the United States and El Salvador have told us that there is nothing they can do about the innocent man now incarcerated in an El Salvadorean prison.

Do they think that the matter is thus closed? That we will accept this Alice in Wonderland brand of insanity? Are they so dangerously removed from reality?

Who would have thought that we would now have our own version of Los Desaparecidos here in America? If this man is not returned to the United States and freed, we are none of us safe. None of us.

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Mothers of the Disappeared, by U2

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I count myself a lucky man. To have had delivered to my door a problem I can sink my teeth into at this stage of my life. And I have Donald Cluck to thank for it. He has brought fascism home to us, with all of its colorful horrors intact. It is possible that most of the people who voted for him still think he’s a good guy and when the dust settles all will be well. But they are daily being disabused of that quaint notion, because this particular “good guy” has used them to get what he wanted and doesn’t need them any more.

He has taken a functioning economy and thrown it into the Vitamix. Of course there will be a little pain for awhile, he admits, but eventually this will pass and there will be endless possibilities of getting richer ahead of us. What he leaves out is that the pain is to be borne by the 99%, and the increased wealth will go to the 1%. Not a good sound bite, that ending, so he leaves it off.

Like all fascist leaders before him he has employed the tactic of providing us with enemies who are at our doors and who are reaching for our throats. And what an abundance he provides. People of any color other than white. People of any faith other than Christian Nationalism (which isn’t a faith at all). People who won’t do what he tells them when he tells them to do it. People who don’t lick boots or kiss behinds with enough fervor. Facts and truth being inconvenient, he has dispensed with them completely.

So what is my new job? To join with others who see clearly the tragedy unfolding in front of us. To work for the removal of Cluck from office. To work with others to address the injustices and inequalities that allowed someone as unworthy as Cluck to get power in the first place.

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Find the Cost of Freedom, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

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It was a blue sky day. The temperature was around seventy degrees. The road through the Black Canyon National Park was still closed to automobiles two days ago, while open to bike and foot traffic. Sooooo … I loaded our machines on the rack and off we went.

When we reached the park, we found the road had unfortunately just been opened to cars, but we decided to head out anyway. Shortly thereafter a wind came up, the blue sky disappeared, the temperature dropped 15 degrees, and a light rain set in. When we finally reached the end of the road and our halfway point, we went into the only shelter, an outdoor privy, and stood there for a while to warm up a bit.

The rain finally quit and we returned to the bikes to finish the trip. But, oh what a ride this few miles of highway provides! It’s a narrow two-lane road that twists its way along, with the lip of the dramatic Black Canyon of the Gunnison River just a few yards away much of the time.

Well worth a bit of damp and shiver.

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Ridin’ the Storm Out, by REO Speedwagon

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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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Cool Water

jono55

The lightest of snowfalls last night, right around suppertime. If you blinked, you missed it. No need for shovels, brooms, or leaf-blowers. Just enough to remind you to turn up the collar of your coat and to wear a cap. This week I will dig out my backpacking stuff from wherever I put it, and begin spring preparations for overnights in the area.

Robin and I are very aware that being seniors we seem to be more sensitive to dehydration. When we were in our twenties we would take off on hikes without carrying water and seemingly never miss it. Now we never go anywhere outdoors without having a plan for our next drink. Get even a little behind and our energy flags significantly,

I use the Sawyer filters because they are relatively inexpensive, lightweight, durable, easily maintained, and reliable. Sort of a can’t-miss product. Takes care of everything but viruses, which is more than adequate for our surroundings.

Even on the short overnight camping stays that Robin and I will be doing, we check out each item before heading out as if we were embarking on an expedition up the Amazon River. Failure of an essential item can have consequences ranging from highly inconvenient to quite unhealthy. Many of the camping and hiking areas here in Paradise are out of cellular range, and as we’ve not invested in satellite phones, falls, burns, dehydration and the like are ours to deal with as best we can. Ergo – gear reliability is an important quality.

For a hiker, Paradise is … well … Paradise. We have countless mountain trails to explore, ranging from short walks to epic journeys like the Colorado Trail. We also have the opposite situation, where instead of climbing we descend into the canyons especially to the north and west of us.

One of our personal favorites is Dominguez Canyon, with its trailhead about an hour’s drive from Montrose.

Though this is a desert walk, there is water available in a creek, so staying hydrated is not difficult, as long as we remember to take our water filters.

Is wilderness water safe to drink without filtration? Here’s a stat to make one think otherwise. It is estimated that 90% of the surface water in the U.S. is contaminated with giardia. I’ve not had giardiasis myself, but have cared for many patients who did. To a woman (or man) they did not find the experience delightful. There is nothing about taking a long walk in a hot and rocky country that is improved by having sharp cramps and profuse diarrhea.

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Everyday Is A Winding Road, by Sheryl Crow

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From The New Yorker

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You can’t make this stuff up, folks. Our King/Fuehrer/Emperor Cluck decided that the Gulf of Mexico is not a grand enough name for something adjacent to his realm. So he has re-named it the Gulf of America. The rest of the world is scratching their heads and wondering to themselves, is he really that bonkers?*

Google and Apple, on the other hand, revealing to all and sundry that they have the spine of a planaria**, immediately changed their maps to reflect this new unreality.

A day later, the Associated Press, which does business all over the world, had failed to make the change in their maps, and their reporters were banned from presidential events forthwith.

Never mind that it is only Cluck and his sycophants who call it the Gulf of America. Although this is only his latest delusional piece, we’ll be dealing with it for a while until he is out of office, and the name it has had for centuries can be restored. In the meantime I think I won’t be vacationing off the Texas coast any time soon. I’d be worried that if I should need a life guard and holler “I’m drowning in the Gulf of America,” they might not come to my aid quickly enough, not being up with the times and all.

* Answer = yes
**A microscopic flatworm familiar to high school biology students, at least to those who opened their textbooks.

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Give A Little Bit, by the Goo Goo Dolls

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Dark shadow passes

Raven flying in snowfall

True black in true white

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Last evening we had friends over for dinner and spent a very pleasant couple of hours sharing a meal. Robin and I prefer hosting small dinner get-togethers of six persons or less. We find that conversations run smoother, everyone gets a chance to talk, and the occasional blowhard* is easier to control.

As the evening was winding down, we began sharing our physical complaints, adjustments to aging, and which of our acquaintances was in dire straits at the moment. As the misery toll mounted, I realized that the entire past hour’s discussion would not have happened if we had all perished before the age of forty, as in the good old days, like the year 1000 BC, perhaps. When life was “nasty, brutish, and short” there was no need for or profit in these mutual commiserative sessions.

“Nasty, brutish, and short” is a phrase that appears in Thomas Hobbes’ book Leviathan . It refers to life without government and the state of humanity in its natural, violent, and brutal form. 

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Back then we would simply be rubbed out, perhaps by being careless in the vicinity of a leopard and whoop! End of story. But these days, living into our seventies, eighties, or beyond (partly due to a scarcity of leopards), we have the dubious luxury of comparing aches and pains and thinking we’ve had a discussion.

*Often yours truly, I admit

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From The New Yorker

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Words Failing

jono55

Ran across a short article in the Times about grief, and the discomfort most of us feel when in the presence of someone who has sustained a loss. The pangs of not knowing what to say. The piece describes one phrase that definitely should be off the table as something you could offer to the sufferer:

Everything happens for a reason.

This is like handing a nice glass of Gobi desert to someone dying of thirst. It doesn’t help and may make the situation even more painful. Having been the recipient of this advice on more than one occasion, I can say that in each case I felt anger. Such fatuity, I thought, really deserves a swift kick more than a thank you.

The advice given at the end of this article resonated with me as good and true, when it is suggested that sitting there quietly is often a better choice than trying to explain the hurt away or dismiss it with platitudes.

.

It’s exactly what pets do for us at such times. Offer a silent presence without asking anything of the wounded. Like I said, it’s a short piece. What were you going to do with those two minutes, anyway?

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Grief Is Only Love, by Stephen Wilson Jr.

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Last night I told Robin that we must be at the halfway point for this episode of the frigid season. Give it a few more weeks and thaws will start to appear. It’s really hard for me to feel sorry for myself when it comes to winter, but I manage. The hardships of the season here in Paradise are so puny that none of my friends from back in the Midwest will commiserate with me at all. They don’t even pretend to try. If I begin to complain to one of them, I am quickly cut off in exchanges like this one:

Me: Lord, lord, it’s cold and I am sick to death of it.
Midwesterner: The temperature here is twenty-five degrees below zero, what is it there?
Me: Twenty-five above.
Midwesterner: I think I hear my momma calling.

I can go where it is colder if I choose. All I would have to do is put on some crampons, bundle up, and start up any mountain trail above 9000 feet. But why would I do such a lamebrained thing? If I told any of my friends that I was planning to deliberately seek frostbite or fatality, they would arrange psychiatric care for me in the twinkling of an eye, and provide moral support for Robin until I got over the affliction.

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Winter, by the Rolling Stones

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From The New Yorker

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I was talking with a friend the other day about winter hardships, and happened to mention the term “ground blizzard.” This was a new term to him, so I explained it in a story.

I was returning from a visit to family members in Minneapolis, and had been asked to transport three college friends of one of my children back to South Dakota. The four of us were tooling along on Interstate 90 on a brilliant blue-sky day with so much sunshine that even with sunglasses on I squinted as I drove. It had snowed several inches over the previous week and the winter landscape was smooth, white, and beautiful. At one point as we were nearing Worthington, Minnesota I happened to glance to my right and a long way off across a large field I could see what looked like a white fog which was moving in our direction.

It was upon us so quickly that as even as I said to my passengers “What the hell … ?” we were suddenly surrounded on all sides by snow and what was now nearly zero forward visibility.

Looking out my side window I could see the white lines in the center of the road alongside our car and I crept along with only them to guide me.

I knew that we were about six miles from an exit, which now became our destination. The trip to that exit took nearly an hour, and when we pulled into the first motel we came across we took the very last room that was available. Anyone who arrived after us was given a few square feet around the swimming pool area or in the meeting rooms to use as sleeping space. All traffic in that part of the state came to an abrupt halt.

A ground blizzard occurs when a sudden and powerful gust of wind crosses an area where the snow is not packed or crusted over. It picks up that loose material and the result can present the same dangers as a true blizzard does, even though not a flake of new snow is falling.

The wind blew all that night and didn’t let up until dawn of the next day. By noon we were back to blue skies and I-90 was open. The rest of the trip was without incident.

This was the first and still the only time I’d experienced such an event, and it was unsettling. To have such extreme weather come upon you with no warning at all … can’t say I cared for it.

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Winter, by Matt Corby

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I was a precocious reader when still a sprout, starting somewhere in my fourth year and going through books and stories like a riding lawn mower through tall grass from then to the present moment, although my attention seems to wander these days more than it did.

There are literary milestones along the way that I remember clearly, markers that are idiosyncratic in my own journey rather than what yours might have been. One of them was reading Up in Michigan by Ernest Hemingway in which a rape takes place. I was still too young to understand the meaning of what I had read, but I knew it must be something bad, because when I shouted out to the kitchen, where my mother and aunt Addie were talking, what does “rape” mean, they became totally quiet and did not answer.

Then there was Jack London’s short story To Build A Fire. It might have been the very first story I ever read where the hero does not prevail.

Up until that time heroes pretty much had always won the day, but here the guy freezes to death, and I didn’t know how to process that information. Was this what life could be like? You do all the right stuff and then a random blob of snow puts out your fire and you perish? My life-view took a real hit with that one, and never completely recovered.

Reflecting, I can see that I have read quite a few stories that I was not prepared to fully understand when I first came upon them, and only looking back did they finally reveal themselves to me. Each re-read clearer than the one before.

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From The New Yorker

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Winter Light, by Linda Ronstadt

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It’s In The Book

jono55

Something very pleasant happened to me recently, and it had to do with my birthday. I was given the gift of a book. A physical book with pages and a spine and everything. How long has it been since that happened? I can’t remember the last time.

There was a time when it was normal and to give gifts of books and music. Pleasing on both ends of the transaction. Any excuse to through the stores that sold such things was appreciated. And spending money on such luxuries was not extravagance but a noble gesture …. because I was going to give it away. Win – win.

With books, it was the Kindle and its clones. Not only were the books generally cheaper, but you had access to a gazillion titles. And on a cold and rainy day when you didn’t want to get out of bed you could simply click “Purchase” and the book would magically wing its way through space and land exactly on that small device in your hand. But giving somebody an e-book … the magic is diluted, if not absent.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle. Why, I can carry hundreds of books with me when I travel, and who doesn’t need such a library when stranded in a Super 8 on a snowy night in Nowhere, USA?

But this new actual book that I was given … I am savoring it … turning pages … inserting bookmarks … what’s not to love about “old school?”

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It’s In The Book, by Johnny Standley

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Touch the Hand of Love, by Renee Fleming and YoYoMa

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Reading can be hazardous to your health. Every time I do a little bit of it, I can’t wait to run and tell somebody about what I’ve learned. In that I am much like the average four year-old.

This time it is once again something from the book The Animal Dialogues, and it was in the chapter dealing with pronghorns.

For a good part of my life I called them antelope, and even when I learned that this was not the proper terminology I wasn’t curious enough to pursue the obvious question – if they aren’t antelope, what the heck are they? When I finally did, I found that they weren’t anything in the world but … pronghorns.

Their genus, Antilocapra, belongs to no other species in the world but the pronghorn, endemic to North America. Since they are technically not antelope, and their genus is solitary, the pronghorn is the sole animal of its genetic kind in the world.

Craig Childs, The Animal Dialogues, p. 176.

We have seen them occasionally here in Paradise when we drive to Grand Junction, along Highway 50. But not as often as we would like, perhaps a sighting every couple of years or so. They can survive in what looks to us like the most unpromising rangeland.

The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the Western Hemisphere, being built for maximum predator evasion through running. The top speed is dependent upon the length of time over which it is measured. It can run 56 km/h (35 mph) for 6.5 km (4 mi), 68 km/h (42 mph) for 1.5 km (1 mi), and 88.5 km/h (55 mph) for 800 m (0.5 mi). Although it is slower than the African cheetah, it can sustain top speeds much longer than cheetahs. The pronghorn may have evolved its running ability to escape from now-extinct predators such as the American cheetah, since its speed greatly exceeds that of all extant North American predators.

Wikipedia: Pronghorn

Imagine that. Not only could the pronghorn outrun those cheetahs, they outlasted them in the evolutionary story. Today there’s nothing left in North America that can keep up with them.

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Veteran’s Day came and went as always. Thank you for your service has become as frequent and almost as meaningful as other common phrases like I know just how you feel or thoughts and prayers. I always nod when it is said to me, even though I feel somewhat of an impostor. My military service consisted of putting on the uniform, setting aside two years of my life from my civilian career, and then going to work in a safe and comfortable environment. At no time during those two years was I in any danger greater than is encountered by anyone driving on an average American highway.

So those of us who were in the Armed Forces are not all heroes, no matter how many florid speakers on how many platforms proclaim the converse. Most of us worked far away from the sound of guns and bombs and cries of the wounded. The men and women who do that are true exemplars, but unfortunately at parades and public functions where we put on our uniforms we all look the same.

Yesterday I was listening to a discussion on PBS as to who soon-to-be-president Cluck would choose as his military advisers, since nearly all of the generals in his previous term came to detest and distrust him and have clearly said so in the past several years.

The speakers were talking about the ethos of a company of men and women who are going into danger. They must trust their leaders and their fellow warriors, and also must share the intangible ideals of sacrifice and honor. Such a unit cannot function well without all of these.

Our newly elected leader knows nothing of either sacrifice or honor. In his public statements over the past dozen years he has shown that he has little understanding of or respect for the men and women in the military, except as they can be a source of profit, as in his statement “We should have taken the oil.”

So technically speaking I am a veteran, but nowhere near a hero, not even on the same page with them. I did make small sacrifices, and I do know something about honor. I like to think that I would not have behaved badly had I been put into a combat area, but of course I have no way of knowing, and unless they start drafting octogenarians for combat work I will never find out.

So when I am thanked for my service I nod acceptance, because it is easier than going into a harangue like the one you have just been subjected to. But I do know the difference.

So to all of those who did the heavy lifting while I walked through my tour of duty in Omaha, Nebraska, a sincere thank you for your service.

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A moving scene from a fine movie – From Here To Eternity. Robert E. Lee Prewitt plays the bugle call Taps in honor of a friend who was killed. Something about these twenty-four notes has the power to halt people in whatever they are doing until the last one is played.

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Lei Lady Lei

jono55

I’ve never been to the Hawaiian Islands. People tell me that it is lovely there, and I believe them. I might visit the islands if they were the Hawaii of 1941, when the novel and film “From Here To Eternity” took place.

At the time that I read the book I was young and very impressionable, and it “imprinted” with me. Later I saw the movie and I became permanently bonded to a time and place. In fact, that film had more than a little influence on my enlisting in the Air Force as a teen. The military life seemed the life for me.

Especially since there was always the off chance that I might meet the real life incarnation of Deborah Kerr’s character in the movie … ay ay ay … that scene … still … after all these years …

Well, that adventure didn’t last very long. I never got to be a pilot and I never got to Hawaii. But I did get to spend several weeks sweating profusely at Lackland AFB in south Texas in August, and came back home resolved to pick up my college career and get serious about it.

So if you look at it in in a certain cockeyed way, “From Here To Eternity” may be the reason that I finished college and med school.

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There is a certain genre of Hawaiian music that I have come to love, called slack-key guitar. And one of the most beautiful musical pieces of any genre I have ever heard comes from this tradition.

Here is the King’s Serenade (‘Imi Au Iā ʻOe), by Keola Beamer.

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While it is true that celebrities are no smarter than anyone else when it comes to politics, and there is no reason to give their opinions any more weight than let’s say, any old un-famous person, there is no reason to give them less, either.

George Clooney is a favorite of mine in the actor department. If he had only done O Brother Where Art Thou, and nothing else, it would have been enough to win me over.

So I gave his op/ed in the Times the same level of scrutiny that I would give yours. The only difference between he and we being that he is closer to the center of the action than most of us. And when he says we’re in a tight spot, I am prone to believe him.

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From The New Yorker

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How often does something turn out exactly the way you’d hoped? Robin and I had planned a several-day getaway to a small campground at Woods Lake, about 1 1/2 hours from home. The heat was rising here in Paradise, and at 9,600 feet, the temperatures promised were 20 degrees cooler, and off we went.

To get there you go through the marijuana capitol of our area, Ridgway CO, continue on for about twenty miles, then turn left to go past Placerville (home of the Yo Mama moving company), until you are almost to the megalopolis of Sawpit CO. You then turn right to drive up the Fall River road, which is 2.5 miles of pleasant blacktop followed by 6.5 miles of equal parts good gravel road, tooth-loosening washboards, bomb craters, and boulder fields.

Where that road finally ends is at Woods Lake. An alpine gem.

We launched our now almost-new kayaks onto the water and the wind did not blow. The sun did not scorch. The insects did not bite. The least movement of the paddle was enough to move the boats on a near-mirror surface. The lake is not a large one, and we were able to circumnavigate it a couple of times before supper on the first afternoon. Sometimes we just floated out there, admiring the mountains around us.

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A handful of photos from Woods Lake.

We paddled through forests of neon-blue damselflies, watched clouds of tiny anonymous summer insects whirling over the water in the golden light of early evening, spent several minutes observing a beaver the size of a panel truck gnaw on an inch-thick branch, saw shorebirds of several different species running back and forth on narrow mudflats.

After all those hours of paddling and hiking we returned home wishing we had servants to fan us and brighten up our lemonades. That’s one of the two things life requires to be perfect and is almost always missing. People whose only aim in life is to make you comfortable and keep you fed.

The other missing part is having a background score for your life. Music that swells when feelings are building. Becomes expansive when you are confronted by beauty. Chills when your ex comes for a weekend with the kids. Weeps at times of misfortune.

No doubt about it. I need someone to write my soundtrack. Maybe this guy, Richard Thompson would do it for me. This dramatic melody from the movie Grizzly Man could just as easily be playing in the background as I spoon yogurt onto my granola in the morning.

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From The New Yorker

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I Am, I Said

jono55

I am a writer. I’ve denied it for years because I once thought that it didn’t count unless you wrote the novel of the year. But I write short pieces and string them together to make this blog, and that is the niche I occupy. It’s not Tolstoy. It’s not even Stephen King. It’s a sort of blather that I started to amuse my children and then found that those children were not easily amused and I was going to have to work at it to keep them reading.

Then it was something that I also did for myself, like writing a journal that you allow people to see, rather than keep it secreted away in a leatherette volume protected by a weak lock that will open with a tiny golden key (or you could just cut the flimsy leather strap with any household scissors). To me it was saying, like the Neil Diamond song – I am.

I Am, I Said, by Neil Diamond

I suspect that there are others among you who have had times in your lives when you wanted to say I am. Writing has been helpful to me, and you can see how little talent it takes to do it by reading my stuff. So write without fear, friends. You have nothing to lose but your dignity, and you may say something that resonates with a stranger on the other side of the world.

A change has occurred in my own thought life as the years have passed, and now I find myself saying more and more as my bucket o’days accumulates – We Are.

The horrorshow that reading the daily newspapers has become is never going to improve if all of the bozos like me do nothing but run around saying I Am in our separate and desperate identities. Except for those among us who are card-carrying psychopaths, there should be enough common ground for the remainder to stand on while we roll up our proverbial sleeves and get to work.

For me, at least, that means thinking more in terms of We and less in I. Alone I can make little progress in any of the problem areas America faces. But WE can.

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More from the El Arroyo restaurant

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From The New Yorker

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Got by April Fool’s Day unscathed. Actually it gets easier to do when the kids have moved out and you aren’t living near any of them. Who’s going to prank you? Neither Robin nor myself are pranksters, nor any of our local friends, who are mostly seniors. We seem to have got past that phase of development. Or maybe it’s because a good prank takes some planning, and that is too exhausting to contemplate.

We did our taxes on April 1 this year, challenging the Fates. But my fingers were crossed all during the session with the tax preparer, hoping that nothing gets in the way of the small refund we are supposedly due. The woman who does this work for us each year is named Darla, and she’s an old cob just like we are. Plainspoken, good sense of humor, solid advice.

Somehow we got to relating an experience Robin and I had when we first moved to Paradise. I don’t even know why we had to go there, but we made a visit to the local Social Security office. It was in a low brick building that was nondescript except for one thing – a small sign outside ordering: DO NOT PEE ON THE SHRUBS.

Even in laid-back Colorado finding a sign like that doesn’t happen every day, so once inside we asked a clerk if that was a problem. She said that since the facility didn’t have a public bathroom, and the wait times were occasionally long, some of the clients would relieve themselves in the landscaping.

When we related this story to Darla, it got us all to giggling like schoolchildren for several minutes, and I earnestly hope that there were no large errors made in our return during this period.

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Robin and I have kayaked and canoed for most of our life together. For a time we had beautiful Kevlar kayaks that weighed nothing and flew like arrows. But time caught up with the boats and with us, and we found getting in and out of them much less enjoyable as our bodies’ flexibility lessened. So we sold the old boats and were now marooned.

Robin’s boat

But this Spring we’ve been window-shopping for new kayaks of the sit-on-top variety. Except that they are heavier to tote around, getting in and out shouldn’t be an issue. Especially getting out, where all one need do is flop to the side and fall in the lake.

Jon’s boat

I love to float. Heaven would be leaning back in a kayak and being towed by an otter.

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From The New Yorker

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Joy, by Lucinda Williams

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Watching videos of games from the women’s side of March Madness is watching basketball at its best. Period.

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